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A 29-year-old firefighter from Matanzas has the military ranks of Fidel Castro tattooed on his body along with his signature, next to an image of Che Guevara, as part of what the official media Periódico Girón presents as symbols of ideological loyalty to Castroism.
The laudatory profile, published this Sunday by the official newspaper Girón, portrays Robert Yunior Vega Acosta, company chief of Command 1 in Matanzas and secretary of the Union of Young Communists of the Matanzas firefighters, as a model of revolutionary youth.
According to the report, Yunior justifies the tattoo of Fidel Castro with a phrase attributed to the deceased dictator: "Only in exceptional circumstances is it known that those men exist and prepare silently for critical moments."
The article notes that for the young firefighter, Fidel Castro is "like a father" and that he follows his ideals.
In addition to ideological tattoos, Yunior's body bears the names of his parents, a moon, a star, and the phrase "I am what I live" on his right arm; a winged angel wearing a firefighter's helmet on one leg; a chef representing his brother along with his date of birth; and tattoos dedicated to his three-year-old son and his little girl on his shoulder.
The profile of the Periódico Girón is framed within the regime's strategy to promote young figures committed to the Revolution in a context of a serious crisis of militancy: the Union of Young Communists declined from 609,000 members in 2007 to 415,000 in 2024, a loss of 32% attributed mainly to mass migratory exodus, which even led to raising the age limit for joining the organization to 29 years.
Yunior gained public notoriety in August 2022 during the funeral honors for the fire at the Supertanker Base in Matanzas —considered the worst disaster of this kind in Cuba's history— when he recounted the last words of firefighter Elier Manuel Correa Aguilar, 24 years old, who asked for a phone to say goodbye to his family before he died.
"I faced the unfortunate task of pulling him out of hell and sending him to the hospital. The only thing he kept saying to me was, 'my brother, give me the phone so I can say goodbye to my family'."
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