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The Cuban filmmaker Juan Pin Vilar published a powerful message on Facebook directly addressing Miguel Díaz-Canel, in which he labels him a great fool and accuses him of being the most mediocre and incompetent politician ever known in the history of Cuba since 1959.
The immediate trigger was the interview that Díaz-Canel granted to journalist Kristen Welker from the program "Meet the Press" on NBC News, in which the president displayed irritation, evasion, and a notable intellectual void in response to direct questions about the country's crisis.
"Buddy, there have been ridiculous, mediocre, and bland politicians in our history, but Díaz-Canel, you've set the bar very high. Dude, you are a complete idiot," Vilar wrote candidly.
The documentarian went even further by comparing the leader to independent journalist Yoani Sánchez: "You can't handle even one round with Yoani Sánchez, with whom I've exchanged greetings only two or three times in my life, but you can see her intellectual rigor beyond her clothing."
About the interview with NBC, Vilar was equally devastating: "The journalist from NBC must have been astonished by so much stupidity, so much emptiness of ideas."
In that interview, Welker asked Díaz-Canel if he would be willing to resign to save Cuba. The ruler's response was to counterattack: "Have you asked that question to any other president in the world? Could you ask President Trump that question? Is it your question or does it come from the United States Department of State?" Welker defended his line of questioning, stating that he had asked similar questions to Trump.
Vilar did not stop there. He invoked the figure of José Ramón Machado Ventura—one of the most obscure historical figures of Castroism, aged 95—to draw a comparison that is devastating: "Just look at how Machado Ventura is a distorted and ill-conceived invention, rejected by every honest revolutionary with two brain cells who passed through this island. But you surpass him by far."
The filmmaker also highlighted activist René Fidel González alongside Yoani Sánchez as more legitimate voices than the ruler himself to speak on behalf of the Cuban people: "All that Yoani does—just like René Fidel—is walk around and share what she hears and sees. They have more right than you to speak for the people, simply because they walk on foot and without fear."
Vilar concluded his text with a question that encapsulates the underlying denunciation of the persecution the regime exerts against dissent: "What are you afraid of? A woman with a phone talking on the street?" This was a direct allusion to Yoani Sánchez, arbitrarily detained by State Security on January 28 to prevent her from attending a diplomatic reception.
Vilar, a documentarian with a long history of confronting the regime's censorship, is not new to this type of criticism: in June 2023, he already sent a public letter to Díaz-Canel denouncing the ban on his documentary "La Habana de Fito".
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