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David Ramírez Álvarez, Second Secretary of the Embassy of Cuba in the United States in charge of Cultural Affairs, posted this Saturday on his X account a message in which he asserted that "no fuel or economic embargo will kill the will of the Cuban people to prosper, develop, and continue to be a cultural powerhouse."
The diplomat accompanied his post with an image of a ballet studio and the hashtag #LetCubaBreathe, a campaign supported by Cuban diplomacy to advocate for the lifting of the U.S. embargo.
The statement stands in stark contrast to the reality on the island. The Cuban economy contracted by 5% in 2025—the third consecutive year of recession—and independent organizations project an additional decline of 7.2% for 2026, which would accumulate a contraction of over 23% since 2019.
The blackouts lasted up to 25 and 30 hours daily in 2025, affecting 63% and 64% of the population, with ten of the 16 thermoelectric plants in the country out of service in March 2026.
The diplomat's reference to resisting "even with the lights turned off" is particularly revealing: it is not a metaphor, but a literal description of the everyday life of millions of Cubans.
But the most devastating contradiction lies in the rhetoric surrounding the "will to prosper." The very regime that Ramírez represents is the one that most hinders that will. In 2025, the government conducted over 1,100 inspections of small and medium private enterprises, resulting in hundreds of permanent closures, mass confiscations, and multimillion-dollar fines. The access to foreign currency, licenses, and imports depends on political loyalties and clientelism networks.
While the diplomat speaks of prosperity, Cuba ended 2025 with 1,197 political prisoners —a historic record—, a number that rose to 1,214 in February 2026, according to Prisoners Defenders. Among the inmates are dissidents, entrepreneurs, and demonstrators from July 11, 2021. At least 46 people died in Cuban prisons between 2025 and the beginning of 2026 due to denial of medical assistance.
The regime approved a pardon for more than 2,000 inmates on April 3, but explicitly excluded crimes of sedition, contempt, and public disorder, which are precisely the charges used against the majority of political prisoners.
Amnesty International has described the pattern of the Cuban government as a strategy to "intimidate, isolate, and silence those who demand respect" for human rights.
The official narrative blames the crisis on the U.S. embargo, but the data tells a different story: the U.S. exported $585 million to Cuba in 2024, a 16% increase from the previous year, including medical products and food. The structural causes of the crisis—centralized economic model, state inefficiency, repression of the private sector—are internal and have 67 years of history.
The most eloquent response from the Cuban people to this supposed "will to prosper" is the exodus: more than one million people have left the island since 2021, reducing the estimated population from 11.3 million to between 8.6 and 8.8 million inhabitants, marking the largest diaspora in recent Cuban history.
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