The ruling party calls for the use of political humor but represses those who practice it against the regime

Fernando González, former Cuban spy and president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), called this Saturday for the use of political humor to "deconstruct clichés and false news" about Cuba, during the V International Homeland Colloquium held in Havana.

In statements to Prensa Latina, González argued that sarcasm and irony are valid tools to communicate the ideas of the revolution to international audiences.

"We need to deconstruct many clichés and fake news, like the issue of the blockade, for example. Explaining a topic that hurts us so much with a humorous or sarcastic line can be challenging, but I truly believe we Cubans have survived for so long because we laugh at everything, even our misfortunes. It is an element of our own resilience," he asserted.

However, the official's call stands in stark contrast to the systematic repression that the regime itself exerts against artists and comedians who use that very humor to criticize the government.

The most documented case is that of writer and comedian Jorge Fernández Era, who underwent nearly three years of judicial and police persecution for satirizing the regime on his social media.

Fernández Era was in 2023, on November 28 of that same year, on April 18, 2025, while attempting to peacefully protest, and on January 18, 2026, when he was held for more than 15 hours in Central Park in Havana.

On July 18, 2025, State Security officials physically assaulted him and released a video in an attempt to discredit his accusation.

The State Security forcefully took him to two hospitals to attempt to certify him with paranoid schizophrenia, a method that Fernández Era himself described as "the typical resource of Stalinism."

The comedian Ulises Toirac is another example of the regime's double talk.

Since September 2023, the Ministry of Culture has pressured organizers not to hire him, leaving him without any income.

In June 2025, he was summoned by the State Security after criticizing measures from the state telecommunications company ETECSA and supporting a university student strike, and he announced the summons with irony: "It seems they don't like what I'm saying."

In February 2026, Toirac reported the detention of the creators of the satirical project El4tico as evidence that freedom of expression is feared and repressed in Cuba.

Kamil Zayas Pérez and Ernesto Ricardo Medina, creators of El4tico, were arrested on February 6, 2026 in Holguín and remained imprisoned in April 2026, according to Amnesty International.

This pattern is compounded by the seven-year prison sentence imposed on March 26 of 2026 on the visual artist Leonard Richard González Alfonso for painting posters with the phrase "How long?" on the walls of Regla.

Prisoners Defenders recorded 1,214 political prisoners in Cuba as of February 2026, a historic record in a country where the government promotes political humor as long as it serves the revolution and punishes it when it turns against them.