Memento mori: "Congratulations" to Miguel and Arleen at the twilight of power

In the midst of the unending darkness, with 1,250 political prisoners —or more—, with 87% of Cubans living in extreme poverty, with children behind bars, elderly individuals without medications, mothers lacking food for their children, and the string of misfortunes with which the Castro dictatorship oppresses and mistreats the nation, the birthdays of Miguel Díaz-Canel and Arleen Rodríguez Derivet coincide.

You have likely received congratulations from those who care for you; now, accept the "well wishes" from those who do not. After all, you are "public figures" and supposedly receive a salary as officials in service to all citizens. Reality dictates the tone of this message; the abyss is already consuming us, and the gates of hell have swung wide open.

Now that the so-called "revolution" has been laid bare as the political project it always was: a ruse to perpetuate a dynasty in power, a pretext to appropriate the nation's wealth, an apparatus that sowed hatred and division, that cultivated meanness, mediocrity, and violence among its followers; now that it is revealed not as a heroic deed, but as a mechanism of control and degradation, sustained by trained repressors and docile commissioners—with the moral stature that the graduates of Ñico López exude—it is time to call things by their name and dismantle, without reservation, the farce that was pretended to be epic for decades.

Because it is not just about two figures that have accompanied the Disaster: it is about two cogs aware of a machinery that has turned the lives of millions into an experience of lack, fear, and wear. One, as an obedient administrator of a ruin that does not belong to him but has executed without hesitation; the other, as the diligent voice of the alibi, always ready to cloak misery in virtue and abuse in heroism. To the scapegoat of the estate and the headless horsewoman that traverses it in her witchcraft, these "congratulations" are directed.

Now that it is evident that Miguel is nothing more than a straw man for a power that has always had an owner; now that Arleen has left a mark on the universal history of servile journalism, insulting the intelligence of both allies and outsiders, creating a parallel reality where every virtue she evokes refers to a vice and daily suffering; now that he wanders around zombified while she, like a circus Circe, works to turn pigs into men; now that the Castros, owners of the country, go with a whip in hand, spitting and flaying their own court of loyalists; now that betrayal has performed the miracle of consubstantiation between discourse and lies, between power and simulation, it is important to call things by their true names.

The mission of Miguel and Arleen has not come without cost. The service has been rewarded. Provisions and fine liquors flowed through the Palace, the Machi's dolls adorned with Cartier, their feet in Christian Louboutin, their necklines set with jewels. Each servant received a little gift, proportional to the weight of their infamy. There were privileges, access, visibility. All of this, while the country was sinking, while Cubans stood in line for nothing, to perpetuate the system. While the truth became unbearable, someone had the task—and the benefit—of taming it. Miguel and Arleen, embracing one another, embodied the horror and crime of "continuity."

And yet, memento mori. Remember that you are mortal. Remember that all power was fleeting, that every biography, no matter how shielded it may seem, will ultimately be exposed to the relentless judgment of time. Pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. You are dust—and you will return to dust—as are all those whom they scorned, threatened, and judged from the borrowed heights of position and podium, those attributes of power that, like playthings, were left to them for a while by El Tuerto and El Cangrejo.

There is no device, nor slogan, nor chorus of flatterers that can come between you and that ancient certainty that the Romans already whispered in the ears of the victors: respice post te, hominem te esse memento. Look back, remember that you are men. Nothing more than men.

This should be, if there is still any trace of clarity left in you, a moment for reflection. A pause. Even—if the word isn’t entirely foreign to you—for penance. Because it is not enough to have served: one must take responsibility for what has been done. It is not enough to have been "continuity": one must bear the consequences of having been so.

They still have time—although the window is narrowing with each passing day—to attempt a different gesture. To abandon the comfort of obedience, to break away from the liturgy of lies, to renounce the role they have played with the discipline of bureaucrats and the fervor of believers. It seems like a mission impossible, but it demands a "creative resistance" with a tumbadora and a final sway.

Perhaps —and only perhaps— in that final gesture, in stepping away from the chorus and the script, they might aspire to something that today feels foreign to them: to regain a semblance of dignity. Not the kind bestowed by positions of power, nor the kind crafted by speeches, but the only kind that survives power: the one that is built when one stops participating in harm.

Congratulations, if that word still applies. Not for the work... but for the increasingly distant opportunity not to persist in it.