The Cuban activist Amelia Calzadilla launched a scathing critique against Miguel Díaz-Canel this Wednesday during a live interview for CiberCuba, labeling him "unpatriotic" and "inhumane" for demanding more sacrifice from a people who, according to her, have already given everything.
When asked about the president's statements, she explained how it affects her to hear calls for "more resistance" in the midst of a crisis. "Díaz-Canel is a textbook demagogue. But more than just a textbook demagogue, Díaz-Canel has never had decision-making power. Neither as a minister did he have it, nor as the party secretary, and not today as president," asserted Calzadilla, coordinator of the opposition organization Ciudadanía y Libertad, based in Madrid.
Calzadilla stated that he had "understood" the leader since he was a student at the University of Havana, when Díaz-Canel was the Minister of Higher Education, a position he held from 2009 to 2012.
His most personal criticism focused on the lack of empathy: "What truly hurts me the most is the fact that you are as entrenched in the mud as I am, that you come from below like I do, and that you haven't developed enough empathy to understand what a Cuban feels when experiencing this level of misery."
"It is unpatriotic, but it is even inhumane. It is even inhumane because I feel empathy for someone I don’t know at all who lives in South Africa. How could I not feel empathy for a Cuban?" she added.
The activist detailed the realities that make the call for sacrifice untenable: Cubans who go to the hospital with a bottle of oil for the doctor, teachers who leave for work without having breakfast, bus drivers whom people shout "my soul" at because they can't pick up passengers, and entire families without water, electricity, and gas for years.
"What more sacrifice is a Cuban going to make when we have to arrive at a hospital with a bottle of oil for the doctor? Our country is surreal," he stated.
Calzadilla also denounced that the regime has drastically cut social spending while increasing military spending and spending on hotels: "Today, the state budget is saving much more money because they are not allocating a single peso to social programs. It keeps getting less and less, while military spending, spending on hotels, and expenditure on international trips to discuss communism are on the rise."
He pointed out that from 2020 to 2026, the regime has recycled the same economic strategies with no results, and that the only real change has been to further reduce social investment.
"We have been at this for years. If this problem had started a little while ago, maybe, because there is no justification; the job of politicians is to solve these issues," he emphasized.
The interview takes place in a context of maximum tension in Cuba, particularly following the interruption of Venezuelan oil supplies, which further exacerbated the energy crisis. Díaz-Canel responded with a resistance rhetoric that evokes the Special Period of the 1990s, including an interview with Juventud Rebelde on April 4th where he offered young communists a recipe for happiness based on struggle, citing Marx.
Calzadilla, a member of the Council for Democratic Transition in Cuba, also addressed the secret negotiations between Washington and Havana, which included a key meeting held on April 10. He expressed skepticism about the regime's stall tactics and was blunt about the deadlines: "For me, you have one week. Take it or leave it. That's it."
"Every time I see this man being just as shameless, inept, and corrupt in front of the people of Cuba, asking for what the people have already given a long time ago, I feel an awful rage and helplessness", she concluded.
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