The Cuban comedian Rigoberto Ferrera published a video on Facebook this Friday, in which he ironically comments —in a double entendre— on the regime's official signature collection campaign, humorously stating with his characteristic sarcasm that signatures are being collected, but for the removal of trash in Havana.
The 34-second clip, accompanied by the only text: "This needs to be cleaned up. Sincerely, The Whip of Communals", was recorded on Perfecto Lacoste Street in the capital, and shows heaps of waste piled up in the middle of the public road, apparently with a visible Communist Party office in the background.
Petitions are being collected here in Perfecto Lacoste for garbage collection," says Ferrera in front of the pile of waste, before adding, "This needs to be picked up, my friend. For a better city." The wordplay is as simple as it is effective: while the regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel mobilizes its machinery to gather millions of signatures for a political statement, Havana has been buried under tons of garbage for months with no one to pick it up.
The official campaign that Ferrera parodies is called "My Signature for the Homeland" and was launched on April 19 by the Communist Party of Cuba, marking the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Playa Girón. Díaz-Canel was the first to put his signature at the Ciénaga de Zapata Memorial Museum in Matanzas, and solemnly declared: "We sign the unequivocal declaration that the Cuban Revolution will never negotiate its principles."
In the wake of yet another of the many propaganda campaigns by the dictatorship—this time titled: Declaration of the Revolutionary Government "Girón is today and always"—there is an attempt to gather millions of signatures, with open signature books in communities, workplaces, and student institutions across the country, along with the usual pressures for the population to support the initiative.
What the regime fails to mention in its actions is that, while its officials travel across the country with signature books in hand, the Cuban capital is facing a health crisis of alarming proportions. Last February, only 44 out of 106 garbage collection trucks in Havana were operational due to a shortage of diesel. The city generates between 24,000 and 30,000 cubic meters daily of solid waste, but has only 10,000 containers when it needs between 20,000 and 30,000.
In light of the government's inaction, residents have resorted to burning trash in the streets, a practice that the blogger Yoani Sánchez described on April 15 with a poignant phrase: "Havana smells of burnt trash".
Ferrera himself had documented this reality on April 20, days before this video, when he published another clip showing burning containers in the heart of the city. The irony is that, while the regime was spreading its ledgers across the country, Havana was literally ablaze with garbage.
The official campaign has also been denounced by activists as a forced propaganda operation. In Cárdenas, there were reports of direct threats to workers with phrases like "Either you sign, or you know what awaits you." The opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer and the activist Lara Crofs, among other critical voices, publicly called for not participating, labeling the initiative as support for "tyranny."
Dozens of Cuban internet users received Ferrera's video with the same sharp humor that characterizes his work. "Who should we pick up first?" joked one user. Another noted, "I’m all for collecting signatures to get the trash picked up and thrown far away." A third one wryly warned, "If they are gathering signatures for trash collection, they need to specify which trash; otherwise, the lines might exceed those from May Day." And one more accurately closed the loop: "Even the PCC is collecting signatures to get the garbage issue resolved."
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