Related videos:
The Cuban playwright and activist Yunior García Aguilera published an opinion column defending Amelia Calzadilla and the Cuban Orthodox Liberal Party (PLOC) that she founded last week, in which he argues that the activist "achieved something difficult: connecting with real Cubans, with ordinary people, worn out by blackouts, shortages, abuses, lies, and fear."
The text, titled "Eulogy of Daring", published in his section "Cuba and the Night", comes after Calzadilla announced the founding of the PLOC from Madrid on April 26, a center-right liberal party inspired by Martian ideals and the free market, with the slogan "A new path for Cuba. With principles. With freedom. With you."
García opens his column with a direct warning: “One of the most practiced sports among Cubans is public lynching. I am not talking about honest, necessary, even harsh criticism. I am referring to that emotional machinery that is activated against anyone who dares to step forward.”
The playwright, who has been exiled in Spain since November 2021 following the failed Civic March for Change on November 15, argues that not all hostility towards new leadership comes from the regime: some of it originates "from within ourselves, from our wounds, from our frustration, from that anthropological damage that decades of living under a system that rewards obedience and punishes initiative have left us."
"It is unfair to demand perfection from each new opponent, a perfection that the dictatorial machinery itself prevented us from developing," writes García, adding: "We want one person to bear the shortcomings of an entire nation." For the playwright, "perfect leaders only exist in hindsight. They are suspicious constructs of time."
The announcement of the PLOC generated a polarized reaction. Calzadilla received a wave of massive support from Cubans both on the island and abroad, with membership requests and proposals for her to run as a presidential candidate. In contrast, the official program Con Filo mocked the new party on April 29, to which Calzadilla responded on Facebook, interpreting it as a sign of the PLOC's impact.
On April 30, in response to a discrediting campaign that she attributes to the regime, Calzadilla published a video in which she warned State Security agents: "I remind you too, security and DTI, that you have children, that you have parents, and that the government has turned its back on you." The response from Calzadilla to that campaign highlighted the pressure she faces from her exile in Madrid.
Calzadilla was not originally an opposition figure. She gained prominence in June 2022 when she recorded a viral video denouncing the gas shortages in her Havana neighborhood of Cerro, where 11,000 people and 58 families had gone for years without supply. In that video, she directly challenged the regime’s leaders: "How long will the people continue to pay for your comforts?" After facing harassment and repression, she exiled to Madrid in 2025.
García dedicates a special passage to political commitment in exile: "Willpower, in exile, is no small matter. Exile is exhausting. It disrupts life. It forces one to start over." He concludes that "for a young woman, a mother, in exile, to decide not just to denounce, but to try to build a political platform, deserves at least our respect."
The creation of the PLOC also carries considerable symbolic weight: Article 5 of the 2019 Cuban Constitution establishes the Communist Party as the sole leading political force, making Calzadilla's announcement a direct challenge to the regime's monopoly. García concludes his column with a thought that addresses all those who desire change on the Island: "Perhaps the solution does not depend on finding the perfect leader, but on allowing many imperfect leaders to emerge, compete, collaborate, fail, learn, and try again."
Two days prior, the very outlet published an article authored by Jorge Luis León, which questioned the proposal of the Cuban opposition leader right from its headline: “Amelia Calzadilla: Between Improvisation, Arrogance, and Political Absurdity”. With this new column by Yunior García Aguilera, readers are presented with the other side of a debate that will inevitably arise regarding the various initiatives that emerge for the construction of a post-dictatorship Cuba.
Filed under: