Related videos:
The Cuban regime celebrated on Saturday at the Plaza de la Revolución Mayor General Antonio Maceo Grajales in Santiago de Cuba the official submission of signatures collected in the province during the campaign "My Signature for the Homeland," an initiative that included remote areas such as the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and sparked mockery and skepticism among Cubans on social media.
According to a report from the official channel Tele Turquino, the envelopes with signatures came from the nine municipalities of the province and were delivered to Beatriz Johnson Urrutia, the first secretary of the Communist Party in the province, Governor Manuel Falcón Hernández, and Martha del Carmen Mesa Valenciano, president of the Commission on Education, Culture, Science, Technology, and Environment of the National Assembly of People's Power.
The event was preceded by the laying of a floral tribute at the Bronze Titan, and a representative of the so-called "civil society" that acknowledges the regime stated that the movement demonstrated "the unwavering determination of Cubans to preserve their independence and to demand respect for their inalienable right to develop and live in peace, free from blockades and threats."
The public reaction on social media, however, was radically different from the official narrative.
"When was that, and I didn't find out?" Leydis Area Santana wrote in the comments of the post.
Others were just as direct. "As if the United States cared," noted Miloida Martinez, while Anays Matos summarized the operation with irony: "They signed for the common people."
The campaign was launched on April 19 by the PCC, coinciding with the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Playa Girón, and was officially presented as a spontaneous initiative of civil society.
The regime boasted about collecting more than six million signatures nationwide, a figure that was symbolically presented to the ruling Miguel Díaz-Canel and former president Raúl Castro on May 1st at the José Martí anti-imperialist platform, in front of the United States Embassy along the Malecón in Havana.
The historian Alina Bárbara López mathematically dismantled that figure, pointing out that in 2002 the regime reported more than eight million signatures with a larger population, and documented that the identity card of Vice President Salvador Valdés Mesa appears in the official book with only eight digits instead of the required 11, among other anomalies.
Filtered audio revealed the coercion behind the operation. An official from the Revolutionary Armed Forces threatened civilian workers of the state-owned company Cimex by stating that "those who do not agree should resign" and that they would no longer be employed.
State company executives were pressured to secure at least 80% signatures from their employees under the threat of dismissal, and the PCC set up tables with forms even at agricultural fairs and candongas throughout the country.
The young Cuban Alfredito Fominaya summarized it in a video that went viral. "Signatures do not fill the bucket of water for bathing, nor do they drown the cries of the child who can't sleep at three in the morning", he said, as Cuba faces its worst economic crisis in decades, with power outages lasting up to 24 hours a day and a GDP contracted by 23% since 2019.
Filed under: