The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) in the province of Granma launched the campaign #MyMailboxAgainstTheBlockade on Friday, an initiative to collect letters and written messages denouncing the U.S. embargo, as part of the activities for Family Day, celebrated every May 15.
The Las Mangas demarcation was the pioneer in the journey that will extend across all municipalities in the province. The call, open to people of all ages, is presented as "support for the rejection of the arbitrary rules promoted by the government of Donald Trump," showed a Facebook post by the athlete María Elena Cisneros Ferrer, a resident of Bayamo.
The handmade white cardboard mailboxes, featuring slogans like "Down with the Blockade" and "Bring Down the Blockade," were placed in outdoor community spaces next to the FMC flag.
The campaign is part of a wave of political mobilizations orchestrated by the regime in recent months, in a context of extreme polarization in relations between Cuba and the United States and the possibility of military action from Washington against the autocratic regime in Havana.
The Communist Party boasted about collecting more than six million signatures in the My Signature for the Homeland campaign, presented to the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel on May 1 at the José Martí Anti-Imperialist Tribune in Havana.
That campaign was marked by allegations of coercion. A leaked audio exposed a FAR official threatening civilian employees of the state corporation Cimex with "anyone who does not agree with this should resign."
The day before, Santiago de Cuba celebrated the official submission of the provincial signatures, collected even in remote areas of the Sierra Maestra, during an event that also sparked mockery on social media.
The public reaction to the new mailbox campaign was no different. Comments on the FMC's post Overflowed with skepticism and irony.
Yandy Ogando asked, “Oh, is there paper for letters? And here we are writing medical methods on scraps of paper.”
Alexandra Rivas Almarares was more straightforward. "The blockade is the sham of keeping a people without electricity for 34 hours while others enjoy priorities that I am sure many of us do not have," she stated.
Freddy Batista claimed, "Why don't they write letters for political prisoners to get them released? Why don't they write to advocate for human rights, when neither you nor anyone else can choose the president of your country?"
For his part, Jorge Félix Castro asked with an ironic tone, "And what do they do with the letters afterward? Do they use them to cast a spell on Marco Rubio, or do they send them so that their little hearts soften?"
Basilio Sanchez pointed to the heart of the issue by questioning, "And what about the internal blockade, which is the main problem and can actually be resolved, when will that happen?"
Finally, Leyanis Isabel Silva Jomarrón summed up the general perception in one sentence: "This is indeed what we call indoctrination."
The pattern of epistolary campaigns as a propaganda tool has a recent regional parallel. In January, Chavismo in Venezuela organized a similar initiative of support letters for former president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores from the Bolívar plazas in the South American country, under the name "I Want You Back", receiving the same response of citizen mockery on social media.
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