The Cuban filmmaker Pavel Giroud stated that "the revolution took away even Independence Day" in remarks made during an interview with CiberCuba on the 124th anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic.
For the filmmaker, May 20, 1902 marked a foundational milestone: it was the first time the Cuban flag flew over all public buildings and the American flag was lowered. "Whenever we are compared to Puerto Rico, I say no, no, no. When you enter Puerto Rico it says Welcome to the United States of America," he remarked, highlighting the difference in sovereignty between the two territories.
Giroud described the Republic as an imperfect yet essential period: "We had dictators, we had small wars, we had true popular revolutions born from the people, like in '33 for example. It was imperfect, but the country we have was forged there, it was forged there at a cultural level."
He acknowledged that the Platt Amendment was a tool with which "the United States had us somewhat blackmailed as a nation," but he argued that Cuba was a country with its own cultural wealth that deteriorated over time.
Giroud emphasized the figure of Tomás Estrada Palma, Cuba's first president, as an example of this erasure: "They didn't even respect the fact that someone like Estrada Palma had been a mambí, had founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party with José Martí, and then remained at the helm of the party after Martí's death."
As a symbol of that suppression, the filmmaker recalled that the statue of Estrada Palma in Havana was toppled in 1961: “All that remains of Estrada Palma are two bronze shoes there on the Avenue of Presidents because they took it upon themselves to erase history.”
Giroud also criticized the narrative that the regime imposed in Cuban schools about the republican era: "They took it upon themselves to erase history (...). I remember when in school, they told us in a completely distorted manner."
He added that child poverty, which the regime has wielded in its rhetoric as a characteristic of that historical period, was never resolved by those who used it as an argument to justify the Revolution: "There were barefoot children with bellies full of worms, but they didn't solve that, because there continue to be barefoot children with bellies full of worms."
The interview took place on a day rich with political symbolism: this May 20, 2026, it became known that Raúl Castro was indicted for the shootdown of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, a date that the regime had erased from the official calendar for more than six decades and that the Cuban exile community has never stopped commemorating.
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