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The Cuban comedian Ulises Toirac released a message on Facebook that quickly went viral: “About hating hate... okay. Look, you can’t expect everyone to be a decent person... But please, send me catfish with at least five neurons. If there are any left.”
The request, modest as it was, was not a culinary whim: it was a plea for intellectual basics directed at the "revolutionaries" who fill their messages with the enthusiasm of those who have no more urgent occupation than insulting a comedian online.
The immediate trigger was a comment from a user identified as Cristina Quintero Lao, who boldly wrote: "Your groans aren’t even funny." Toirac, who in addition to being a humorist is a screenwriter and director with 45 years of artistic life, seized the pedagogical opportunity and responded with his usual ironic wit: "Cristi, darling, illiteracy is harming you. Conjugation is first-grade stuff. How did they accept you in Ñico López without knowing plural and singular, my dear?"
The mention of the Ñico López Higher School of the Communist Party of Cuba was neither innocent nor accidental. Founded on December 2, 1960, and attached to the Central Committee of the PCC, Ñico López is the main ideological training center for cadres of the party, the government, and mass organizations. Leaders graduate there under the principles of Marxism-Leninism, or its tropical version. The fact that one of its alleged graduates does not master the agreement between subject and verb says a lot about the qualities that the student body prioritizes, as one internet user pointed out accurately in the comments: "Remember that the student body demands attitude, not aptitude."
The comments on the post turned into a festival of popular wit at the expense of the so-called "ciberclarias," a term from Cuban digital slang referring to accounts—many of which are fake or coordinated—that defend the regime and attack critical figures on social media. "They suspended PLASTILINA at the Children's Circle," wrote one internet user. Another was more pessimistic about Toirac's request: "Clarias with neurons... and more than five, damn, you really are optimistic; that doesn't exist, my dear." A third person concluded elegantly: "Even the clarias with more neurons have abandoned ship."
The phenomenon of the ciberclarias is not folklore: the Oxford Internet Institute documented in 2020 that Cuba is among the countries with "cyber troops" organized to manipulate public conversation on social media. The site LasCiberClarias.com went on to identify over 100 pro-government fake profiles on digital platforms. The fact that many of these profiles cannot conjugate the verb "to give" is perhaps the only reassuring detail in this entire story.
Toirac has been the target of this digital artillery for years. In October 2024, the comedian expressed his frustration with the insults on social media and called for "peace" on his profiles, describing what he read as something "from another planet," "cold," "soulless and lacking discernment," and "simplistic." Peace, evidently, did not arrive. In June 2025, State Security summoned him following his criticisms on social media; he described the meeting as taking place "in an atmosphere of mutual respect" and lasting more than an hour. And in May 2025, he launched the hashtag #CubaDueleConCojone to denounce everyday hardships.
The audience's response to the latest post, on the other hand, was one of massive support. "There’s always a troll who has nothing better to do. Ulises, you are truly great and brave; you have a community that loves, admires, and respects you," wrote one follower. Another added with impeccable logic: "It was precisely his spelling that caused Ñico to choose such a character."
Toirac, who has been making Cubans laugh for decades on television, in theater, and in film, has found his most recent stronghold on Facebook. The lingering question after all this episode is whether there are still clarias with five neurons left in Cuba or if, like so many others, they too have emigrated.
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