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The Cuban-Salvadoran filmmaker Jorge Dalton published a powerful critique on Facebook regarding the marches organized by the regime in support of Raúl Castro, where he described the slogan "Raúl is Raúl" -uttered by Miguel Díaz-Canel- as the "most hollow and stupid one invented these days," and added that "it could only come from a complete idiot."
The text directly addresses the event held on Friday, May 22, at the José Martí Anti-Imperialist Tribune in Havana, called by the Union of Young Communists and other mass organizations following the criminal charges presented by the U.S. Department of Justice against the former president on May 20.
Dalton does not hold back in his harshness when referring to the accused: "Raúl may be very Raúl, but he is a Raúl accused of murder, and that cannot be taken away from him, as this accusation is on the front pages of the major global news outlets."
The federal charges, approved by a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida on April 23, accuse Castro of conspiring to murder U.S. citizens and of four counts of homicide for the deaths of four members of Hermanos al Rescate shot down on February 24, 1996 over international waters in the Florida Strait.
The filmmaker, son of the poet Roque Dalton and trained at the Cuban Institute of Cinematic Art and Industry, humorously dissects the composition of the marches: "Most of those who attend come from various ministries, the Armed Forces, buses filled with police in civilian clothes, members of the Communist Party, increasingly impaired youth, and members of the Union of Young Communists, the Ministry of the Interior, Rapid Response Brigades, and all that essentially makes up the monumental and parasitic state sector that mostly produces nothing."
Dalton contrasts the polished appearance of the attendees—"well-dressed, clean hats, white, red, and blue sweaters, neatly bathed, groomed, and impeccably ironed"—with the misery of the Cuban people, noting that "many appear to have just come out of their air conditioning with their adrenaline high, as high as their cynicism."
Mention explicitly the presence of Mariela Castro at the event and criticize regime figures like Johana Tablada, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, and Deputy Minister Carlos Fernández Cossio, whom you describe as shopping for clothes in stores in New York, Madrid, Barcelona, and Mexico City: "They, to name just a few, are the ones from the camp that have it all."
The filmmaker also points out the significant absence of Black Cubans at the gatherings: "Black people continue to be the most marginalized and impoverished group in this over half a century of socialist dictatorship."
The event on Friday also had a grotesque note: Raúl Castro himself did not attend the event organized in his honor, which triggered a wave of ridicule on social media with phrases like "Did the honoree not attend his own event?" and "And Raúl is in the cave!".
Leaked internal documents revealed that the Electric Company of Havana forcibly mobilized 971 workers from 41 units to attend the event, with transportation starting from 5:00 am.
It was later reported that the regime is preparing open forums across the country from May 23 to June 3, amidst an electrical crisis with a record deficit exceeding 2,000 MW.
Dalton concludes his text with a striking description of the Cubans who do not attend those mobilizations: those who live "among long lines to buy rubbish, surrounded by mountains of garbage, waiting for a truck to arrive after 60 or 70 days without water, experiencing blackouts, lacking food and medicine, suffering from all kinds of hunger, and carrying all accumulated sadness."
For them, the filmmaker writes, the answer is obvious: "They do not go to those marches."
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