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The Cuban baritone and cultural promoter Ulises Aquino Guerra stated this Saturday that the pursuit of wealth and the restrictions on entrepreneurship in Cuba have led to poverty, dependency, and a loss of freedoms, in a direct criticism of economic models based on state control for decades.
In the text titled The Fight Against Wealth, published on his Facebook profile, Aquino argues that systems that fight against wealth and prohibit entrepreneurship only serve to multiply poverty, and that those who wield power from this philosophy rely on the misery of others to sustain themselves.
"Those who fight against wealth and prohibit the freedom to undertake only succeed in creating more poor people. They achieve this very quickly because they live off them, from their miseries and their needs," he wrote.
The director of the theater group Ópera de la Calle also dismantles the argument that wealth is a source of injustice.
"It is never wealth that is the source of evil. Wealth is a source of good, of development, of the creation of inexhaustible sources of jobs, of all kinds of freedoms," he reasoned.
The essay directly targets politicians who turn power into an instrument for personal enrichment while fueling envy and class struggle.
"The logic of their philosophy is that the more poor people there are, the more individuals there are to control, to dominate, and to justify their policies," he stated.
The reflection sums up in one sentence the diagnosis of six decades of imposed economic model: "Hatred toward wealth brought us here. It all started with a dream and turned into the worst of nightmares."
The text concludes with a paraphrase of Marti's thought and a summary of his thesis. "Being prosperous is the only way to be good" and "for a people to be truly free, they need to be free in business," he concluded.
The publication comes at a time when Cuba is experiencing one of the worst humanitarian crises in its recent history, with an excessive electricity deficit and areas where power outages exceed 24 continuous hours.
The bishop of Santa Clara, Monsignor Marcelo González Amador, reported this week that people are arriving at the parishes "saying they have gone days without eating" and that fainting episodes are frequently occurring during the masses.
A report from the Food Monitor Program presented before the UN held responsible Gaesa, the conglomerate of the military elite that controls between 40% and 70% of the Cuban economy, for exacerbating the food crisis through its monopoly on foreign currency, imports, and food distribution.
It is not the first time that Aquino has raised his voice. In October 2025, he denounced the "state of indigence" that Cuban society has reached, while criticizing the government for squandering resources on bureaucracy and hotels while neglecting basic services.
In May, he portrayed Havana engulfed in "a haunting silence" and "a darkness that endures," calling for internal dialogue as the only possible way out.
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