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The doctor and activist Óscar Elías Biscet published an opinion piece this Sunday in addressed to the American people, in which he urges them to stop romanticizing the Cuban Revolution and justifying the regime that oppresses Cubans.
Biscet writes from Havana, by the light of a lantern, amidst the worst energy crisis Cuba has experienced in decades.
"I am writing from Havana, by the light of an old lantern, because there is no electricity again. At the beginning of May, the government admitted what every Cuban already knew: the country has run out of fuel to keep the lights on. This is the worst crisis I have seen here in decades, and I have seen many," writes the opposition figure.
The Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, admitted on May 14 that Cuba had no reserves of diesel or fuel oil to sustain electricity generation, on a day when the deficit reached a record 2,174 MW.
Biscet, who spent more than 11 years in Cuban prisons without having committed any act of violence, recalls that he was imprisoned for refusing to remain silent about babies left to die after late-term abortions, for hanging the Cuban flag upside down as a signal of distress, and for meeting with other Cubans who wanted to express themselves freely.
He was sentenced in 2003 to 25 years in prison during the so-called Black Spring, as part of the Case of the 75, and was released in 2011 under conditional license.
After his release, he refused to go into exile and decided to stay in Cuba. "I could not abandon my people to despair; having raised the torch of freedom, I could not extinguish it or forsake it," he explains in the article.
The political police keep a close watch on him and frequently detain him. Biscet was detained in Havana in January 2023 as he left his home.
In his text, the opponent dismantles the argument of the embargo as an excuse for all the ills of Cuba with a straightforward question: "In what other country would you defend a government that imprisons journalists, silences priests, allows the people to vote only for the ruling party, and then dismisses every complaint by pointing to a foreign enemy?"
"I don't ask you to hate my country. I ask you to stop making excuses for the men who govern it," Biscet writes.
The activist recalls the protests of July 11, 2021, when thousands of Cubans took to the streets in over fifty cities demanding freedom, and the regime responded with mass arrests and lengthy prison sentences.
"Those people were neither traitors nor foreign agents. They were ordinary Cubans who had simply lost hope," he notes.
According to data from Justicia 11J, in May 2026 there were 775 political prisoners in Cuba, of whom 338 were sentenced for the protests of July 11th.
Biscet invokes Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi as his political references and rejects violence as a means: "Cuba will not be healed by hate or revenge. Change will come through awareness, civic spirit, and Cubans finding the courage to speak honestly with each other again."
The article concludes with an image that encapsulates the opponent's resistance: “Tonight I am sitting in the dark, with every reason to give up, but I will not. Cuba will be free, and we Cubans are working towards that liberation.”
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