Cuban journalist and writer Alfonso Quiñones outright dismissed any possibility of real change under the current regime in an interview with Tania Costa for CiberCuba, stating that "you can't change with the same things" and that the only things that might improve marginally would be "a little more food through the ration book" or "fewer blackouts."
Quiñones, born in Camagüey in 1959, raised in Manzanillo and living in Santo Domingo for the past 25 years, provided a devastating diagnosis of the island's situation in 2026, based on his direct experience and decades of political and cultural analysis.
"There is no possibility of change with them. Not at all. No, I don’t think that can be possible. It’s just continuing in the same ignorance, the same apathy, the same mediocrity," stated the writer.
For Quiñones, the regime destroyed the country's productive structure by betting everything on tourism as the sole economic model, neglecting agriculture and industry.
In this interview with CiberCuba, he shares that during the last journey he was allowed to take across the island—from Havana to Banes, passing through Camagüey, Manzanillo, Guantánamo, and Holguín—the writer encountered a bleak landscape: “Cuba is a thicket of marabou. A large thicket of marabou. It’s a farm owned by the Castros transformed into a vast thicket of marabou because they’ve grown tired of making money.”
As a concrete example of productive abandonment, he pointed out that in Ciego de Ávila, where large pineapple plantations once flourished, fields of marabú now spread, the invasive plant that symbolizes the collapse of Cuban agriculture.
Quiñones went further and criticized that even this weed is not being used in a beneficial way. "If at least they would gather the marabú to produce charcoal so that people could cook with it, they would be doing something. But they are incapable of doing anything."
The writer rejected the official narrative that attributes the crisis to the U.S. embargo. "They blame everything on the Americans, on Trump, and on the blockade, and it's all a big lie."
His diagnosis aligns with verified data from 2026: the Cuban regime ran out of fuel for electricity generation in May, leading to blackouts in Havana lasting between 20 and 22 hours daily, while 96.91% of the population lacked adequate access to food according to the Food Monitor Program.
The daily life of Cubans amidst water shortages, gas, and power outages perfectly reflects the scenario Quiñones describes: a country where citizens' demands have been reduced to the most basic needs.
The writer described Cuba as a "mediocre nation" built on repression, pointing out as extreme evidence the presence of minors among political prisoners. "When you see that there are children imprisoned, there are minors in prison, that means..."
The poet also invoked the concept of "anthropological damage," attributed to Cuban essayist Dagoberto Valdés, to describe the moral and civic deterioration accumulated after 67 years without democracy on the island.
"Cuba has become a mediocre nation. They have turned it into a mediocre nation. With all the political mediocrity they have managed to instigate. Everything is based on repression," concluded Quiñones, painting a picture of a country that, according to him, "is now about 500 times worse than in '59."
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