Cuban influencer Anna Bensi posted a new video on Facebook where she rejects resignation in the face of power outages and urges the Cuban people not to get used to misery, in a message that has garnered over 317,000 views and 37,000 likes.
In the reel, the 21-year-old performs a dialogue between two Cuban women: one who tries to normalize power outages lasting over 30 hours and another who firmly rejects that attitude.
"I can't get used to this, even if they pay me," says the character who embodies resistance, before deconstructing the phrase that, in her view, has become the shield for those who justify hardship: "It's the favorite phrase of all those Cubans who justify misery. 'At least.' At least what?"
The video articulates a concrete demand for dignity: freedom, options, food, work, and transportation. "To live in freedom. To have options. I want to sleep well on a good mattress and wake up refreshed," Anna Bensi lists, before directly pointing to those who govern the island: "The dictators who run this country have all that. They have everything. Those people have no shame. Conscience is what devoured us."
The most powerful message comes at the end of the video, when the young woman dismantles the official narrative of resistance as a virtue: “Misery is not a patriotic goal. Cubans were not born to invent and resist. They were born to thrive like anyone else. But there is a dictatorship that needs a people who are tired, hungry, and focused on survival. Because a weary people does not protest. A weary people does not think. A weary people is just trying to make it to the next day.”
The video is published during one of the most tense electrical moments in Cuba's history. On June 7th, 66% of the national territory was left without electricity simultaneously, marking the largest scheduled blackout recorded in the country. In Havana, outages reached up to 22 hours a day, and the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant — the largest in the country — experienced its thirteenth disconnection of the year.
That crisis triggered a wave of clanging pots in multiple neighborhoods of Havana, including El Vedado, Centro Habana, Playa, Regla, and Guanabacoa, considered one of the most widespread protests since July 11, 2021.
In April, intelligence agents attempted to recruit her by offering support for her music career in exchange for her to stop criticizing the regime. Amnesty International documented her case, and in May, the U.S. Special Envoy for Cuba, Mike Hammer, met with her in Havana and conveyed greetings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Despite being under house arrest and facing constant pressure, Anna Bensi continues to publish from the island, closing her latest video with a direct question to the Cuban people: “And you, people, what do you want?”
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