Related videos:
Marxlenin Pérez Valdés, host of the pro-government program 'Cuadrando la Caja' and wife of Fidel Castro Smirnov —grandson of the dictator Fidel Castro—, published a text on Facebook this Sunday in defense of Miguel Díaz-Canel's speech on supposed economic reforms.
Under the title "Expectations," the regime spokesperson referred to the umpteenth maneuver led by Dr. Díaz-Canel last Friday on state television, where he appeared troubled as he revisited the old pieces of the political domino of the dictatorship: economic management system, municipal autonomy, business autonomy, agricultural recovery, foreign trade, and foreign investment.
Although in a derogatory tone, the academic acknowledged in her text the plurality of opinions among Cubans, but only to immediately dismiss it with the official dogma of unity.
The text is revealing in what it unintentionally admits: Pérez Valdés acknowledged that in Cuban society there are "expectations, many, all expressed in different languages and from different starting points: ideological, social class, political, and economic." However, he then quoted the designated leader to settle the debate: "our response must be one of unity".
This formula —to accept plurality in order to subordinate it to the Party's command— is characteristic of the totalitarian essence of the Cuban regime, which instrumentalizes "unity" not as a democratic value but as a tool for social control.
Pérez Valdés herself acknowledged that what was announced by Díaz-Canel "was just a sketch of what we should know in more detail shortly," which did not prevent her from launching into a lengthy diatribe against those who reacted with skepticism or criticism.
In her publication, the defender of Castroism classified critics into a gallery of derogatory categories: "mercenaries," "theorists without work," disseminators of "neoliberal agendas and sellouts to their masters through their counter-revolutionary media," and those who "use this crossroads to see if they can discredit the president."
The only group that deserves the label of "legitimate," according to Pérez Valdés, is that of those who care about the future of socialism and "will not remain idle in the face of the possibility of losing our social justice project originally designed for the most humble."
He also acknowledged, seemingly unaware of the irony, that "in real life, people have more urgent matters to attend to", referring to Cubans who do not engage in Facebook debates.
That "real life" is one where 89% of families live in extreme poverty, power outages last between 20 and 40 hours daily in some areas, the year-on-year inflation was 13.42% in March 2026, and more than one and a half million Cubans emigrated between 2020 and 2024.
The reforms that Pérez Valdés advocates for—greater autonomy for state-owned enterprises, unblocking small and medium private businesses, and eliminating intermediaries in foreign trade—were described as a "fading ploy" by economist Pedro Monreal and as "too late, very poorly executed, and very little" by other analysts, and still need to be approved by the Political Bureau and the National Assembly, scheduled for July.
This is not the first time that Pérez Valdés has been involved in such episodes. In December 2025, she called those who criticized a suggestion not to eat rice or potatoes, shared on her own show, "worms" on social media.
In March 2026, during a tour of 18 cities in Spain, Pérez Valdés declared that private businesses in Cuba "we will create them to eliminate them", a phrase that accurately summarizes the regime's stance towards any real economic opening.
The Cuban Constitution of 2019 legally enshrines this logic in its Article 5, declaring the Communist Party of Cuba as the "highest leading force" and prohibiting any political alternatives, turning the dogma of unity into law.
The comments on Pérez Valdés's post were not exactly enthusiastic: "Develop awareness? At this point and with an empty stomach?" wrote one internet user; another was more succinct: "I'll read it when I want to sleep and there's no light"; a third added: "No text that uses the word 'agglutinate' has ever said anything serious."
Filed under: