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A 25-year-old young man from Havana, Damián Ochoa, published a testimony this week on Facebook in which he claims to feel cheated by the Cuban system and states that the dictatorship is taking away the most valuable thing he has: his youth.
"I feel like my youth is being stolen from me. I’m 25 years old, I have a university degree that I earned with sweat, and it isn’t even enough to buy a bottle of oil in the mipyme," Ochoa wrote, summarizing in a single sentence the paradox faced by thousands of Cubans with academic backgrounds but no economic future.
Ochoa describes a Havana that is very different from the one portrayed in tourist brochures: "I live in the Havana of the blackout that melts your brain at two in the afternoon, of the bus that never comes, and of the endless 'there isn't any'."
What weighs heaviest in his account is not the material precariousness, but the frustrated will: "What bothers me the most is that I don't want to leave. I don't want to give away my labor to another country. I want to prosper here, honestly, with my hands and my mind."
However, the State shuts you down. "This system puts a concrete ceiling over you. You want to start a business, to run a legitimate venture, to do things right, and you find yourself facing a State that is simultaneously judge, party, and executioner: bureaucratic obstacles, confiscatory taxes, and the wary gaze of a government that sees you as a class enemy if you earn more than they deem permissible."
Ochoa also points to the structural inequality that upholds the regime: "What justice is there in seeing the privileged, the military-businessmen, and the nomenklatura living in another world while the rest of us have to pawn even our mattresses to escape the Island on a death raft or in a humanitarian flight?"
That elite he refers to has a name: the military conglomerate GAESA, which controls tourism, foreign trade, and telecommunications, creating a dual economy where the military thrives while the population struggles to survive.
For Ochoa, the crisis goes beyond the economic: "It is existential. It is political, because there is no freedom to express this same discontent without fear of reprisals." His warning is backed by evidence: Cuba recorded a historic high of 1,260 political prisoners in 2026, including 142 women and 33 minors, according to the organization Prisoners Defenders.
The testimony of the young man comes at the worst energy moment in Cuba in decades. According to data from the Electric Union, the generation deficit reaches 1,960 MW, with an installed capacity of only 1,090 MW against a demand of 3,050 MW. Residents of Havana have a maximum of four hours of electricity a day.
The economic context supports their frustration. The average monthly salary in Cuba is 6,649 pesos, equivalent to between 15 and 20 dollars, while the basic basket costs 14 times that salary, and more than 95% of the population cannot access three dollars a day for essential needs.
The regime announced 176 economic measures approved by the National Assembly, which include private banking and the opening to foreign investment. Miguel Díaz-Canel himself admitted to "internal obstacles such as slowness, bureaucracy, and regulations that hinder those who want to produce," although he dismissed any political opening.
Citizens responded with widespread skepticism on social media, and Ochoa's testimony encapsulates that rejection.
"I do not feel complete. I feel cheated. I feel like a lion in a cage that is too small. I want the right to dream without being punished for it. I want the right to live without having to ask for permission. I want FREEDOM," he concluded.
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