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The Cuban photojournalist and journalist Kaloian Santos Cabrera published an essay on his Facebook profile in which he openly questions the legitimacy of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba as a representative organization of salaried workers, following the conclusion of the XXII Congress of the CTC.
The text arises as a direct reaction to the confirmation of Osnay Miguel Colina Rodríguez as the general secretary of the labor union, a position to which he had been appointed by the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in August 2025, when he replaced Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento after more than 12 years at the helm of the organization.
Santos Cabrera points out that Colina's entire career took place as an official of the Young Communist Union (UJC) and the PCC — eventually becoming the First Secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Party in Villa Clara — without ever having gone through a union, a factory, a hospital, or any other workplace.
"Do we really consider it normal that the person who is supposed to defend workers is a member of the Communist Party? That their entire career has been spent as an official of the UJC first and of the PCC later—going directly from the first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Party in Villa Clara to the general secretary of the CTC—and not in a union, a factory, a hospital, a school, or any other workplace?" writes the whistleblower.
The author clarifies that his criticism is not directed at individuals but rather at a political practice that has been normalized for decades: "This is not a personal matter. It’s not about Osnay Colina. In fact, I worked with him when he was the ideological head of the UJC Nacional and I was a journalist at Juventud Rebelde. I remember him as a cordial official. My reflection is not aimed at individuals, but at a political practice that has become normalized."
The underlying contradiction identified by Santos Cabrera is structural: "the one who should defend the workers against the main employer in the country —the State itself— belongs to the same political structure that governs that State."
The essay anchors that criticism in the very Marxist tradition that the Cuban regime claims to embody.
The journalist recalls that Marx envisioned unions as autonomous organizations of the working class, that Rosa Luxemburg emphasized their independence from the grassroots, and that Lenin defined them as a bridge between the state and the working class, not as an extension of the political apparatus.
"It was under Stalin that the unions became fully subordinate to the State and the Party, losing much of their ability to independently represent workers," quotes Santos Cabrera to point out the model that, in his view, Cuba reproduces.
The XXII Congress, held on Saturday and Sunday at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana with 759 delegates —198 in person and 561 via videoconference— took place while Roberto Morales Ojeda spoke about "union democracy" and Díaz-Canel closed the event denying any capitalist drift and defending 176 economic and social transformations approved on June 18 and 19, 2026.
Santos Cabrera directs his reflection towards the economic landscape unfolding in Cuba: with the expansion of the private sector, the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (mipymes), and self-employment, the need for genuinely autonomous unions shifts from being an ideological debate to a practical urgency.
"If the economy changes, the institutions responsible for protecting those who earn a living from their work must also change," he writes.
The journalist, who worked in official Cuban media before pursuing an independent career, ends his essay with a question that summarizes the central argument: "Perhaps it is time to ask ourselves whether the Central Workers' Union of Cuba truly represents workers or if, in practice, it ultimately represents the State to the workers. Because that difference is not merely semantic. It is the very essence of what a union should be."
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