The Cuban artist and theater director Selene Perdomo Chacón, residing in Barcelona, stated this Saturday that the 67 years of absolute power of the Cuban regime are enough to dismantle any attempt to justify the failure of the socialist model.
Perdomo stated that Cuba is experiencing a collective "delirium" caused by a system that, in his view, has normalized violence, persecution, and social fracture for almost seven decades.
"It is the result of the most absurd thing that has happened in Latin America for nearly 70 years," he stated during an interview with journalist Tania Costa from CiberCuba, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States.
The artist recalled that this dynamic marked her childhood in the 1980s when she saw neighbors who lived in harmony turn against each other on the orders of the regime.
"I saw my neighbors, who got along really well, throwing stones at their brothers, at their neighbors, at the children they played with," she recounted.
In his view, this logic continues to define the Cuban system. "It is a society and a regime that promotes violence and persecution; we are all each other's police," he stated.
Regarding those who still support the regime, he distinguished between those who do so out of fear or coercion and the ruling elite, whom he accused of maintaining their power through their privileges while "absolutely" ignoring the suffering of the population.
Perdomo also rejected the official explanations that attribute the Cuban crisis exclusively to external factors. He recalled that, while in a democracy governments have four to eight years to demonstrate results, the Cuban regime has ruled for 67 years without parliamentary opposition and with absolute control over the institutions.
"In eight years they have had 67, and without any opposition in parliament, with everyone voting in favor, and still, they have sunk the country," he stated.
For the artist, the issue can no longer be attributed to the "external enemy," but rather to the system's inability to manage the country. "It's no longer a problem of the external enemy; it's a management problem—they don't know how to manage resources," she said, before questioning the appointment of unqualified political figures to lead state enterprises: "You can't put a party member in charge of a company."
Perdomo's statements come a day after the ruling Miguel Díaz-Canel once again blamed the United States for the Cuban crisis in an interview granted to the Puerto Rican newspaper Claridad, where he urged Cubans to direct their protests against Washington and not against the government.
In that same interview, Díaz-Canel dismissed any betrayal of socialism and reiterated that "what is being done to Cuba can be done to any country."
That pattern of shifting responsibility is precisely what Perdomo rejects. The regime has spent decades blaming the embargo.
The artist, author of the denunciatory poem "El Rapto de las Mulatas" and director of the podcast "Menos mal que estoy yo aquí," concluded her presentation with a phrase that encapsulates the day's contrast.
"The United States is celebrating today what we still cannot celebrate, which is freedom, democracy, and the defense of the nation's values," he emphasized.
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