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Roberto Morales Ojeda, Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, published on Facebook this Friday a text where he invokes the Special Period of the 90s to justify what he calls "creative and even uncomfortable solutions," without mentioning a single concrete measure or acknowledging that the regime he is part of is the main responsible for the disaster.
The official began with the favorite resource of the nomenklatura: invoking Fidel Castro. According to Morales Ojeda, the historical leader "promoted a series of fundamental measures to save the Revolution" during the Special Period, exhibiting "a leadership that combined firmness and a sense of the historical moment," adopted to "resist the impact of the crisis at the lowest possible social cost." The real social cost of that period—mass hunger, exodus in rafts, extreme rationing—was, as usual, left out of the narrative.
From there, Morales Ojeda made the rhetorical leap that gives title to his twist: the "Cuban revolutionaries" must revisit that legacy "not to repeat it mechanically," but to draw out "the capacity to prioritize the defense of the nation over any dogma, and to find creative and even uncomfortable solutions when reality demands it." Translated from the official language to plain Spanish: the regime needs to do things it once called capitalist heresy, but prefers to present them as revolutionary courage.
The text concluded with a phrase that summarizes decades of propaganda: "that of a socialism which, without renouncing its principles, is smart and brave enough to reinvent itself." Not a word about blackouts lasting up to 65 consecutive hours, nor about the 96.91% of the population with inadequate access to food, nor about the 33.9% of households where at least one person went to bed hungry in the past month.
The "uncomfortable solutions" now have a name and a face: the regime approved in June 2026 a package of 176 economic measures that includes private banking, cryptocurrencies, and the elimination of universal subsidies. Measures that in any other context the Communist Party itself would have labeled as "surrender," but that are now presented as sovereign decisions. Apparently, bravery depends on who signs the decree.
The context in which this piece of propaganda appears is devastating. Cuba is experiencing its worst economic crisis since the Special Period that Morales Ojeda invokes as inspiration, with a projected GDP decline between 6.5% and 15% just this year. The dollar in the informal market surged from 435 Cuban pesos in December 2025 to over 670 pesos on July 7. The monthly basic basket costs around 50,000 pesos, more than seven times the average state salary, according to analysis on the cost of living in Cuba in 2026.
This is not the first time that Morales Ojeda has resorted to the literary genre of slogans disconnected from reality. On June 20, he published "Cuba is Rising" while the island was burning in blackouts with a generation deficit that exceeded 1,975 MW. Days later, he spoke of "union democracy" in a country where independent labor unions are banned.
The public profile of Morales Ojeda has its own numbers: a survey from April 2026 revealed that 94% of the Cubans surveyed declared having "no confidence" in him, with an average rating of 1.1 out of five. The U.S. Department of the Treasury included him on May 18, 2026, in the list of Specially Designated Nationals under Executive Order 14404 of the Trump administration, due to his ties to repression in Cuba.
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