A post on Facebook by Cuban Angelo Del Castillo summarizes with biting irony the frustration felt by millions of Cubans towards the official slogan of "creative resistance" promoted by Miguel Díaz-Canel: "The power goes out: resistance. The water runs out: resistance. There is no gas: resistance. There are no medicines: resistance. There is no transportation: resistance. There is no internet: resistance. There is no salary that suffices: resistance."
The post, accompanied by a photograph of a chaotic electrical panel—with rusty meters, unprotected cables crossed haphazardly, and vegetation creeping between the boards—became a reflection of Cuban reality and sparked hundreds of comments from citizens who can no longer tolerate being asked to applaud misery as if it were an achievement.
Del Castillo concludes his text with a question that many are asking: "If after 67 years the main proposal continues to be 'resist', one starts to wonder whether the goal was to solve the problems or to turn them into a national heritage."
The comments on the post are, in many cases, more powerful than the publication itself.
"Creative Resistance because we must be magicians to endure without water, without electricity, without money, without gas, without medicine, without food," wrote a user.
Another directly pointed to the hypocrisy of the official discourse: "The creatives are the ones who say we should resist while they themselves don't have to resist. It irritates to the core, as my dad used to say."
A third was even more direct: "Creative Resistance while the dictatorship thrives, subjugating the people, robbing them of their dreams and the simplest aspirations."
Physical exhaustion was also reflected in the comments: "Who the hell can cope after 72 hours without electricity, and when it finally comes back for just two hours, they post again that the SEN has failed? 'Unlivable' is the only term that can describe what we Cubans are going through."
Other users turned to black humor to describe their situation: "We’re an electric burner, pure resistance and the good kind, because they have us on maximum and we don’t short-circuit, we heat up but we endure."
The gap between those who call for resistance and those who must carry it out was another central theme in the reactions: “Resistance is for the common people and creativity is for those at the top,” summarized a commentator.
Some pointed out the repressive nature of the model: “To endure it, to applaud it, and finally, the most absurd of all: to defend it. And if you think otherwise: keep quiet or go to prison. The height of absurdity, truly.”
And there were those who said it in a single phrase: "We resist so that they may live."
The context in which the post circulates is one of extreme crisis. The SEN collapsed on July 10 during its fourth total blackout of the year, leaving more than 9.6 million people without electricity. Two days earlier, the country experienced the largest energy deficit in its history: 2,341 MW, simultaneously affecting 73% of the population.
The slogan of "creative resistance" has been coined by Díaz-Canel at least since 2022 and has been repeated as an official mantra for years. In March 2026, the leader justified cooking with charcoal as a positive example of that creativity in the face of blackouts lasting up to 15 hours.
However, on June 18, during the Extraordinary Plenary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Díaz-Canel had to admit that "resistance alone is not enough", implicitly acknowledging the exhaustion of the model.
A commenter on Del Castillo's post summed it up precisely: "It's not that the main proposal is to endure; it's that it's the only proposal they have to buy time, as always."
And a user concluded with the phrase that perhaps best summarizes the mood of many Cubans: "I am waiting for them to leave to see if I can get creative."
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