In response to the direct question of whether Cuba can emerge from the crisis, the ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel on Monday resorted to a metaphor from the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano to avoid answering and evade the issue with the sophistical tricks reminiscent of the Afanásiev school.
"The utopia is on the horizon. When we take two steps, the utopia moves back two steps. And the horizon moves ahead by ten steps. What is the purpose of utopia? To walk. I would say that hope is the same." The phrase, spoken in an exclusive interview with RT en Español, amounts to admitting that there is no concrete way out of the disaster faced by the Cuban population.
The question was posed by Oliver Zamora, correspondent in Havana for the Russian propaganda channel and a regular figure on Cuban state television. Zamora asked the ruling doctor whether there was hope "despite everything," and received a tongue-twisting, nonsensical response instead of a plan.
What Díaz-Canel presented as a response to the citizens' distress is, in fact, a version of a famous quote by the Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri, popularized by Eduardo Galeano in his book 'Las palabras andantes'.
«She is on the horizon. I take two steps closer, she moves two steps away. I walk ten steps and the horizon moves ten steps further away. No matter how much I walk, I will never reach her. What is the purpose of utopia? That's the purpose: to keep walking,» says the quote paraphrased by the author of the 'Government Management System based on Science and Innovation for Sustainable Development in Cuba'.
The original philosophical meaning—the utopia as the driving force of movement, not as an attainable destination—has taken on a connotation of resignation in the words of the "straw man" of the Cuban regime: hope does not lead to any specific place; it only serves to keep moving forward.
Only in a dictatorship can power afford to respond with such a frivolous, pseudo-literary tone to the most pressing questions of its people.
The context in which this response is given is devastating. In the same interview with RT, Díaz-Canel acknowledged that “it has been six months since a fuel ship has arrived, only a Russian ship has come”, while Cuba needs between 90,000 and 110,000 barrels of oil daily and produces only 40,000. The Venezuelan supply collapsed after the capture of Nicolás Maduro in January 2026.
The Cuban economy has experienced a decline of over 15% since 2020, with external projections anticipating an additional drop of 7.2% for this year. Recently, the regime officially announced a minimum wage increase in the budgeted sector from 2,100 to 3,210 pesos per month, a 53% increase that benefits all salary scales of the State.
With the dollar trading between 660 and 695 pesos in the informal market in July 2026, this new minimum wage amounts to barely 4.65 to five dollars per month, an amount that is far from sufficient to cover basic needs.
Díaz-Canel promised to RT that the regime will implement 121 of the more than 170 approved economic transformations before the end of July, prioritizing retirees and vulnerable individuals. He also assured that there are companies from Latin America, Europe, and Asia interested in investing, although he admitted that these contacts "are not made public" due to U.S. pressure.
The use of RT as a platform follows a recurring pattern: the ruler employs this channel to project narratives of resistance to sympathetic audiences, not to hold themselves accountable to the Cubans suffering through the crisis.
Zamora, the journalist who asked the question, was at the center of a controversy in May 2025 regarding the purchase of a Chinese SUV Bestune T55 valued at 26,845 dollars, a luxury unattainable for the vast majority of Cubans.
While the regime accumulates promises without verifiable results, Díaz-Canel insists on his strategy of "creative resistance" in the face of external pressure.
The metaphor of the unreachable utopia unintentionally summarizes six decades of unfulfilled promises: a horizon of well-being, dignity, and justice that always recedes.
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