The Cuban actor Luis Alberto García Novoa responded harshly this Wednesday to the interview that Miguel Díaz-Canel gave to the Russian channel RT en Español, dismantling point by point the metaphor of utopia that the leader used to answer whether Cuba can emerge from the crisis.
In his Facebook post, García started with a strong statement: "To walk, we need legs and feet. Not utopias."
The trigger was the response Díaz-Canel gave on Monday to RT correspondent Oliver Zamora when he asked if Cuba has a way out. Instead of presenting a concrete plan, the leader resorted to a philosophical quote: "The utopia is on the horizon. When we take two steps forward, the utopia takes two steps back. And the horizon moves forward ten steps. What is the purpose of utopia? To keep walking. I would say hope serves the same purpose."
García noted that the journalist "didn't see it pass or didn't want to see it" by not objecting to the president that the horizon is, by definition, always unattainable: "That line where the land or sea seems to meet the sky is an optical illusion, and no matter how much one tries to reach it, whether advancing slowly or quickly, one will never be able to achieve it."
The actor emphasized that Díaz-Canel's poetic approach clashes directly with the reality that Cubans face: "I imagine that DC wanted to be poetic, but POETRY has a tough time when various types of local blackouts run rampant."
García, who recently reported three days and three nights without electricity in his building in Playa, Havana, was emphatic about what the Cuban people need: "All Cubans, we need, we wish, we intend, we long for, we dream of an ACHIEVABLE welfare state."
The actor also questioned that for decades the regime promised that welfare without the adjective "unachievable" ever appearing in the official discourse, and firmly demanded: "We demand facts, not promises. I say 'we demand' and not 'we beg or plead.' I mean, if we truly are the ones in charge and making decisions, as they claim."
García's criticism was not limited to the metaphor. The actor also pointed to the public support that Díaz-Canel gave to the Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo, just after both declared that Nicaragua will not have elections again. Ortega made this statement during the event commemorating the 47th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, and Cuba officially acknowledged that date.
García's reaction adds to a wave of criticisms generated by the interview of Díaz-Canel for RT, in which the leader also acknowledged that no fuel ship has arrived in Cuba in the past six months—except for one from Russia—and promised to implement 121 of the more than 170 economic measures before the end of July.
One day earlier, historian and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández —under house arrest since June 2024— also criticized Díaz-Canel following the interview: "No one can make nonsensical statements in a grandiloquent tone like the Cuban president."
Thousands of Cubans on social media expressed outrage at the presidential metaphor, in a country where the minimum wage amounts to less than five dollars a month andblackouts cause food to spoil in homes.
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