Four days. That was the time needed by the regime's ideological apparatus to come to the rescue of Miguel Díaz-Canel after one of the most unfortunate responses in his interview with RT en Español.
When the leader was asked if there were reasons to believe that Cuba could overcome the crisis, he did not mention production, investments, salaries, electricity, fuel, or food. He responded with a metaphor about utopia and the horizon.
It took only a few hours for thousands of Cubans to interpret those words as the involuntary admission that the regime can no longer offer a realistic horizon of recovery, but only the promise of continuing to walk toward a destination that always seems to move further away.
The reaction was immediate. Social media did what propaganda could not prevent: it appropriated the phrase and turned it into a symbol of the exhaustion of the official discourse.
The "utopia" became chicken, electricity, transportation, medication, wages, or any other promise that never quite materializes.
Then Cubadebate appeared.
Not to explain how Cuba will emerge from the worst economic crisis in decades. Not to answer the question that Díaz-Canel did not answer. But to clarify what the people should understand from the words of the appointed leader.
His article, titled From the Networks: "Díaz-Canel's Utopia, the Same One That Brought Us Here", aims to be a damage control exercise, but ends up becoming a second communication blunder. This time, from the very propaganda machinery itself.
Before delving into its content, the headline itself poses a devastating question: “where is ‘here’?” Because the "here" of Cuba in 2026 is far from resembling a utopia.
It is a country with endless blackouts, salaries that barely amount to five dollars a month, chronic shortages of food and medicine, the largest exodus in its history, a declining economy, and a population that is losing hope much faster than it gains new horizons.
If this is the destination where the revolutionary utopia has led, the propagandist chose the worst argument possible to defend it. Their own headline inadvertently serves as a summary of nearly seven decades of Castroism: the utopia, indeed, brought Cuba to this point.
From that point onward, the article unfolds a classic operation of political propaganda. When a message fails, the error is not acknowledged. The meaning of the message is altered. And, if necessary, the topic of conversation is changed as well.
The controversy should no longer revolve around the ruler's inability to provide a concrete answer to a specific question. It needed to be shifted to the favorite terrain of the ideological apparatus: revolutionary epic, sacrifice, resistance, and the eternal struggle against imperialism.
Suddenly, the presidential evasion ceased to be an evasion. It transformed into a "lesson in revolutionary strategy".
The maneuver is as predictable as it is clumsy.
Cubadebate devoted entire paragraphs to explaining who Eduardo Galeano was, what the metaphor of utopia truly meant, and why those who criticized the phrase "understood nothing."
The curious thing is that Díaz-Canel himself didn’t even mention Galeano when he referred to the quote. In a hurried and barely audible comment, he attributed it to Lenin, mixing one of the most well-known metaphors popularized by Galeano — originally formulated by the Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri — with the founder of the Soviet state.
The detail went almost unnoticed amid so much controversy, but it is revealing. The president confused the origin of the phrase; four days later, the state media had to hold a crash seminar on Galeano to explain what it claimed he really meant.
Few images better describe the functioning of the system. First, the leader improvises. Then, they interpret the propaganda. And finally, reality is expected to adapt to the new narrative.
However, the attempt by Cubadebate had the opposite effect than intended.
In his eagerness to defend the ruler, he ended up elevating his response to a doctrinal status. "The Revolution is not a destination. It is a path," solemnly stated the author of the article, a typical profile of a "cibercombatiente" / "ciberclaria".
It's hard to imagine a more devastating confession.
Because that's precisely what thousands of Cubans understood when they listened to Díaz-Canel. That after nearly seven decades, the regime continues to present itself as a process that is always advancing, but never arrives. The promised future remains exactly where it was sixty-some years ago: on the horizon.
What Cubadebate attempted to present as a strategic virtue ultimately turned into an involuntary confession. Because if, as its own headline proclaims, that utopia was what brought Cuba "this far," the assessment does not need to be written by the opposition: it is summarized by the current state of the country.
If success consists solely of keeping on walking, then there will never be a moment when someone can ask about the results.
No matter how many generations pass. No matter how many reforms fail. No matter how many young people emigrate. No matter how many times the electrical system collapses.
It can always be said that the "revolution" continues to advance... even as the horizon keeps receding.
Propaganda thus turns permanent noncompliance into a method of governance.
The reasoning harkens back to that old adage of totalitarian systems: when reality contradicts propaganda, the problem is never the propaganda. It is reality.
The truly significant aspect of this episode is not that Cubadebate has come out to defend Díaz-Canel. That is what it is there for.
What is significant is that it was necessary to do so. Because propaganda rescue operations only emerge when the original message has failed.
No one writes a treatise to explain a phrase that worked. It is written when public conversation takes a direction that the power cannot control. And that is exactly what happened.
Cubans did not debate about Fernando Birri, Eduardo Galeano, Lenin, or the philosophy of utopia. They debated about something infinitely simpler.
That the leader of a country gripped by blackouts, shortages, inflation, and mass emigration was unable to respond with a single concrete solution when asked if there was hope for overcoming the crisis.
That was the problem. Cubadebate decided to respond to another. Because, as has happened so many times in the history of revolutionary propaganda, it is much easier to rewrite the meaning of a phrase than to change the reality that caused it to explode.
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