A Cuban captured in a video broadcast by Tele Pinar during the central event marking the 73rd anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, held this Sunday in Pinar del Río, placed his hope in the support of the regime’s allied powers to advance the Island's economy.
"The brother countries like China, Vietnam, and Russia will give us the support; they have never turned their backs on us. Those governments have never abandoned us," stated the man in front of the cameras of the state channel, in a video that later began circulating on social media.
The interviewee also affirmed that the political model shared by those countries and Cuba serves as a guarantee for the continuity of the system.
"We will follow the same doctrine as they do, Vietnam and the People's Republic of China: communist party, socialist, and we will not back down. We will not back down and will continue to carry forward the legacy of our commander-in-chief Fidel Castro with our teachings," he stated.
The statements were made during the main official commemoration of July 26, led by Miguel Díaz-Canel in Pinar del Río, one of the provinces most affected by the economic and energy crisis.
In recent months, the three countries mentioned by the interviewee have sent various types of aid to Cuba. China approved emergency assistance worth 80 million dollars at the beginning of the year and the shipment of 60,000 tons of rice. Russia supplied a shipment of approximately 730,000 barrels of Urals oil at the end of March, while Vietnam announced a contribution of 15 million dollars and investments aimed at the energy sector.
However, these initiatives have not managed to reverse the deterioration of the Cuban economy or significantly alleviate the supply and electricity generation crisis affecting the country.
Miguel Díaz-Canel himself recently acknowledged that Cuba went six months without receiving fuel from Venezuela and that during that period, only one Russian ship arrived with humanitarian aid.
The reality also contrasts with the stage of the official event. Pinar del Río continues to face prolonged power outages, and thousands of families are still living in precarious conditions following the damage caused by Hurricane Ian. In fact, early Sunday morning, the Antonio Guiteras power plant went offline from the National Electricity System again, worsening the instability of the electric service.
The images from the event also sparked criticism on social media, where many users questioned the availability of resources to organize the celebration while large sectors of the population remained without electricity.
During the event, Díaz-Canel again placed the blame on the United States for the crisis facing the country and described the embargo as "a weapon of war" that, he said, causes scarcity and suffering for the population.
From an opposing perspective, Cuban writer Yanier H. Palao published a reflection this Sunday in which he described the Revolution as a "curse" that brought "hunger, misery, death, imprisonment, despair," and proposed July 11, 2021 — the date of the historic popular protests — as the date that Cuba should truly celebrate.
"I hope that very soon Cuba won't have so much heroism, but rather more food, more dreams, more returns, and that we can all dance together under an unrelenting sun to the rhythm of a conga," wrote Palao.
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