The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) published this Saturday on its official Facebook page the message "Fidel is eternal; his work placed him at the forefront for all time", accompanied by the hashtags #100YearsWithFidel and #CubaWillWin, as part of the commemorative events for the centenary of Fidel Castro's birth.
The response from Cubans was immediate and showed no reverence: hundreds of comments turned the party's statement into a blank canvas of sarcasm, indignation, and dark humor, with users linking Castro's proclaimed "eternity" to power outages, water shortages, piled-up garbage, and the misery that the island suffers in 2026.
One of the most striking comments summed up the feelings of many with emphatic capital letters: "IT SHOWS, IN EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD, WHERE THERE ARE SEWER LEAKS, GARBAGE TO BE COLLECTED, ENDLESS BLACKOUTS, IT'S REAL, YOUR WORK IS ETERNAL."
Another internet user pointed out with direct irony the regime's legacy: "He doesn't leave our lives even in death, he's on TV all day, the successors are making the same mistakes and adding their own to the list, now that's continuity."
The temporal dimension of Castro's government was also a subject of criticism: "Don't doubt it [...] 67 years that have felt like an eternity [...] a whole lifetime for many people [...] a way to ruin a country and four generations," wrote a netizen.
Some comments mixed the complaint with the absurd. One user directly addressed the late leader: "Fidel, you who are eternal and apparently can do anything [...] I've been without water for over 7 days [...] please make a miracle happen." Another simply wrote: "Yes, thanks to Fidel there's hunger, we love him." A third one concluded: "In the 'vanguard'? I guess that's looking from behind..."
There were those who put the country's economic situation into perspective: "The entire population is in an unprecedented misery, now even behind Haiti," noted one commentator. Another was more succinct: "The country's ruin he left is eternal." And one more described his physical reaction to the publication: "I read that and felt dizzy. Even the depth of the text has the green of diarrhea."
The episode is not isolated. This pattern of rejection has repeated itself throughout the centennial year: in April, Cubans mocked decorated plates featuring messages like "LONG LIVE FIDEL" and "100 YEARS WITH FIDEL" displayed at a Culinary Forum for Workers in Puerto Padre, Las Tunas, amid a food crisis. In January, a post from Cubadebate about "Latin American Fidel" generated over 700 comments, mostly mocking or outraged, with users calling him "the cancer of Latin America."
The contrast between official propaganda and daily reality is stark. The national electrical system has collapsed five times in 2026, with power outages lasting up to 22 hours daily in Havana and 45 to 48 consecutive hours in some provinces. The Food Monitor Program reported that more than 45% of Cuban households lost refrigerated food due to power outages, a figure that exceeded 80% in provinces like Granma, Matanzas, Pinar del Río, and Sancti Spíritus. One in three families had at least one member who went to bed hungry.
This situation is compounded by an economy that has experienced a decline of nearly 20% since 2020, with a contraction of around 5% in just 2025, according to independent estimates.
The regime declared 2026 as the “Year of the Centenary of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz” and designed a two-phase program that extends until December 4, 2026, marking a decade since Castro's interment at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. The central event is scheduled for August 13, the date on which the founder of the one-party regime would have turned 100 years old.
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