Pedro Jorge Velázquez, the Cuban communicator known as "El Necio" and a public defender of the regime for years, announced this Sunday his return to social media after several months of absence, with a text in which, inadvertently, he ended up describing the very crisis that millions of Cubans have been denouncing for years and that he helped to downplay.
The revelation came wrapped in reflections about his craft: Velázquez explained that his pause extended "due to how radically difficult it has become to live in Cuba—something that everyone who experiences it knows well—day after day, where the most basic things like having water in the bathroom, cold in the refrigerator, or a cool breeze at night have now become PROBLEMS, requiring a personal effort that nobody was accustomed to."
The man who traveled to Moscow published "poems" to Fidel Castro from the Russian capital and claimed that in Russia there was "admiration for Putin" following the deployment of Cuban troops; it turns out he is also walking in search of water and going to a friend's house to find ice.
"I walk out of my house to fetch water and I go to a friend's house to make ice: those who know me know that I am not lying," she wrote, as if the news were hers and not that of the approximately one million Cubans who depend on tanker trucks for their supply.
What Velázquez "discovered" during his break has a name and figures: blackouts lasting between 20 and over 40 consecutive hours, 43.3% of households receiving water only every three days or less, and 461 out of 651 essential medications out of stock in state pharmacies since 2024.
Velázquez himself admits it without hesitation: "We are living through a severe humanitarian crisis. People are suffering and sacrificing to stay alive, they scream, bang pots, and get angry; but people also push forward with bravado and courage..."
But the propagandist does not die completely. The text never mentions the responsibility of the Cuban government in that crisis. Instead, it points to "those who predicted hundreds of sanctions and a strategy of suffocation against an innocent people, to murder this joy," in a reference to the embargo that conveniently omits six decades of dictatorship as a structural cause of the disaster.
Another gem of the text is its declaration of independence: "I distance myself from any objectives to be achieved, from any orientation, and from any attempt to silence my voice." The phrase recalls when in February 2026, when the U.S. imposed visa restrictions on him for his alleged involvement in campaigns of harassment against U.S. diplomats in Cuba.
His rhetorical question also caught attention: "What will life be like in Cuba in 2026? There are those who still believe that this question can only be answered with a postcard of a crumbling building, or with the nearly perpetual blackouts, or with the massive piles of trash in the streets, or with the current slogan/hashtag that has been promoted, or with a new SOS Cuba launched by a horde of bots […] or with the latest unfulfilled promise." The list, coming from someone who for years criticized those who described exactly that, has a particular flavor.
The UN launched a humanitarian appeal for 94 million dollars in 2026 to assist nearly two million people on the island, facing a funding shortfall exceeding 60 million as of last May: this is the reality that the communicator "discovered" during his break, a reality he helped to conceal for years from his privileged platforms.
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