The French academic and essayist Salim Lamrani, a known defender of the Cuban regime, sparked a wave of mockery and outrage after posting on Facebook that Cubans who emigrate are not fleeing socialism, but rather "from the economic sanctions imposed by the United States."
The statement, which mirrors point by point the official discourse of the Cuban dictatorship, was met with immediate sarcasm: "You've won the joke of the year award!" replied one of the first commentators.
The reaction was not limited to mockery. Dozens of internet users, many of them Cuban emigrants, dismantled the argument with data and their own experiences.
"We fled because of the dictatorship, not because of the sanctions," he wrote emphatically.
Another was more detailed in his refutation: "The recent sanctions may materially worsen the current crisis, especially the energy crisis, but they did not create the dictatorship, the one-party system, the lack of competitive elections, central planning, repression, decades of low productivity, nor the decision to invest enormous resources in hotels while basic services were collapsing."
Several users pointed out the internal contradiction of the argument: the regime has been warning for decades that Washington wants to invade Cuba, yet Cubans flee precisely to that country. "It's ironic and paradoxical that they are always telling the people that the United States wants to invade them, and when they escape, they come precisely here," noted one.
Another person summarized Lamrani's post with sarcasm, alluding to what it means to live in a dictatorship: "I just found out that the sanctions are what land you in prison for thinking differently."
A Cuban summed up what many emigrants feel: "The opinions of those of us who emigrated are completely opposite. Our reason was the lack of freedom and the inability to live as dignified human beings."
The narrative defended by Lamrani is identical to the one the regime has been repeating for decades. Díaz-Canel has stated that the embargo is the main cause of Cuban migration, and in May 2026, the Cuban government once again denounced before the UN that the exodus is due to the "extreme intensification of the blockade."
The data, however, contradicts that version. Cuba trades with more than a hundred countries, and the United States itself exported goods to the Island worth 416.6 million dollars between January and July of 2025.
"Even the United States trades with Cuba. Argentina and almost all of Latin America trade with Cuba. Several European countries trade with Cuba. The thing is, Cuba has very little to offer," noted another commentator.
The demographic figures are equally revealing. According to official data from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), approximately 245,264 people emigrated in 2025, leaving the population at 9,434,593 inhabitants, with nine consecutive years of population loss.
The citizen rejection of the government allows no room for ambiguous interpretations: 92% of Cubans disapprove of the government's management, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), and only 5% view it positively. Among young people, that figure drops to 3.39%.
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