Aleida Guevara March, the eldest daughter of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, broke down in tears while speaking about the dictator Fidel Castro during a forum held in Havana to celebrate his legacy, in a video from Canal Caribe that has gone viral on social media.
The clip, lasting just 35 seconds, shows Guevara visibly emotional as she uses a Portuguese word to describe her feelings for Castro, nearly ten years after his death.
“There is a beautiful word in Portuguese that doesn't exist in Spanish, but it is a mixture that is saudade. And that is what I feel for Fidel, an immense saudade,” declared the pediatrician before the attendees at the event.
His words were even more revealing about the weight the dictator carries in his life:
"I can easily talk about my dad, but I still find it difficult to discuss Fidel." He added, "I still need him to argue, to see how we're doing, the path we're taking, and those are things only he could do."
The video was recorded during the I International Colloquium "Fidel: Legacy and Future," held at the Palace of Conventions in Havana from August 10 to 13, 2026, as part of the official events celebrating the centenary of Castro's birth — on August 13, 1926.
The event brought together more than 1,500 delegates from 63 countries amid a national crisis.
The contrast with the Cuban reality
Guevara's tears for the dictator who passed away on November 25, 2016, stand in stark contrast to the situation faced by millions of Cubans.
In 2026, the island experiences one of its worst economic crises in decades: endless blackouts, shortages of food, medicine, and fuel, and a GDP decline estimated at up to 6.5%, according to independent analyses.
The Cuban economy has contracted by approximately 15% since 2020, according to data cited by Infobae, making the nostalgic statements of regime figures a stark contrast that is hard to ignore for those who endure the crisis daily.
A controversial figure on the rise
Far from being an isolated incident, Guevara's weeping for Castro adds to a series of public appearances that have stirred controversy in recent months.
In August 2025, she was seen shopping at a dollar store in Havana, an option beyond the economic reach of a significant portion of the Cuban population.
At the end of January 2026, Cuban activists confronted her in Seville during the IV International Meeting Europe for Cuba, where activist Brayan Infante told her, "your father was a killer," to which she replied, "that's not true."
In March 2026, she appeared on a channel aligned with Iran defending Hamas and Hezbollah. In June, she tearfully called Ramiro Valdés her "uncle", a historic leader of the Cuban Revolution who passed away on June 21, 2026, at the age of 94.
And just days before this new episode, he described self-employment as "a small cancer within our society".
Nostalgia for power while the people suffer
The words of Aleida Guevara reveal the perspective of an elite mourning its historical leaders while the population grapples with blackouts, shortages, and a prolonged migration crisis.
For Guevara, Castro was the irreplaceable interlocutor who set the direction. For millions of Cubans, that direction led to decades of dictatorship, structural scarcity, and repression. This gap, more than any tears, encapsulates the contrast between nostalgia for the regime and the daily reality faced by a large part of the Cuban population.
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