The Cuban activist Yamilka Lafita, known on social media as Lara Crofs, posted a message on Facebook this Friday that captures the exhaustion of those living in Cuba: "I am TIRED of living under a dictatorship that has even stolen our ability to react."
The text, titled "Release", is not an isolated expression: it is the voice of a woman who has paid with arrests, harassment, and physical injuries the price of publicly denouncing the regime.
Lafita directly addresses the strategy of power: "They are impoverishing us, silencing us, dividing us, and getting us used to surviving as if that were life. And while we argue among ourselves, they remain firmly clinging to power."
The warning about division is the political core of the message: "If we do not understand once and for all that we will not get through this divided, they will end up destroying what little remains and then have the audacity to blame the blockade, the enemy, and anyone but those who have been in power for decades."
The post came days after Lafita described a scene that encapsulates the energy crisis in Cuba: after more than 20 hours of continuous blackout in her Havana neighborhood, a device from the electric transformer exploded in flames, leaving her entire block in the dark. "Surviving in Cuba every second that passes is extreme torture," she wrote at that time.
This scene is not exceptional. In Havana, an average of 25 transformers break down daily, with peaks of over 60 in a single day. The National Electric System has suffered seven total collapses so far in 2026, and on August 4, a record impact of 2,411 MW was recorded due to generation deficit.
The economic background is equally grim. According to various estimates, the Cuban economy could end 2026 with a cumulative contraction exceeding 20% compared to the levels of 2019-2020, depending on the base year and methodology used. For this year, CEPAL projects a GDP decline of 6.5%, while The Economist Intelligence Unit places it at 7.2%. The average monthly salary in the business and budgeted system was around 7,074 pesos in April 2026, equivalent to just over ten dollars at the informal mid-year exchange rate.
Official inflation reached 20.7% year-on-year in July, although independent estimates that account for the informal market place it well above that level, with some estimates around 70%. Since 2021, more than a million Cubans have left the island, in what specialists and demographic studies describe as the largest migration wave in the country’s modern history.
Lafita is intimately familiar with the weight of repression. She was arrested on April 18, 2026 by State Security agents just hours after documenting a surveillance operation outside her home, and upon her release, she reported that the regime was attempting to "fabricate a crime" against her. Months earlier, in 2025, she had suffered a grade two sprain after being violently arrested.
The comments on the post reflected an immediate identification. A internet user wrote: "This is how we all feel, Lara; it’s truly not easy what we Cubans are going through, no animal should have to live like we are living." Another noted: "We just have to look in the mirror […] it’s exhaustion and a lot of stress […] I’m tired of just surviving, our lives are passing us by while we survive."
A third voice asked, “The hell that Dante described in his Divine Comedy seems small compared to what we are experiencing. This is not meant to be endured by human beings. Can one live without water?”
Lafita closed her message with a slogan that directly reverses the official rhetoric of the regime: "I do not want to die while surviving. I do not want my people to disappear in silence. Homeland is not death! Homeland is freedom!"
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