A phrase published on Facebook by the host Laritza Camacho precisely summarizes the propaganda mechanism that the Cuban regime has perfected over more than six decades: “If it goes wrong, it's the fault of the blockade; if it goes well, it's an achievement of the revolution.”
This binary logic is not a rhetorical accident, but rather a discursive formula that shifts the focus of internal responsibility and diminishes scrutiny on government management.
The pattern repeats with a regularity that no longer surprises anyone on the island. When power outages extend to 20 hours a day, when shelves remain empty, or when the healthcare system collapses, the official explanation invariably points to the U.S. embargo.
When there is an indicator to showcase—historical infant mortality rates, literacy campaigns, or international medical missions—the credit goes to the Revolution and socialism.
The chancellor Bruno Rodríguez provided the most recent example of this dynamic on September 7, when he declared to international media that «there have been, and there are no negotiations, nor are there agreements or roadmaps» and described the embargo as «genocidal», estimating its economic damage at 8.1 billion dollars between March 2025 and February 2026.
The government also stated that 7,000 containers of food, medicine, and medical devices were being held in foreign ports due to U.S. pressure, a figure that has not been independently verified.
What the official discourse omits is equally revealing. In March of this year, Miguel Díaz-Canel himself acknowledged that Cuba had stopped generating 1,100 MW due to a lack of fuel and that the country needed eight fuel ships per month, when between January and April it only received one.
In those same internal statements, he admitted that the National Electroenergetic System is obsolete, with thermoelectric plants at the end of their useful life and without adequate maintenance.
The contradiction extends to the healthcare sector. In June, a Cuban diplomat at the UN spoke of "achievements in health" while independent media were documenting a profound health crisis on the island. Just two months later, Díaz-Canel himself acknowledged "the magnitude of the health disaster" in Cuba, in open contradiction to the triumphalist narrative his government projects abroad.
The start of the school year 2026-2027 was presented as evidence of institutional normalcy, with over 1.5 million students, while the state budget allocates 64% of public spending to health, education, and social assistance—a figure that the regime uses as a propaganda argument, not as a guarantee of actual quality.
The "double standard" transcends the blockade-revolution dichotomy. The regime celebrates protests and demonstrations abroad as a legitimate expression of popular discontent, but harshly represses the same forms of protest within Cuba. It applies different criteria to state media and independent outlets, to officials and to ordinary citizens.
Even public figures who remain in Cuba have openly questioned the official narrative. Comedian Ulises Toirac criticized the official triumphalism in May, while baritone Ulises Aquino pointed out in August that "they may not know anything about economics, but they are very good at accounting to maintain a bureaucratic, dysfunctional, and unproductive structure at the expense of the people's money and taxpayers," in a direct critique of the regime's economic management.
The phrase by Camacho is not just a clever critique: it is the precise portrait of a system that has spent 67 years perfecting the art of not assuming any responsibility.
Related videos:
Filed under: