A phrase posted on Facebook by the presenter Laritza Camacho precisely summarizes the propagandistic mechanism that the Cuban regime has perfected over more than six decades: “If it goes wrong, it's the blockade's fault; if it goes well, it's a triumph of the revolution”.
This binary logic is not a rhetorical accident, but a deliberate political tool that shifts internal responsibility and shields leadership from any accountability for the failure of the centralized socialist model.
The pattern repeats with a regularity that no longer surprises anyone on the island. When power outages extend up to 20 hours a day, when the shelves remain empty, or when the healthcare system collapses, the official explanation invariably points to the U.S. embargo.
When there is any 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 stated to international media that there were no negotiations with Washington 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 with 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 ceased to generate 1,100 MW due to a lack of fuel and that the country required eight fuel ships per month, while between January and April it only received one.
In those same internal statements, he admitted that the National Electroenergy System is obsolete, with thermal power plants at the end of their useful life and without proper maintenance.
The contradiction extends to the health sector. In June, a Cuban diplomat at the UN spoke of “achievements in health” while independent media were documenting a deep health crisis on the island. Just two months later, Díaz-Canel himself acknowledged “the magnitude of the health disaster” in Cuba, in stark contradiction to the triumphant narrative that his government projects abroad.
The start of the 2026-2027 school year was presented as proof 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 kitchenware demonstrations abroad as a legitimate expression of popular discontent, but harshly represses the same demonstrations within Cuba. It applies different criteria to state media and independent media, to officials and to ordinary citizens.
Even voices tolerated by the system have begun to question the narrative. The comedian Ulises Toirac criticized the official triumphalism in May, and the economist Ulises Aquino pointed out in August that the regime "doesn't know what it knows" about the economy, questioning the leadership's competence to manage the crisis.
The phrase by Camacho is not just a clever critique: it is the exact portrait of a system that has spent 67 years perfecting the art of avoiding any responsibility.
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