The announcement from Miguel Díaz-Canel that he will host a new radio program on Radio Rebelde took less than 24 hours to become raw material for Cuban popular humor, which rarely misses an opportunity like this.
On Wednesday, September 16, the leader arrived at the broadcaster's studios around 7:00 AM to announce the upcoming premiere of "Criterio Compartido", a biweekly segment that he will host alongside the official journalist Bárbara Betancourt within the program "Haciendo Radio."
Díaz-Canel described it with his usual enthusiasm of someone launching a new project: “It is a program for participation, for citizen engagement. It is a program of transparency, because we will address all our issues openly. It is also a program to build consensus.” He also promised to “engage in dialogue very closely with our audience about the problems of Cuban reality, about their concerns, about their aspirations.” He mentioned that it would start broadcasting "next Wednesday," that is, on the 23rd.
The choice of Radio Rebelde —founded on February 24, 1958 by Che Guevara in the Sierra Maestra as a guerrilla clandestine station and regarded by the state system itself as "the first and largest news broadcaster of Cuban Radio"— does not seem coincidental: it is the most emblematic platform of the regime's media apparatus, ideal for giving symbolic weight to the initiative.
What the ruler perhaps did not anticipate is that Cubans have been honing their ingenuity for years through blackouts, long lines, and speeches without concrete solutions. The comedian Alian Aramis captured this ingenuity in a Facebook post where he proposed 14 alternative names for the program: "No Progress Here," "Criteria with Gone Bread," "No Turn," "From 5 to 7 Lies," "Dessert Allergies," "A Sunday with Limonsillo," "The Horde of Joy," "Total Dementia," "The Exilio," "Talking Cago," "They Didn't Make You Coyuntural Radio," "Channel 4," "Dessert Utopias," and "Hello Pestilent."
Each name is a compressed portrait of Cuba in 2026: the blackouts that disrupt the schedules ("No Shift"), the scarcity that empties the tables ("Criteria with Missing Bread"), the official rhetoric that promises horizons without ever reaching any ("Tabletop Utopias"), the unending exodus ("The Exodus"), and the figure of the ruler himself, now a symbol of the crisis ("The Canel 4"). The list serves as a more accurate popular diagnosis than any economic analysis.
Skepticism has a history. In February 2026, when a special appearance by Díaz-Canel was announced, Cubans responded with a phrase that summed everything up: "Only those with power will see it." And so, after many of his appearances, popular humor, the "Cuban chucho," has made its mark.
The new program arrives with an uncomfortable precedent: the podcast Desde la Presidencia, launched in March 2024, which reached 32 episodes and stopped updating without any public announcement of its cancellation after the issue dedicated to the ETECSA tariff increase, published on June 5, 2025. Since then, over 15 months of podcast silence have passed. In that episode, Díaz-Canel acknowledged failures in communication and the design of the measures, but defended their necessity and dismissed the possibility of retracting them, while ETECSA's president, Tania Velázquez, issued public apologies for the errors in their implementation and communication without implying a reversal of the new rates.
In July 2026, with his "communicative and poetic skill," Díaz-Canel quoted Eduardo Galeano —"The utopia is on the horizon... What is the utopia for? To walk"— in response to whether Cuba could emerge from the crisis, prompting a wave of mockery. The comedian La Crema published a 43-second video parodying the "philosophical discourse," and Ulises Toirac responded with a satirical text about the metaphor of the path without a destination.
With that track record, "Criterio Compartido" arrives with its credibility in the red before airing its first minute. Although perhaps the name that suits the new program best has already been suggested by popular humor: "Tabletop Utopias."
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