The Grand Master of chess Lázaro Bruzón published a video on his Facebook profile this Sunday in which he openly refers to Cuba as a "dictatorship without alternation" and claims that the island "has the worst in the economy" and "the worst in social order."
In the reel of approximately one and a half minutes, Bruzón starts with a simple premise: countries that function well share common traits. "They have a free market economy that encourages entrepreneurship, incentives, and innovation, and private property is respected," he states.
This adds, in the political realm, democracy, with all its functionalities and attributes: "There is a separation of powers, the thoughts of each individual are respected, minorities are acknowledged, individual freedoms... power is exchanged, everyone can form their own party, elections are held periodically, there are no lifetime positions, and these countries function well."
Against that model, the Cuban reality is presented bluntly: "In Cuba, we know what is happening; we have the worst in the economy, we have the worst in the social order, which is, well, a dictatorship without alternation."
The chess metaphor that concludes the video is as straightforward as it is devastating. Bruzón compares Cuba to a player who enters the game down a piece: "I am going to play a game with a piece less, and then I will waste all my time because I am at a huge disadvantage, I am contradicting all the logical laws that make sense, and then I wonder why I lose."
And he concludes: "I obviously have to lose because I am violating all the laws, the principles of chess, the fundamentals. And then, besides, I want to find all the excuses [...] I lost without accepting that I’m playing with one piece less. This is exactly what happens in Cuba."
The statement adds to a series of declarations that the chess player has made with increasing intensity. In February, he accused the regime of having "sunk" the country since 1959; in April, he characterized its leaders as people "sick with power" who "have always sacrificed the people for their personal interests"; in May, he denounced that the indoctrination "leads to fanaticism" and "impairs critical thinking"; and in June, he asserted that "free Cubans speak from real profiles", in a critical reference to the regime's "cyber combatants."
At the beginning of this month, Bruzón was involved in another incident that illustrates the personal cost of his stance: he reported that his mother was mistreated in a store in Las Tunas due to the political opinions he expresses from exile and described his home province as "a leader in informants and candle-eaters." He has reiterated on multiple occasions that he will not return to Cuba until the country is free and democratic.
Bruzón, born in Holguín in 1982, achieved the title of Grandmaster at the age of 17, was the under-20 world youth champion in 2000, and won the Cuban Championship six times, with a peak Elo rating of 2,717 in 2012. He left the island in July 2018 and has been competing under the American flag since 2020.
The figures support the diagnosis presented in the video. According to the Center for Cuban Economic Studies (CEEC) at the University of Havana, Cuba's GDP fell by 5% in 2025, marking its third consecutive year of decline, with an accumulated contraction exceeding 15% between 2020 and 2025. Year-on-year inflation reached 25.19% in August 2026, and according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), eight out of ten Cubans have skipped at least one daily meal due to a lack of money or food.
The regime attributes the deterioration to the U.S. embargo. However, for Bruzón, Cuba is not losing due to external causes: it has been playing with one less piece for decades.
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