The Grandmaster of chess Lázaro Bruzón published a video on his Instagram account this Wednesday, where he firmly responded to those who have been trying to silence him for years and reaffirmed his commitment to continue denouncing the political situation in Cuba.
"I will not be silenced; I will not stop speaking about Cuba. They have been trying for eight years to use all kinds of personal attacks against me, and I have nothing to hide. They will not silence me, plain and simple," declared the chess player, who has been living in the United States since July 2018.
Bruzón identified his detractors as "ciberclarias" and "cibercombatientes" — terms he uses to refer to the digital defenders of the Cuban government — and accused them of resorting to personal attacks precisely because they lack arguments: "Since the truth crushes them, they want to attack the messenger."
The chess player also dismissed the argument that Cubans in exile do not have the right to criticize the regime for not doing so within the island.
"You say that I didn't speak out in Cuba because you wished I had been imprisoned. That's not a valid argument," he replied, adding that living under a dictatorship justifies previous silence, but staying silent once free would be "the great shame."
His message was clear: "No Cuban should feel complex about not having spoken out from within Cuba, from inside the prison. The issue is that, in a free country, you should exercise your judgment, your freedom of expression, and denounce what is happening in your country."
Bruzón also questioned the regime's legitimacy to speak on behalf of the nation: "Neither Canel, nor the party, nor Fidel, nor Raúl, nor anyone else. Those people are no more Cuban than we are; on the contrary, they are the destroyers of the Cuban nation."
The video concluded with a slogan: "Down with the dictatorship, freedom for all political prisoners, and let my cyber-combatants continue to suffer. Until that changes, I, another Cuban, will keep denouncing what is happening in Cuba."
The statement comes amid a surge of public declarations from the chess player during the second semester of 2026. At the beginning of October, Bruzón asserted that imprisoning young people for posting videos or singing protest songs amounts to "justifying cruelty."
At the end of September, he described Cuba as a "dictatorship without alternation" and stated that the country has "the worst" in terms of economic and social matters.
In September, he also reported that his mother was harassed in a store in Las Tunas by people who blamed her for her son's political opinions, to whom she replied: "Las Tunas, a leader in snitches and candle-eaters."
In April, the chess player had already warned that every Cuban who leaves the island can become an "enemy" of the regime, even if they had previously been loyal or had officially represented the country.
Bruzón, six-time national champion of Cuba and International Grandmaster since the age of 17, has been competing under the American flag since July 2020 following FIDE's approval, and has repeatedly stated that he will not return to the island until it is "free and democratic."
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