The former youth leader and academic Hassan Pérez Casabona returned to the public eye this week with a video shared on Facebook in which he praises the dictator Fidel Castro, as part of the official Cuban campaign for the centenary of his birth.
In the clip published on Facebook by Alejandro Ernesto Santamaria Tasende, Pérez Casabona describes Castro as "a man of extraordinary sensitivity, a giant of ideas, but at the same time a warm human being," and presents him as "probably the only person" who would have combined the qualities of a statesman, intellectual, and guerrilla leader.
Among the arguments he presents to illustrate this alleged exceptionalism, the academic claims that Castro was able to simultaneously manage "the deployment of Cuban troops in Angola, where each piece of equipment is," and to ensure that "the fighters had chocolate and condensed milk."
The video is part of the official campaign under the hashtags #100YearsWithFidel and #TheCenturyOfFidel, with which the regime designated 2026 as the "Year of the Centenary of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz."
The central events took place in August, when Raúl Castro made a public reappearance at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana alongside President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the official agenda extends until December 4th.
Pérez Casabona, born in Jovellanos, Matanzas, in 1977, served as president of the University Student Federation (FEU) and later as second secretary of the National Committee of the Union of Communist Youth (UJC) during the so-called Battle of Ideas.
In September 2008, the UJC announced its replacement through a "logical renewal of leadership" and its transition to university teaching activities. Since then, he has been a full professor and researcher at the Center for Hemispheric Studies and U.S. Studies (CEHSEU) at the University of Havana.
His subsequent trajectory includes a period in Bolivia, where in 2018 he arrived in the country and, according to reports from 2019, advised members of the Bolivian presidential security during Evo Morales' government. In May 2023, he reappeared at a virtual event of European solidarity groups with the Cuban regime, this time speaking partially in English.
The current video comes days after Pérez Casabona himself delivered a notably more nuanced speech to European audiences. In an interview published by the Spanish media outlet Mundo Obrero on October 3rd, he stated that "Fidel cannot be invoked from repetition." The contrast between that stance and the direct praises in the video is striking.
In the clip, the academic also presents Castro's thinking as a "method of analysis" that surpasses the content found on social media: "The living Fidel, fighting and dialoguing, is not a discharge, it is not an algorithm, it is not a tutorial video," he states, concluding that "the best tribute to Fidel is to go directly to the source of his thought."
The author of the post refers to him as "Metralleta" —a nickname that reflects his image as a combative speaker during the Battle of Ideas— and describes him as a "very faithful fidelista" and "a social scientist out of league."
In 2026, Pérez Casabona also published the book Clearing Paths... Fidel and the Conquest of Time, which was presented in Seville and at the Festival of the Communist Party of Spain in Rivas-Vaciamadrid at the end of September.
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