While Cuba has experienced eight total collapses of the electrical system so far in 2026, the vast majority of its population lacks adequate access to food, and hundreds of essential medications are conspicuously absent from pharmacies, Miguel Díaz-Canel met this Thursday in the Portocarrero Hall of the Palace of the Revolution with a group of young people to talk about Che Guevara, shed some tears, and proclaim, with the spirit and words of Guevara, that "the present is for struggle; the future is ours."
The event, organized by the regime to mark the 59th anniversary of Ernesto Guevara's death in combat, was described by state-run media as "moving," "heart-wrenching," and "beautiful." Participants included the First Secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), Meyvis Estévez Echevarría; Politburo member Roberto Morales Ojeda; Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman Waugh; and economist and writer Carlos Tablada, among others.
Díaz-Canel did not hold back on phrases for the record: "Che is not dead: Che has multiplied," he asserted, in a country where what has truly multiplied is hunger, blackouts, and emigration. He also declared that "there are people who cannot explain how we are resisting," a rhetorical question that, outside the Palace of the Revolution, has quite concrete answers: people resist because there is no other option, or they simply do not resist and take a flight.
The economist Tablada, for his part, urged young people to be "always rebellious" and "dissatisfied," warning that "the day we lose our ethics, we lose everything." Of course, rebellion and dissatisfaction should always be directed against "the empire," never against the regime that has plunged Cuba into misery. That is indeed a convenient ethic.
One of the highlights of the event was the presentation of the Farma Joven project, an initiative by the UJC that distributes donated medications from foreign organizations through WhatsApp and door-to-door visits. Díaz-Canel described this as a "totally Guevarist attitude." As the president himself admitted on Wednesday, the island is experiencing a serious crisis in medications, which, according to various reports, include hundreds of essential drugs.
Leanet Proenza del Hoyo, the project coordinator, described the work with unintentional frankness: "We have gone to the communities, delivering medications to anyone who has no means, to that elderly person who is in such need. We must knock on doors. We have reached nursing homes, children's homes, and maternity homes."
The backdrop of the event is a Cuba that hardly fits into the heroic narrative that the regime diligently constructs. About 2.7 million Cubans have their water service affected either partially or completely. More than 30% of households reported that at least one person went to bed hungry in the past month, according to recent data. It is estimated that more than 1.6 million Cubans have left the island since 2020, according to estimates from the Council on Foreign Relations, marking one of the most massive exoduses in recent history in the hemisphere.
Díaz-Canel added that the tribute to Che was doubly significant "because we are doing it in the year of the centenary of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz," as if amassing revolutionary anniversaries could replace fuel, food, or antibiotics.
The president concluded his reflections by calling for the "new man" envisioned by Guevara: "We cannot build a better world without a new man," he proclaimed, before an audience of young people who, for the most part, likely dream of building that better world in another country.
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