The Cuban chess Grandmaster Lázaro Bruzón posted a powerful message on Facebook in which he responded to those who try to silence him and unequivocally asserted his right to speak about Cuba: «Why do I talk about Cuba? The short answer is: because I FEEL LIKE IT».
The chess player from Holguín, who has been competing under the American flag since 2020, has consistently escalated his critical statements against the Cuban dictatorship, and this new publication represents one of his most direct and personal writings to date.
Bruzón outright rejected the arguments that supporters of the regime use to silence him: "The defenders of the dictatorship always try to intimidate you into silence with their tired phrases like: 'they pay you,' 'you didn't speak in Cuba,' 'you have no morality.' That's the same old script: to distort the message. It does NOT WORK with me."
The chess player described the debate about Cuba as "a two-way street": on one side, those who demand freedom, rights, and dignity; on the other, those who justify censorship, repression, and the absence of freedoms.
For him, his denunciations do not respond to any external agenda or organization: "My denunciations arise from my conscience, my history, and my responsibility as a Cuban. I do not belong to any party or organization. I represent myself first and my principles."
The Great Master went beyond the circumstances and established a position that, as he himself clarifies, would not change even in the best possible scenario: even if there were no political prisoners in Cuba tomorrow and the economic situation improved, he would still assert that "in Cuba THERE IS A SINGLE-PARTY DICTATORSHIP that divides the nation and maintains an apartheid of conscience."
He also urged Cubans to shake off their fear: "Cubans need to overcome the complex and the fear of being censored for speaking about their country. Who has the authority to tell you what you can talk about? Wasn't it enough to grow up in a system where, from childhood, we were told what to think and what to say?"
Bruzón concluded his publication with a statement that sums up his stance: "Even if I stand alone, I will continue to say the same thing: what is happening in Cuba is UNJUST, and denouncing it is MY RIGHT."
This post adds to a series of recent interventions. At the beginning of October, he referred to those who applaud the imprisonment of young people for posting a video or singing protest songs as "miserable," and later declared in a video that he would not be silenced: “I will not stop talking about Cuba."
In a post on Sunday, he stated that access to the Internet "eliminated all excuses" for defending the Cuban government. The chess player denounced weeks ago that his mother was harassed in a store in Las Tunas due to her son's political opinions, labeling that province as a "vanguard of informers".
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