Díaz-Canel and all the henchmen who accompany him in government and in the inevitable repression are consumed by the fear of losing power.
14ymedio, Pedro Corzo, Miami, 21 July 2025 — Castro’s totalitarian regime has once again demonstrated that the only thing left in its arsenal of lies and manipulation is the most brutal and destructive repression, the preferred tool of despots who are accustomed to using bayonets to hide their fears.
Cubans on the island ignore numerous anniversaries of the struggle for freedom that a large segment of the population has led against the Castro tyranny, but everyone knows that on the 11th of July 2021, the population took to the streets to demand their rights despite police brutality and the inevitable prison sentences they would face.
The protests of 11 July will forever remain in our history. Citizens fed up with the dictatorship, mostly young people, took to the streets and staged protests that had been lost to the national scene for decades, for a free Cuba, responding to the satrap Miguel Díaz-Canel: “You know your time is up, freedom is coming!” an expression I read with great satisfaction on the Martí Noticias website.
Another important report from Radio Martí, a piece by journalist Ivette Pacheco, reminds us that 1,597 people were arrested for participating in the protests on 11 July and the following days, and that “at least 360 remain in prison and others remain deprived of their liberty.” Camila Rodríguez, founder of Justicia 11J, told the station that those incarcerated are serving between 10 and 22 years in prison for protesting and that more than 60 minors were among those arrested, three of whom remain in prison.
All this information about the extreme cruelty of the dictatorship is a clear message to those outside of Cuba who have defended totalitarianism.
All this information about the dictatorship’s extreme cruelty is a clear message to those outside Cuba who have defended totalitarianism, arguing that the Cuban people didn’t rebel because they agreed with their government. Now they will have to admit that they never wanted to listen to the cries of the dictatorship’s opponents, because there are many Cubans who oppose Castroism.
A new generation of Cubans has redeemed those who, for ideological reasons, opportunism, or any other motive, collaborated in the construction of a totalitarian system that destroyed the Republic and who have the sense of nation of a population in comatose state. This new generation, mostly born after Castro’s regime, are the ones occupying prisons for political reasons, as the NGO Prisoners Defenders states in one of its most recent reports.
Díaz-Canel and all the henchmen who accompany him in the government and in the inevitable repression are consumed by the fear of losing power and facing the consequences of their humiliating and degrading actions against the people. For this reason, their threats are always accompanied by criminal actions against the population, as in the time of Fidel Castro, lord and master of the Díaz-Canels who continue to sink Cuba: “We were born in a free country bequeathed to us by our parents, and the island will sink into the sea before we consent to be anyone’s slaves.” Destruction and death have always been this subject’s maxim.
This Numantian commitment of Castro’s loyalists was what led to the intermittent interruption of telephone and internet services. This is also why several police officers were stationed in front of the home of Oscar Elías Biscet and his wife, Elsa Morejón, while the regime organized a dance show near the residence in an effort to provide a circus for the citizens, since bread is conspicuously absent.
Castro’s repressive practices resemble the actions in George Orwell’s book 1984: the authorities arrest and suspend public services to prevent protests when the regime suspects something contrary to its interests is about to happen. For example, in the city of Santa Clara, Guillermo Fariñas was arrested, and in the capital, the tireless Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, was arrested along with her husband, former political prisoner Ángel Moya Acosta. This is how Castro’s totalitarianism operates.
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