An audio recording reveals Miriam Nicado García’s pressure to get students to abandon their protest against Etecsa’s rate hike.
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 17 June 2025 — The recently leaked audio recording of a meeting between the rector of the University of Havana, Miriam Nicado García, and students dissatisfied with the so-called ‘Tarifazo’ — the rate hike from Etecsa, the State telecommunications monopoly– not only confirms youth discontent with an arbitrary measure, but also gives voice—and tone—to the authoritarian model of top-down pedagogy masked by the rhetoric of “unity and dialogue.”
Nicado is not a mere academic administrator. She is a deputy in the National Assembly of People’s Power, a member of the Council of State, a member of the Communist Party, and the former rector of the University of Informatics Sciences (UCI), an emblematic center of technological control and loyalty to power. In other words, she is an official of the regime, located in one of the country’s key institutions: the University of Havana, the historic cradle of Cuban critical thought.
It begins with economic technicalities, continues with condescension and ends with veiled threats.
The audio, which has gone viral on social media, shows a debate that begins with economic technicalities, continues with condescension, and ends with veiled threats. A story that many students, especially the bravest ones, know by heart. “If you don’t come to class, you don’t receive classes,” Nicado says in a calm but implacable voice. “If it’s a strike, then it’s counterrevolution.”
Thus, bluntly, the university’s highest authority equates a student civic action with “treason.” The students’ demand was clear: that the Etecsa rate hike be explained transparently, that space be given to criticism and real dialogue, not institutional monologue. The response: emotional blackmail, ideological disqualification, and the insinuation of punishment.
“Do not come to class until this dialogue becomes a reality.”
The demand of Amalia Díaz Pérez, president of the FEU (University of Havana) Faculty of Philosophy, History, and Sociology, was respectful, articulate, and, above all, legitimate: “As this is a problem that not only affects students but the entire population, our position as the University of Havana must also be aligned with that.” And the applause shook the walls when she stated her position: “Do not come to class until this dialogue becomes a reality.”
But Nicado prefers to crush any fissure rather than engage in genuine dialogue. What follows in her remarks sounds like something from an interrogation at State Security’s Villa Marista, not a university campus.
The rector anticipates any protest: “I have some information here,” she says, and pulls out a supposed rumor of a demonstration like a card up her sleeve. No one has said anything, but she already has the accusation ready. The method is familiar: discredit before the adversary speaks. Fabricate the threat to justify the control. She never clarifies who gave her this information, although multiple students have already reported the disproportionate presence of State Security agents inside the universities.
The paradox is that this exile they call the enemy is the one they are forcing to save their socialist enterprise.
“We can’t play into the hands of those who want to see us in the streets or those who want to see us protesting,” Nicado declares, always referring to an external enemy. The paradox is that this exile they call an enemy is the one they are forcing to save their socialist enterprise by sending phone and internet recharges — in US dollars — to their families on the island.
The rector hides behind technocratic language—numbers, clusters, percentages—to disguise what is essentially an imposition as a “rational explanation.” She says, with the tone of someone who has memorized her lesson well, that Etecsa relied on “arithmetic logic” to set rates, even though “this has a social cost.”
Nicado’s presence on the Council of State is not for show. It signals that she is aware of—and involved in—the decisions that affect the lives of millions of Cubans. That’s why she resorts to the same demagoguery: first, she sweet-talks the students by talking about “culture and intelligence,” and then she fires off the words “blackmail” and “division.” Her rhetoric is classic Cuban power. She talks about transparency while censoring and repressing any dissent. She offers dialogue, but only if the questions don’t bother her.
More and more young people are deciding to raise their voices.
The leaked audio is not an isolated incident. It joins a series of spontaneous expressions of discontent from universities, workplaces, and neighborhoods that are beginning to break through the wall of official silence. More and more young people are deciding to speak out. The fact that they do so in a classroom, in front of a rector, without insults or empty slogans, shows that fear no longer completely paralyzes them. The fact that those in power respond with threats disguised as pedagogy is a sign that the legitimacy of the system is cracking.
For now, Nicado remains in her position. Her voice, at least in the audio, sounds confident, even maternal. But beneath that confidence, one senses the cracks of an authority that is beginning to be questioned.
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