Without Raúl Castro or Ramiro Valdés, the event was held amid an electricity deficit of 1,872 MW
14ymedio, Havana, April 16, 2026 — The Cuban regime, aware of its dwindling domestic support, seems determined to expend every last drop of fuel on acts of reaffirmation and propaganda. This Thursday, it did so again at the historic corner of 23rd and 12th streets in Havana’s Vedado district, where Miguel Díaz-Canel led the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of the Revolution.
The official figure was over 50,000 attendees, a number the propaganda machine tried to present as a show of strength. But even accepting that figure, the image was rather lackluster. Iti s barely a quarter of the more than 200,000 people that, according to official figures at the time, the Castro regime managed to mobilize at that same site in 2002.
The comparison doesn’t favor the government. In a country exhausted by blackouts, inflation, and emigration, the capacity for mobilization no longer impresses as it once did. This time, moreover, the contrast was even more striking due to the absences. On the platform, the only historical figure alongside President Díaz-Canel was José Ramón Machado Ventura. Neither Raúl Castro nor Ramiro Valdés were present, two names that for decades served as emblems of continuity and control. The image left by the December 23rd rally was that of a ritual increasingly outdated, more bureaucratic, and less epic.
The most stark reality of the day, however, wasn’t in the stands but in the electricity report. While the official apparatus orchestrated another dawn of slogans, the National Electric Union predicted a deficit of 1,872 MW during peak hours on April 16th. The state mobilized dozens of buses, trucks, police, and loudspeakers to celebrate socialist resistance while millions of Cubans prepared for another night in darkness.
Díaz-Canel spoke for twenty minutes, dressed in olive green and holding a small flag in his left hand, which he waved almost mechanically during each pause, waiting for applause. He reiterated that “the main cause of our problems is the genocidal blockade imposed by the United States government,” a formula that, in official discourse, aims to shut down any serious examination of the inefficiency, improvisation, and failure of the model. The phrase rings increasingly hollow on an island where the government has monopolized all the levers of the economy for more than six decades and where the crisis can no longer be explained solely by Washington.
He also appealed to a list of achievements that today seems remote, almost ghostly, to a large part of the Cuban population. He spoke of literacy campaigns, the social advancement of the children of workers and peasants, shoeshine boys sent into space, social justice, and a society where “man is brother and not wolf to man.” All of this was presented as irrefutable proof of socialism, but heard in the Cuba of 2026—with hospitals lacking supplies, neglected schools, and professionals fleeing en masse—the argument sounds more like a rhetorical relic than a description of the present.
Perhaps the most contradictory passage was his attempt to vindicate socialism by citing the cases of China and Vietnam, presented as examples of dazzling development. The mention has something of an unintentional confession about it. Because if those countries exhibit growth, openness, and dynamism, they have done so precisely after embracing extensive market mechanisms, attracting foreign investment, and relaxing economic dogmas that in Cuba continue to be treated almost as articles of faith. Invoking them as showcases of socialism without acknowledging this shift is yet another way of manipulating history.
Not missing, also, was the tone of a besieged city. Díaz-Canel asserted that Cuba must be ready to face “serious threats, including military aggression,” and concluded with one of the most bellicose phrases of the day: “Here, as the song says, we are going to give fire.” The slogan may elicit applause from the disciplined masses, but it speaks volumes about a regime that, even amidst material collapse, continues to rely on an increasingly unbelievable martial theatricality.
The event at 23rd and 12th was, in the end, a show of force in a weakened country and an appeal to nostalgia in a society rapidly losing faith. Castroism still manages to mobilize its supporters, but each act of reaffirmation resembles less a demonstration of support and more a display of attrition. And the numbers, this time too, are against them.
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