Amid political prisoners, blackouts, and palace infighting, the fifth anniversary of ’11J’ confirms the regime’s final exhaustion.
14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, July 11, 2026 – Five years after 11 July 2021, the Cuban Revolution is dead. The people know it, the military knows it, the leaders know it, and even the news anchor who puts makeup on the corpse every night knows it. The only thing missing is the burial. And that funeral is being unbearably prolonged because those who inherited the funeral home also possess the weapons, the prisons, and the keys to the cemetery.
The demonstrations of 11J did not bring down the regime, but they destroyed its narrative forever. That day it was not a “minority paid from Miami,” as the propaganda used to claim, that took to the streets. It was Cuba. The poor neighborhoods came out, the young people with no future, the exhausted mothers, the Black Cubans whom the government claims to have redeemed, and the workers to whom six decades of socialism have barely guaranteed the right to stand in line.
Five years later, Prisoners Defenders counts 1,306 political prisoners. Among them are 40 people who were detained while they were still minors, and 16 of them remain imprisoned in adult facilities. The project that promised to create a New Man has ended up imprisoning teenagers to keep a group of potbellied men in guayaberas in power.
Cuba reaches this anniversary in almost complete darkness. In 2026, the national electrical system has already suffered four total collapses, two of them in the same week leading up to 11J. Electricity has become a ghostly apparition: no one knows when it will arrive, how long it will last, or what sin must be atoned for to deserve it. The Government blames the embargo, fuel shortages, the heat, a breakdown, Trump, and when it runs out of culprits, even Thomas Edison for popularizing the light bulb.
The empty cooking pot has become the country’s most popular musical instrument. It requires no training, no sheet music, and no permission from the Ministry of Culture
But Cubans are no longer protesting solely to get the power back. In Central Havana, when electricity returned, some residents remained in the streets shouting: “We want freedom, not electricity.” That phrase reflects a decisive political evolution. For years, the regime sought to reduce every conflict to a material need. Hunger, but not rights. Misery, but never freedom. Now people are beginning to name the illness, not just its symptoms.
The pot-banging protests, blocked streets, and burning garbage are the noise of a society stretching the rope of fear another meter every day, and one that is on the verge of snapping it. The empty cooking pot has become the country’s most popular musical instrument. It requires no training, no sheet music, and no permission from the Ministry of Culture. Only exhaustion and a ladle.
The disastrous interview given by Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro did more than generate headlines. It caused a short circuit within the government itself. Suddenly, the guardians of orthodoxy started talking too much. The mother of Leticia Martínez, Díaz-Canel’s press chief, posted on Facebook what her daughter likely hears every day in the halls of the Palace. Without intending to, she ended up airing the conversations of the very power that has always demanded absolute silence from everyone else.
The late Ángel Castro watches from his grave as his descendants extended the fence around their properties to encompass the entire Island, turning an entire country into the family’s estate
The contrast was even more revealing. While Manuel Marrero, a political creation of Gaesa, hurried to defend López-Calleja’s son and assure everyone that everything was under control, Díaz-Canel remained in a silence that spoke volumes.
It was fascinating to watch the reaction of the courtiers. Israel Rojas, poet of the bulb and otherness, beat his chest lamenting how naïve he had been, as though he had just discovered that hereditary privilege existed in Cuba. Michel Torres Corona, the increasingly watered-down host of Con Filo, directed his attacks at El Cangrejo and Sandro Castro with a discourse that conveyed less moral indignation than class resentment. He did not seem scandalized that a revolutionary aristocracy existed. He seemed bothered that he was not part of it.
The scene was almost Shakespearean. The court jesters hasten to bow before the Crown, yet despise the royal princes. They swear loyalty to the kingdom while grumbling about its heirs. And in that theater of forced loyalties, the great truth that Castroism has spent decades trying to conceal was laid bare: the Revolution has become a hereditary monarchy that preserves the language of Marxism to justify the privileges of a dynasty.
A system whose international defenders can only invoke victimhood is no longer a “beacon” of anything, but a ruin shrouded in darkness.
In 1961, Fidel Castro asked whether the Revolution’s weapons were in the hands of the “sons of the rich” or the “young gentlemen.” Sixty-five years later, the question has returned like a boomerang, this time aimed at his own family. Those who bear his surname travel on yachts and private jets; they speak in Cuba’s name without ever having received a single vote; they move through the halls of power like the natural heirs to an estate. The late Ángel Castro watches from his grave as his descendants extended the fence around their properties to encompass the entire Island, turning an entire country into the family’s estate. No one can protest that vast landholding without risking imprisonment, exile, or being branded an enemy. It is the perfect estate.
A regime that must persecute and threaten young people and teenagers because it can no longer buy loyalty is not defending a cause: it is administering terror. A system whose international defenders can only invoke victimhood is no longer a “beacon” of anything, but a ruin shrouded in darkness. And a State whose own propaganda apparatus ends up leaking its palace quarrels on Facebook is no longer governing: it is broadcasting its own collapse live.
The Revolution is dead. Its corpse still occupies the ministries, gives orders, signs sentences, and appears on television made up like a zombie. But it stinks. And no matter how much ideological incense its priests burn, all of Cuba recognizes the stench. It is time to close the coffin, lower the body into the ground, and return Cuba to those who are still breathing, before the entire country ends up becoming a cemetery.
Translated by Regina Anavy
______________________
COLLABORATE WITH OUR WORK: The 14ymedio team is committed to practicing serious journalism that reflects Cuba’s reality in all its depth. Thank you for joining us on this long journey. We invite you to continue supporting us by becoming a member of 14ymedio now. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.