Cuba: The Rebellion of the ‘Clarias’: Cracks in the Regime
If the Prosecutor’s Office announcement about Alejandro Gil was a “smokescreen,” it backfired badly.
By Yunior Garcia Aguilera (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – “The Communist Party of Cuba must demand the dismissal of its first secretary and president of the country, as well as that of Manuel Marrero Cruz.” With no anesthesia or hesitation, the pro-government psychologist Suzanne Felipe demanded on her Facebook wall the heads of Miguel Díaz-Canel and the prime minister for their closeness to the ousted Alejandro Gil. What was most striking was not her audacity, but the avalanche of hearts, thumbs-up, and supportive comments from other “revolutionary” profiles.
Such a scene would have been unthinkable barely five years ago. But in today’s Cuba—where economic collapse has made corruption, darkness, and despair an everyday reality—even the clarias—that digital army that once blindly defended “continuity”—seem to have lost faith in the anointed Díaz-Canel.
When the Attorney General’s Office published the litany of serious crimes attributed to the former Minister of Economy, many interpreted the news as a distraction tactic, a “smokescreen” to cover up the destruction left by Hurricane Melissa in the eastern part of the country. But this time, the smoke got into the eyes of the regime’s own firefighters.
The Gil case threatens to become a political hurricane far more devastating than Melissa, sweeping away the already precarious image of the establishment and unleashing what some mockingly call “the rebellion of the clarias.”
If the announcement was meant to distract from the widespread perception of a failed regime, it failed miserably. Neither the military helicopters rescuing stranded families nor the choreographed reports of the National News managed to impose an alternative narrative. Even within the regime’s own ranks, there’s only one topic of conversation: who were Gil’s accomplices, and how deep does the rot go? The supposed charge of “espionage” against such a high-ranking figure—a rarity in recent Cuban history—only feeds the sense that something has broken at the very core of power.
The internal fissures had already been heating up earlier, when Havana timidly dared to pay tribute to another Caribbean hurricane: Celia Cruz. At the Fábrica de Arte Cubano (FAC)—the epicenter of semi-tolerated independent art—an exhibition was held, a performance to make amends after a previous act of censorship, and even a star dedicated to the Queen of Salsa. It was enough to make the hardliners erupt in fury.
On his Facebook group, Rodrigo Huaimachi—a Chilean proletarian, pardon, proprietor, based in Havana—tore his revolutionary garments and threatened FAC with popular reprisals: “They will have to rectify, or it will be the people who take measures.” His tone was more castrista than Castro himself. One of his followers even proposed destroying the star dedicated to the Guarachera de Cuba “with sledgehammers.”
Faced with the club and gallery’s indifference—built, not by chance, on the ruins of an old oil factory—Huaimachi expanded his offensive. His new target was Carlos Miguel Perez Reyes, a parliamentarian and small-business owne, accused of ideological softness for speaking too cautiously about Celia Cruz. Also thrown into the bonfire were Haila Maria Mompie, for organizing a mass in the singer’s honor, and the Minister of Culture himself, Alpidio Alonso, for his silence.
Even the most faithful propagandists didn’t escape the sledgehammer blows. Pedro Jorge Velazquez, known as El Necio, a regular defender of the official line, was flayed by the Chilean, who called him a “like-hunter, politically untrained, and profoundly ideologically dizzy.”
The troubadour Raúl Torres—singer of official funerals and author of a few good songs—didn’t want to be left out of the show either. He complained on social media that his projects were shelved because of a “worm-infested bureaucracy” and nearly demanded a star for himself. In a burst of performative Fidelista zeal, he declared: “Sooner rather than later, they’ll learn that here, no one who isn’t family or from the inner circles of Fidel, Raul, and Díaz-Canel… is going to get the perks.”
But the true epicenter of the quake remains the Gil case. His abrupt fall, the murky espionage charge, and the information blackout surrounding him have unleashed a Category 5 political storm within the ruling elite. The Party apparatus, accustomed to controlling the story, is now facing a digital rebellion from its own creatures—who now doubt, clash, and, worst of all, step-off script.
The regime’s proclaimed “monolithic unity” is cracking before everyone’s eyes. Gone are the days when it could control the narrative—as in the Ochoa case—or muzzle the relatives of the fallen from grace, as during the times of Carlos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque. Now anyone with a phone can break the silence and amplify their opinions.
The clarias—those amphibious creatures that live in the mud—have begun to leap out of the pond. If this new storm proves anything, it’s that Castroism, in its decrepit, recycled form, has lost its monopoly on faith. And when the believers begin to doubt, the temples empty faster than the ration stores.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.