The humorist questions that the Cuban regime use “blockade” as a pretext to justify the country’s economic crisis.
Miami, United States. – The popular Cuban humorist Ulises Toirac openly questioned this Monday the use of the American embargo – “blocking” according to the island’s regime – as a central argument to explain the country’s economic crisis. “The theme of the blockade (…) is that it does not depend on us. It has been and will like it or not,” He wrote on Facebook.
Toirac responded to an acquaintance who pointed out the need to consider the embargo on the analysis of the national situation. His reaction was blunt: “And then? Is it already? Do we die? If there is a blockade we are dysfunctional? Is it the cause and it will always be? Because if so, it does not serve us as a country to maintain a project that can never develop.”
In the artist’s opinion, clinging to the embargo as the unique cause of economic difficulties is an immobilistic position. “It’s simple. You have to change the rules of the game or we’re starving,” he concluded in his message.
The Cubnano humorist has assumed an increasingly critical tone towards the Cuban authorities. On June 2, after the controversy unleashed by the increase in rates of the state monopoly of communications in Cuba, Etecsa, pointed out: “The issue that exploded with what has been called ‘Etecsa’s tariff’ It has been a public opinion catalyst. ”
In that same publication he added that Etecsa was not a company, but “the State selling connectivity and communication” and denounced the exclusion of the citizen in economic decision making: “The helplessness of the citizen who does not participate or is informed or benefits from any plan, strategy or decision with his economy and that of his country.”
A day later, Toirac highlighted the role of university students in the resistance to the imposed measures. “Many of those boys could be planted ‘until they go back,” he wrote in reference to the possibility of protests. However, he warned that “the government will never afford to give an indication of weakness.”
The humorist was even more emphatic in his criticism of the government: “The tariff (…) is a sample button (…) for the population they are not ‘lunge’, they are bars that start to the marrow.” And about the social consequences of government measures warned: “A holocaust is coming before ‘the silence of the lambs'”.
On June 4, commenting on a possible strike in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing of the University of Havana, he wrote: “Repressing will have a political cost (very high in my opinion, I would say unpayable), allow it, a sample of political weakness never before edited.”
That same day he shared a video of a meeting between students and officials, where two young university students ratified an academic strike and criticized the lack of legitimacy of official dialogue spaces.
Following these publications, Toirac was summoned by the authorities. “I go to a conversation, to an ‘exchange'” they told me ‘exchange. “It seems they don’t like what I am saying,” he said in A brief video posted on June 6.
It is not the first time that the humorist faces reprisals for his opinions. In June 2024, the authorities suspended a presentation of them in the Athenaeum of Cienfuegos. “Again. Now the presentation of Cienfuegos is suspended,” he denounced then on social networks. “Beyond denying a person for his ideas or what he says, the way in which power makes it impossible to speak freely, is brutally cowardly,” he added.
Graduate of Electrical Engineering in 1986, Ulises Toirac has been one of the most influential humorists in the country, with emblematic characters such as Juan Marchante (Chivichana) and Matute. In recent years, he has used his social networks to express a critical position of the Cuban government on issues such as censorship, authoritarianism, economic crisis and repression.
