[News] Cuba: The Trap of Equidistance

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://resumen-english.org/2025/08/cuba-the-trap-of-equidistance/>
Cuba: The Trap of Equidistance
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By Carlos Gonzalez Penalva on August 5, 2025

The recent appearance of Israel Rojas, leader of the duo Buena Fe, on the
program La sobremesa on the digital platform *La Joven Cuba* has sparked an
interesting debate on the fringes of the Cuban revolutionary
intelligentsia. His presence, polite but firm, honest and serene, has been
celebrated by many as a gesture of openness and courage. And it undoubtedly
is. But this recognition should not lead us to overlook the terrain where
the exchange takes place. Because in politics—and especially in the
cultural battle—the setting matters as much as the words, and there is no
innocent dialogue when the script is written by the adversary.

The scene is presented as a dialogue between different people, a
pluralistic Cuban after-dinner conversation. But it is a perfectly
calculated staging: a space designed to erode the symbolic legitimacy of
the revolutionary project from within, under the guise of “critical” or
“independent” journalism. The key lies precisely in that word: independent.
Independent from what? From whom? And with what resources?

The question is not insignificant. In times of cultural warfare and hybrid
siege, where the adversary not only bombs with economic missiles but also
with seemingly neutral discourse, the choice of space matters as much as
the content of the message. *La Joven Cuba is not just any forum: it is a
platform that has received financial support from the Norwegian Embassy in
Havana,* whose cooperation policies have prioritized the promotion of an
“alternative” media ecosystem on the island for more than a decade. But
alternative to what? To the Cuban public media, yes. But also—and more
seriously—alternative to the revolutionary project itself, which it
presents as anachronistic or authoritarianism disguised as historical
legitimacy.

The strategy is not new. In 2011, during Barack Obama’s second term, the
policy of “regime change” towards Cuba was openly reformulated through
sophisticated consensus engineering. Instead of opting for direct
confrontation, the White House promoted an artificially cultivated “civil
society” with logistical and financial support from USAID, NED, and various
allied European embassies. Within this framework, academic, cultural, and
journalistic projects multiplied which, under the rhetoric of human rights,
diversity of voices, or modernization of the state, actually promoted an
ideological mutation: emptying the public space of revolutionary content
and replacing it with a false equidistance between victim and victimizer,
between the besieged and the aggressor.

Of course, the problem is not Israel Rojas. His presence in the public
sphere has allowed the voice of the Cuba that resists to be heard in an
environment that is often resistant to honest debate. But it has also
served, unintentionally, to stage a false pluralism: a conversation “among
equals” that artificially equates the defender of a revolutionary project
with his strategic adversaries. And that, in a country under economic,
financial, political, and media siege, is not neutral: it is an act with
consequences.
The cultural war and the soft counterrevolution: The trap of equidistance

The United States’ foreign policy toward Cuba changed substantially with
the Obama administration, not in its objectives, but in its methods. It was
no longer a question of overthrowing the Revolution with marines or direct
suffocation, but of fostering an alternative “civil society” that, in the
name of openness, would introduce the values of bourgeois
liberalism—individualism, meritocracy, abstract pluralism—into the Cuban
ideological fabric. This is what Joseph Nye would call soft power: not
imposing from outside, but making domination seem desirable from within.
What Antonio Gramsci analyzed, from a materialist perspective, as cultural
hegemony.

To this end, a whole network of funding and institutional support was
activated for media, academic, and artistic projects that, without openly
declaring themselves counterrevolutionary, cast doubt on the legitimacy of
the socialist state, questioned the role of the Communist Party, and
proposed a liberal democratic refoundation. One of the most obvious fruits
of this strategy has been the proliferation of digital media outlets such
as La Joven Cuba, whose name, incidentally, is a symbolic appropriation of
the legacy of Antonio Guiteras—a deeply anti-imperialist revolutionary who
would never have accepted foreign funding for his cause.

An essential distinction must be made here: criticism from within the
revolutionary process, as a dialectical means of perfecting it, is one
thing; functional criticism aimed at dismantling the socialist project,
financed and validated by those who wish to see it end, is quite another.
Such criticism is not criticism at all, but soft counterrevolution with a
friendly face and academic manners.

Israel Rojas, as an artist committed to the collective destiny of his
country, has always defended the Revolution from a popular, critical, and
creative position. His presence on La sobremesa does not contradict this
trajectory. But it is necessary to warn about the framework. By entering
that set, even with the best of intentions, Israel becomes—whether he wants
to or not—an element that legitimizes the apparatus.

The program does not seek simply to converse. It seeks to stage a dialogue
between “peers”—between the Revolution and those who, with moderate smiles,
advocate its dismantling. What is presented as pluralism is, in reality, a
strategy to normalize the counterrevolution under the guise of diversity.
The problem is not debating: it is accepting as a legitimate interlocutor
those who receive foreign funds to undermine the Cuban constitutional
order, especially when those funds come from embassies such as Norway’s,
which has been financing audiovisual, artistic, and journalistic projects
linked to the most active sectors of the restorationist agenda, camouflaged
under the label of “civil society.”

Gramsci warned about the use of the concept of “civil society” as a
disguise for bourgeois power, capable of absorbing the intellectual and
moral energies of the adversary in order to neutralize them within the
limits of the system. In Cuba, this logic is reproduced through the
creation of hybrid spaces that appear to be plural, critical, and modern,
but which operate as devices for legitimizing a capitalist restoration
disguised as critical citizenship. This is the friendly face of the
counterrevolution.

In this sense, the link between these cultural operations and phenomena
such as 27N, the San Isidro Movement, or the campaign of digital
influencers who, in the midst of the economic crisis resulting from the
intensification of the blockade and the pandemic, sought to capitalize on
popular discontent to trigger an institutional rupture cannot be ignored.
*There is no symmetry in the face of siege*

The choice of the name La Joven Cuba is not an innocent gesture. It seeks
to draw a false continuity between the heroic legacy of Antonio
Guiteras—who fell in combat against Yankee imperialism and its local
puppets—and a space that, instead of fighting against global power, is
financed by its crumbs. As Carlos Fernández de Cossío has pointed out,
opposition to the Revolution is counterrevolution, whatever name it goes
by. And the founder of the original La Joven Cuba did not need, nor would
he ever have accepted, foreign aid to wage his struggle.

Gramsci insisted that the battle for hegemony was not fought only in
parliaments or factories, but in schools, newspapers, universities, and
theaters. Today, we could say, it is also fought on social media, podcasts,
and digital media. And Cuba, under permanent siege, does not have the
luxury of granting neutrality to these fronts. Not when freedom of the
press, as Rafael Correa warned, remains the will of the owner of the
printing press. And the owner, in this case, is not Cuban.

What is at stake is not an academic debate or a postmodern conversation
between ideological sensibilities. What is at stake is the ability of a
blockaded, attacked, and criminalized country to defend its political
sovereignty, its social model, and its historical legitimacy. In this
context, any space that seeks to place the Revolution and its financed
adversaries on the same level is not a space for dialogue: it is a semiotic
trap, a carefully staged scene designed to shift the axis of common sense
toward liberal consensus.

Participating in this scene is not just talking: it is contributing to the
production of a new script, where the Revolution appears as one among many
possible options, devoid of moral and historical exceptionalism. And
therein lies the danger.

Defending the Cuban Revolution today means not only resisting economic
attacks, but also reading the signs of the moment clearly.

In the culture war, form matters: space, language, dialogue, financing. It
is not a question of rejecting debate, but of not giving away ground. It is
not a question of censorship, but of unmasking. And it is not a question of
attacking those who participate honestly, but of denouncing the
architecture that allows the adversary to disguise himself as a moderate.

Defending the socialist project requires intelligence, subtlety, and
courage. It also requires not forgetting that in politics, as in theater,
the stage is never neutral. Sometimes even the best-delivered monologue can
end up legitimizing the wrong play.

Sometimes, participating is not dialoguing, but validating. And validating
the adversary on their own ground, with their rules, is to concede another
battle in this prolonged war for the consciousness of the people.

Source: Cubadebate
<http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2025/08/04/la-trampa-de-la-equidistancia/>,
translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English
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