Read part one

Social media has mobilized Cubans in the last two decades like never before. The demonstrations against socialism that took place on July 11 and 12, 2021 (known as 11J), originated from a call to action on a Facebook group.

In this environment, independent communicators and influencers are key to delivering different messages to potentially millions of people. In a closed system like the one that has existed in Castro’s Cuba, this breaks the information monopoly controlled by the Communist Party and its narrative about the island.

For civil society, it is exciting to have, for the first time, such powerful communication alternatives — both inside and outside the island. These alternatives allow for the instantaneous sharing of events, interactive discussion of different perspectives, and exposure of fellow citizens to currents of thought that the Left denounces — from free market principles to conservatism and Christianity.

Since the beginning of the 2020s, there has been a greater presence of influencers residing on the island in public discourse. Some were key in defending the freedoms of expression, conscience, and association, the right to life, or — during the Evangelical Civic Movement (MoCE) between 2018 and 2022 — institutions such as the family and marriage during the Castro regime’s push for gender ideology.

Accustomed to being politically incorrect in every sense (from rejecting woke culture to denouncing the consequences of the socialist system) and to living under pressure because of it, it is not surprising that today some of the most followed anti-Castro voices within Cuba come from among the members of the growing evangelical community.

Yordanka Battle Moré

Yordanka Battle Moré became a kind of citizen influencer after a live broadcast while waiting in an hours-long line to buy food.

“Don’t anyone dare come and talk to me about effort or sacrifice. What we are experiencing is not fair, we are not animals. Dogs in the United States live better.” And she said to the socialist leadership: “You’re going to have to kill me to shut me up. You bunch of lunatics, you incompetents, get out of here, you’ve already stolen everything you were going to steal, you’ve already ruined this country, leave!” This was the beginning of her increasingly frequent messages on Facebook to her more than 30,000 followers, about the harsh daily reality.

She posted about the false unanimity of the National Assembly of People’s Power; and about how pieces of the house she lived in with her mother and grandmother were falling down around her, and the lack of materials to repair it. Thousands of reactions and comments flooded her Facebook profile. The media shared her words. A lover of theater and reading, and a member of the Evangelical League of Cuba, she became an opinion leader.

Her live broadcasts inspired others. She didn’t think her life would change so much, so quickly. Hours after her first viral video, she was fired from her state-owned workplace. On January 28, 2023, she reported police surveillance near her home. The following month, she was summoned to the Zapata and C police station in Havana because, a police officer told her, she was inciting crowds.

The challenges of exercising free expression also had an introspective implication:

“And my answer is always the same: I love Our Lord Jesus Christ for who He is. He doesn’t need to perform a miracle and get me out of Cuba, He doesn’t need to give me luxuries, jewels, yachts, and mansions for me to love Him. I could mention many attributes of the spiritual world (which does exist) for which to love Our Lord, but since I sometimes can’t fully comprehend that dimension, I am grateful for these things.

“I have my two hands, my two legs, my two breasts, my two eyes. I breathe, I can walk, jump, run. I can eat, I can talk, I can dream of a better life because I still have a little youth left. I survived the COVID-19 pandemic. I have my mother and my grandmother alive. Even though it’s in ruins, I have a roof over my head. I have ‘something’ to call a job (...)

“He has forgiven me every time I have failed Him.”

David Espinosa

David Espinosa (David Siloetano, with more than 21,000 followers on Facebook) and his references to the imaginary country of “Abuc” are an iconic case of the use of humor on X. Through this kind of contrived anagram referring to a distorted nation, Cuba, the young man from Havana could address the situation on the island as a wink to the reader. Due to his leadership of the communication office of the “El Calvario” Baptist Church, Espinosa had been summoned by the police and intimidated for his public opposition to the imposition of gender ideology from the Palace of the Revolution.

Espinosa referred to the issue of censorship in the 2023 Communication Law, posting:

“In Abuc there is a censorship law where everything you say can be used against you. Many Abucans fear being condemned for saying something that bothers the king; for this reason, it is almost impossible to read anything negative from someone who lives there.”

He began using the term Abuc the same May that the law was launched. The goal was not to conceal his reference to Cuba but, through this pretended evasion, to reveal the prevailing censorship.

Abuc became a trope for addressing other controversial social issues; it is curious that an idea born from indignation over the censorship imposed by the Communication Law produced a surge in the very criticisms that were intended to be suppressed, at least in Espinosa’s personal case.

Regarding the introduction of gender ideology into the curriculum of the centralized school system, he wrote:

“In Abuc, everything is upside down! The education system there now wants to force children to read from right to left. They say that’s how it should always be; because everything ends on the left. What madness, someone do something!”

The spiritual aspect of the word “freedom” was also present in Espinosa’s tweets:

“There is a small remnant in Abuc that knows the only one capable of liberating it. If that small flock were to strategically take to the streets of the town and show everything they know about this Great Liberator, the people of Abuc would soon be free. I hope they realize it someday!”

The Baptist also spoke out against the Castro regime’s foreign policy toward the Iranian dictatorship. In September 2022, the ayatollah’s regime had repressed demonstrations over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after the so-called morality police arrested her for wearing her veil “inappropriately.” Months later, Díaz-Canel received and shook hands with authorities of the Islamic Revolution in Havana.

Regarding learned helplessness, he noted:

“The people of Abuc are so, so lost, that they are always complaining about so much scarcity and abuse; however, when the king passes through a neighborhood, even the bravest fall silent. What a lamentable and illogical place! Will it ever wake up?”