Cuban Communist Influencer Labels Activists as 'Despicable': Claims They Harm Their Own People

Residing in Spain and known for echoing the Cuban government’s rhetoric, Tere Felipe, a Cuban influencer, labeled journalist and activist Magdiel Jorge Castro as "despicable" following an online debate about the root causes of the island's ongoing power crisis.

The conflict was sparked by a tweet from Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, who attributed the latest complete outage of the National Electric System (SEN) to the "energetic siege and the extreme tightening of the U.S. blockade against Cuba."

Castro quickly countered, stating, "This is a falsehood, despicable... in 2024, before Trump took office, the SEN collapsed up to five times. The crisis Cuba faces has a single culprit... and it is the communism you support."

Tere Felipe responded to the activist by echoing the Communist Party of Cuba’s official stance: "Despicable is when people like this so-called Mag, a Cuban, are willing to justify policies that harm 'their own' people while whitewashing Trump’s regime."

Her post attempted to support her argument with two specific examples.

First, the French shipping company CMA CGM halted cargo operations to Cuba in mid-May 2026, reportedly leaving containers with essential spare parts for the Antonio Guiteras Thermal Power Plant in Matanzas stranded in France.

Second, the energy division of Alstom was acquired by the American company General Electric in 2015, bringing the plans and components of the Cuban thermoelectric system, built with that technology, under U.S. jurisdiction.

Both events partially resulted from Executive Order 14404, signed by Donald Trump on May 1, 2026, which expanded secondary sanctions against foreign companies operating in strategic Cuban sectors, particularly energy.

The suspension by CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd affected up to 60% of maritime traffic to the island.

Nonetheless, Tere Felipe's argument omits a key fact pointed out by Castro: the SEN collapses began long before these sanctions were imposed.

The fourth total blackout of the year occurred on Friday, with a historic deficit of 2,341 MW and outages lasting up to 87 consecutive hours in Matanzas.

The first complete SEN collapse was recorded on October 18, 2024, when a failure at the Guiteras Plant led to a loss of 1,640 MW, well before Trump returned to the White House.

This isn't the first time Tere Felipe has publicly defended the regime in this debate. In March 2026, she blamed Trump for the blackouts, drawing criticism for downplaying decades of underinvestment and mismanagement by the Cuban government.

On Saturday, she also stated that "the blockade exists and is cruel and inhumane," sharing an incident where pediatric hospital doctors in Cerro ran out of fuel for their generator at six in the morning, with five children in intensive care.

Magdiel Jorge Castro, born in Holguín in 1994, is a Cuban journalist, activist, and biologist. He is currently exiled in Spain. In December 2022, Bolivia's government expelled him for "disturbing public order" due to his social media opinions, an expulsion celebrated by the Cuban regime on national television.

Tere Felipe concluded her post with a statement summarizing the narrative the regime has been promoting for months: "Anyone who tries to pretend that these criminal measures only affect the Cuban Government or that the energy crisis is the government’s fault is hiding an obvious reality.

The consequences are borne by the people, with more blackouts, more shortages, and further deterioration of their living conditions."