A Revolution that is no longer and the question that no one wants to answer
Log from the memory of Che, between history and the open wound of an island
If Che lived and saw Cuba where there are nights when time stops.
Not for romanticism.
For darkness.
The electricity is cut off for hours. Sometimes for days. The refrigerator stops working. The fans turn off. The heat becomes thick. Silence weighs more than noise. And in that darkness, millions of Cubans wait.
They wait for the light to return.
They wait for food to arrive.
They hope something will change.
The blackouts, which have intensified since 2021 and deepened in recent years, are not only due to the economic blockade imposed by the United States that restricts access to fuel, financing and infrastructure. They are also a consequence of the internal deterioration of the Cuban energy system. It is the result of mismanagement and a siege that suffocates the island's economy and limits its ability to sustain basic services.
But the blockade, although real and decisive, does not explain everything.
There is also internal wear and tear.
The bureaucracy.
The inertia.
The fear.
The inability to reform.
And then an inevitable question arises.
An uncomfortable question.
A dangerous question.
If Che were alive and saw Cuba
What would you think if you could walk through the streets of Cuba today?
What would you say when you saw the people you helped liberate surviving amid blackouts, shortages and fear?
The Argentine who became a symbol, but never wanted to be a statue.
Ernesto Guevara, Argentine and Rosario, traveler, doctor, photographer and revolutionary by conviction, was not just a symbolic figure: he was a man of action and principles. Doctor at heart, Cuban by dedication, Latin American by destiny. His life was marked by a tireless search for social justice, and his time in Cuba left a mark as deep as it was contradictory.
It all started on a trip.
A motorcycle trip through Latin America where he discovered the open wounds of the continent: inequality, exploitation, structural misery, something that has not changed much. It was not a tourist tour. It was a revelation.
That's where Che was born.
Not as a revolutionary.
But as conscience.
Inspired by the ideals of Latin American heroes such as Martí, Bolívar or even San Martín, whom he undoubtedly knew as an Argentine, Che believed in a united, free and fair America. And he found in the Cuban Revolution a cause for which to leave everything. And he did it, ending a very harsh Batista dictatorship. Because Che was not a tourist of revolutions, he was a man who believed to the core. Who gave up all privileges for an idea.
He understood that the freedom of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean was a single cause, from the Río de la Plata to the Sierra Maestra.
He once wrote:
“Let me tell you, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” That love—deep, uncomfortable, non-negotiable—led him to be more than a symbol: it turned him into an example.
Love to the people.
Love of justice.
Love of dignity.
Would that same man—who crossed borders with an ideal sewn to his chest—watch in silence today at the blackouts, hunger, and repression?
Would it justify the bureaucracy that suffocates the very people for whom they risked their lives?
I don't believe it.
Today's Cuba
Between external lock and internal lock
The island is going through one of its deepest crises since the fall of the Soviet Union. The US blockade limits financial operations, trade and access to strategic supplies. Fuel is scarce. Power plants are aging. The energy infrastructure collapses.
But the crisis is not only energy.
It's economical.
It's social.
It's moral.
Inflation erodes wages. Young people emigrate en masse. Doctors who can leave hospitals. Families are fragmented between those who leave and those who remain resisting.
Where ideals were lost among bureaucracy, censorship and repression.
Where blackouts last endless hours. Where scarcity is daily: there are no medicines, there is no milk, there is no freedom.
Where Havana—beautiful and broken—is falling apart, and in Cienfuegos, Santa Clara or Camagüey, people survive by making eternal lines, bartering for food or selling the few things they have.
The Revolution that promised dignity today survives amid blackouts.
The question is no longer ideological.
It's human.
Repression and injustice. Culture and silence: when the Revolution fears its own children
In recent years, social protests and critical cultural expressions have been responded to with arrests, trials and forced silences. Young people, artists, musicians, ordinary citizens have faced consequences for expressing discontent.
The case of young people linked to the independent cultural movement—such as those known in alternative spaces and creative collectives such as the 4th— reflects a growing tension between power and the new generations.
Beyond specific names, the climate is clear: dissent has costs.
And there the question appears again.
Would Che have remained silent in the face of young people imprisoned for protesting?
Would you have accepted that internal criticism be treated as betrayal?
Probably not. Because Che, even in Cuba, did not defend order for its own sake. He defended revolutionary coherence. And a revolution that does not admit criticism runs the risk of becoming what it promised to combat.
Because they are young people who grew up within the Revolution and who today dare to question it. And that is, perhaps, the most painful criticism. Because it does not come from the historical enemy. It comes from within.
Che believed in critical consciousness as a revolutionary engine. Not in forced silence. Not in fear as a political tool. It's hard to imagine him on the side of censorship. It is easier to imagine it on the side of those who dare to think.
The Revolution that Che imagined was not this
Che was not a tourist of revolutions. He was a man who believed until the last consequences.
He also criticized bureaucracy, stagnation, rejected conformism and the loss of the revolutionary moral impulse. He distrusted the power that perpetuates itself without transforming. He defended the idea of the “new man”: a human being guided by conscience, solidarity and collective responsibility, not by privileges or fear.
In his farewell letter to Fidel Castro he wrote:
“Other lands of the world demand the help of my modest efforts…”
His loyalty was not to power.
It was towards revolution as a living and global process.
That is why it is difficult to imagine him defending an immobile Revolution. He believed in a permanent revolution. Viva. Criticism.
That love I was talking about cannot coexist with hunger.
He cannot live with imposed silence.
He cannot live with resignation.
Today, that Cuba that he helped liberate is experiencing a profound contradiction.
The State that promised to emancipate controls.
The system that promised dignity administers scarcity.
The revolution that promised the future manages survival.
Many young people no longer dream of building the country.
They dream of leaving.
Che did not fight for exile to be the natural horizon of a generation.
Today, Che in Cuba would be uncomfortable
He was not an obedient man.
He was a coherent man.
It did not justify injustice no matter where it came from.
He did not defend power for power's sake.
He defended the people.
Probably today I would not be comfortable with either Washington or the Cuban Communist Party.
I would criticize the external blockade that is suffocating the island.
But I would also question the internal blockage that is suffocating its future.
He would align himself with the people, especially with young people who ask for changes with dignity.
Because I didn't believe in eternal excuses.
He believed in permanent transformation.
“Knowledge makes us responsible,” he said. Che, as a doctor and thinker, knew that one could not be indifferent. Today, knowing the suffering of the Cuban people, silence is also complicity.
What would Che do?
Maybe I would be in a hospital without supplies. Maybe he would side with the oppressed, even if it meant taking on the current leadership.
Perhaps I would speak of a revolution within the revolution.
Perhaps I would try to shake off the inertia and return real content to the words justice and dignity.
Or maybe he would be in prison.
Or exiled.
Or silenced.
Because Che was never a comfortable symbol.
He was a threat to any system that betrayed its own principles.
The final question
Today his face is on t-shirts and murals.
But his spirit—critical, uncomfortable, alive—seems to have separated from the structures that speak in his name and to be closer to the people.
Cuba continues to resist.
The people continue to resist.
In doctors who fight every day for a vocation more than for a salary.
In the endless lines.
In the separation of families.
In the darkness of the blackouts.
And in that darkness, his figure appears again. Not as a statue. As a question.
If Che were alive, would he be in power... or would he be with the people?
No one can know with certainty what Che would think today. But his life – marked by criticism, action and coherence – suggests that he would not have remained indifferent to the suffering of the people.
Because the true revolutionary is not tied to flags, but to causes. And Cuba's cause, today, is to be free again.
Editorial signature — Multipase
Because traveling is also understanding.
Because borders are not only geographical.
Because there are journeys that never end.
Multipase It doesn't go places.
Discover truths from within.
