The Briefing:
- Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel published a congratulatory message to Kim Jong Un on October 10, 2026, celebrating the 81st anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea, drawing immediate mockery and condemnation from Cubans online.
- The post landed as Cuba endures at least eight total nationwide blackouts in 2026 alone and prolonged daily outages exceeding twenty hours in parts of Havana — the island's worst energy crisis since the revolution.
- The congratulation follows a pattern of authoritarian solidarity: just three days earlier, Díaz-Canel marked Vladimir Putin's 74th birthday, and in April 2026 he celebrated Kim Jong Un's re-election as head of state.
"We Reiterate Our Commitment"
Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel triggered a wave of mockery and condemnation on social media this weekend after posting a public congratulatory message to North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, paired with an image of the two men shaking hands beneath their respective national flags. The message, directed at Kim and all members of his ruling party, celebrated the 81st anniversary of the Workers' Party of Korea — founded on October 10, 1945 — and was published on the exact date of the milestone.
In his post, Díaz-Canel addressed Kim directly as "compañero" — comrade — and declared Cuba's intent to deepen ties between both parties and peoples. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla echoed those sentiments, invoking the language of brotherhood, solidarity and cooperation, according to state outlet Prensa Latina. The accompanying photograph, depicting both leaders mid-handshake, quickly became the focal point of ridicule for thousands of Cuban internet users who saw the image as a symbol of authoritarian kinship rather than legitimate statecraft.
The Workers' Party of Korea's anniversary prompted labor meetings, art exhibitions, and museum visits across Pyongyang in the days leading up to October 10, with Kim Jong Un receiving flower baskets from allied governments ahead of the occasion.
Social Media Erupts: "Not an Ounce of Shame"
The diplomatic post detonated online the moment it went live. Cuban users, many of them living on the island or in the diaspora, flooded the comment section with sarcasm and raw frustration. One commenter, Ore Esco, reduced the whole exchange to three words: "Cooperation in torture chambers." Frank Michel Velazquez Santiesteban was equally blunt, writing that there is "not an ounce of shame" in the gesture, and warning — with a ticking-clock metaphor — that historical reckoning has a way of arriving eventually.
Others turned to dark humor. Melissa Frontela Vázquez called the whole episode "terrifyingly funny," while Flor Alelis landed perhaps the sharpest jab: "Even they are better off than people in Cuba." The phrase encapsulated a widespread sentiment on the island — that Havana's government expends energy on ideological solidarity abroad while its own population endures conditions that have few parallels in Cuban peacetime history.
A Country Running on Empty
The timing of the post made it especially combustible. Cuba has suffered at least eight total nationwide blackouts in 2026 alone — more than a dozen since the crisis began in late 2024 — as its decrepit electricity infrastructure buckles under chronic fuel shortages. In some areas of the capital, residents have endured outages stretching beyond twenty hours per day. Food, medicine, and drinkable water are intermittently scarce, and what was once called a crisis has settled, for millions of Cubans, into a grim new normal.
The most recent total grid collapse struck on September 18, 2026 — Cuba's eighth nationwide failure of the year, just weeks before Díaz-Canel's post honoring the North Korean ruling party. The government has consistently blamed U.S. sanctions for blocking fuel supplies, with Venezuelan and Mexican petroleum imports both halted amid increased pressure from Washington — though critics have long pointed to decades of structural mismanagement as an equally decisive factor.
A Pattern of Authoritarian Solidarity
The congratulatory post to Kim Jong Un did not arrive in a vacuum. Just three days earlier, on October 7, Díaz-Canel wished Vladimir Putin a happy 74th birthday — a gesture that also drew heavy criticism from Cubans pointing out the dissonance between those birthday wishes and the daily hardships unfolding at home. In April 2026, Díaz-Canel had similarly congratulated Kim on his re-election as head of state, affirming — according to North Korean state media quoted by the Korea JoongAng Daily — Cuba's "commitment to expanding friendship, cooperation and solidarity between our two countries."
Cuba and North Korea, longtime ideological allies, have been working to mend ties that frayed after Cuba's move to establish diplomatic relations with South Korea in February 2024. Both Díaz-Canel and Kim were among the world leaders present at China's massive Victory Day military parade in Beijing in September 2025, where the two leaders reportedly crossed paths, and the two governments have repeatedly framed their bond as one rooted in shared revolutionary history.
Sixty-Six Years of a Complicated Alliance
Cuba and North Korea established formal diplomatic ties in 1960, one year after Fidel Castro's revolution. North Korea was among the first countries Díaz-Canel visited after taking power in 2018, where he was welcomed in Pyongyang with the kind of orchestrated mass ceremony that the Kim regime reserves for heads of state it considers ideologically aligned. Official Cuban press has described the bilateral relationship as one of "brotherhood," a characterization that critics say has always reflected the priorities of the governing class rather than the aspirations of ordinary Cubans.
For those Cubans now watching their government celebrate a secretive nuclear-armed state while rationing cooking gas and queuing hours for bread, the image of two leaders shaking hands carries a different weight entirely — one that, judging by the flood of comments, many are no longer willing to scroll past in silence.
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