‘Supernatural’ Actor Catches Cuba’s Puppet President Dining Lavishly in Rome While Cubans Starve

Cuban exiles in Rome peacefully protested his presence outside the Vatican on Tuesday morning as Díaz-Canel and Pope Francis’s meeting was underway, chanting, “down with the dictatorship,” “Díaz-Canel murderer,” and calling for an end of the communist Castro regime and its over six decades of rule in Cuba.

Díaz-Canel’s European trip was reportedly sponsored in some capacity by the Venezuelan socialist regime, as the figurehead president used an airplane from the Venezuelan state-owned Conviasa airline for his trip. Conviasa was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 2020 during the administration of former President Donald Trump. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin explained at the time that the Maduro regime relies on the airline to “shuttle corrupt regime officials around the world to fuel support for its ant-democratic efforts.”

Díaz-Canel’s visit to the expensive Pierluigi restaurant in Rome heavily contrasts with his “Creative Resistance” narrative concept, which the figurehead president has been employing since 2022 to ask Cuban citizens for greater sacrifices amidst Cuba’s inhumane conditions, crumbling infrastructure, rolling blackouts, and widespread shortages of food, medicine, fuel, and other supplies.

Partaking in international fine-dining experiences while its citizens continue to suffer is a common practice among socialist and/or communist dictators and their families.

In 2018, Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores visited Turkish chef Nusret “Salt Bae” Gökçe’s expensive Nusr-Et Steakhouse in Istanbul just as the Venezuelan economy collapsed, causing mass starvation and hunger. Venezuelan exiles living in Miami protested outside Gökçe’s Miami restaurant shortly afterward.

“Salt Bae,” whose real name is Nusret Gökçe,” posted videos showing him carving meat in front of Nicolas Maduro. (Twitter/@nusr_ett)

Gökçe, who owns several restaurants around the world, quietly closed down his New York burger joint this week.

In a similar case, Mariela Castro, daughter of former dictator Raúl Castro, was spotted in November 2018 enjoying lobster alongside Spanish singer Pastora Soler and Spanish transgender lawmaker Carla Antonelli from the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). The backlash prompted Soler to cancel a concert in Miami that she had scheduled for December 2018.

In May, members of the Cuban communist musical group Buena Fe, which has deep ties to the Castro regime, were confronted by Cuban exiles living in Barcelona as they patronized a “capitalist” Burger King restaurant shortly before they were scheduled to participate in an anti-capitalism event.

Sayde Chaling Chong, president of the Ibero-American and European Alliance against Communism (AIECC) organization, told Radio Televisión Martí that he asked the communist musicians why, “if they’re so anti-capitalists, they are going to eat at a Burger King, which is the ultimate example of capitalism.”

“He [one of the musicians] told me he didn’t care,” Chaling Chong added.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.