Ana de Armas has limited her comments on Instagram as she faces massive backlash for dating the stepson of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is widely regarded as an authoritarian leader overseeing a repressive regime in the communist island state.

The Cuban actor, 36, is being attacked online by other Cubans and Cuban Americans for dating a representative of the dictatorship she herself escaped. The Daily Mail reports this .

De Armas, whose last high-profile relationship was with Ben Affleck, was photographed last week on a romantic walk in Madrid with Manuel Anido Cuesta, Diaz-Canal’s 26-year-old stepson.

The “Knives Out” star and “Bond girl” left Cuba and moved to Spain at the age of 18. She previously dated Tinder vice president Paul Boukadakis, after dating Affleck. He was her co-star in the erotic thriller “Dark Water,” and they dated through 2021 and became paparazzi favorites while living together in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The photos of de Armas and Anido Cuesta, first published in Hola! magazine, shows the lovebirds walking around Madrid with a dog and smiling, laughing and kissing. But the photos have wrong-footed many Cubans and Cuban Americans, reports say. This is due to Anido Cuesta’s connection with the current Cuban regime.

Anido Cuesta is the son of Díaz-Canel’s second wife, Liz Cuesta, and is considered a “close advisor” to the president. Diaz-Canal himself was a longtime Community Party official who was handpicked and “chosen” by Raul Castro to be his successor in “an election” in 2018 in which no opposition challengers were allowed, according to the Daily Mail and the BBC reported.

Diaz-Canal has often taken his stepson along to official events and on trips to places like the Vatican and the United Arab Emirates, the Daily Mail and other media reported.

It seems the president and his wife are fine with Anido Cuesta’s reputation as a lover of a luxurious lifestyle – even as the majority of Cubans live in poverty in a collapsed economy and are arrested or jailed for protest and dissent.

“While Cuba endures one of its worst crises in decades, marked by daily power outages, rampant inflation and a mass exodus that is draining the nation, this official regime strolls comfortably through Madrid, the capital of capitalism, enjoying a romance with a Hollywood -star. like Ana de Armas,” wrote Luis Flores, a columnist for the English-language digital news channel CiberCuba.

“From Ben Affleck to the son of a dictator, what a crazy life,” someone wrote on the FauxMoi reddit thread. “Filled with choices, some bad choices, and some choices that make you question your humanity.”

Ana’s own brother, photographer Javier Caso, has been an activist against the Cuban regime for years, the Daily Mail reported. In 2020, he was questioned over his connections to artists and opposition activists.

CiberCuba also reported that De Armas remained silent for a long time about government dysfunction and alleged human rights violations in Cuba, even when his own brother was questioned. She has said she grew up with food rationing, fuel shortages and electricity outages, but describes her early life as happy. CiberCuba said the strongest thing she ever said about Cuba is that she felt she had to leave the island to grow professionally, which happened for her in Hollywood, which landed her roles in “Knives Out,” “No Time to Die,” and the 2002 Marilyn Monroe biopic “Blonde,” for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.

“Ana de Armas’ years of silence about Cuba are now eloquent, following the publication of images confirming the actress’s romance with Manuel Anido Cuesta,” CiberCuba also said.

Although de Armas has limited commentary on some of her Instagram posts, some criticism was allowed on her other posts, including one in which she promoted her role as a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton jewelry.

One person directed their comment at the luxury design company: “You should choose better next time, a woman who supports the Cuban dictatorship does not deserve to be the image of an international brand #vivacuba#vivacubalibre.”

A self-identified Cuban also wrote: “It pains me deeply to see someone with your platform joining a regime that has brought so much suffering to our people. As a Cuban, I know firsthand what it means to live under a system that oppresses, divides families and destroys dreams. Your support for that dictatorship is a betrayal of all of us who have suffered and those who are still fighting for freedom in our homeland.”

“I expected more from you, but it’s clear you chose to ignore the pain of your own people,” the person continued.

The Daily Mail also quoted some comments from

Another person said: ‘Ana de Armas is dating the stepson of the tyrant who runs the dictatorship she ran away from? This is bad, this is bad, this is very bad.”

In gallows humor, someone expressed sympathy for her publicist on Reddit, saying that her “whole damn PR team needs to be on suicide watch right now.”

Originally published: November 22, 2024 at 11:06 am PST