Trump continues to point to Cuba as a supposed threat to U.S. national security.

The early morning of January 3rd still hurts. Not only because of the 32 compatriots who fell on Venezuelan soil during Absolute Resolve Operation, martyrs of a solidarity that knows no borders, but also because of the fog that has tried to cover everything ever since.

In those first hours and days, while we held our breath, social media burned with conflicting accounts; influencers for hire passed judgment, and some, from the comfort of their feeds, had already decided that “Maduro brought it on himself.” Today, when the blockade is clearer than ever, and fuel is scarce on the streets, it is worth asking ourselves: who wins when we stop thinking?

We are facing not just an energy crisis or an escalation of rhetoric from Washington. It is a high-intensity cognitive warfare operation. As the Cubadebate Media Observatory recently explained, between February 1st and 15th, dozens of calls for violence against Cuba circulated on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. All of them, absolutely all of them, originated abroad. None achieved any real mobilization within the country. But be aware: they will not stop trying.

Their organizational failure does not mean they are harmless. These campaigns pursue another objective: to create a climate of tension, to sow seeds of discontent.

To instill the feeling that “something is about to explode.” To saturate the digital public space with insurrectionary iconography, balaclavas, red backgrounds, and maximalist slogans so that, in the mind of the citizen overwhelmed by blackouts and long lines, the exception ends up seeming like the norm.

It is the strategy of endless noise. Information overload does not produce enlightenment, but paralysis. When everything is urgent, nothing is important. And in that confusion, the enemy wants to advance.

That terrible early morning also left us with a luminous lesson. The mourning for the 32 fallen, respected even by electric motorcycles blasting music in the neighborhoods, revealed something that neither polls nor algorithms can measure: the deep-seated patriotism that persists in the Cuban people.

One researcher expressed it precisely: “Social exhaustion does not translate into a weakening of patriotic values. Weariness with failed economic policies does not imply a loss of commitment to national sovereignty.”

There is a crucial distinction here that certain analyses, especially those produced from the comfort of Miami newsrooms, refuse to acknowledge. One can disagree with energy policy, question the bureaucracy, demand better wages, and, at the same time, repudiate foreign interference and be willing to defend independence. These are not only not contradictory positions: in a healthy society, they should coexist.

The problem is that the Cuban right wing and its sponsors in Washington have not understood the national political psychology, neither in 1959 nor now. They continue to believe that the economic crisis is the Trojan horse that will open the doors of Havana for them. They ignore the fact that, when the aircraft carrier appears on the horizon, internal divisions close and the conflict is redefined in existential terms. Precisely the terrain where the United States has always lost.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF DISUNITY

In these days of February, while President Miguel Díaz-Canel calmly explained the measures adopted in response to the energy blockade—including the update of the so-called “Zero Option,” conceived in the 1990s —certain divisive narratives have attempted to take hold in the public debate. The first: the supposed “abandonment” of Venezuela by Russia and China for not intervening militarily. This interpretation, whether intentionally or unintentionally naive, overlooks the fact that Venezuela does not have mutual defense agreements with these countries comparable to those of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Reducing strategic cooperation to armed intervention is a simplistic view that only benefits those who want to see the anti-imperialist camp defeated.

Second: the specter of “Chavista betrayal” of Cuba. It has even been claimed, without a shred of evidence, that measures adopted by acting president Delcy Rodríguez are dictated by Donald Trump. This narrative, sustained by emotional appeals to “what Chávez would have done,” ignores the complexity of the Venezuelan situation. Caracas is negotiating with a gun still smoking at its head, in a scenario perhaps analogous to that of Soviet Russia, which signed a harsh peace with Germany in 1917.

Third, perhaps the most cynical: the negotiating fatalism that presents any dialogue as capitulation. Immediately after the Cuban government reiterated its historic willingness to talk with the United States, without preconditions or pressure, the same sectors that demand dialogue at any cost began to question the relevance of these talks, labeling them naive or useless. Pure double standards: what for Cuba would be surrender, for them is insufficient pressure.

THE "RUBIO" FACTOR

Donald Trump's return to the White House has revived a familiar dynamic. The tycoon's companies have shown interest in Cuba as a business opportunity in the past. His recent, ambiguous statements suggest that today, he would prioritize a massive migration agreement over regime change. Either of these agendas could, in theory, translate into a modus vivendi.

But then there's Marco Rubio. And Rubio is no ordinary politician: he embodies a tradition. That of the so-called "historical exile," founded by the henchmen of the Batista dictatorship and the oligarchies who fled after 1959. For this political force, the only solution to the "Cuban question" is revenge. During the Cold War, their interests coincided with those of the United States as a nation.

Today, when Cuba no longer “threatens” hemispheric security (it never has), nor “exports” armed revolutions (meaning: direct support for national liberation movements), policy toward our archipelago remains hijacked by that lobby which only Obama briefly managed to circumvent.

Wayne Smith, head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana during the Carter and Reagan administrations, used to say that Cuba had the same effect on U.S. governments as the full moon has on werewolves. All strategic rationality is suspended. In its place, ideological fundamentalisms and emotional obsessions prevail. Nevertheless, the thaw of the Obama era made it clear that, when the U.S. political class so chooses, it can overcome that “wolfish curse” and maintain serious contacts with its Cuban counterpart.

It's worth remembering: when the Cuban president expressed his willingness to engage in dialogue "on any topic" on February 5th, he wasn't deviating an inch from the Revolution's historic position. Cuban society and its diaspora had already experienced the benefits of a relatively civilized relationship between the two countries.

Obama didn't eliminate the blockade, the main obstacle to Cuba's normal integration into the global market, but he relaxed it enough for there to be perceptible prosperity in daily life during those years. In 2017, that all collapsed. Trump, needing Rubio's support on the Senate Intelligence Committee during the investigation into the "Russian collusion," sacrificed normalization on the altar of his political survival. Policy toward the land of José Martí was, once again, a bargaining chip.

The question today is whether the politically stronger Trump of 2026 will be able to escape this dynamic. It doesn't seem likely to happen as long as Rubio, now Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, retains veto power over any rapprochement.

There is something deeper at stake, something that transcends the balance of power in Washington. Socialist Cuba, even with all its problems, represents a symbolic limit for the new hemispheric right. As long as we exist, the spectrum of possibilities remains too far to the left.

Someone said we are the last soldiers of the Cold War, but, in reality, we represent an alternative that transcends the narrow confines of that defunct bipolarity, for we embody a purpose of social and national emancipation from the Global South, before which all progressivism and social democracy still seem acceptable within the overall framework of the system.

That is why the new right calls the Mexican MORENA party, the Spanish social democrat Pedro Sánchez, or Argentine Peronism “communists” and “dictators.” Erasing the Cuban experience would allow them to enter another stage of the culture war, where the new “intolerables” will be those who currently still fit within the liberal democratic pact. Today they come for us, tomorrow they will come for them.

Hence, the virulence of the attacks. Hence, the need to understand that our resistance is not only a defense of a political model but also the preservation of a horizon of dignity for Our America.

Having said all this, a necessary warning: the external threat cannot become an excuse to postpone the changes the country needs. If the climate of confrontation ends up reducing spaces for participation and criticism under the argument of “not giving weapons to the enemy,” we would, once again, commit a mistake that would ultimately erode the legitimacy of the system we defend.

President Díaz-Canel expressed this clearly on February 5: the existence of the Communist Party as a leading force is not incompatible with internal debate; on the contrary, it requires it. Political leadership is strengthened through collective analysis, constructive criticism, and the deliberation of ideas within the framework of the Revolution.

Yes, we must move forward with business reform, economic decentralization, and the attraction of investments that bring technology and production chains. We must stabilize our finances, unify the exchange rate, and deepen relations with Russia, China, Mexico, Algeria... We must produce everything we can domestically and import only what we cannot manufacture.

These are not easy tasks. But they are possible. And they cannot be postponed.
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When, on January 3rd, the Cuban military personnel stationed in Venezuela fought for two hours against an overwhelmingly superior force, they gave us a lesson that transcends the military: they demonstrated that preparation and dignity can stand up to material superiority.

This power of example is our main weapon. Not the one that comes from the rifle, but the one born of conviction. The one that allows the Cuban people, even in the midst of exhaustion, to distinguish between daily hardship and surrendering their sovereignty.

The episode we are experiencing confirms a constant in the contemporary Cuban landscape: the growing gap between the intensity of the noise on social media and the material reality within the nation. Calling people together is easy. Mobilizing them is another matter entirely.

The difficult days are not over. The energy blockade is palpable, the lines are long, and the blackouts are exhausting. But it is also true that we are still here and a plan and a leadership is guiding it. Can it be improved? Yes. Are they necessarily flexible and objective? Absolutely.

The truth, in times of uncertainty, is an act of resistance. Building it collectively, without giving in to shortcuts or forgetting, is the task that calls us together. For the 32. For those who will come after. For Cuba.