José Martí, a prominent writer and journalist born in Havana in the 19th century, left behind lines that still resonate today: “In politics, what is real is what is unseen.” There are maneuvers we don’t see, but which determine the present and future of entire nations; and from the outside, we can barely discern scattered traces: speeches, communiqués, press statements, meetings. The steps of diplomacy are usually accentuated before a crisis.
Havana and Washington are now the hottest political hubs in the Americas. Tensions have risen after the trip to New York that the U.S. Southern Command facilitated for Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Cuba seems on the verge of collapse, without fuel and in the worst possible situation.
Embassies Brace for Crisis
Several countries have officially recommended against visiting the island. Ukraine strongly urged its citizens to refrain from visiting Cuba in the short term, as “the economic situation (...) has deteriorated drastically.” If traveling, it recommended temporarily limiting time spent in public places, avoiding conflicts with the police or places of mass gatherings, and limiting visits to state and police institutions.
According to an EFE report, nearly a dozen embassies from European and Latin American countries are updating their evacuation plans and lists of nationals residing in Cuba, and are reportedly reviewing their “contingency and evacuation plans” due to the “growing geopolitical uncertainty in the Caribbean and the possibility that the US could even be preparing a military intervention in Cuba.”
Other diplomatic delegations are accumulating supplies to withstand long periods without electricity, fuel, and water. Current fuel reserves on the island would only be enough to keep the country barely functioning for little more than a week. According to EFE, several subsidiaries of international companies in the private sector are reconsidering their operations in Cuba with their parent companies.
Cuba Declared a National Security Threat
The uproar comes, especially, after Trump issued an executive order on January 29. With it, he declared a national emergency due to the “unusual and extraordinary threat posed by the Government of Cuba to U.S. national security and foreign policy.” He correctly warned that “the Cuban regime aligns itself with and supports hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malicious actors adverse to U.S. interests, including Hamas and Hezbollah.”
The document was specific and emphasized that the island houses Russia’s largest signals intelligence base outside its territory, used to intercept sensitive U.S. information and conduct espionage activities.
Immediately, the Castro regime’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minrex, in Spanish) began drafting the statement released on February 1. In it, they condemned terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations” and declared that it “does not harbor, support, finance, or permit terrorist or extremist organizations.”
Let us remember that this is the same country that swore there were no Cuban military contingents in Venezuela, until members of Delta Force eliminated Maduro’s praetorian guard on January 3, which was entirely composed of the “non-existent” Cuban military personnel.
With even greater cynicism, Havana stated that it “does not host foreign military or intelligence bases and rejects the characterization of being a threat to the security of the United States.” Did they forget the Chinese mega-radar base that points towards Florida and is located near the capital?
And then Minrex adopted a more conciliatory tone. “Cuba is willing to reactivate and expand bilateral cooperation with the United States to address shared transnational threats,” it stated. It proposed “renewing technical cooperation with the United States in areas that include counterterrorism, money laundering prevention, combating drug trafficking, cybersecurity, human trafficking, and financial crimes,” because the Cuban and American people “benefit from constructive engagement, cooperation in accordance with the law, and peaceful coexistence.”
Harassment of U.S. Ambassador Hammer
However, in practice, the Castro regime contradicts itself. These days, the regime has resorted to an old and crude weapon: “acts of repudiation“ (forms of organized collective harassment against a person or group for political or ideological reasons); a tactic it usually reserves for dissidents, but which it recently aimed at the U.S. ambassador to Cuba, Mike Hammer.
This past weekend, a group, several of whom are directly linked to Castroist organizations, confronted the diplomat with shouts and insults in the cities of Trinidad and Camagüey — where he was coordinating the delivery of humanitarian aid to victims of Hurricane Melissa.
“Genocidal!”, “Murderer!”, “Puppet of Donald Trump!”, shouted the agitators, no more than a dozen, mostly women. In some videos, it is possible to see members of the National Revolutionary Police nearby, impassive, failing to fulfill the Cuban State’s duty to protect foreign diplomats according to the Vienna Convention.
I can assure the reader that the behavior of the military would be very different if, instead of shouting at Hammer, they were shouting “Freedom!” or “No more repression!”
The Iranian media outlet Hispan TV praised the harassment of the diplomat as a popular “rejection,” since, according to official sources, “Hammer has been linked to actions that, since his arrival in Havana in November 2024, contravene the principles of diplomacy and the international agreements that regulate relations between states.” They are referring to the ambassador’s solidarity with activists and reporters, whom he frequently visits.
Photo Ops with the Dictator
Meanwhile, in the ebb and flow of its words and actions, the Castro regime is trying to project an image of international support by celebrating the VI International Conference for the Balance of the World. At this gathering of self-congratulatory leftists, the Cuban dictator received and was photographed in the Palace of the Revolution with “personalities attending the world meeting.”
They paid homage to the unburied corpse of the Cuban socialist revolution, from the American activist David Adler, general coordinator of the Progressive International, and the Spanish feminist and Member of the European Parliament Irene Montero, to an expert from the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Greek George Katrougalos.
The death throes of the dictatorship, which are joyfully anticipated by millions of Cubans on the island and in exile, are imperceptible to those who want to continue playing at revolution with the suffering of generations.
