The capture of dictator Nicolás Maduro and the end of Chavista patronage have left the Cuban regime in the most delicate position, possibly, in its entire history.
HAVANA.- In moments of crisis, when one is under unbearable pressure, common sense is usually among the first tools that human beings abandon. The regime that has tyrannized Cuba since 1959 has gone through four moments of high tension: the missile crisis (1962), the crisis and Mariel exodus (1980), the fall of the Soviet Union that caused the economic debacle of the nineties known as the Special Period, and the current crisis that carries the consequences of all the previous ones, plus the collapse of the institutions and the definitive breakdown of the social pact (Health, Education, Culture, Sports, Social Security) in exchange for which Fidel Castro kidnapped the political rights of Cubans.
The capture of the dictator Nicolas Maduro and the end of Chavista patronage have left the Cuban regime in the most delicate position, possibly, in its entire history. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has issued clear warnings to Havanaurging its leaders to promote truly democratic changes. For the first time in Cuba, almost all the factors that can make the political transition viable come together: neither the continuity government nor what remains of the historical leadership manage to inspire confidence; The island lacks a benefactor to replace Venezuela in fuel subsidies; and the popular base that they had decades ago has been reduced, apart from the repressive bodies, to privileged people and people incapable of breaking the habit of obedience, but who want, even if they keep it very quiet, for this to end once and for all. The only absent factor, for the moment, is the people in the streets, because fear is still superior to the hope reborn after Maduro’s capture.
To Trump’s urging, Havana has responded with the script of resistance at all costs and military exercises that must have the Southern Command trembling with fear. The message is clear: they will be able to disembark, leave the heavy weapons on the coast and punch their way to the Plaza that will soon be Civic Square again. The capacity of the Cuban regime to make a fool of itself has no limits, nor does its inability to understand that circumstances have changed, that those “millions of Cubans willing to give every last drop of blood” are, for the most part, old, sick, poorly fed and less well prepared people.
The three armies that for six decades have gobbled up the country’s resources under the pretext of an imminent enemy attack are oblivious to the ultra-modern war that is reconfiguring world geopolitics. Convalescent soldiers and officers of Chikungunyapunished by presbyopia in a country where optics have not worked for years, accustomed to thriving and staging days of national defense for television cameras, are the deadly force available to the howlers of the PCC who They are invoking the burning of Bayamo and accusing the United States of lacking morals, as if Trump cared about any morality other than his America First.
Unlike the PCC, the Republican is crystal clear and his actions have been consistent with the plan designed by his cabinet for the United States. On the side here we have people who continue to remain politically naked, who no longer have a plan because they betrayed everything that could be betrayed. People who insist on the moral issue after it became known that those who protected Nicolás Maduro were Cuban mercenaries; that speaks of a “Yankee invasion of Venezuela”, but describes the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “military operation”; and who rails against Venezuelan sovereignty while Delcy Rodriguez He negotiates with the United States and Diosdado Cabello takes the edge off his speeches so as not to be the next fish in Delta Force’s bag.
This swing morale is as fragile as the claim that, in a hypothetical confrontation with US forces, Cuban soldiers resort to the example of the heroes who fell in the wars of independence. Lacking tangible achievements to defend, they sell jingoistic fantasy to encourage boys who have never fired a bullet in their lives.
The Chavistas also alluded, ad nauseum, to Bolívar’s homeland, to the blood of the liberator that runs through the veins of the Venezuelan people, and other similar mischief. After so much boasting and so much useless march, Maduro is stuck in New York, in Venezuela what Trump says is done and Venezuelans seem more concerned with solving their daily needs than with recovering the usurper of the July 2024 elections.
No self-respecting Venezuelan is willing to give his life to defend the regime that has left him without a country and without rights. I hope that Cubans know, likewise, that the defense is not being prepared for the homeland, but for a caste. We also have no country, no rights. We are the subjects of a miserable fiefdom ruled by a handful of corrupt and greedy individuals, compulsive liars who do not even try to hide how much they despise us.
I hope that Cuban mothers and fathers are aware that the children of those who ask for resistance and sacrifice to the last consequences live abroad, paying for a life of luxury with the money that should have been invested in the development of this country. And I hope they begin to pay attention to the alleged conversations that Trump claims and Díaz-Canel denies because, whatever their content, the interlocutor is not the Cuban people.
