La Isla que No Se Rinde: Cuba y la Amenaza de Guerra

That sense of being used as a pawn between superpowers, it runs very deep in Cuban political culture.

Mira, Cuba quiere hablar.

Look, Cuba wants to speak.

Cuba quiere una silla en la mesa.

Cuba wants a seat at the table.

And fast-forward to now.

The Soviet Union is gone.

The Cold War is gone.

Cuba's economy is in genuinely terrible shape after the pandemic, after years of tightened U.S.

sanctions, after losing Venezuelan oil subsidies.

So why is Díaz-Canel talking about guerrilla war?

Bueno, la economía de Cuba hoy es muy difícil.

Well, Cuba's economy today is very difficult.

Hay pocos productos en las tiendas.

There are few products in the shops.

Blackouts lasting twenty hours a day in some provinces.

Food shortages.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have emigrated in the last three years alone.

The government is under real pressure from inside.

La verdad, muchos cubanos salen de Cuba hoy.

The truth is, many Cubans are leaving Cuba today.

Van a otros países.

They go to other countries.

So here's my read.

When a government is under that kind of internal stress, the foreign threat narrative becomes very useful.

You consolidate people around defending the homeland.

It's an old playbook, and it works.

Es que el enemigo exterior ayuda al gobierno interior.

The thing is, the external enemy helps the government at home.

Siempre es así.

It is always like this.

Always.

I've seen it in Beirut, in Jakarta, in Buenos Aires.

The external threat resets the internal conversation.

Suddenly the economic failures become secondary to national survival.

A ver, pero la amenaza de Estados Unidos es real para Cuba.

You see, but the threat from the United States is real for Cuba.

No es solo política.

It is not only politics.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

There is a genuine 2026 Cuban crisis playing out right now, with real U.S.

military posturing in the region.

This isn't purely manufactured.

The threat has some real material basis.

Mira, Estados Unidos tiene muchos soldados cerca del Caribe hoy.

Look, the United States has many soldiers near the Caribbean today.

And the Trump administration has been making noise about Cuba for a while.

Reinstating Cuba on the state sponsors of terrorism list, tightening remittances that Cuban families abroad send home.

These are real economic and diplomatic pressures.

Bueno, sin dinero de las familias, Cuba tiene más problemas.

Well, without money from families abroad, Cuba has more problems.

Es muy importante ese dinero.

That money is very important.

Remittances are a lifeline.

For a lot of Cuban families, money sent from Miami or Madrid is the difference between eating adequately and not eating adequately.

When you cut that flow, you're not hurting the government first.

You're hurting ordinary people first.

La verdad, las sanciones duelen a la gente normal.

The truth is, sanctions hurt normal people.

No solo al gobierno.

Not only the government.

That's the central debate about sanctions as a foreign policy tool, and it's one that has never been cleanly resolved.

Sixty years of embargo against Cuba.

The government is still there.

The Castro family ran the country for six decades.

So what exactly did the sanctions achieve?

A ver, el gobierno cubano usa las sanciones como excusa.

You see, the Cuban government uses the sanctions as an excuse.

Siempre.

Always.

That's a sharp point.

Every time there's a shortage, every time a hospital runs out of medicine, the government says: it's the blockade.

And sometimes that's true.

But sometimes it's also mismanagement.

And it becomes very hard to separate the two.

Es que Cuba tiene dos problemas: el bloqueo y el gobierno.

The thing is, Cuba has two problems: the blockade and the government.

Los dos son malos.

Both are bad.

Look, I think that might be the most honest summary of the situation I've heard.

Two problems, tangled together, each one making the other harder to solve.

And ordinary Cubans are living inside that tangle.

Mira, los cubanos son fuertes.

Look, Cubans are strong.

La isla es difícil pero la gente resiste.

The island is difficult but the people resist.

The extraordinary thing is that resilience is something I heard about Cuba from journalists who covered it in the nineties during the Special Period, the economic collapse after the Soviet Union fell.

Cuba lost forty percent of its imports overnight.

People improvised, they survived.

Whether you admire the government or despise it, the people's resourcefulness is genuine.

Bueno, Cuba no tiene mucho pero siempre encuentra soluciones.

Well, Cuba doesn't have much but it always finds solutions.

Es su cultura.

It is their culture.

So what do you make of the guerrilla warning specifically, as a political signal?

Because I read it partly as domestic theater, partly as a genuine strategic message to Washington, and partly as Díaz-Canel trying to put himself in a lineage with Fidel and Che.

La verdad, Díaz-Canel no es Fidel.

The truth is, Díaz-Canel is not Fidel.

Fidel es un símbolo muy grande.

Fidel is a very big symbol.

Right, and that's the legitimacy problem.

Fidel Castro had revolutionary charisma, whatever you thought of his politics.

He built the system personally.

Díaz-Canel inherited a struggling system and has to find his own authority within it.

Invoking guerrilla warfare is one way to borrow Fidel's language, Fidel's mythology.

A ver, él habla como Fidel pero la situación hoy es diferente.

You see, he speaks like Fidel but the situation today is different.

Cuba está cansada.

Cuba is tired.

Tired is the right word.

And yet, the message to Washington still carries weight, because the historical record is there.

Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Large armies with overwhelming firepower have consistently struggled against committed guerrilla resistance.

The U.S.

military knows this.

Cuba knows they know this.

Mira, una guerra en Cuba es muy cara para Estados Unidos.

Look, a war in Cuba is very expensive for the United States.

Muy complicada.

Very complicated.

Enormously complicated.

Ninety miles from Florida.

The refugee flows alone would be staggering.

And the political cost domestically, especially with the Cuban-American community in Florida, which is not monolithic on this question, would be significant.

Es que muchos cubanos viven en Florida.

The thing is, many Cubans live in Florida.

Tienen familia en Cuba también.

They have family in Cuba too.

And that's the human tissue of this whole conflict.

Politics operates at the level of governments and grand strategies, but underneath it there are families split across ninety miles of water, calling each other, sending money, worrying about each other.

That reality doesn't disappear when leaders make speeches.

Bueno, las familias no quieren guerra.

Well, families don't want war.

Las familias quieren paz y comida.

Families want peace and food.

Peace and food.

I mean, that's it, isn't it.

That's what it comes down to at the end of every one of these conversations.

So where does this actually go?

Because the warning was issued, the crisis is named, and we're in a world that is already managing a war in Iran, a war in Lebanon, and instability from the Persian Gulf to the Caribbean.

La verdad, Estados Unidos tiene muchos problemas ahora.

The truth is, the United States has many problems right now.

Cuba puede esperar.

Cuba can wait.

That may well be the most geopolitically astute thing said on this podcast today.

Washington is stretched thin.

Cuba is a problem for another day.

Which means Díaz-Canel's statement might be less about preparing for a war that's coming and more about establishing a posture for negotiations that he hopes are coming.

A ver, negociar desde una posición fuerte es mejor.

You see, negotiating from a position of strength is better.

Cuba lo sabe.

Cuba knows this.

Look, that is how diplomacy works at its most basic.

You make yourself as costly as possible before you sit down at the table.

Cuba has been doing this for six decades.

They are genuinely very good at it.

Whatever else you think about the Cuban government, their survival as an independent political project against the most powerful country in the world is, objectively, remarkable.

Mira, Cuba es pequeña pero tiene mucho orgullo.

Look, Cuba is small but it has a lot of pride.

Eso no cambia nunca.

That never changes.

Small but not afraid.

We're back where we started.

Thanks for listening to Twilingua.

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See you next time.

Bueno, hasta pronto.

Well, see you soon.

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