By José R. Cabañas Rodríguez – Apr 23, 2026
Since the events that took place in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 3, a series of developments and interpretations of those events have unfolded, which have had a direct impact on the quality of life of Cubans, both on and off the island.
The first of these was a US military action against Cuba, considered almost imminent, around which the traditional troupes of certain sectors in Miami organized themselves, ranging from the Admirers of Batista and So-Called Landowners, to Mercenaries by Nature, or the Trio “You Go, I’ll Stay.”
Despite the mirage created by social media, it should be made clear that all of them combined—and even multiplied by ten—constitute a tiny minority of the so-called Cuban exile community. These are individuals who take advantage of the circumstances to once again make headlines, post their photos, be interviewed on a sidewalk or in a restaurant, and provide themselves with self-therapy in the face of the crisis of isolation they experience due to living in efficiencies, having no employment ties, nor family ties.
As the various deadlines set in recent months for the “end of the regime” came and went and the fuel blockade against Cuba began—with the island being deemed “an unusual and extraordinary threat”— a long list of experts in fossil fuels, supertanker routes, and, above all, repairs to thermoelectric plants emerged overnight and without any prior gestation period.
Similar circumstances in the past have always triggered a massive surge of “Cubanologists” in various fields, but what has been regrettable on this occasion is that the current chorus has been joined by people who, despite their differences with current and former Cuban authorities, maintained an ethical stance a few years ago—especially in the light (or shadow) of Democratic administrations—and approached Cuba with more or less serious business proposals, or in the academic sphere.
Specialists who today go so far as to publicly disclose the ID number of the captain of the alleged tanker that might carry a few drops of fuel to Cuba once accompanied delegations from US oil companies to explore business opportunities in Cuba. Others, who currently appear to be very close to Russians, Japanese, French, and Canadians—who in the past built power plants in Cuba— have ventured to offer predictions about the lifespan of their projects and seem to know inside out which spare parts have not been purchased due to the restrictions of the embargo and which have not been acquired due to alleged shortcomings of Cuba Petróleos.
Although these are people who currently seem very bold in their stance against the “regime,” when they previously came to Cuba for academic events or familiarization visits, they had to request a specific license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) not only to purchase their plane ticket but also for the type of proposal they intended to present and even the underwear they would wear in Havana.
In another group, those who have been accompanying the National Electric Union of Cuba (UNE) in their blackout forecasts—calculating, meter by meter, which parts of Cuba are lit or dark—have been marching all these weeks, along with those who monitor where every food or medicine donation package goes, and those who create supposed dialogues or irregular events with the help of artificial intelligence.
What is interesting about these activists is that they make all this human effort despite not casting a single glance, nor offering a single reflection on the community, the state, or the country where they live; they have no outcries about the family member whom ICE has kidnapped right around the corner from their home, nor do they tell us about the money they will have to save from now on because they have been excluded from social health programs. They suffer from a “Cuban-dependence,” or, conversely, from a “US-allergy.” A rare kind of presbyopia, whereby one sees much better what is 90 miles away and ignores the proximity of what is right under their noses.
Once the days of the initial uproar had passed, they demonstrated a strange attachment to science, when Havana and part of the rest of Cuba were better lit thanks to a donation of Russian oil—a qualitative change that undermined their argument that Cuba’s darkness was more related to incompetence than to the blockade.
But the great commotion among these creatures has not been caused so much by the resistance reactions from the island as by the shifts in tone that the White House and the State Department introduced into their repeated statements on Cuban issues.
The shift from zero oil to allowing the Russians to supply it, or to permitting private exports from US shores, the announcement of secret negotiations and with whom they were speaking, the dilemma between using military force or the economic levers of Cuba’s new productive forces, has turned these people into center fielders on a baseball team trying to track a Texas League ball moving in circles. They go to bed late, tweaking their rhetoric, and wake up early to stay ahead of the latest amendments.
They are possibly the last humans in the MAGA equation who still don’t feel they have enough of a voice—or the guts—to shout from the rooftops that they’ve been used and that they let themselves be used. As soon as Trump claimed that Cuba was “next,” because there were many Cubans living in Florida who had been mistreated in their home country, the number of former owners of sugar mills, hotels, and even coat and scarf shops (remember the claim about the lack of heating on the island) multiplied.
And, once again, it is important to state that despite their thousands of tweets, posts, and all the modern digital tantrums, these hominids constitute a minority. They cannot change the fact that the vast majority of Cuban emigrants, and the American public in general, would like to return to the days when all US airlines flew to nearly every Cuban city, when cruise ships constantly arrived at the ports, when hundreds of artists and intellectuals participated in mutual cultural activities, and when there was no need to speak in hushed tones about remittances or lie about medical treatments in Cuban institutions.
But why has there been such a chameleon-like change in the attitude of some? And the answer is simple: fear.
On this side of the border, we know how many offices, homes, schools, and nursing homes US government agencies have approached to blackmail and exert pressure; we know how many foundations have threatened to withdraw support from specific projects; we understand that threats of potential legal proceedings or alleged tax arrears are making more than a few people tremble. Nothing new under the sun.
While such pressures are exerted on some to the point of breaking, others take advantage of the space the former have left open to step into the spotlight and propose that “this is a matter among Cubans” and that Trump neither pushes nor strikes, but merely represents them in their legitimate right to grant them access, to have a presence in Cuba that would be theirs by birthright.
The problem with these formulas and facades is that none of them are really anything new, not even for Latin American Netflix.
The days of the 65th anniversary of the Victory at Playa Girón—or the defeat at the Bay of Pigs, depending on how you want to call it—have come and gone. It was a CIA-led operation, the only one of its kind at the time, with multimillion-dollar budgets that were supposed to ensure undoubted success.
Even then, John F. Kennedy, who inherited the blueprint for failure from Dwight Eisenhower, did everything possible to ensure that Operation Pluto was a Cuban operation in which no American fingerprints would appear. For that reason, the planes that attacked Cuban airports in the early morning of April 15, 1961, bore Cuban insignia; for that reason, the discredited US representative (a former presidential candidate) to the United Nations said at the time, “the fundamental issue is not between the United States and Cuba, but among the Cubans themselves.”
Cuba Seeks Mutual Understanding With US, Denounces Intensified Blockade
This minority of Cubans living in the United States who applaud a likely military invasion of Cuba and the regime change they believe will result from it are completely out of touch with the reality of the country where they live. They are unaware of the ethical, moral, political, and every other kind of collapse shaking American society; they ignore the successive failures of the current US administration in foreign policy.
These individuals do not see on the radar that a monumental defeat for the Republicans is looming in the midterm elections, perhaps even in the 2028 presidential elections, and they lack the capacity to imagine a post-Trump world.
This minority has been an effective instrument in achieving the Trumpist invasion of South Florida—a traditionally Democratic territory—and in bringing about a regime change there that ignores the will of the majority. They have prioritized noise and digital emotions over opinion polls. They have even gone so far as to sideline the specialists who conduct these polls and analyze their results, so that they are neither recognized nor cited by the local press, which is becoming increasingly submissive and less daring.
Part of this regime change in Miami has emerged from the multiple visits received in recent days by businesspeople who held permits to conduct some form of commercial activity with counterparts (private or otherwise) in Cuba. They have been pressured by both federal agents and local opportunists seeking a financial cut. The ultimate goal is to try to replace those who have defended a stance of commercial exchange with Cuba for decades with others who have a different attitude toward the new forms of production already present on the island—forms that could flourish even more if they were able to operate in an environment different from the one they face today.
The current phase of bilateral confrontation has already resulted in casualties on both sides of the Florida Strait. We have acknowledged ours; the other side has not yet acknowledged theirs.
(Ahora)
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