Criticism follows yesterday's statements by President Donald Trump, who asserted in a threatening tone that the Greater Antilles is in "its last moments of life" — rhetoric that progressive sectors label as warmongering and devoid of empathy.

In response to this right-wing triumphalism, publications such as The Nation magazine and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) published essays and reports Thursday that dismantle the official narrative about the so-called 2026 Cuban crisis.

Both outlets argue that the tightening of the economic siege, including the cessation of operations by shipping platforms and the suffocating financial blockade, functions as a form of collective violence and humanitarian punishment that directly affects the civilian population, not the government.

NACLA analysts (a leading academic journal in Latin American studies) emphasize that this maximum pressure policy seeks to generate internal collapse through fuel and food shortages — a strategy that violates international law and turns the domestic economy into the main battlefield.

They also subject the recent reforms announced by President Miguel Díaz-Canel — specifically the opening of the hotel sector to private management — to rigorous analysis, distancing themselves "from simplistic interpretations that see this as a surrender to Washington."

From these U.S. academics' perspective, the Cuban state's measures confront economic asphyxiation, although they warn that their implementation carries significant social risks for the Caribbean nation's welfare structure. "These openings will benefit mainly foreign capital and elites connected to the international market while the Cuban working class continues to suffer the rigors of shortages and inflation unleashed by unilateral coercive measures," the reports warn.

Meanwhile, Jacobin, another progressive publication, demands the immediate end to Treasury Department sanctions and expresses solidarity with Cuban civil society's demands, reaffirming the growing unease generated in intellectual circles by this U.S. government policy.