The Threat That Does Not Exist and the One That Does

Just when it seems that the United States' hostile policy toward Cuba and the slanders supporting it could not be greater, the Trump administration manages to demonstrate that there are no limits to irrationality and disrespect.

After a 2025 in which the administration reinstated Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and tightened its policy by prohibiting transactions with Cuban economic entities, 2026 has arrived with aggressive actions against the island multiplying every month.

In January, an executive order labeled Cuba as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. Were it not for the danger it represents and the harm it causes to the daily lives of the Cuban people, it might seem like a joke in extremely poor taste.

The alleged presence of foreign bases—Chinese and Russian—in Cuba is one of the pretexts that the world's greatest empire cites in the aforementioned order. However, the Cuban government has categorically refuted this, and there is no minimal evidence to support it, despite the dozens of spy flights the United States conducts daily around the island, according to U.S. media specialized in fueling tension between the two countries.

What these communication platforms do ignore is that the only foreign base threatening Cubans—and that has taken the lives of the children of our people—is the one located at Guantánamo Bay. An enclave remains there illegally, a reminder of the true intentions of the U.S. government toward Cuba. On that stretch of land, the most aberrant human rights violations have been committed against victims of the imperial wars of this century.

Cuba, named the capital of peace in 2016 after the meeting in Havana between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, and the city where Latin America and the Caribbean were proclaimed a zone of peace years earlier, now faces a hostile escalation. The most faithful followers of fascism and apprentices of the empire's most rancid playbooks do everything possible to bring MADE IN USA bombs down on this land.

To achieve that macabre objective, they also claim that Cuba harbors terrorists, that the government is cruel, that the State is failing, and that a humanitarian crisis could break out at any moment.

The daily lives of the Cuban people grow harsher: fuel is increasingly scarce, with cross-cutting effects on the economy. Blackouts lengthen, industries and water pumping systems grind to a halt, forcing the people to demonstrate resilience and determination to overcome.

These problems are amplified in major media outlets that claim to care about the well-being of Cubans, though few mention that so far in 2026, only one oil tanker has reached Cuban port. This is because, in flagrant violation of international law and the norms of peaceful coexistence, the Trump administration threatens tariffs and naval deployments in the Caribbean against anyone who trades fuel with Cuba.

The anguish of doctors who see a service symbolizing the essence of the Revolution deteriorating, the distress of those who lose the little food they manage to obtain—none of this is enough for Trump and Marco Rubio, who threaten to raze this land simply because Cubans do not renounce their right to exist free and sovereign.

On May Day, another turn of the screw was announced in an already inhumane and merciless policy. That day, another executive order reinforced the blockade and its extraterritorial character in an unprecedented manner, causing important trading partners to suspend operations. Among them is the French shipping company CMA CGM, through which essential supplies reach the country and which is withholding parts destined for the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant for fear of the consequences derived from said imperial measure.

This entire economic war is complemented by a media campaign seeking to colonize minds and subdue the Cuban people. The strategy is as simple as it is macabre: to turn the executioner into a savior by magnifying desperation and using manipulation and lies as fundamental weapons.

Among the most repeated lies is that the Cuban State is incapable, and the idea is increasingly reinforced that a military aggression “without damage” could occur. One would have to ask the Iranian people whether the “surgical and high-precision” operations carried out there by the empire, with the failed intention of overthrowing their government, were truly so precise.

In that country, leaders were assassinated in atrocious ways, and while the Western press boasted about the precision with which military targets were destroyed, it conveniently forgot to report on the missiles and bombs that fell on civilian infrastructure, including a school reduced to ashes with more than 160 girls inside.

For reasons like these, there can be no surrender. The empire no longer hides its true face or its vilest intentions. Those who do not want to see how immigrants are humiliated, how children are imprisoned, how people's lives are ended in broad daylight, and how nations that submit are plundered—simply do not want to see.

The most atrocious techniques of economic and media warfare are being applied to the Cuban people, while an attempt is made to prepare the ground for military aggression. The United States, which has threatened Cubans since the era of the mambises, has no reason to feel threatened by a people who want peace and who only prepare to defend it at whatever cost necessary, because it is their right and their greatest aspiration.

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff