SOS for Journalists Latin America Culture Features Fun Opinion Interviews Diaries Photos Photo of the Day Videos CUBA Nicaragua Chile Music About Spanish Cuba: It Seems We?ve Entered the Final Phase February 8, 2026 MIguel Diaz Canel, February 5, 2026. Photo: Presidencia de Cuba By Francisco Acevedo

HAVANA TIMES — Donald Trump has shown that this time he means business and remains determined to cut off all supplies to Cuba. In response, the dictatorship has already had to adopt measures in all workplaces and schools caused by the fuel shortage.

For all her crowing, Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum halted oil shipments to Cuba when she woke up to Trump’s threat of tariff hikes (and she began sending basic supplies instead so as not to provoke Trump’s ire). For the moment, Miguel Diaz-Canel and his clique were left hanging by the paintbrush, as the popular saying goes.

Incidentally, our beloved president was up to his usual antics this week when he called a public appearance on national television to say nothing.

Yes, because regardless of the fake little “live” sign — proven false by the obvious transmission cuts and even the presenter’s watch — his words contributed nothing beyond empty phrases, the same things he’s said in previous months, when people were expecting a package of measures to alleviate the current situation.

Surrounded by a chorus of submissive “journalists” who were not going to ask him uncomfortable questions, the leader looked rattled, shifting from side to side at the podium even to answer things he already knew and had written in his notes.

Even so, he was incapable of saying anything substantive — for example, who is going to throw him a lifeline now. There’s plenty of verbal solidarity, but cars run on gasoline; when oral fuel is invented, then we’ll swim in abundance.

He repeated the line that Cuba is willing to engage in dialogue with the USA, but insists it would be on equal terms, when in reality he would be negotiating from an increasingly weak position, even as he continues denying that he leads a failed state.

Shortly afterward, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez called for international solidarity to try to stop Trump and criticized the six million dollars in hurricane relief aid for victims of Hurricane Melisa that Washington offered at the same time.

The strategy behind the latter seems to be for the US to become Cuba’s main suppliers themselves, and in return demand the reforms they’ve wanted for more than half a century, starting with the departure of the political leadership.

Failures to meet payment obligations have translated into a loss of credibility for the Cuban government, even among allies such as Russia, China, or Vietnam, and no one wants to get caught up in that dynamic anymore.

As part of the package of measures announced this week, some hotels on the island began closing and tourists were transferred to other facilities to reduce costs. In addition, the Gaviota chain, owned by the Ministry of the Armed Forces, suspended all reservations for domestic clients until further notice, leaving many who had already booked for this February in limbo.

Some time ago tourism ceased to be the engine of the national economy, and now it will be even less so, because in the current context fewer people are willing to risk traveling to a country in crisis and under the looming shadow of military conflict.

The “Option Zero” scenario that was discussed in the 1990s after the disappearance of the Soviet Union now seems likely to be implemented, because the economic strangulation appears to have halted — at least for the moment — the specter of military intervention.

In this context, a post by Israel Rojas, leader of the band Buena Fe, drew enormous attention. Without any hedging, he said he would not give his life for any leader.

Cloaked in a string of slogans — because he is not going to change his way of thinking overnight — he made it clear that it is not worth dying to sustain the privileges of a few.

But the fact that he wrote it, having been one of the dictatorship’s principal cultural standard-bearers, is striking; it seems more like a message to the military, given that he himself is a former serviceman.

If I say it, it doesn’t matter — but when Rojas says it, it carries great symbolic weight, because it gives the impression he realizes that this time the offensive from Washington is serious, and that in Havana the high nomenklatura will not step down willingly.

In the event of war — which looks inevitable, and which Rojas seems to understand — he is urging the Cuban people, and especially his former military colleagues, not to shed their blood in vain.

The deaths of the Cuban members of Nicolas Maduro’s security detail, far from outraging the Cuban public or provoking rejection, struck a hammer blow on their consciences — a clear cry that we are merely pawns on this chessboard, and that the one for whom you gave your life is capable of walking over your corpse without hesitation to save his own.

Rojas’s stance — this spokesman of Cuba’s official cultural world — is notably distant from when he publicly defended Nicolas Maduro’s regime with a fiery “They shall not pass!” just last month.

These are different times, and although during the so-called Special Period there was never a nationwide social explosion beyond the 1994 balsero crisis in Havana, with the precedent of the massive protests of July 11, 2021, many people believe the dictatorship would not withstand another mass uprising.

Some sources indicate that a US spy plane flew along Cuba’s entire northern coast in recent hours — a clear message, because this was not a routine flight but direct, precise, sustained surveillance. The regime knows it is being watched, and Washington wants to make clear that nothing moves on the island without being detected.

All this while US naval power is breathing down its neck, with significant war assets just 55 kilometers from Havana — in other words, a combination of economic asphyxiation and maximum military pressure. It seems we have entered the final phase.

Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.

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