The Island suffers a civil confrontation of nearly seven decades that today reaches its most tense moment.
By Yunior García Aguilera (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – It is obvious that Washington and Havana are antagonists, but the real conflict is not between two countries, but between citizens of the same Island irreconcilably opposed to each other. The recent events in Cayo Falcones, where Ministry of the Interior authorities claim to have engaged in combat with other Cubans from Florida, demonstrate this once again.
Those who hold power in Cuba today came to it through arms. And for decades they have insinuated—when not openly stated—that this is also the only way to remove them. Cubans who dissent are not allowed to publicly express their discontent. Organizing protests is illegal, articulating politically outside the single party is forbidden, and the mere aspiration to participate in free and plural elections belongs to the realm of legal fantasy. All civic avenues are closed off, and then violence is invoked as a pretext.
With Washington, on the other hand, the top leadership of the Communist Party has always been willing to dialogue, talk, “reach understandings.” Against the Cuba that opposes Castroism, the repressive apparatus has been implacable, unleashing a virtual civil war from 1959 to the present. And in 67 years, there has never been a serious attempt at a truce.
Since the Revolution began to radicalize, the new power rushed into the arms of Moscow while its opponents sought the support of Washington. But the White House did not even want to involve its marines in the Bay of Pigs. And after the Missile Crisis, it committed to the USSR not to invade the Island. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States preferred gradual economic pressure over resorting to military force to finish off the regime.
The geographical argument, by the way, borders on the picturesque. For decades it has been repeated that the United States does not tolerate “a socialist state 90 miles from its coasts.” But geography is stubborn. The US is closer to Russia than to Cuba. At the narrowest point of the Bering Strait, only 82 kilometers separate Alaska from Chukotka, while between Miami and Havana there are about 150 kilometers. So during the entire Cold War, Washington coexisted with the USSR literally on the other side of the polar fence.
US conduct itself dismantles the thesis of an existential enemy. After the 1996 shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes—where US citizens died—the response was not to mobilize aircraft carriers, but to tighten the embargo. Even now, everything points to the US strategy continuing to be to pressure for negotiation, not military intervention.
The regime’s official narrative, however, insists that the essence of the problem is the historical dispute with the United States. It sounds epic, cinematic, and—above all—politically profitable, because that discourse attracts international solidarity and allows every internal disaster to be justified. No one in the world would lift a finger for the regime if it were too evident that the conflict is really against its own citizens.
The dictatorship has shown scandalous clumsiness against high-profile external threats—as happened on January 3 in Caracas— in contrast to the notable efficiency it displays when it comes to neutralizing and annihilating other Cubans. The bulk of the apparatus, from the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution to the political police and the army itself, are designed to monitor and discipline its own compatriots. In any serious strategy manual, that is called a structural internal conflict.
In the early years of revolutionary power, the confrontation between Cubans reached levels of open violence. The mass executions of the 1960s set the tone for a policy that turned disagreement into a capital crime. The “Escambray cleanup” was, in essence, an irregular war within its own territory, where thousands of Cubans fought—and died—at the hands of other Cubans.
What is revealing is that, once the armed insurgency was exhausted, the State did not dismantle the logic of war. It simply changed the target. The same rhetoric of “terrorists” and “mercenaries” was recycled to confront peaceful opponents, independent journalists, and human rights activists. And the leadership’s response to the largest civilian protests—the July 11, 2021—was never to call for national dialogue, but to give the “order to combat.”
Currently, the climax of this historical confrontation responds less to Donald Trump’s return to the White House than to the presence of a politician of Cuban origin in a key position in the current Administration: Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
For the Cuban regime, Trump is a predictable figure in his tough rhetoric but also in his pragmatic negotiating style. Rubio, on the other hand, embodies the memory of anti-Castroism, the political capital of the diaspora, and above all, the ability to translate the Cuban conflict into the language of US national security without intermediaries.
That is why the real conflict—Cuba versus Cuba—has now reached its most tense moment. And it occurs, moreover, when the Castroist model looks more exhausted than ever, incapable of convincing, of satisfying the basic needs of its population, or of finding an external ally truly committed to its survival. Is it possible to imagine a scenario in which Cubans resolve their differences through civic means? The challenge remains open.
Translated by GH for Translating Cuba
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