I Was Mistaken About Cuba’s Future
HAVANA TIMES – A few months ago, armed with my calculations and a healthy dose of skepticism, I concluded that the Cuban system wouldn’t survive to see July 11, anniversary of the large-scale 2021 protests. I saw myself as a gloomy oracle, predicting the regime’s imminent demise—either collapsing under its own weight, like those buildings in Old Havana that crumble further with every heavy rain, or brought down by Donald Trump’s iron hand in a surgical operation along the lines of Venezuela, or perhaps something even more violent, because drama always sells better amid the sound of cannons and fireworks.
But here lies the irony: the world decided my calculations were more pliable than a fishing rod swaying in the wind. Trump, that hawk with the piercing gaze and razor-sharp tweets, is now embroiled in an epic confrontation with Iran—a conflict that, according to my timeline, should have reached its conclusion a couple of months ago. The war against Iran has not only captured Washington’s attention, but has completely reshaped the Cuban scenario. What once seemed only a matter of time now resembles a chess game in which the pieces move with less certainty than ever before.
Amid this international chaos, Marco Rubio—the tireless US Secretary of State and spokesman for frustrated hopes—continues to press the Cuban issue. But Cuba, this tiny country as resistant as a bougainvillea, has nothing particularly enticing to offer the United States economically.
It would be a cruel joke to paint Cuba as the goose that lays the golden eggs for the US American taxpayer. Wars are marketed according to a cost-benefit calculation, and the numbers here simply don’t add up for anyone. Explaining this to United States public opinion is like trying to teach salsa dancing to a penguin: amusing, but useless.
Meanwhile, Havana and the rest of the archipelago are enduring blackouts of 16 or more hours a day, a kind of ritual of enforced darkness that has engulfed even the capital itself, which had always enjoyed a measure of protection.
The city, with its broken streets and people whose faces reflect both exhaustion and defiance, resembles an old Garcia Marquez novel filtered through the lens of the absurd. Desperation grows in the sweltering air, yet the social explosion, that volcano threatening to erupt, remains silent because of fear, that invisible whip that brutally crushed the protests of July 11, 2021.
The wounds remain open, the voices silenced, and hearts paralyzed, because sometimes silence hurts more than screams.
So here we are, waiting. Waiting for something to change, for the storm to pass and the sun to shine once more on these streets flooded with nostalgia and frustration. A suffering archipelago, yes, but also one filled with monumental stories, with the biting humor that allows us to endure, with cherished memories that cling to the soul like the aroma of freshly brewed coffee in the morning.
Because that is Cuba: a place where time is measured in deferred dreams, in hopes that refuse to die, even though it seems at times the clock has stopped.
Meanwhile, people continue suffering one blackout after another, wielding irony as a last resort against so much darkness. Hopelessness isn’t a luxury they can afford; they are far too busy surviving with a blend of resistance and tenderness that only someone who knows this island could truly understand.
Perhaps one day, when the dust settles, Cuba’s future will no longer depend on calculations skewed by distant wars, but on those small, everyday moments in which life, against all odds, continues to prevail.
And then, perhaps, we will look back and laugh together at how absurd it was to expect rapid change in a land that takes its time—even when it comes to being reborn.