By Pedro Prada on February 15, 2026
foto: Ismael Francisco
The US president, his officials, his congressional supporters, and his political and communications operatives in Miami insist with risky emphasis on the existence of negotiations with the Cuban government, with its representatives, with a sector of them, and even with a traitor in their ranks, who has allegedly accepted the supposedly irresistible pressures, the intensified blockade, global blackmail against oil exporters, and offers of salvation from northern negotiators. They announce that something big will happen, that something extraordinary will be revealed, causing unfounded global expectations and disturbing the sleep of correspondents based in Havana, whose parent companies demand news that reality does not offer and will not happen.
It is a global and massive exercise in manipulation of consciousness directed, first and foremost, against the people of Cuba, to destabilize civil peace, sow doubt, encourage fears, cause mass disappointment and, ultimately, surrender. This is not the first time they have tried this. They have practiced it in different countries. They have been working for years on Cuban political, public, and military officials, poking around for weaknesses, trying to buy consciences. They have allocated unquantifiable financial and human resources to these ends. They have ordered algorithms and surveys. They have achieved small, temporary, and painful victories with pawns who have succumbed to the sweetness of power and the glitter of the tinsel they offer them, but that is as far as it goes.
Not long ago, during a long trip through the city, a young taxi driver asked me what the special period and the “zero” option of the 1990s had been like. I told him, and we established the differences and similarities with the current scenario. He insisted that “El Caballo” was alive then, and he tried to imagine the reinvention of his almendrón without fuel and compare the blackouts of those years with the current ones. I ventured some answers. With the pieces of the puzzle clear, he said to me:
“Then we’ll just have to put up with it, because those fucking Yankees aren’t going to fuck me over.” And he said it just like that, quite naturally.
I had been honest but cautious in my language. We didn’t know each other. He hadn’t gone overboard either. We were just stating facts and figures, and then suddenly, that phrase, which clarified everything: “Those fucking Yankees aren’t going to fuck me over.”
“Excuse me for asking,” he continued. “I always travel with a full car, but today it’s just you and me, so I can talk. I don’t know where you work or what you do, but I’m interested to know, he insisted.
I explain that every time we have negotiated with the United States, it has been on the basis of mutual respect, sovereign equality, without restrictions or conditions, without violating principles or lying. They know very well how to talk to us when they want to reach an agreement. They know that threats don’t work with us, and they also know that Cuba always honors its word.
But this is not the case, I assured him. Now they want us on our knees, and I ventured a question: “What do you think?” “Listen, who is going to negotiate with a dagger in their chest, with their family threatened, with the country in ruins? Do they really not know us? Maceo never negotiated freedom. Camilo never got down on his knees. Fidel never did. Raúl even less so.
Diaz-Canel is not going to break that rule either. Why do they insist?
-Well, they believe that all men have a price and are for sale, that political leaders must have dollar accounts in foreign banks and lavish properties in order to blackmail them, and here none of that works, and those who overstep the mark and become corrupt, you know what happens to them: not only because of the bill they get from the state and the justice system. Our people don’t forgive them either. We learned to be equal, or almost equal, and to live without a price. Or rather, a single price: our blood and our lives for being free, independent, and sovereign.
– But they’re crazy, even the Constitution prohibits it here. And with that statement, he revealed another piece of information about Cuban popular political culture.
“Exactly,” I replied, “the Constitution expressly prohibits negotiating under pressure and making dishonorable agreements that compromise the existence of the state and the Cuban nation.”
At that point, I was almost at my destination, and we both fell silent. I paid him what I owed him. He took the money and held out his hand:
“Thank you very much for the conversation. I’m sorry if I bothered you. I talk a lot.”
“Don’t worry, my brother, we didn’t know each other, but we’re in the same boat and we’re going to face whatever comes together. Besides, in the event that someone violates what has been the norm in our history and in the Constitution, remember that we will always have the right to rebel against anyone who negotiates the surrender of our homeland.”
“That worked!” he replied cheerfully.
“Thanks to you. It worked too!” I replied. And the almendrón* drove off.
*Almendrón, a four-wheeled vehicle that has become a symbol of Cuban resistance.
Source: El Cubano Libre, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English