By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on April 23, 2026
July 20, 2015, the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC. foto; Bill Hackwell
The images from January 1959, with Fidel Castro entering Havana, doves on his shoulders and a dense crowd, have often been interpreted as the end of a historical era. However, the very words spoken on that January 8—“we have only earned the right to begin”—place that moment in a different light. They are not the end, but the starting point of a permanent tension between the aspiration for peace and the need to defend it.
That tension resurfaces today. Last week, a meeting took place in Havana between representatives of Cuba and the United States, in a particularly contradictory context. While diplomatic talks were underway, U.S. President Donald Trump has once again placed the island on the radar of a possible escalation, by suggesting that Cuba could be the next target following other conflict scenarios. The simultaneity is not anecdotal: it defines the nature of the moment.
Recent experience with Venezuela and Iran shows that negotiations with Washington have not served as a barrier against military aggression. In both cases, dialogue coexisted with economic pressure, explicit threats, blockades, extrajudicial killings on the high seas, and, ultimately, military actions or scenarios of intervention. The talks did not defuse the conflict; in many ways, they accompanied and paved the way for it.
The evidence is particularly revealing in the Venezuelan case. The military operation carried out on January 3, 2026, involving bombings of key infrastructure in Caracas and other strategic areas, was not an improvised move, but the result of prolonged preparation. U.S. intelligence had spent months reconstructing the Venezuelan air defense system in real time, identifying vulnerabilities and operational patterns to ensure the attack’s effectiveness. In other words, while channels of contact and spaces for dialogue existed, the military apparatus was simultaneously advancing with intervention planning.
This makes it clear that the institutions engaged in negotiations are not the only ones operating. Diplomacy does not replace the military apparatus, but coexists with it. In Iran, this logic manifested in the constant readiness to resume bombing if certain conditions were not met; in Venezuela, in the effective execution of an operation preceded by months of preparation. Negotiation, therefore, did not suspend the logic of confrontation, but coexisted with it.
From a strategic standpoint, dialogue can serve several simultaneous functions: facilitating the gathering of political and operational intelligence, assessing the adversary’s internal cohesion, and building international legitimacy prior to a larger-scale action. In this context, negotiation does not appear as an alternative to conflict, but rather as part of the process that precedes and conditions it.
This precedent inevitably shapes the interpretation of the current Cuban situation, because the meeting in Havana does not take place in a neutral vacuum. It occurs under the weight of a brutally intensified economic blockade, deliberate energy pressure, and a regional environment disrupted by recent interventions and unworthy governments. From the Cuban perspective, however, the position maintains historical consistency. Cuba has reiterated—in line with that founding declaration of 1959—that it aspires to peace. Not just any peace, but one with sovereignty, justice, and rights. A peace that does not imply subordination or surrender.
But that will must not be confused with naivety. The political tradition of the revolution has always maintained that peace is a strategic objective, but its defense requires preparation. It demonstrated this early on, in 1961, when Cuba confronted and defeated a U.S.-sponsored invasion in just 72 hours, without yet having the military experience accumulated in subsequent decades. Later, that learning was applied in international settings such as Angola, where Cuban participation contributed decisively to the defeat of South African apartheid and the independence of Namibia.
This historical continuity explains why today the assertion that Cuba knows no fear is not mere rhetoric, but a concrete political statement: the willingness to engage in dialogue does not exclude the capacity for resistance, and the possibility of negotiation does not imply political or psychological disarmament. It is, in any case, the expression of a political culture forged in defense, sacrifice, and the conviction that peace is only viable when it can be sustained.
Fidel Castro made this clear from the very first hours of 1959: peace only makes sense if it is linked to dignity. More than six decades later, that premise remains as valid as ever. Cuba engages in dialogue because it is committed to peace as a political horizon, but it does not disarm in the face of threats nor confuse negotiation with concession. It knows, from historical experience that under certain conditions peace is not a guaranteed destination, but a balance that must be won and sustained. And that, when that balance is broken, defending peace requires being willing to do whatever is necessary to preserve it.
Source: La Jornada translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English