By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on May 7, 2026, from Havana
foto: AFP
May 1, 2026, will go down as a day of immense political significance for Cuba. While more than 5 million people took to the streets across the country, with over 600,000 Havana residents gathering in front of the U.S. Embassy on the Malecón, the White House responded with a new executive order against the island. It was a signal. Cuba filled the streets to affirm its will to defend itself; Washington responded by tightening the noose.
The executive order signed by Donald Trump is not simply “more blockade.” Its gravity lies not only in the fact that it freezes assets, prevents transactions, and expands penalties. It lies, above all, in the fact that it is not directed solely against Americans who violate the laws of the blockade, but against “any foreign person” who, in the judgment of the Secretary of State or the Secretary of the Treasury, operates in sectors of the Cuban economy or provides material, financial, or technological support to the Cuban government. In other words, it turns U.S. officials into global judges with the power to punish citizens, companies, and banks from third countries for having ties to the island.
Discretion is at the heart of the mechanism. No court ruling, no proven crime, and no violation committed within the United States is required. It is enough for the Washington bureaucracy to determine that someone has had an economic or institutional relationship with Cuba to trigger sanctions. That is the real leap: the blockade ceases to be an abusive bilateral policy and reaffirms itself as a claim to global jurisdiction. The United States does not merely impose sanctions: it seeks to decide who may trade, finance, invest, or cooperate with the Caribbean nation.
That is why the date matters. The order was issued on the very day that Cuba demonstrated political muscle, social organization, and the capacity for mobilization. The White House’s message was clear: in the face of the Cuban people, more punishment; in the face of sovereignty, more pressure; in the face of resistance, more economic suffocation.
Hours later, Trump completed the picture with a speech in Florida in which he stated that he would “take control” of Cuba “almost immediately” and that the island would be his next target after “finishing” the job in Iran. He added that he might have the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln stop “about 100 yards” (91.44 meters) from the Cuban coast, until the Cubans said: “Thank you very much, we surrender.” The statement is not only aggressive: it is absurd. An aircraft carrier of that size cannot be positioned at that distance from the coast. It would be technically unfeasible, militarily irrational, and operationally ridiculous.
But the problem is not just the bluster: it is ignorance with power. Trump had already said that hurricanes do not pass through Cuba, as if he were unaware of the basic geography of the Caribbean. He also claimed he didn’t care if a Russian ship carried oil to the island because “people need heating,” confusing Cuba’s energy reality with that of countries with continental winters. Now imagine an aircraft carrier stationed a stone’s throw from the Malecón. The accumulation of nonsense reveals that a country one doesn’t even know is being blithely threatened.
May 1st presented two contrasting images. In Havana and throughout Cuba, a mobilized people under the slogan “The homeland must be defended.” In Washington and Florida, a power that responds with sanctions and fantasies of surrender. But when a nation one does not know is threatened, the error is not merely political—it is strategic.
Cuba is an organized society, with a historical memory, with experience in resisting under severe pressure, and with a clear willingness to defend its sovereignty. To think that a military adventure would be quick or painless is a dangerous underestimation of reality. What Trump imagines as a formality that will yield the cowardly gesture of “thank you very much, we surrender” could, in practice, turn into an unpredictable, costly conflict—and anything but a “stroll” through the Caribbean.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English