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In the José Martí Memorial, a place rich in patriotic symbolism, Miguel Díaz-Canel affixed his signature to a grandiloquent declaration titled “It is Urgent to Prevent a Military Aggression Against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.”
Surrounded by leaders of the Communist Party, with a replica of Bolívar's sword serving as the backdrop and the Venezuelan ambassador applauding, the event was crowned with the announcement that the Cuban people would dutifully endorse the initiative through signatures at workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.
The propagandistic choreography evokes the old Soviet style: solemnity, a grand narrative, lots of rhetoric, and zero substance. The detail is that while the official press repeats slogans about unbreakable solidarity with Caracas, the reality is different: the Cuban regime is limited to gathering signatures and, in the words of Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío, offering "full political support" to Nicolás Maduro, ruling out any military involvement.
From the rifle to the ballpoint pen
The paradox is obvious. For more than six decades, Castroism has fostered the image of a warlike revolution, willing to sacrifice itself in the face of the empire.
Fidel Castro, champion of regional anti-imperialism, built his leadership on high-voltage, warlike phrases: "Homeland or death, we will overcome!”, "with weapons in hand, I will die fighting”, or the doctrine of "the war of all the people”.
This rhetoric was not just words. With Soviet financing, Havana exported its model to half the planet: guerrillas in Latin America, advisors in Nicaragua and El Salvador, weapons for insurgencies in Colombia, and tens of thousands of soldiers sent to Africa under the banner of "proletarian internationalism".
In Angola, Ethiopia, and Congo, Cuba became Moscow's armed pawn, sacrificing thousands of young lives in foreign wars that, nevertheless, reinforced the narrative of a "triumphant" and combative revolution.
That past of warrior bravado contrasts sharply with the present of Díaz-Canel, a president who faces the threat of a U.S. military deployment in the Caribbean with... a pen.
What used to be resolved with slogans of rifles and promises of spilled blood now translates into campaigns of coercive signatures, where those who do not sign risk being marked for a lack of "solidarity."
Solidarity or social control
The government presents the initiative as a spontaneous gesture of support for the "popular, military, and police fusion" in Venezuela. In reality, it is just another exercise in social control: a mechanism to gauge loyalties, subdue wills, and turn foreign policy into an internal spectacle of obedience.
In the speech, the "Bolivarian brotherhood" and the defense of Venezuelan sovereignty are invoked. In practice, the campaign serves as a thermometer to determine who obediently complies with the order and who dares to deviate from the script. The signatures, far from expressing free solidarity, end up being the equivalent of a mandatory vote of loyalty to the Party.
The contradiction is blatant: the very regime that boasted for decades about sending troops, weapons, and resources to revolutionary causes across the seas is now content to chain citizens to tables with a pen, all the while watching the United States deploy its military power just a few kilometers from Cuba's shores.
Venezuela: The Pressed Ally
The irony becomes even more pronounced when one remembers that Cuba has been benefiting from Venezuelan oil, soft loans, and transfers of resources for more than twenty years, which supported the island's economy during the Chávez era.
It was a marriage of convenience in which Havana exported doctors, teachers, and above all intelligence and military assistance, in exchange for barrels of crude oil that kept the thermoelectric plants running and transportation moving.
International organizations and investigative reports have documented the deep infiltration of Cuban advisers in Venezuelan military and repressive bodies. Maduro's intelligence apparatus has a Havana DNA, and the repression of dissent has drawn from manuals learned on the island.
However, at the critical moment, when the ally claims to be threatened by the “empire,” Cuba takes a step back. No troops, no ships, no tanks, not even a veiled threat. Only grandiose statements, compulsive signatures, and the repeated mantra of “full political support.”
Salon anti-imperialism
What we are witnessing is the watered-down version of that blustery anti-imperialism that Castro sold to the world. Today, it has been reduced to a ritual of propaganda for domestic consumption, while the regime struggles to survive amid a devastating economic crisis.
The contrast between the revolutionary epic of the past and today's bureaucratic gathering of signatures is the perfect metaphor for the decline of Castroism: from the guerrilla warfare in Sierra Maestra to the elementary school desk where one is compelled to sign against the United States; from proletarian internationalism to merely providing "full political support."
The implicit message is clear: the Revolution that once boasted of rifles, heroic deaths, and intercontinental displays, now has neither the strength nor the will for anything other than controlling its own population.
From the machete to the wet paper
If this signature campaign proves anything, it is that Cuban anti-imperialism has turned into a form of salon anti-imperialism: filled with symbols, theatricality, empty rhetoric, and no real capacity for response.
Venezuela, expressed over two decades, stands alone in the trenches. Cuba, which takes pride in its revolutionary epic, merely turns the page and picks up the pen. Meanwhile, the U.S. showcases its ships in the Caribbean without a single shot being fired, and the regime repeats the old propaganda script to keep its people in line.
The revolution that once emerged as powerful and victorious has been reduced to this: a petition form.
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