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Raúl Castro sent a congratulatory letter to the fighters of the Central Army of Cuba on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of that institution, which was read in his name this Thursday at a gala held in Matanzas, where he reiterated the militaristic speech that the regime has intensified since January of this year.
"Today, when the Homeland is once again threatened, I reaffirm my confidence that you will know how to face any aggression, convinced of victory," was the central phrase of the letter from the Army General, who was physically absent from the event, according to the Cuban News Agency.
The message contains nothing that hasn't been heard before: the same appeal to the external enemy, the same invocation of resistance, the same call for military cohesion that the regime has been repeating for decades and which has intensified in recent months.
In his letter, Castro highlighted the founding of the Central Army by the Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque on April 4, 1961 and acknowledged the contribution of this institution to the doctrine of the War of All the People.
The gala included the presentation of the 65th Anniversary Seal to Raúl Castro himself, to the Deputy Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), Joaquín Quintas Solá, and to other generals and founders, as well as a certificate of recognition signed by the Minister of the FAR, Álvaro López Miera.
A revealing detail of the event was the award of the Distinguished Service of the FAR to Lieutenant Colonel Sander Padilla Gómez, who was performing "special service" in Venezuela on January 3, 2026, the date on which U.S. forces carried out Operation Absolute Resolution, resulting in the capture of Nicolás Maduro and the death of 32 military and Cuban agents who were part of his personal security detail.
This operation was the trigger for the regime's rhetorical escalation, which since then declared 2026 as the "Year of Preparation for Defense," announced military exercises every Saturday and approved plans to transition to a State of War in a meeting of the National Defense Council chaired by Raúl Castro on January 18, a role that constitutionally belongs to Díaz-Canel.
The MINFAR has declared that the words surrender and defeat are completely erased from its military terminology and that "no enemy will be safe in Cuba."
Analysts point out that this rhetoric serves to divert attention from the serious economic crisis that the island is experiencing and to reinforce the ideological cohesion of the regime by appealing to fear of an external enemy, a tactic that the dictatorship has systematically used for 67 years.
The tribute was presided over by the Deputy Minister of the FAR Joaquín Quintas Solá, the Major General Víctor Leonardo Rojo Ramos, head of the Political Directorate of the FAR, and the Major General Raúl Villar Kessell, head of the Central Army.
The gala began with a floral tribute to those who fell in Playa Girón in 1961, symbolically linking the anniversary with the anti-imperialist narrative that the regime never abandons, regardless of how much the world has changed or how much life for the Cuban people has deteriorated.
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