The Cuban regime revealed this Saturday its master plan to take down enemy drones: an anti-aircraft artillery piece pulled by a team of oxen in a cart, during military maneuvers conducted in the mountainous area of Jibacoa, in the municipality of Manicaragua, Villa Clara.
The images, circulated by the regime itself during the National Defense Day, also showed mules carrying packs with military supplies along mountain paths and militia members armed with AKM rifles, in what the authorities described, with utmost seriousness, as an anti-aircraft defense exercise against unmanned aerial vehicles.
The official narration of the video left no doubt about the strategic gravity of the matter: "As part of the unique exploration system. Directly from the simple ambush of air defense, the approach of non-tricolor aerial vehicles."
The exercises were presided over by Army Corps General Joaquín Quintas Solá, Deputy Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, accompanied by Brigadier General Israel Cubertier Valdés, head of the Military Region of Villa Clara, and Susely Morfa González, President of the Provincial Defense Council.
The president of the Municipal Defense Council of Manicaragua, Amaury Rodríguez Linares, took the opportunity to引用 the historic phrase by Raúl Castro: "Yes, it was possible, yes, it is possible, and it will always be possible." It's hard to argue against the consistency: if in the 19th century they fought with oxen, why change a winning formula?
Social media responded with the forcefulness the moment required. "I died with the ox cart; this is the 18th-century war they're planning to go to," wrote Yasmani Enriquez, who added in another comment: "The most powerful military in the world is dying of fear when seeing those images, just look at the mules they have." Danilo Fuentes-Viñoly took a more technical approach: "Do any of those comrades know what a military-grade drone or a B-2 bomber is?" Others simply noted the obvious: "There was more technology in the Middle Ages."
The episode is not an isolated incident, but rather the latest installment in a series that began in January 2026, when the Absolute Resolution Operation of the United States captured the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, resulting in 32 Cuban military personnel killed in Venezuela. In response, the regime declared 2026 as the "Year of Preparation for Defense" and established National Defense Day as a weekly event. Since then, Cubans have been presented with rusty helicopters in January, oxen teams blocking roads in February, and coal as "personal care" for military personnel in March.
The technological context makes the scene even more illustrative: according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Cuba has not purchased foreign weapons since 1991 and ranks 117 out of 145 countries in global military capability according to Global Firepower 2026. Its S-125 anti-aircraft missiles are over 60 years old. The fuel crisis that paralyzes the country — with electrical deficits of up to 1,790 megawatts — explains, though it does not justify, that animal traction is now a real logistics solution and not a tactic of asymmetric warfare.
All of this occurs just four days after Díaz-Canel warned in an interview with Newsweek that Cuba would respond with guerrilla warfare to a potential military intervention by Washington, statements that generated nearly 3,000 mocking comments in less than 24 hours. Secretary of State Marco Rubio dismissed them with a phrase: "I don't think much about what he has to say." A user from the Jibacoa area, Ariagnelis Cruz, perhaps provided the most revealing fact of the day: "Thanks to the visit, we got a bit of electricity," she wrote, suggesting that the electricity supply in the area depended on the presence of the generals. A tremendous strategic technological advance.
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