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The exiled Cuban journalist Luz Escobar publishes this Sunday in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo an analysis of Cuba, the aircraft carrier, and the pressure from Donald Trump, in which she argues that the mistake lies not in whether the American president exaggerates, but in reading his words as a spectacle rather than as a signal. Cubans, she notes, suffer “the anxiety of living in a perpetual waiting room where the clock seems to have stopped.”
The text stems from the statements that Trump made this weekend at a private dinner of the Forum Club in West Palm Beach, where he claimed that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, returning from Iran, would stop "about 100 yards off the Cuban coast" until hearing a "thank you, we surrender." The warning and the recent measures signed by the U.S. president place Washington's pressure on Havana at unprecedented levels.
Escobar acknowledges that the almost automatic reaction to each of Trump's statements has been the same for months: "he exaggerates, he threatens, nothing is going to happen." But he warns that this anticipatory fatigue is precisely the trap. "The real danger of the story of the boy who cried wolf: it's not that someone lies too many times, but that when they finally tell the truth, no one is willing to believe them anymore," he writes.
What changes this time, the journalist asserts, is the context. The image of the aircraft carrier comes after the Trump administration has imposed more than 240 sanctions against the regime since January 2025, intercepted at least seven oil tankers, and reduced Cuban energy imports by between 80% and 90%.
The situation on the ground is devastating: power outages exceeding 20 hours a day throughout most of the country, a projected GDP contraction of 7.2% for 2026, and a massive exodus that is emptying the nation. “It is no longer possible to view this as an isolated threat,” writes Escobar.
As pressure builds from the outside, the regime maintains its oldest reflex, repression, the journalist notes. The Cuban MMA champion Spiderman ended up in Villa Marista on April 24 after peaceful protests from his balcony. And Jonathan David Muir, a 16-year-old detained during the protests in Morón, Ciego de Ávila, was calling his parents from prison: "Dad, please, get me out of here, I can't take it anymore," the article points out.
The official response followed the known script. President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded to Trump on the social network X, describing the situation as "a dangerous and unprecedented escalation" and proclaiming that "no aggressor will find surrender." Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla stated that Cuba "will not be intimidated." Escobar dismantles this rhetoric with a direct question: "What sovereignty does a system defend that cannot guarantee light, food, or freedom to its citizens?"
The analysis draws a parallel with Venezuela, where what seemed like "pure noise" ultimately turned into a cumulative process that ended Nicolás Maduro's presidency, captured by U.S. military Commandos on January 3, 2026. Underestimating a process by focusing on its most exaggerated form, Escobar warns, can be the critical mistake.
The text also incorporates the historical-cultural dimension of the issue through the theme "Our Day (It's Coming Soon)" by Willy Chirino, the anthem of the Cuban exile since 1991. Chirino reacted in March when that phrase appeared painted on a wall in Havana, amidst the protests against power outages. The constant repetition of "now is the time" messages that never materialize has "inoculated a corrosive anxiety in Cubans," notes Escobar.
"Perhaps the wolf is not 100 yards from the shore. But in Cuba, this time, the landscape is different, and those who inhabit the island no longer have the strength to distinguish the howl of reality," concludes the journalist, winner of the International Journalism Award from EL MUNDO.
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