New revolutionary task for the diaspora: pack the family emergency bag for war

One must acknowledge a merit of the regime: when it comes to solving a serious problem, they know exactly whom to call. And it’s not their ministers.

The new Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression, dated April 2026 and signed by the National Civil Defense Staff, is an "emotionally charged" document.

After three pages dedicated to reminding us that the Yankee empire has been conspiring against Fidel's humanist dream for 67 years — in case anyone had forgotten amidst the blackouts — the guide finally shifts to practical matters: what each Cuban family should have at home to survive the war.

The list is ambitious. Very ambitious.

The family bag, according to the General Staff

Each family should prepare a bag or backpack containing, among other things: a radio with alternative power, candles, matches, a lighter, a flashlight and other solar-powered lighting sources, canned food for three days, drinking water, personal hygiene items, medications for chronic illnesses, and age-appropriate toys for the little ones to keep them entertained.

But the gem of the document comes afterward.

The first aid kit

The General Staff requests that each household have a first aid kit containing dipyrone, paracetamol, aspirin, loratadine, Benadryl, meclizine, disposable gloves, antiseptics, gauze, dressings, bandages, adhesive tape, scissors, tweezers, a thermometer, burn ointments, masks, and a square cloth measuring one meter for making triangular bandages.

Read it twice. Without laughing or crying, if you can.

This is the list of products that, as of May 2026, are not available in the pharmacies of the Cuban state. It is not a metaphor. It is the operational inventory of what is missing in provincial hospitals, in polyclinics, and in MINSAP sales points. The Civil Defense is asking a single mother from Granma to keep the first-aid kit at home that the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Hospital itself cannot assemble for its operating rooms.

And here is where it appears, with its usual elegance, the key phrase of the document. The guide clarifies, in bold letters, that all this content should be included "according to the availability of the family". Translated from the official language to Cuban: solve it yourselves, comrades, because there is nothing here.

The new revolutionary task

And here comes the true protagonist of the operation, the one that the General Staff does not mention in any of its nine pages but without whom no Cuban family bag will ever be filled: the worm from Miami. The stateless one. The traitor. The one who left.

The same person who has been described for six decades by the official press as scum, traitor, and agent of the empire, is now—without anyone saying it aloud—the last logistical line of Cuba's Civil Defense. Because let's be honest: Yudelkis Ortiz's family bag, the first secretary of the PCC in Granma, is probably already full. Her neighbor's bag, however, is not. Her neighbor's will be filled by the cousin who sent three boxes from Hialeah last month, with paracetamol, loratadine, a solar flashlight from Amazon, and a couple of masks.

The paradox is perfect, and the regime knows it: the only infrastructure that works in Cuba is the one funded by those who have left. The remittances that support families, the packages that fill airports, the mules that traverse Havana with 50-kilogram suitcases full of dipyrone and diapers. This is the real Civil Defense of Cuba. It has no General Staff, does not publish nine-page guides, and does not use the slogan "protect, resist, survive and triumph." It simply protects, resists, survives, and every now and then, overcomes the shortages that the regime has turned into state policy.

The war combos: "market opportunity"

And as every Cuban crisis ultimately becomes an opportunity for someone, it doesn't take much imagination to foresee what is coming. In the coming weeks, at any shipping agency on Calle 8 in Miami, someone will put up a poster:

CIVIL DEFENSE COMBO — $99.95" Includes: solar flashlight, crank radio, 30 dipyrone tablets, 20 paracetamol tablets, loratadine, gauze, adhesive tape, antiseptic, masks, and digital thermometer. Shipping in 7 days to the whole island. Ask about our Enhanced Family Combo that includes a complete first aid kit.

There will be a basic version and a premium version. There will be a volume discount for those who want to send one to each cousin in Bayamo. There will be an entrepreneur in Hialeah who will register the brand "Bolso del Pueblo" before the end of May. There will be WhatsApp groups organizing collective shipments by neighborhood. There will be a small and medium-sized enterprise (mipyme) in Havana that will import the combos wholesale and resell them, because that is also part of the mechanism.

This thing about the combos is humor, or maybe it's not?

There is something sadder than comedic in all of this, and it is worth mentioning before closing. The regime has reached the point of asking a impoverished population, lacking medicines and enduring 20-hour blackouts, to prepare on their own for a war that it is stirring up as a political tool. The guidance is not a civil protection act: it is a transfer of fear. Every Cuban family that reads that document will understand two things simultaneously — that the regime is seriously contemplating the possibility of a conflict, and that in that conflict, everyone will defend themselves with whatever they have at home.

Whatever I have at home, of course, thanks to my nephew from Tampa.