Related videos:
The historian and activist Alina Bárbara López Hernández posted this Sunday on Facebook a snippet of her interview with journalist Daniel Lozano for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in which she intellectually dismantles the Cuban regime's position regarding the intelligence report on the acquisition of more than 300 military drones.
López describes the official response to the ultimatum from the government of Donald Trump as "absolutely erratic," both from a military and political perspective, and concludes that the regime is sending a clear message: that it is prepared for war to come.
"The way they are responding to the ultimatum from the government of Donald Trump is absolutely erratic. From a military standpoint, they refer to the doctrine of the 'War of All the People' to oppose an army 2.0, with drones and smart weapons that do not exist here," wrote the activist from Matanzas.
López dismantles that doctrine by pointing out that its viability depends on popular consensus and peasant support, which the State itself has destroyed: "That is absolutely impossible today: a guerrilla stronghold would perish from hunger. What peasants are going to provide food if the State's policy towards the peasantry has contributed to leaving the Cuban countryside abandoned to its fate?"
From a political standpoint, his diagnosis is even more severe: "The regime is sending a message that we will resist under any condition. In other words, it is somehow encouraging the idea that yes, let the war come; I’m waiting for it, when what a statesman should be doing is seeking ways, intelligent strategies to avoid aggression against the country."
The intellectual also questions who they intend to resist the regime with: "With our young people in military service, some of whom have been committing suicide in alarming and tragic numbers in recent years because they do not want to be in the military units?"
The information is significant: according to Cubalex, at least 19 young people died during Mandatory Military Service in 2025, and Archivo Cuba historically records 27 such cases among the causes of death in that service.
López also points to the accumulated social deterioration: "A people who have been left to fend for themselves, who have been turned their backs on with the dismantling of policies that were once regarded as social achievements of the revolution and that have been abandoned for decades, particularly since Raúl Castro came to power in 2008."
His conclusion is unequivocal: "They are practically using the Cuban people as a sort of human shield."
López's statements come just hours after the Axios portal published a report based on classified intelligence indicating that Cuba has allegedly acquired more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran since 2023, with plans discussed to use them against the Guantánamo naval base, military vessels, and possibly Key West.
In response to that report, neither Deputy Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío nor Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denied the acquisition: both merely invoked legitimate defense and accused Washington of manufacturing excuses.
Fernández de Cossío did not deny the drones and wrote on X: "The U.S. is the aggressor country. Cuba is the attacked country, protected by the principle of legitimate defense."
Rodríguez avoided mentioning the report and accused the media of "promoting slander and leaking insinuations from the U.S. government itself."
That omission —not denying the facts— is precisely what López analyzes and criticizes: a regime that, instead of seeking diplomatic solutions, sends signals that it is willing to drag the Cuban people into a conflict for which it lacks both the means and the necessary popular support.
Filed under: