The Dominican journalist and political analyst Manuel Cruz stated on the program "El Sol de la Mañana," from ZOL 106.5 FM, that Cuba has become trapped in an ideology while the rest of the world has progressed, guided by geopolitical pragmatism and economic interests.
Cruz anchored his argument in the 1962 missile crisis and cited the book "Cien horas con Fidel" by journalist Ignacio Ramonet, in which Fidel Castro himself admitted that he learned about the secret agreement between the USSR and the United States to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba through the press.
"Not only did we find out through the press, we were not even consulted about anything," Fidel supposedly said according to that book, in words quoted by Cruz.
For the Dominican analyst, that episode should have been the turning point that led Havana to reform after the Soviet collapse of 1991: "That should have been the message, the starting point so that after the fall of the Soviet Union in '91, Cuba would have done what it needed to do, like other countries did."
Cruz pointed out that after the socialist debacle, the countries of Eastern Europe joined NATO and adopted the western model, while Cuba chose to remain anchored in the system.
The journalist used three examples of geopolitical pragmatism to contrast with the Island.
Vietnam: despite having endured a devastating war with the United States, it now maintains a bilateral trade balance that exceeds 170 billion dollars annually with that country.
Dominican Republic, which was invaded twice by the United States and now considers it its main trading partner.
And China, which despite being considered Washington's global rival, maintains the most important bilateral trade relationship in the world.
In light of those examples, Cruz was emphatic: "Cuba is still caught up in an ideology. No, no. That’s nonsense."
The analyst also dismantled the argument of the embargo as the main cause of the Cuban crisis, referring to it directly as "the myth of the blockade": "You chose to remain this way. And that's why there is hunger."
He added: "The whole communist story, that's just a tale. Cuba isn't interesting to the United States, neither because of Raúl Castro nor anything like that."
His words resonate strongly in the context of a worsening humanitarian crisis on the Island. A recent survey revealed that one in three families suffers from hunger in Cuba, with 33.9% of Cuban households reporting hunger in 2025 and 94.9% of participants stating that they have lost some degree of access to food purchasing.
The regime, on the other hand, accuses the United States of attempting to subdue Cuba through hunger, using the embargo as a central explanation for its failures, a narrative that independent organizations and analysts such as Cruz systematically reject.
The Cuban Constitution of 2019 defines the Communist Party as the "organized vanguard of the Cuban nation" and establishes socialism as an irrevocable political system, illustrating the ideological rigidity that Cruz criticizes.
"Geopolitics has no feelings and no heart," concluded the Dominican journalist, summarizing the central thesis of his speech in a single sentence.
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