The political analyst Juan Antonio Blanco, president of the think tank Cuba Siglo XXI, states that Cuba is already experiencing a war, not a future threat: “the war of the State against the population”, where a fully armed State confronts an unarmed, disconnected, and starving population.
Blanco stated in an interview with Tania Costa, when directly asked: can Cubans free themselves on their own? His answer was categorical.
"In my opinion, it is almost bordering on irresponsibility to ask a people who are unarmed, disconnected from the internet, starving, who must fight for their daily survival, and who are on the brink of explosion, to additionally confront a machinery that has shown no qualms for 67 years about crushing anyone who stands in its way to remain in power with non-violent methods," stated the analyst.
Blanco emphasizes that this demand—to free themselves alone, without violence and by offering dialogue—appears disproportionate when considering the reality of the regime's repressive machinery.
"We have reached a point where it is not possible, at least in the short term, for the population to free itself from the yoke it is under and, above all, from this existential crisis, which is an existential crisis of the Cuban nation," he warned.
The analyst also rejects the notion that the debate is theoretical or long-term. The problem, he insists, is urgent: the Cuban people are dying now.
"Dozens of thousands of people are dying whose deaths are not counted as deaths by the Cuban state. They are not deaths caused by police violence, but rather deaths because there wasn't any dipyrone at home to reduce the fever of a five-year-old child, deaths because someone cut themselves on a metal object and there wasn't an injection available to prevent the infection from worsening," Blanco pointed out.
That description matches a documented humanitarian crisis in Cuba: one in four Cubans goes to bed without dinner, according to data from May 2025, while the healthcare system collapses due to a lack of basic medications.
Blanco mentions a historical analogy with the situation in Cuba in late 1896 and early 1897, during the war of independence against Spain, although he does not elaborate on it in this excerpt from the interview.
That parallel refers to the moment when the Cuban independence fighters, exhausted and unable to ensure victory on their own, ended up seeking the support of the United States, which led to the Spanish-American War of 1898.
The argument of Blanco is part of a broader debate that Cuba Siglo XXI has developed in its analysis titled "Intervention in Cuba: Undesirable, Preferable, or Indispensable?", where it suggests that decisive external assistance may be necessary to restore Cuban sovereignty.
In January 2025, Cuba Siglo XXI identified that year as a window of opportunity for change, with six governance indicators in critical condition.
Blanco concludes with a clear warning: "If people are dying now, if the physical people, the only real people that exist, are dying now, then it seems to me that we need to look with an open mind for other possible solutions to this dilemma and not allow what is happening now to continue, because it will not get better; it's only going downhill."
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