The political analyst Juan Antonio Blanco, president of the think tank Cuba Siglo XXI, dismantled in an interview with CiberCuba journalist Tania Costa the argument used by the Cuban regime to label those seeking alternatives to the system as "annexationists," calling this stance "tremendously ridiculous" in light of the real concession of sovereignty that Havana made to Moscow for decades.
Blanco pointed out that the same regime that today stirs the ghost of pro-American annexationism was the one that allowed the deployment of approximately 50,000 Russian soldiers and officials in more than 18 bases across the island, to which no Cuban had access.
"The people who placed nuclear missiles in Cuba and, by doing so, handed over a substantial part of the national territory... No Cuban could enter those bases," the analyst asserted.
To illustrate the depth of that commitment, Blanco turned to two direct testimonies.
"I was a personal friend of one of Che Guevara's bodyguards, and he told me that when Che arrived at one of those bases, they were told not to let him in," he recounted.
The second testimony comes from General Rafael del Pino, a Cuban pilot who defected in May 1987 during one of the highest-profile military escapes of the Cold War.
According to Blanco, Del Pino confirmed that even in the 1980s there was an exclusive sector of the Soviet Air Force at the San Julián airbase in Pinar del Río, from which daily espionage missions were carried out over the east coast of the United States, and to which Cubans were prohibited from accessing.
Blanco's most compelling argument points to the Cuban Constitution of 1976 itself, which included a clause of "unbreakable friendship" with the Soviet Union.
"They included a clause in the Constitution, an unusual clause, stating that we were obligated to be unbreakably friends with the Soviet Union," the analyst explained, noting that any sovereign policy divergent from Moscow's interests was thus constitutionally criminalized.
In his opinion, that clause far exceeded the historic Platt Amendment (1901) that the United States imposed on Cuba in the early 20th century, which the regime uses as a symbol of Yankee imperialism.
"The Platt Amendment, for God's sake, looks small next to such surrendering and interventionism," she declared.
Blanco also noted that the regime itself may have encouraged the annexation narrative to strengthen its rhetoric. "I have no doubt that they may have promoted it themselves to give substance to their discourse," he commented.
The analyst framed the phenomenon in historical perspective, recalling that since the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), there has been a pro-American annexationism within the Cuban independence movement itself, even symbolized by a flag designed similarly to the American one.
This interview is part of a series of appearances by Blanco in which he develops his thesis on the existential crisis in Cuba, in which he also predicted that change on the island would come before September 2026 and described the current situation as "the state's war against the population."
Cuba Siglo XXI published in January 2025 the report Cuba 2025: Possibilities and Probabilities, which evaluated six indicators of governance and concluded that the totalitarian system had collapsed and that a regime change was possible that year.
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