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Miguel Díaz-Canel led a high-profile military event for the 65th anniversary of the Western Army this Thursday in Havana, which was also attended by the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), Army Corps General Álvaro López Miera, and to which Raúl Castro sent a formal greeting from his retirement.
The event brought together hundreds of uniformed personnel in a capital auditorium, where awards and medals were presented, and several officers were promoted to higher ranks.
During the ceremony, tribute was paid to the commander of the Revolution, Guillermo García Frías, regarded as the founding chief of the Western Army, an organization established in 1961 to defend the provinces of Havana, Matanzas, and Pinar del Río.
The head of the Western Army, Division General Ernest Feijóo Eiró, reaffirmed the commitment of his troops to remain "steadfast in our positions of combat" in the face of what he described as a "serious threat of aggression to the Homeland."
"We will confront any plans that aim to undermine our determination to be free and independent," affirmed the high military command.
The event occurs at the moment of greatest tension between Cuba and the United States in decades.
Just one day earlier, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited Guantánamo Naval Base and issued direct warnings to the regime, invoking the so-called "Donroe Doctrine" as an update to the Monroe Doctrine to "regain the hemisphere."
This Thursday, from the Central Command in Tampa, Hegseth confirmed that a capture or elimination operation against Díaz-Canel "remains an option on the table."
"All those options are on the table. The president expects us to act with firmness and determination in our response," Hegseth stated.
The Cuban regime responded to those statements by labeling them as "completely mistaken".
The crisis escalated from May 2026, when Axios reported that Cuba had acquired more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran since 2023, with possible plans to use them against Guantánamo and targets in Florida.
In response, Washington deployed the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Caribbean on May 20 and tasked Southern Command with developing military action scenarios against the island.
Díaz-Canel has maintained a defensive mobilization rhetoric since April, based on the doctrine of the "War of All the People," going so far as to warn that a U.S. aggression would result in a "bloodbath with incalculable consequences".
In this context, the joint presence of Díaz-Canel and López Miera at the Western Army event, supported by Raúl Castro's message, serves as a deliberate signal of cohesion between the civil and military leadership of the regime in the face of pressure from Washington.
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