Writer and analyst Jorge de Armas made one of the most striking statements of the week during the weekly discussion at CiberCuba, moderated by Tania Costa: "Cuba needs a 15-point earthquake on the Trump scale to completely wash away the misery, the impoverishment, and for those who currently hinder change—something that is no longer even necessary—to disappear from the earth."
The statement emerged in the context of the debate over the false seismic alarm that unleashed panic in Cuba this Tuesday, when earthquake notifications reached Android phones in several provinces without any alert being issued by the authorities of the National Seismological Service, according to official sources.
De Armas used geological metaphors to go much deeper than the technical debate surrounding the alarm: his diagnosis points to an irreversible structural crisis. "The country has already reached a point where even a change does not guarantee a future. The country needs to be refounded. It needs to be rebuilt," he stated.
But De Armas's analysis did not stop at the metaphor. The analyst identified two major victories of totalitarianism over Cuban society: "They are specialists in the battle of time and in diverting the narrative."
The second victory he pointed out is, in his view, the most devastating: the destruction of civic consciousness. "The worst real damage, which is not only anthropological, goes further: we do not see ourselves as citizens. We are not capable of taking the reins because to do that, one must be a citizen. And they took that away from us. And there, they are kings," he stated.
This reflection connects with another theme of the discussion: the controversy generated among sectors of the exile community following the release of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the artist and activist from the San Isidro Movement who arrived in Miami on July 19, 2026, after five years in prison. De Armas harshly criticized those who attacked him, labeling them as "a horde of surrenderists in exile whose only way of being anti-Castro is by being more Castroist than the Castrists themselves."
In that same vein, the analyst warned about the contradiction in certain opposition discourses: "We are going to fight against Castro, but in the end, we sustain the dictatorship with that very discourse. It has to do with a loss of civic courage."
In the discussion, writer Camilo Venegas from the Dominican Republic and analyst Frank Rodríguez from Miami also participated, debating the expulsion of nine Cuban diplomats from the Dominican Republic on August 13, related to alleged attempts to prevent the defection of Cuban athletes during the 2026 Central American and Caribbean Games in Santo Domingo.
A viewer of the talk show during the broadcast summarized the collective mood with a question that hung in the air: "I see only silence, everything is falling apart like a meringue, or is it the calm before the storm?" In Camilo Venegas's opinion, it is the calm before the storm.
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