While Cubans endure blackouts lasting up to 20 hours or more; a water crisis that in July left over half a million residents of Havana without regular access to water, President Miguel Díaz-Canel chose this Friday to visit the defense zone of Alamar Este —one of the municipalities most affected by this water crisis— and solemnly declared that "the primary priority remains defense".
The visit is part of the so-called "National Defense Day," the military ritual that the regime has been celebrating every Friday since it declared 2026 as the "Year of Preparation for Defense." In his role as president of the National Defense Council, Díaz-Canel reaffirmed that "the threat of aggression remains" and justified the military priority by stating that "this week, the offensive statements from the government of the United States and its Secretary of State against our country continued," reported the Presidential site.
He was accompanied, as befits such a martial occasion, by Esteban Lazo Hernández, president of the National Assembly; Roberto Morales Ojeda, secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party; generals Álvaro López Miera and Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, ministers of the FAR and MININT respectively; General Amado Ricardo Guerra, secretary of the Council of Ministers; General Ernest Feijóo Eiró, chief of the Western Army; and Liván Izquierdo Alonso, president of the Provincial Defense Council. A high-level meeting to inspect an area where, according to the official report itself, the water supply is "a major issue".
The Alamar Este Defense Council covers just over nine square kilometers, housing around 36,000 people and boasting more than 40 production and defense brigades. It also has 85 hectares of land dedicated to food production, the source indicated. Díaz-Canel described the work carried out there as "high-quality and profound" and stressed that the population must know "where to seek protection" and "how to access those places" in case "the enemy attempts to invade us." The enemy, of course, is Washington. Water is a secondary issue.
The warlike rhetoric of this Friday is neither new nor spontaneous. On the same day, Díaz-Canel took advantage of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to accuse the United States of "state terrorism" against Cuba, asserting that the island "has suffered for over 60 years from various types of terrorist attacks resulting in more than 3,400 deaths and 2,099 injuries," and that it faces "a genocidal plan to starve the people into submission."
The statements that irritate the Cuban leader come from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stated this week in Colombia that the U.S. has imposed on Cuba “the strongest sanctions in history” of the bilateral relationship, and labeled the island as a “humanitarian disaster” whose economic model “does not work,” according to Infobae. At the beginning of September, Rubio had been even more direct: “Trump and I are adamant that Cuba will be free”.
On September 9, the State Department warned the Cuban regime to "look in Maduro's mirror", in response to threats made by a general from MININT. Spokesperson Juliana Camacho was clear: "The Trump Administration will not sit idly by while those who act recklessly threaten or seek to harm the United States and its citizens."
While the regime fine-tunes its war rhetoric, the Cuban economy is experiencing a decline of around 15% between 2024 and 2025, and the CEPAL projected an additional contraction of 6.5% of GDP for this year; a figure that, according to independent analyses, may be higher.
The response from the dissent to Díaz-Canel's approaches has been decisive: Rosa María Payá responded that "the only threat to Cuba is the dictatorship."
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