The Cuban leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, participated this Friday in a new day of the National Defense Day from the "Rampa" Defense Council in Havana, and confirmed on his X account that "our preparedness is a priority for the country."
The Cuban ruler accompanied the message with images of meetings with uniformed personnel from the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and a screen displaying a quote from Fidel Castro: "This Revolution belongs to the people, and it is the people who must defend it!"
“Dignity and unity are the premises for protecting the Homeland," Díaz-Canel added in the post.
This Friday's meeting is the most recent in a series of weekly visits to Defense Councils that the regime has institutionalized throughout 2026 under the doctrine of "Total People's War," which mobilizes civilians, militias, and territorial structures to sustain a prolonged resistance against potential external aggression.
On January 12, 2026, the Western, Central, and Eastern armies of Cuba officially proclaimed the "Year of Preparation for Defense 2026," featuring weekly exercises that include ambush drills, shooting practices, evacuations, and shelter preparation.
Among the previous visits were those made to the Zone Defense Council of Casablanca (Regla) on September 4, to Alamar Este in mid-month —where Díaz-Canel warned that “the threat of aggression remains”— and to Capdevila-Altahabana (Boyeros) on September 18.
The backdrop of this rhetorical and military escalation is the increasing tension with Washington.
On September 22, Donald Trump described Cuba as a "completely failed state" before the UN General Assembly, announcing that his administration is seeking a "fundamental change" on the island and predicting that the regime will "fall."
The Cuban delegation left the plenary session during the speech of the U.S. president.
The next day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not rule out military action against Cuba and stated that "the president has both the power and the obligation to confront it" if there is a threat to national security, according to Rubio in a press conference in New York.
On that same day, Díaz-Canel responded by describing Trump's speech as "totally arrogant, overbearing, interventionist," and stated that "Cuba's freedom arrived on January 1, 1959."
This Friday, CBS News revealed that the U.S. Army Reserve is assessing the possibility of providing medical, logistical, engineering, and military police units to Southern Command within a timeframe of 90 to 120 days, as part of a planning that U.S. officials linked to Cuba, although the internal document reviewed by the outlet does not mention the island and no deployment order has been issued.
The Cuban regime has used the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces in Venezuela on January 3, 2026, as a central argument to justify the intensification of its military preparations, an operation in which 32 Cuban bodyguards were killed.
In August, Díaz-Canel had declared to Folha de São Paulo that "millions of Cubans would give their lives" for the revolution and that, if he were captured, it would be "fighting, fighting."
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