On Friday, during the National Defense Day, Miguel Díaz-Canel arrived in olive green uniform at the headquarters of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), located at the iconic corner of 23 and 12 in the Plaza de la Revolución municipality of Havana, to inspect the Colón Nuevo Vedado Defense Council (CDZ), as reported by the Cuban News Agency.
Who welcomed him was not a general or an official from the military apparatus, but Alexis Triana Hernández, president of the ICAIC, who has also been heading that zonal defense council based at the film institution since May 2026.
The image precisely encapsulates the direction that the Cuban regime has taken this year: a cultural institution transformed into a military outpost, and its highest official presented to the head of state not as the manager of national cinema, but as a territorial defense commander.
Triana Hernández informed Díaz-Canel about an area of nearly two square kilometers where more than 15,000 people live, distributed across 12 districts, with 28 Production and Defense Brigades —13 of which are located in centers of economic interest—and a battalion of the Territorial Troops Militias.
The president of the CDZ and cultural commissioner also acknowledged to the head of state the most urgent problems facing the area: the irregular water supply, which comes from the Palatino and Cuenca Sur sources, and the breakdowns in electrical transformers as the main complaint from the energy sector.
In his speech, Triana Hernández explicitly connected the management of those deficiencies with military preparedness: "For us, defense is tied to the issue of whether water arrives, if the electricity supply stabilizes, and how we manage the challenge that over 40% of the population in our defense area is practically over 65 years old."
Díaz-Canel praised the work presented and framed it within his doctrine of permanent militarization: "Here we see how, when the tasks of defense are undertaken responsibly, functioning from wartime structures in peacetime, the role of a state institution is also as a key player in the defense area. So many things can be achieved."
Accompanying the leader Esteban Lazo Hernández, President of the National Assembly and the Council of State, were Generals Álvaro López Miera, Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and Lázaro Alberto Álvarez Casas, Head of the Ministry of the Interior, as well as Major General Amado Ricardo Guerra, Secretary of the Council of Ministers, among other high-ranking officials.
The visit to the ICAIC is part of a military preparation campaign that Díaz-Canel has personally led over at least eleven days throughout 2026, touring defense areas in various municipalities of Havana within the framework of the so-called "Year of Preparation for Defense."
The appointment of Triana Hernández to lead the ICAIC in October 2023 was marked from the outset by controversy: more than a hundred Cuban filmmakers publicly rejected his designation considering it part of an authoritarian management. Three years later, that same official appears on the screens of Canal Caribe not as a promoter of national cinema, but as a defense zone chief welcoming the leader in combat attire.
Díaz-Canel suggested at the conclusion of the visit that the experiences from the CDZ Colón Nuevo Vedado be shared with neighboring areas that have similar characteristics—high population density, urbanization, and aging— in order to build replicable work models in the capital.
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