Cuba’s Dictator Is Prepared for Cubans to Die Defending the Regime

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel appeared on NBC News yesterday and said Cubans were willing to die in order to defend the regime if it came to that.

“An invasion to Cuba would have costs. … It would affect the security of Cuba, the United States and of the region,” he said through a translator in his first American broadcast interview.

“If that happens, there will be fighting, and there will be a struggle, and we will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die, because as our national anthem says, ‘Dying for the homeland is to live,’” the Cuban president said.

Technically, he’s saying “we” will die if needed but of course he won’t be the person on the front lines with a rifle. He’ll be the guy hidden in a bunker somewhere while other people are asked to die to protect him. 

Diaz-Canel was asked about some basic elements of a free system like free elections and the release of political prisoners. He made it clear those things were not compatible with the Cuban revolution.

“Nobody has made those demands to us, and we have established that in respect to our political system or constitutional order, these are issues that are not under negotiations with the United States,” Díaz-Canel answered, adding that those issues are “extensively manipulated.”…

Díaz-Canel did not commit to releasing political prisoners and rejected their characterization as such, saying there are people in Cuba who are not in favor of the revolution “and manifest themselves on a daily basis” who are not in prison.

“This narrative that has been created, that image that anyone who speaks against a revolution is thrown into jail, that’s a big lie, that’s a slander, and that’s part of that construct in order to vilify and to engage a character assassination of the Cuban Revolution,” Díaz-Canel said.

In a word, no. Cuba will not be freeing political prisoners or having free elections. It will remain a communist dictatorship in the Castro mold.

It has become commonplace for Cuba and its apologists on the left to blame the country’s problems on America. Why is Cuba in such desperate condition? As Diaz-Canel repeated during his interview, it’s because of the US blockade and sanctions. But the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece yesterday pointing out that this isn’t the real story.

Blaming the U.S. embargo for Cuba’s economic disaster has lost its political firepower because the law has been watered down. Today Cuba can buy, with cash, all the food, medicine and construction materials it wants from the U.S. It can get lots of other stuff from the rest of the world. It can’t get credit from U.S. banks, which is a good thing since the U.S. is the rare jurisdiction that has never suffered from one of the revolutionary government’s many defaults…

Cuba’s economic crisis is caused by a hard-currency shortage. Output from once-vibrant export industries like sugar, tobacco, coffee and fruit can’t even supply the domestic market. Barren agricultural fields are covered in weeds. Manufacturing is gone. Even tourism, which the regime has tried to hype since the 1990s, is in bad shape. Handouts from the Soviet Union, bilateral lenders and Venezuela, which kept the country afloat for decades, are no more.

Even before January, when the Trump administration began to ensure that Venezuelan oil largess couldn’t go to Cuba, the monthly Cuban ration book supplied food for less than two weeks. Cubans are kept alive thanks mainly to the country’s most reliable export: people. If not for remittances, families would suffer even greater privation.

As for President Trump, he hasn’t changed his tune at all. He said again today that Cuba may be next after he finishes what he’s doing in Iran.

Trump:

We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with Iran. pic.twitter.com/Z1iNx5tcav

— Clash Report (@clashreport) April 13, 2026

Cuba has made itself a base for spying for Russia and more recently China. Trump should put an end to the Cuban regime as it exists. It has been on its last legs for years. All the blockade is doing is accelerating the collapse which was imminent once Cuba’s support from Venezuela ended.  

Diaz-Canel would no doubt love a US invasion to live out his fantasy of standing up to America on behalf of the Castro regime. But he’s not important enough to warrant that. There’s no need for any boots on the ground to achieve the transition. Someone in Cuba will be willing to accept a deal similar to the one we have with Venezuela. At most, special forces will need to go in and remove one person, Diaz-Canel himself. That shouldn’t present any serious challenge when dealing with a regime that can’t even keep the lights on.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Hot Air’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.