Cuba's Military Starves Its People · Then Asks Them to Die for Them

On April 9, 2026, NBC's Kristen Welker sits across from Díaz-Canel in Havana — his first appearance on American television since Fidel Castro in 1959. She asks: would you be willing to step down to save your country? He does not answer. He asks if the question comes from the State Department. He smiles. He speaks through a translator. Six days earlier, in a written interview with Newsweek — no cameras, no video — the same man said this: 'Cuba does not fear war.

We have a defense doctrine called the war of all the people. If military aggression occurs, we will fight back, we will battle, we will defend ourselves. And should we fall in battle, to die for the homeland is to live.' On camera, he deflects. In writing, he threatens guerrilla war and quotes the national anthem. Marco Rubio's response: 'I don't think much about what he has to say.' Since a US military operation captured Maduro in January and killed 32 Cuban military and police personnel, the regime declared a 'State of War' and designated 2026 the 'Year of Preparation for Defense.'

The military making this threat has fifty thousand active troops — down from over two hundred thousand. It ranks sixty-fifth globally. Zero operational combat aircraft. MiG-29s: completely out of service. Three hundred tanks from the 1950s through 1970s, mostly in storage. A navy with converted fishing boats. The Defense Intelligence Agency's assessment: 'not capable of effective operations above the battalion level.'

What this military does run: GAESA. A business conglomerate controlling 121 hotels, twenty marinas, supermarkets, gas stations, and a bank. Gross profits: approximately thirty-seven percent of GDP. Revenues 3.2 times the entire state budget. Pays zero foreign currency taxes.

Not subject to audits. Thirty-six percent of all state investment from 2021 to 2023 went to hotel construction — more than eleven times the combined spending on health and education. Hotel occupancy in 2025: 18.9 percent. The military's industrial arm now manufactures soap and furniture. A military that makes soap and runs empty hotels is threatening guerrilla war against the United States.

The doctrine he invoked is not a slogan. It is a legal system. Ley No. 75 requires 'the organized participation of the entire population.' The 2019 Constitution declares defense 'the supreme duty of each Cuban' and explicitly prohibits conscientious objection.

From primary school: mandatory 'pioneer bastions' and shooting circles. From university: a required course called 'Preparación para la Defensa' whose stated goal is to produce graduates 'capable of materializing the War of All the People.' Decreto 103 of 2024 imposes fines of up to 7,000 pesos for failing to register for military service at sixteen. Non-payment within thirty days: criminal proceedings. Self-injury to evade service: six months to five years.

On every block: Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Roughly eighty percent of the adult population enrolled. Each block president tracks visitors, work patterns, packages. Letters of recommendation from the committee are required for university admission. The US State Department: CDRs are used 'to exercise political control, monitor neighbors, and organize rapid-response mobs.'

The one time this doctrine was activated, it was used against Cubans. July 11, 2021. The largest protests since 1959. Citizens demanding food, medicine, electricity, freedom. Díaz-Canel's response: 'The order to fight has been given.' The framework built for foreign invaders was deployed against the Cuban people. Human Rights Watch documented systematic detention and abuse.

And the doctrine is still being used. Jonathan David Muir Burgos is sixteen years old. The son of an evangelical pastor in Morón. On March 14, 2026, a protest against power outages passed in front of his house. He joined. Two days later, he and his father answered a police summons. His father was released.

Jonathan was not. He is being held at Canaleta prison in Ciego de Ávila — a maximum-security facility. The charge: sabotage. Under Cuban law, that carries up to thirty years, life imprisonment, or the death penalty. For a sixteen-year-old. His father: 'I would have preferred a thousand times to be imprisoned instead of my son.' A habeas corpus petition was rejected.

His father says Jonathan continues to suffer from a chronic and now worsening skin condition, requiring constant medication he is not receiving. US Representatives María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez have demanded his release. The regime pardoned 2,010 prisoners in April. Not a single political prisoner was released. Prisoners Defenders counts 1,214 political prisoners in Cuba as of February 2026. Thirty-one of them are minors.

CiberCuba posted the Newsweek interview to Facebook. Nearly three thousand comments in under twenty-four hours. 'Talking about guerrilla warfare in the 21st century is directly ridiculous.' 'Better worry about the electricity.' 'That guerrilla war would be the people against you yourselves.'

'They want to use the people they've humiliated so much as a shield.' Periódico Cubano: 'The fundamental point is whether the population would want to defend the Castro regime. That population is already aged and tired of broken promises.' 14ymedio reports that Cubans 'prefer anyone — from the US to China or Russia — to administer the country as long as the blackouts end.'

Díaz-Canel invoked the mambises — fighters who freed their slaves, demanded democracy, wrote a constitution with separation of powers, and died so Cuba could be free. His government jails a sixteen-year-old for joining a protest about electricity. José Martí wrote: 'To change masters is not to be free.' The mambises would not have fought for this regime. They would have fought against it.