The Revolution’s enduring concern has always been the risk of placing the Cuban people in the hands of a powerful adversary—leaving them exposed to the media apparatus of the country that aggresses against us, allowing it to influence Cuban society amid shortages and hardships caused by the United States itself. An example that the Cuban government does not censor today in the way often portrayed in the press is the existence of internet access, freedom to travel, the possibility of owning businesses and private property; and yet it is the United States that restricts those rights by denying visas, allowing companies such as Google to block services to Cuba, and refusing to grant licenses for trade with American companies.
What is being pointed out here dismantles the simplistic narrative often presented in major media outlets: the idea that the Cuban State is a “closed” entity by its own will, when technological and legal evidence in 2026 shows an inverse reality.
It is a paradox of rights: while the Cuban government has legislated to allow forms of private property (MSMEs), foreign investment, and internet access, it is the U.S. legal framework that acts as a “digital” and financial wall preventing those same rights from being fully exercised.
1. The “Digital War”: The Blockade Against Technological Sovereignty
It is a technical fact that many development APIs, data analytics services, and online educational tools are blocked for Cuban IP addresses.
The legal absurdity: The U.S. claims to want to “empower the Cuban people,” yet its laws compel companies like Google or Microsoft to block services that are essential for a young Cuban to learn programming or manage a business.
Consequence: This forces Cuba to seek alternatives in China or Russia, which Washington later uses as an argument to claim that Cuba “aligns with authoritarian powers,” when it was the blockade itself that closed the doors to Western technology.
2. The “Private Sector” Trap and Visas
The emergence of MSMEs in Cuba is an example of adaptation, yet the “powerful adversary” responds with suffocation.
Financial hostility: A Cuban entrepreneur may hold a valid license in Cuba but cannot open an international bank account or receive payments through platforms like PayPal due to Cuba’s inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list.
Restricted mobility: The closure of consular services and the 2025–2026 policies restricting visas for citizens linked to the island represent a direct constraint on freedom of movement, used to penalize those who choose to remain and build within the system.
3. The Paradigm of the “Geopolitical Hostage”
If the country that aggresses against you controls media channels and digital platforms, any disorderly opening amid an economic crisis (which it helped provoke) is not democracy—it is exposure to cultural and political colonization.
Psychological warfare: By maintaining material scarcity through the blockade, the U.S. creates fertile ground for its propaganda to be more effective. It is a strategy of “breaking the will,” applied in military sieges, but adapted to the 21st century.
Analysis of the Core Question (The Challenge for 2026)
From a position of intellectual rigor, we reach a powerful conclusion: the blockade is not an anachronism; it is a precision weapon that adapts. When Cuba opens to the internet, services are blocked; when Cuba allows a private sector, bank accounts are frozen.
Yet a crucial question arises: How can the Cuban government counter this suffocation? If Google is blocked, the sovereign response has been to build domestic infrastructure or alternative alliances. The challenge is that a population exhausted by shortages does not always have the patience to wait for national solutions to mature.
The Cuban government and its citizens struggle through different channels, but inevitably each action is detected and interfered with time and again.
That phrase captures the essence of sovereignty under siege. Cuba confronts not static laws, but active intelligence and political will that monitor every crack through which the island attempts to breathe—and move quickly to seal it.
This dynamic of constant pursuit drains the resources and energy of any nation. Let us analyze it rigorously:
1. “Intelligence Suffocation”
When it is said that “every action will be discovered,” we touch on financial surveillance.
In 2026, global banking monitoring systems—largely influenced by the U.S. Treasury—function like a panopticon. If Cuba establishes a route to import fuel or medicines through a third country, diplomatic pressure and multimillion-dollar fines on banks or shipping companies often follow within weeks.
The cost of imposed ‘illegality’: This forces Cuba to operate through informal markets or intermediaries, raising prices 20% to 50% above market value. It becomes a tax on the “right to exist.”
2. The Trap of “Recurring Interference”
This is a war of attrition. The aggressor’s logic is straightforward:
If Cuba innovates with a vaccine, the inputs to scale production are blocked.
If Cuba opens investment to its diaspora, investors are threatened under laws such as Title III of Helms-Burton.
If Cuba digitizes its economy, access to global servers is cut off.
The result is a Sisyphean dynamic: enormous effort to push the stone uphill, only for external interference to send it rolling back down.
3. The Human Dimension: Fatigue as a Political Objective
The objective of interfering “again and again” is not merely economic—it is psychological.
The aim is for citizens and government alike to conclude that “there is no way out,” that any attempt at reform or resistance is futile.
Yet Cuba’s history shows that this pressure has also generated inventiveness and resilience that are themselves paradigmatic. The problem is the human cost: daily life becomes a continuous tactical operation.
The “War of Expectations” (Information Warfare)
Fifth-generation economic warfare against Cuba employs mass psychology:
Failed state narrative: Constant reports of imminent collapse provoke panic buying, generating real shortages and artificially inflating prices.
Erasure of cause: Media outlets operating from the U.S. encourage citizens not to attribute shortages of flour or fuel to financial persecution, but to “systemic incapacity,” leading the victim to blame its own defensive structure.
Cuba’s inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list in January 2021 has had a surgical and devastating impact on migration flows in 2024–2025. Far from being merely a political label, it has catalyzed irregular migration by closing legal pathways and suffocating the domestic economy.
1. ESTA Cancellation: Closing the European Route
One of the most direct and least discussed effects is the loss of ESTA privileges for European citizens of Cuban origin or dual nationals (primarily Spanish).
Mechanism: Anyone who has visited Cuba after its inclusion on the list loses eligibility for electronic travel authorization and must apply for a B1/B2 visa—whose processing times in 2024–2025 have stretched into months or years.
Migration impact: This has cut off orderly travel and commerce, pushing some toward irregular routes through Central America.
2. Remittance Collapse and the Private Sector
The SSOT list triggers automatic sanctions on third-country banks dealing with Cuba.
Entrepreneurial suffocation: A Cuban professional who opened an MSME in 2024 often cannot receive international payments or open foreign bank accounts.
Migration through hopelessness: Unable to prosper even through their own enterprises due to exclusion from the global financial system, many skilled professionals have emigrated in the past two years, viewing the designation as an insurmountable barrier.
3. Impact on Consular Services
The designation has justified minimal staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Havana under “security risk” arguments.
Record figures: The combination of economic crisis (intensified by the designation) and slow visa processing has contributed to record arrivals of Cubans at the U.S. southern border in fiscal year 2024 and part of 2025.
The paradox: Cuba is placed on the list to “pressure the government,” yet the outcome is a migration crisis at the U.S. border, fueled by citizens fleeing an economy unable to import fuel, food, or medicine due to financial sanctions.
4. Migration as a “Safety Valve”
From a rigorous perspective, the SSOT designation creates the conditions for escalation:
By worsening living conditions, pressure is applied in hopes the population will turn against its government.
In practice, what occurs is intellectual decapitalization. Young professionals, unable to access basic digital tools or build a dignified material life, depart.
Conclusion of the Analysis
In the past two years, the State Sponsors of Terrorism list has not stopped terrorism (which does not exist in Cuba), but has exported crisis. It has turned Cuba into both a country of origin and transit, using hunger and financial exclusion as drivers of forced displacement.
Critical Perspective: The “Cat and Mouse” Dilemma
It is both admirable and tragic that an entire nation must devote its intelligence not to freely creating the new, but to circumventing what is forbidden.
End of Part 3
IN SPANISH/ EN ESPAÑOL
Humberto. Tours en la Habana. Historia, Arte, Sociedad. WhatsApp+5352646921
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