“Ninguno de los que hizo concesiones para sobrevivir, sobrevivió,” an op-ed by La Tizza, appeared today 6 March 2026. The following is the English translation of a revised, expanded, and adapted version of the original Spanish text.
“Imperialism and its lackeys understand no other language than that of strength and absence of fear. Any show of weakness is fuel for them to advance on us without mercy. Imperialism does not want concessions from Cuba—such concessions would never be enough—, they want from us total surrender. It would be thus futile to try to fashion ourselves as conciliators and ‘reformers,’ and to give a chance to dishonor in order to avoid war. History shows all too eloquently that, when faced with a powerful and vicious enemy and a choice between dishonor and war, those who choose dishonor to avoid war will ultimately have both war and dishonor.”
— La Tizza
These times are not for lying down with a handkerchief on your head, but with weapons as pillows, like the men of Juan de Castellanos: the weapons of judgment, which defeat the others. Trenches of ideas are worth more than trenches of stone.
— José Martí (1853-1895)
A revival of military incursions in speedboats from the United States—a practice never abandoned against Cuba since its inception in the 1960s—with the aim of provoking an attempted rebellion within the country, failed miserably once again on the morning of 25 February, when ten heavily armed Cuban mercenaries from Miami were defeated by five Cuban border guards, one of whom was wounded. The attempt to gauge Cuba’s readiness to fight failed —or one may well say that it succeeded, since such readiness was immediately and clearly put on display—, and all that remains now is the Miami media cacophony. Nothing new under the sun.
As we have more than once warned, the Washington regime, emboldened by the quick and cheap success of its assault on Venezuela on 3 January, and by the subsequently expedite and pliant regime change in Caracas, would immediately direct its actions against Cuba, whose Revolution has never been “next” on any list, but first.
The 32 Cubans who in unequal combat fell in the early hours of the third day of January in Venezuela, their comrades who survived them, and the five border guards who repelled the wannabe invaders from Hialeah on 25 February demonstrated what a combatant, even isolated, can do against an enemy superior in numbers and means, if he has faith in the righteousness of his cause.
The word surrender is not part of our soldiers’ code of conduct and, ultimately, would only be associated with the solution put in practice by the Cuban mambises in the 19th century: guásima, cabuya y cebo; that is, bay cedar, rope, and lure. Cuban people’s courage sends a clear message to the henchmen of the US corporate-military junta: with the Cuban people and their armed forces, there will be no easy victory decided the day before by the blackmail of an atomic superpower that could wipe us off the face of the earth.
As if that were not enough, wounded and indignant, the patriotic spirit of our people has risen up amid the most unimaginable shortages and material deprivations to lead days of tribute to our martyrs and the courage of our soldiers, under the slogan that has remained in force since the early days of the last revolutionary war in Sierra Maestra: “No one surrenders here!”
In response to the threats issued by Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and other henchmen of the Washington regime, Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, Ministry of the Interior and popular militias have mobilized. Successive National Defense Days, involving a large deployment of troops and resources, have left little room for doubt about what a military adventure in Cuba would mean for imperialism, regardless of the final outcome on the battlefield.
Ours is an armed revolution and, as such, it has always sought to earn by peaceful means the respect of the enemy, but it will never hesitate for a second to defend itself with arms at the ready against any threat or aggression.
It is in these circumstances and amid the smokescreen the Washington junta and its subservient media are trying to raise with the specter of alleged talks between the two sides that the option of a “friendly takeover of Cuba” by the United States has emerged, according to statements by the head of the regime, Donald J. Trump, and some of his minions.
The timing of the statements by Trump and other members of the corporate-military junta, coupled with the ramblings of other lesser-known figures, is not without significance: they came amid threats, finally materialized on 28 February, of an all-out, illegal and criminal assault on Iran in coordination with the genocidal State of Israel, which only the most spineless and useless political correctness or mere diplomatic prudishness can prevent us from calling by its only legitimate name: the Zionist entity. Amid all this, Cuban extremists from Florida smell blood and keep trying to take advantage of the situation to revive their old dream of invasion.
Under the guise of a “friendly takeover,” the United States seeks to legitimize what is nothing more than a rehash of imperial violence. The noise of war serves as an alibi for Yankee imperialists to push their obsessions against Cuba, while turning international distraction into a platform for their reactionary crusade against us. It is useful to recall, at this juncture, a passage described by that Washington ultimate insider, Bob Woodward, in his book State of Denial (2004), in which one former head of the corporate-military junta in Washington, George W. Bush, also emboldened by the outcome of a then-recent regime change (that of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), enthusiastically asked the three-star general and Yankee proconsul in Iraq, Jay Garner, if he also wanted “to get” Iran.
Garner’s response was that he and “the boys” wanted “to hold out” for Cuba, where “the rum and the cigars are a little better” and “the women are prettier.” Bush snapped, “You got it. You got Cuba.” What followed, however, is well known: Iraq became ungovernable, Garner did not “get” Iran, Bush went into the dustbin of history, and to this day Cuba continues to resist. Neither Garner, nor Bush, nor Rumsfeld, nor Auntie Tom Condoleezza Rice —recently on Fox TV foaming at the mouth in her servile prostration before the Orange Child Emperor she does not seem to despise as much as does or pretends to her former boss, W, nor war criminal Cheney — may he not rest in peace—, nor Uncle Tom Colin Powell, that most overrated of “decent men,” nor the Miami pack could “get” Cuba.
More than twenty years later, it seems as if the same images are being replayed. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes: emboldened by the results of the assault on Venezuela —and the indignant surrender of the Venezuelan leadership—, the Trump-Vance-Rubio regime is betting on a war against Iran whose outcome will be neither that of Iraq in 2003 nor that of Venezuela in 2026, while it intensifies the blockade against Cuba as a weapon of “bloodless” mass annihilation.
With the adrenaline rush from last January following the aggression against Venezuela now subsided, and the predictions of a rapid and imminent fall of the Cuban Revolution through armed action combined with a popular uprising now for the most part dashed, Trump and his henchmen have begun to talk about a “friendly takeover” of Cuba.
Imperialism and its domestic and foreign lackeys understand no other language than that of strength and absence of fear. Any show of weakness is fuel for them to advance on us without mercy. Imperialism does not want concessions from Cuba—such concessions would never be enough—, they want from us total surrender. It would be thus futile to try now to fashion ourselves as conciliators and “reformers”, and to give a chance to dishonor in order to avoid war. History shows all too eloquently that, when faced with a powerful and vicious enemy and a choice between dishonor and war, those who choose dishonor to avoid war will ultimately have both war and dishonor.
The most recent instances of imperialist aggression (Venezuela and Iran) have occurred in the midst of negotiations in which both Caracas and Tehran had offered concessions. Their willingness to negotiate and concede did not prevent aggression against them. The roar of the cannons with which Iran is now responding to the US assault is Iran’s best—if not only—bargaining chip short of surrendering its sovereignty. The corollary is clear and has always been at the heart of the Cuban Revolution’s military doctrine: to deter the enemy from launching a war of aggression against us by making them see how costly a military adventure would be. As Che said, “You can’t trust imperialism one bit, not even the tiniest bit.” Victory is not assured. Fierce resistance is.
Cuba has absolutely nothing to negotiate with the Washington regime other than the total and unconditional lifting of the economic, commercial and financial blockade —a de facto war— and the cessation of all political hostility against Cuba, the renunciation of the policy of regime change, the withdrawal of the US military from the illegally occupied territory in Guantanamo, and the recognition and acceptance once and for all that Cuba’s destiny is decided in Cuba, not in Washington, let alone in Miami.
Those who believe that they speak on behalf of the Cuban people—there are some who, while living in Cuba, think and act as if they were in Miami, de facto acting and speaking on behalf of the interests of the Miami mafia and the Washington regime—and propose a surrender on credit to save the skin of their class interests, should take note of what happened in Venezuela and Iran. It should also serve as a warning to those in the Cuban State bureaucracy—sometimes more concerned with preserving their status quo than with national sovereignty—who continue ignoring that the imperialist elites would prefer managers more efficient and loyal than they, Cuban bureaucrats eager for a way out have proven to be.
Meanwhile, the Cuban people have been forced, by the blockade, by underdevelopment, by countless internal mistakes, into a struggle for survival. Perhaps many, tired of this exhausting daily battle, believe that it is no longer worth resisting, that the government should resign itself to peaceful coexistence with Yankee imperialism and make one concession after another. But those who do so must not forget that such coexistence would be conditional on the total abandonment not only of national sovereignty but also of our own dignity, at a moral cost from which we would never recover. As Marco Rubio has said, they would settle for nothing less than a change in Cuba’s socio-economic model, that is, a transition to Caribbean-style capitalism: a corrupt and submissive political system, a distorted economy, a highly unequal society, the obliteration of the Cuban Revolution’s political, social, and cultural legacy, and drug-trafficking mafias as a parallel State.
In the current and foreseeable circumstances, it is worth remembering the extraordinary damage caused by the sustained aggression by the United States against the Cuban people for now 67 years. With Cuba once again alone in the face of imperialism, the Washington regime believes that the final hour of the Cuban Revolution has arrived and it has deployed its enormous range of selective and increasingly classist blockade measures, which seek to further distance the people from the State—the latter the symbolic heir to the 1959 Revolution—and thereby prepare for a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. They are playing the old strategy of combining the stick and the carrot. There are those who are frightened by the stick, and there are those who aspire to eat from a carrot pie that, by definition, would leave out a large part of the Cuban people: all are equally accomplices and traitors.
Some can be bought, overcome by the superiority of the enemy and defeated by a lack of faith in their compatriots, but no economic power or military might has ever had the means, let alone the moral legitimacy, to turn a whole nation or an entire country into traitors and accomplices. Such an impossibility is the most tangible proof that homeland and Revolution are neither slogans nor abstractions. We are not the first revolutionaries to think this way! And, as our comrades demonstrated in the early hours of the night of 3 January in Caracas, we will not be the last either!
Featured image: A view of a permanent installation of late revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara on the façade of the Ministry of the Interior in Revolution Square during a nationwide electrical grid collapse, in Havana, Cuba, on 14 March 2025. Photo: Reuters/Norlys Perez.
Translated from the original in Spanish by Rolando Prats.
