During my years of studying Cuban thinking in the 19th and 20th centuries, I understood that the ideas of a sector or social class were clearer and more transparent, less rhetorical, in lesser works and authors. These were essential to understand not the meaning of words, but their meaning in stormy times, of intense confrontation of ideas. A friend has sent me the link to the personal profile of a minor annexationist, author of an unusual Cayo Romano Project. Strictly speaking, it does not deserve any comment. Neither his name nor his "project" are worthy of attention. However, such is the extravagance of his worship before the Voice of the Master and the exact understanding of his pretenses, that it serves as a warning: what imperialism does not say openly, this soldier of the empire born in Cuba exposes without ambiguity.

He knows his interlocutors well. Like them, he is a businessman. The offer, spattered in revenge in the name of freedom, is simple and tempting: raze my country, he suggests, liquidate its communists, and then we will give it to you. How much would a military intervention cost? He does the math: “elimination of strategic objectives”, “attacks with drones and missiles against command centers, telecommunications and military structures”, “elimination of leaders of the regime and high military commanders loyal to communism”, “deployment of special forces to neutralize organized resistance”. He forgets, perhaps, that the War of the Whole People includes us all, and that the “cleansing” of communists and the crushing of the “resistance” would turn into a genocide similar to that of Gaza. It doesn’t matter, he lives in Miami. He estimates the cost of the intervention at 15 billion dollars. But he miscalculates: the resistance would be unstoppable. He speaks the language that American magnates understand: we give you Cayo Romano, he says, and the usufruct of all our oil and mineral wealth, to pay the debt we would acquire. He remembers, without shame, the Platt Amendment: history repeats itself seems like a comedy, but it’s not. It won’t be.

Zelensky was received again and again in luxury salons, they toasted him with champagne, while the sons of Ukraine faced their brothers, the sons of Russia; they told him in Paris, in Berlin, in London, in Washington that he was a chosen one, one of them. He believed it. He was a useful man, not for his people, but for his handlers, the puppeteers. The show is over. In Washington, a meeting with despicable men brought him back to his senses. I can understand his bewilderment, his fury, when they released the strings that held him in front of the television cameras.

He was not a man, everyone knew, he was a puppet. Now he will leave a devastated country, thousands of dead children, and in payment, yes, because he must pay the empire the cost of its destruction, he will hand over its resources. The author of the Cayo Romano Project does not understand: after his country of origin is recolonized, he will be expendable. We Cubans will all be expendable. Better said: we will be in the way. Like Palestinians. And Trump's fascist dream, the construction of the tourist Riviera of Gaza without Palestinians, Netanyahu and he sitting on sun loungers, drinks in hand, surrounded by beautiful Arabs ready to offer their charms, could be repeated on the beaches of Cuba. Dreams are just dreams. Someone like the author of the project (it’s impossible to find the right adjective), said a few days ago in a queue in Havana: let them sell the country if necessary to live better. Does he really believe that he will live better?

It was not only Zelensky and the nation he represents who were duped. In Ukraine, the commercial and political submission of Europe, which was beginning to prioritize its convenience, to the dictates of Washington was readjusted. It was the ideal space to measure forces and reactivate the arms industry. Its people have discovered the fraud in the most rude and humiliating way. Trump withdrew the locomotive and the Europeans who had boarded the train without knowing what their true destination would be, don’t know now how to get off, they try to steer it with the force of gravity, without engines. If they were truly defenders of the territorial integrity of nations, the political map of the world would be different. But the only recourse left to them is to cling to that slogan, to assume the script they prepared for public opinion and emotions, to try to save the face of Zelensky, hated, blessed and despised.

The author of the Cayo Romano Project has valued each Cuban resource in dollars, like an expert jeweler. He shouts, he demands attention. But a recent study by Florida International University reveals that the policy towards Cuba is not cooked up in Miami, but in Washington. Cuban-Americans are predictable, and candidly loyal. They blend in like lizards with every change of direction in the White House: during the Biden administration they put photos with the Ukrainian flag on their profiles; now they curse Zelensky. They support the expulsion of illegal Latin Americans, as long as they allow the Cubans to stay.

They know how to take advantage of every crevice opened by the new policies to make money. In reality, Biden and Trump, although they seem opposite in their political and human dimensions, are not so different. They act in a play that transcends them. We are in the second act. Biden implemented the “diplomacy” of war; Trump, the stark sincerity of the post-war negotiator. Will Europe rescue its independence, forcing the indefinite continuation of a war without possible military victory? And our annexationists, do they understand what Zelensky’s lesson means? I say this with respect to their interests, not those of Cuba; their homeland is money.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff