OPINION English edition of José Luis Tan Estrada’s column originally published in Spanish on March 30, 2026.
In December 1964, Che Guevara, then Cuba’s minister of industry, sat before CBS cameras in New York for an interview on Face the Nation. With the composure of a man who believed history was on his side, Guevara expressed the revolutionary position of the moment: Cuba wanted nothing from the United States. It merely wanted to be left alone. No conditions. No negotiations. No concessions. The Revolution would provide for itself.
More than six decades later, the same regime that produced that ideological arrogance was sending signals to the administration of Donald Trump. “We are in talks,” Havana’s officials said. They added, with their usual solemnity, that Cuba’s political system was not on the table. It was not negotiable.
The contradiction would almost be comical if millions of people were not trapped in the failure of a system they are forbidden to challenge.
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Castroism’s hypocrisy: from “forget about us” to “we need dollars”
When Guevara spoke to CBS, Cuba had lost the U.S. sugar market and was reorienting its economy toward the Soviet bloc. Guevara was proud of it: if sugar were sold to the United States, the Cuban government would do the selling, not the American buyers who had “dominated” production. Sovereignty served as a shield. Ideology supplied the excuse.
Then came 1991. The Soviet Union disintegrated, taking with it the subsidies that had sustained the Castroist experiment. Suddenly without its patron, the regime had to reinvent itself. With its familiar narrative skill, it found someone else to blame. The “blockade,” the term Havana prefers to the more precise “embargo,” became its universal explanation for every blackout, shortage and economic failure.
The same officials who had told Washington to forget about Cuba built their survival narrative around an obsession with the United States. The country they had asked to look away became the central character in every speech, orchestrated harassment campaign and slogan painted on a wall.
By 2026, the contradiction was stark. Dollar transactions and remittances from Miami, Tampa and New Jersey had become indispensable to many households. The regime sought access to international credit, trade openings and an end to sanctions. The system that had vowed to accept no conditions from Washington had spent decades seeking economic relief while refusing political accountability.
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The same dialogue, with the same people silenced
The most striking part of the 1964 exchange was not Guevara’s geopolitical position. It was a moment near the end, when he was asked what proportion of Cubans supported the Revolution. He dodged the question with a smile and a joke, asserting overwhelming support despite the absence of elections.
The same claim could be made at a Cuban government news conference in 2026 without changing its logic. Popular support is treated as dogma rather than evidence: an assertion that does not need to be tested because a free test is forbidden.
Cubans have no freely operating domestic independent media in which to express themselves. Social media access has been interrupted during protests. Legal opposition parties, free competitive elections and the basic right to choose the government remain absent.
The people the regime claims to represent at every international forum took to the streets on July 11, 2021, calling for freedom and “Patria y Vida,” or “Homeland and Life.” They have left in an extraordinary exodus. Those who remain wait for hours to buy bread, endure lengthy power outages and survive on money sent by the people the regime branded “traitors” for leaving.
Rhetoric as a system of government
Seen from 2026, Guevara’s interview shows that the regime has never needed its positions to be consistent. It only needs them to sound dignified. In 1964, dignity meant rejecting accommodation with imperialism. In 2026, it meant talking to that same imperialism while insisting that “the system is untouchable.”
The practical result is the same: Cubans still cannot vote freely, speak freely or decide their country’s future. Now, many cannot reliably put food on the table either.
When Havana announces talks with the Trump administration, it is not necessarily announcing change. It is replaying the familiar script with different actors: ask for economic relief, offer minimal gestures, invoke sovereignty and reject political concessions. Meanwhile, the Cuban people, supposedly so overwhelmingly supportive, are never consulted.
Guevara argued that revolutions were not exported, but arose from governments’ oppressive treatment of their own people. He was right, though not in the way he intended. The regime he helped build has itself become the island’s most enduring source of oppression.
Dialogue will not change that unless the subjects declared off-limits—the system, freedom and the Cuban people’s rights—are finally placed on the table. They are precisely what matters.
Context: what Che Guevara told CBS in 1964
Editor’s note: The background below was added by the Cubanos por el Mundo newsroom. It is not part of the original column.
Che Guevara gave the interview on December 13, 1964, during the trip to New York in which he addressed the United Nations General Assembly. He was then Cuba’s minister of industry, and he answered questions from CBS and New York Times journalists on Face the Nation.
According to a transcript of the broadcast published by the Marxists Internet Archive (in Portuguese), Guevara said Cuba asked only that the United States forget about it. Havana, he added, set no conditions for restoring relations but would accept none from Washington. He also acknowledged that good relations would benefit Cuba economically, given how close the U.S. market was.
Asked how many Cubans supported the revolution, he admitted there were no elections but said a large majority of the people backed his government. On the same program he insisted that revolutions are not exported, but grow out of the oppression that Latin American governments impose on their people.
What Havana says about the talks in 2026
On March 13, 2026, Miguel Díaz-Canel said in a national address that Cuban officials had held conversations with representatives of the U.S. government, something Havana had previously denied, the independent Cuban outlet elTOQUE reported. He also called the release of 51 prisoners a sovereign decision, not conditioned by any negotiation. Human rights groups say more than 1,000 political prisoners remain behind bars.
A week later, the Foreign Ministry drew the line that the column criticizes:
“The political system of Cuba is not up for negotiation.”
Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, at a news conference in Havana on March 20, 2026
Fernández de Cossío added that neither the president nor the position of any official in Cuba was subject to negotiation with the United States, according to a Reuters report published by CP24.
