Originally published in Spanish on April 21, 2026.
Opinion | Ernesto García
Cuban ambassador to Mexico Eugenio Martínez Enríquez told the Mexican daily La Jornada in April 2026 that many Cubans would die in a possible military confrontation with the United States, but that Cuba’s choice was to resist. He did not say which Cubans would do the dying.
The words appear in La Jornada’s April 20 report, signed by reporter Emir Olivares Alonso. “Claro que caerán muchos cubanos,” the diplomat said: of course many Cubans will fall. He added that “la opción es resistir,” the option is to resist.
Delivered with apparent ease, the remark revived Castroism’s longstanding doctrine of treating ordinary people as expendable. The author compares it with the sacrifice demanded of civilians by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s rulers. The statement provoked rejection in the Cuban diaspora.
What the Cuban ambassador said in Mexico
Martínez Enríquez spoke on Sunday, April 19, at a rally in support of the Cuban government held at Mexico City’s Monumento a la Revolución, according to La Jornada. “No hay rendición,” he insisted: there is no surrender. The newspaper also reported that he thanked Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for rejecting interference in Cuba. The independent outlet Diario de Cuba also reported the remark and placed it in the context of a possible U.S. military action against the island.
The Cuban ambassador used La Jornada’s platform to demand collective international opposition to a possible U.S. military threat. The column regards the newspaper as aligned with Mexico’s radical left and the ambassador as a defender of authoritarian governments including Venezuela, Nicaragua and Iran.
He called the threatened punishment of countries supplying fuel to Cuba a crime and used similar language for the energy restrictions and embargo. Yet the interview, as discussed here, did not confront the conditions facing Cubans: prolonged power failures, collapsing hospitals, repression of protesters and an exodus the original column put above 1 million since 2022.
Which Cubans would die? The question about the Tablada family
The unanswered question is obvious: which Cubans would die? Independent media and exile activists have repeatedly alleged that members of the governing elite’s families enjoy lives abroad, rather than enduring eighteen-hour blackouts and bread lines on the island. They live in the capitalist countries condemned in official speeches.
Martínez Enríquez, married to Foreign Ministry official Johana Tablada, belongs to a diplomatic circle accused by exile critics of enjoying privileges unavailable to ordinary Cubans.
Related: Johana Tablada defends the regime’s repression of opponents.
A six-decade script of sacrifice for others
The rhetoric of a people who never surrender follows a script more than six decades old. The author sees the same logic in Cuban deployments to Angola, Ethiopia, Grenada and Nicaragua: leaders demand sacrifice from people whose families lack the protection enjoyed by those in power.
The comparison extends to Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, Hezbollah’s conduct in southern Lebanon and the Iranian authorities’ mobilization of young people. In the author’s assessment, leaders preaching sacrifice shield their own families from its consequences, whether in Doha, Tehran, Caracas or foreign capitals.
Human rights advocates and exile leaders have also criticized Tablada’s public attacks on the diaspora. To many exiles, the diplomatic couple represents the official double standard: heroic sacrifice for the population, capitalist comforts for the elite’s extended families. Independent outlets have published allegations about the lifestyles of officials’ relatives in Madrid, Miami, Mexico City and elsewhere.
How the Cuban diaspora read the La Jornada interview
For critics in the diaspora, the Cuban ambassador’s remark amounts to a confession: the regime is prepared to sacrifice Cuban lives before surrendering power. Families divided by the Florida Straits, mothers who lost children on rafts, parents unable to bury their loved ones and Brigade 2506 veterans read the interview as another sign that Castroism treats the population as disposable.
Meanwhile, Havana prepares its recurring campaign at the U.N. General Assembly against the embargo, a case this site examined in Granma’s argument against U.S. sanctions, without accounting for the July 11 political prisoners, the people historically executed by firing squad or the deaths of Cubans fleeing across the Straits. The original column cited more than 100 such drownings over the preceding eighteen months.
Cubans do keep dying. Those who write the speeches rarely pay the price.
View the Instagram video referenced in the original article.
