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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://resumen-english.org/2026/02/cuba-option-zero/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Cuba. Option Zero</h1>
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<p>By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on February 13, 2026 from Havana</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33659" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-33659" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/2-16-b5235c74-1f3c-45ca-96a1-a1426db0862a-e1770939915872-300x200.png?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="200" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33659" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Fidel, foto: Roberto Chile</p></div>
<p>Option Zero was the revolutionary government\u2019s contingency plan for
the moment of total blockade from abroad and, therefore, the absolute
lack of oil in the country.<span id="gmail-more-33658"></span></p>
<p>On July 26, 2010, in the small theater of the José Martí Memorial in Havana, a convalescent <strong>Fidel Castro</strong>,
dressed in olive green and recovering from several operations, walked
down the aisle greeting those in the nearby seats. He said
conspiratorially to the woman sitting next to me: \u201cThere\u2019s Rosa Miriam\u2026 <strong>Do you know that one day she asked me if we were going to survive the Special Period?\u201d</strong></p>
<p>He had just recalled an afternoon in 1990, 20 years earlier, when, as
a newly graduated journalist, I was assigned to report on a routine
event at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB),
which Fidel suddenly attended. For more than four hours, he explained
what Cubans would experience after the disappearance of the USSR, a
historic moment that was called the Special Period because, as the
commander-in-chief said at the time, \u201cno one knows what kind of
practical problems may arise.\u201d</p>
<p>Cuba lost a third of its gross domestic product between 1991 and
1994, and the U.S. blockade was opportunistically tightened, first by
Republican George Bush (senior) and then by Democrat Bill Clinton. Among
all the hardships we endured, perhaps the hardest was the epidemic of
neuropathy associated with a sharp drop in food intake: from almost
4,000 calories a day to just over 1,000. Real, daily hunger left
physical and psychological scars on millions of Cubans that still linger
today.</p>
<p>But at the CIGB, on that afternoon in 1990, it was the first time
that the Cuban leader described in great detail the harsh economic
restrictions that were coming, and there was talk in Cuba of Option
Zero. Fidel, who always spoke the truth, was so graphic\u2014communal pots,
bicycles and carts as the only means of transportation, blackouts, food
rationing more than usual\u2014that we were all in shock. And when he
finished speaking and approached the journalists, a passionate question
came from my heart: \u201cDo you really think we will survive?\u201d</p>
<p>He explained again that <strong>Option Zero</strong> was the
revolutionary government\u2019s contingency plan for the moment of total
blockade from abroad and, therefore, the absolute lack of oil in the
country. A strategy was designed for that scenario, and every link in
society was organized to maintain a minimum of economic activity, as
well as vital education and health centers, with provisions for an even
worse situation: that of military aggression. The people would even be
trained to survive without water and electricity for many days.</p>
<p>I remember the patience with which Fidel explained that this plan was
not a propaganda slogan, but a defensive planning tool. It
psychologically prepared the country for an extreme scenario, sent a
signal that the state was organizing itself even for the worst outcome,
and expressed an explicit willingness not to capitulate, even under
extreme material conditions.</p>
<p>At a recent press conference, President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated that
the national survival protocols conceived during the hardest years of
the Special Period not only exist, but have been revised, modernized,
and are ready to be activated if necessary.</p>
<p>In the 1990s, Cuba faced a sudden collapse without a \u201cmanual,\u201d while
today it faces a severe crisis with more experience, more tools to
withstand shortages, and some technological and sectoral
capabilities\u2014including some domestic crude oil\u2014that allow it to resist
with greater resilience, although the weak point remains the same core:
energy, foreign currency, and imports.</p>
<p>Added to this is the fact that Trump\u2019s sanctions and threats have
united the country. When explicit threats become so visible in their
daily effects, they leave less room for the idea that \u201cit\u2019s all just a
story\u201d and begin to operate like any other pedagogy of violence.</p>
<p>Harassment and pain awaken the survival instinct, generate more
solidarity, strengthen social tolerance for extreme measures, and affirm
the common sense that a dispute like this is not only domestic, but
geopolitical and coercive. Seeing Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Miami
congressmen celebrate the damage they are doing, while shouting \u201czero
oil, zero remittances, zero food and medicine shipments,\u201d has outraged
even the stones in Cuba.</p>
<p>But they do not calculate the powers of history. After I asked Fidel
the question in Biotechnology, he spent almost two more hours explaining
to me why Cubans would emerge from the Special Period and the Zero
Option. He closed with a phrase that answered that question from the
heart: <strong>\u201cWe will survive by resisting, resisting, and resisting. As we have done before.\u201d</strong></p>
<p>Twenty years later, at the José Martí Memorial Theater, Fidel
finished his speech and walked back down the aisle he had entered. When
he passed by my seat, he paused for a moment: \u201cDid you see, my daughter,
that we were able to resist?\u201d</p>
<p><strong><em>Rosa Miriam Elizalde</em></strong> is a Cuban journalist
who is First Vice President of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) and
was a founder of Cubadebate, she is a writer of several books and a
regular contributor to La Jornada.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.resumenlatinoamericano.org/2026/02/12/cuba-opcion-cero/">Resumen Latinoamericano \u2013 Buenos Aires</a></p>
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