In 1993, as Cuba was enduring the darkest moment of the "Special Period"—with its economy in collapse and its adversaries betting on the imminent fall of the Revolution—Fidel Castro uttered a phrase that many interpreted as a rallying cry: "Culture is the first thing that must be saved." He spoke these words before the 5th Congress of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba.
This statement did not emerge in the heat of the moment; it was a reflection matured over decades of confrontation with the most powerful nation on the planet. Fidel understood that without a sense of belonging, without the defense of core principles, and without the spirituality that sustains a nation, it would be impossible to find the strength to resist.
Shortly thereafter, in Caracas, he further refined this concept: "A revolution can only be the offspring of culture and ideas." This underscored the fact that the Cuban Revolution had survived ten U.S. administrations, an unprecedented economic blockade, and the loss of its primary ally, precisely because it possessed a revolutionary culture forged over more than a century of struggle.
In the vast and turbulent landscape of contemporary conflict, weapons are no longer the sole instrument used to subjugate nations. This multifaceted, unconventional form of warfare has shifted the center of gravity of the confrontation toward less visible—yet equally devastating—arenas: the minds, identities, and narratives that sustain a people.
Thus, in this new paradigm, culture is neither a mere ornament nor a neutral refuge; it is a primary target. The U.S. strategy against Cuba illustrates this principle precisely.
For decades, the design of subversion against the island has not been limited to economic strangulation or diplomatic encirclement; it explicitly and demonstrably incorporates a cultural component aimed at eroding national identity to facilitate defeat.
With a "factory of fabricators" running at full throttle—much as was done in Eastern Europe—they mass-produce our own versions of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, promote the values of consumer society—along with vulgarity and misogyny—through mercenary music, co-opt so-called journalists, corrupt minds, and saturate our digital ecosystem with media trash.
The stated objective is to ensure that "people renounce their identity" and "feel ashamed of their history," so that they might internalize "the paradigms and patterns of the hegemonic imperialist philosophy."
This cultural assault is integrated with other dimensions of warfare—most notably economic strangulation, which serves as more than just a material punishment; it acts as psychological pressure designed to instill hopelessness and blame the Cuban system for all ills.
A nation that no longer recognizes itself is primed to accept any fate imposed from the outside—the logic is as simple as it is cruel.
The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, has described the nature of this aggression: «erasing the cultural identity of all our peoples and all our countries; It has to erase our stories, our cultural roots; "It has to cause people to see their culture as obsolete."
It is not a biased interpretation of Havana, it is a documented strategy, the use of culture and the arts as tools of destabilization appears in manuals attributed to Gene Sharp, whose methods were tested in Eastern Europe and later adapted to Latin America.
Cognitive warfare attacks "the ability of a society to interpret its reality, to emancipate itself in its history, to think from its own experience." The purpose is not to physically destroy the adversary, but to empty the symbols that sustain its cohesion of meaning.
Achieving that "sovereignty" means isolation, that "socialism" means backwardness, that "Revolution" means dictatorship, is, in short, a war for meaning.
In a world where wars are no longer fought only with armies, but with algorithms, stories and symbols, saving culture is saving the very possibility of existing as a sovereign nation, Fidel understood it before almost anyone, the 1993 phrase was not a metaphor, much less an empty slogan.