Nobody would bet that we have to wait the 62,000 millennia that someone once predicted, nor the two weeks (which have already passed) that the most optimistic predicted.
14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, June 4, 2026 / After it occured to me to describe what the scenarios and actors would be in a presumed transition in Cuba, those who read me keep asking how long it will take for everything to change or, at least, as the great culprit would say, for what needs to be changed to change.
Although time is a dimension that we appreciate in measurable units, days, months and years, no one would bet that we have to wait the 62,000 millennia that someone once predicted, nor the two weeks (already passed) that the most optimistic predicted.
So I’ll leave you with these “algorithms.”
In the scenario of a social explosion, where the people are the main actors, the temporal variable is expressed in the duration of those material realities that directly affect the duration of patience. The endurance of the people.
There is a time when even the best-stocked pantries in homes run dry, another when power outages cause food to spoil in market refrigerators, and another, slightly longer, when the lack of fuel cannot complete the mythical “supply chain: port, transport, domestic economy,” leaving the warehouses empty. After these events accumulate, families are left without food, and since there’s no electricity to pump water from the aqueducts, they can’t bathe, wash dishes, cook, or wash their clothes. Then discontent builds, a desperation that leads to protest.
Time is bought with political capital, and its price is determined by the supply in that volatile market. Time is running out, and they have less and less political capital.
When time is introduced as a variable to predict how long it will be before those in power in Cuba decide to prioritize saving the country over the ideology of the only permitted party, one cannot forget that their specialty has been precisely buying time, and the 67 years that have passed prove it. But time is bought with political capital, and its price is determined by the supply available in that volatile market. Time is running out, and their political capital is dwindling.
It is often said that the patience of the people is like a time bomb. The situation could be compared to that scene in thrillers where, faced with a countdown clock, the person in charge of defusing the explosive device that leads to total collapse is faced with the dilemma of cutting the blue wire, to pave the way for reforms, or the red wire, to give the order to fight and unleash repression.
External pressure, exerted especially by the United States government with more cuts and military threats, has ripped out all the pages of the almanac that adorns the room where the dictatorship makes decisions, and an incessant ticking forces them to sit down to negotiate where there is only one option left: give in or commit suicide.
The variable of foreign intervention has its own timetable, which, although not unrelated to the patience of the Cuban people or the intransigence of the dictatorship, depends on internal factors.
Since the “Cuba issue” is an electoral theme for the United States government, as well as a point of inflection in its foreign policy, there has been much speculation that President Donald Trump would like to have this problem resolved before the midterm elections in November. The other, less precise timeframe relates to how much time the United States has left to end (in its favor) the conflict it is waging with Iran.
But Trump hasn’t had to wait to take other measures, such as cutting off the island’s fuel supply, giving a deadline to foreign companies who trade with the military in GAESA and, more recently, preventing Visa and Mastercard credit cards from working in Cuba. General Raúl Castro, officially dubbed in recent years “the leader at the head of the Revolution,” has been declared a fugitive from U.S. justice, and there is open talk of taking him by force.
To answer the question of how much longer, perhaps it is not necessary to synchronize the clocks of each stage, of each actor. The sun, for its part, will continue to rise in the East each dawn, indifferent to the will of humankind. There is less time left. That is the answer.
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