Cuba strengthens organisation and preparedness for enemy threat

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel visited the Cubanacán Zone Defence Council in Havana’s Playa municipality, where he reviewed preparations for responding to potential threats. The visit reaffirmed the government’s decision to make defence preparedness a central task in the current period, while also maintaining wartime organisational structures during peacetime so that communities can respond more rapidly to crises. Díaz-Canel also called for lessons from these preparations to be documented for both present use and historical record.

During the Defence Day exercise, local authorities explained the measures in place for different emergency scenarios, including warning and protection systems for the more than 17,000 residents of the area. More than 30 production-and-defence brigades have been organised. The authorities also discussed everyday problems affecting residents, including power cuts, waste collection, water shortages, sewage discharges and crime, as well as measures being taken to address them.

A major focus was the economic and social response at the local level. Authorities reported efforts to increase food production, assist elderly and vulnerable people, strengthen medical services, produce natural and traditional medicines, restore sports facilities and children's parks, and prepare for the new school year. Díaz-Canel urged the authorities to make use of vacant land for food production by both institutions and families, while maximising all available local resources.

Díaz-Canel also gave specific instructions on water supply, payments and waste management, including establishing water storage facilities in areas with longer distribution intervals, improving payment mechanisms for pensioners, expanding digital payments and combating excessive and speculative prices. He said waste collection should improve with the arrival of new equipment such as trucks and container systems.

Finally, Díaz-Canel emphasised implementation of the government's 176 economic and social transformations, particularly measures aimed at strengthening municipal autonomy. He noted that 134 of the 176 measures already have the necessary legal framework and urged municipalities and local people's councils to begin implementing them. Local authorities were instructed to identify unused productive capacities and find ways to put them back into operation, involving both state and non-state economic actors. Throughout these efforts, Díaz-Canel stressed, social justice must remain the guiding principle, with particular attention to preventing greater inequality and supporting genuinely vulnerable people.