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What Is Happening with Cuba’s Official Information System?

HAVANA TIMES — On the morning of May 14, Cuban followers of Flightradar24 watched as a US Air Force Boeing C-40B Clipper landed at Jose Marti International Airport. Shortly afterward, CiberCuba reported, citing anonymous sources, that it was carrying none other than the director of the CIA.

For more than six decades, the CIA has occupied a central place in Cuba’s official narrative as the embodiment of the Revolution’s “historic enemy.” Yet state media took hours to provide its version of the events.

Something strange is happening with Cuba’s official communications apparatus amid a deep internal crisis and while Donald Trump and Marco Rubio issue explicit threats against the Island’s government. In recent months, meetings once considered unthinkable have taken place between Cuban authorities and representatives of the FBI, the CIA, and the US Southern Command. Nevertheless, much of the information about those contacts has reached the public first through alternative or US sources.

For decades, those of us living in Cuba became accustomed to a highly centralized communications system. There was a visible center of authority that produced uniform, predictable, and relatively coherent messages. On issues involving the United States, the language, formats, and messengers were clearly defined. Expressions such as “Yankee imperialism,” “criminal blockade,” or “illegal Guantanamo Naval Base” were part of a stable institutional vocabulary. Likewise, formats such as “Information for the People,” “Informative Note,” or “Statement of the Revolutionary Government” signaled a carefully crafted official position.

If something important occurred in bilateral relations, an official version was usually issued quickly, establishing the narrative before others could. That pattern now appears to have broken down.

At the beginning of 2026, Trump claimed that numerous Cubans had died during the so-called “Maduro extraction” operation in Venezuela. The official Cuban response was delayed and never fully clarified what had happened. There was an official period of mourning, but no sufficient explanation. The information vacuum left........

© Havana Times