MIAMI — Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel stepped before state media cameras Friday morning and confirmed what weeks of speculation, secret diplomacy, and a nation’s worth of pot-banging protests had been pointing toward: the United States and Cuba are talking. Officially. For the first time since the Trump administration took office.
The announcement—delivered on Friday the 13th, a date Cubans on social media could not resist noting—ended weeks of official denial and transformed a slow-burning diplomatic drama into one of the most consequential bilateral developments in the Western Hemisphere in a generation.
What Díaz-Canel Said
Speaking at a carefully controlled press conference broadcast nationally on radio and television, Díaz-Canel confirmed that talks had been held with the U.S. government, saying they “were aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the bilateral differences between our two nations. International factors facilitated these exchanges.”
He described it as “a highly sensitive process” that “demands enormous and significant efforts to find solutions and create spaces for understanding that will allow us to move away from confrontation,” adding that Cuba was willing to carry out the process “on the basis of equality and respect for the countries’ political systems and for Cuba’s sovereignty and self-determination.”
In the most significant disclosure of the morning, Díaz-Canel confirmed that both he and Raúl Castro are directly involved in the negotiations—reversing weeks of official denials and contradicting earlier reports that Rubio had been bypassing Díaz-Canel by communicating exclusively with Raúl Castro’s grandson. “It is a long process. We are in the initial phases of that process,” the president stated.
“We are still far from an agreement because we are in the initial phases,” Díaz-Canel said. According to the Cuban leader, the purpose of the discussions is to determine which bilateral issues require solutions, identify possible ways to resolve them, and assess whether both governments are willing to take steps that could benefit people in both countries. He compared the current talks explicitly to the Obama-era diplomatic opening of 2014–2016—a deliberate signal that Havana views this process as a negotiated normalization, not a capitulation.
Díaz-Canel also acknowledged Cuba’s severe fuel shortage directly and without euphemism: “For three months, no fuel ships have arrived. We are working under very adverse conditions that are having an impact on the lives of all our people.” He confirmed that Cuba produces approximately 40% of its own petroleum, but that domestic production has been insufficient to meet demand.
On the energy front, he announced that 955 solar panels have been installed in rural homes and social centers, and that more solar systems coming online before the end of March would add 100 megawatts to Cuba’s crumbling electric grid—before adding: “Even with everything we’re putting together, we still need oil.”
In a notable development at the end of the press conference, Díaz-Canel confirmed that FBI officials would visit Cuba soon, as both countries continue to share information on a recent incident in which a Florida-flagged speedboat was shot by Cuban forces in Cuban waters, killing four of the ten Cubans aboard from the U.S.
The five surviving suspects have been detained and face terrorism charges in Cuba.
The 51 Prisoners—and the Questions They Raise
The press conference came one day after Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the release of 51 prisoners—a move framed as a goodwill gesture tied to Vatican relations and the upcoming Holy Week. The government said the release stems from a spirit of goodwill and close relations with the Vatican, noting that all 51 “have served a significant part of their sentence and have maintained good conduct in prison.”
The government did not identify the individuals or clarify whether any are political prisoners.
The nonprofit Prisoners Defenders has documented 1,214 political prisoners in Cuba as of February 2026. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have demanded the release of all prisoners of conscience—including artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez, both imprisoned for peaceful expression.
University of Miami Cuba studies professor Dr. Andy Gomez framed the prisoner release carefully. “I think they just made a first step, if you will, of good faith, showing the United States that they’re willing to do something,” Gomez said—while raising the central outstanding questions: are any of the 51 political prisoners, and will the government release more?
The Skeptics
Not everyone is reading Friday’s announcements as the beginning of a historic opening. Florida Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart has clarified publicly that the U.S. State Department is not “negotiating” with the Cuban government in Havana—but rather calling the shots from Washington.
The distinction matters: if Washington’s position is that Cuba must meet three specific legal conditions before the embargo can be lifted—liberation of all political prisoners; legalization of all political parties and the press; and scheduling of free multiparty elections—then 51 unnamed prisoner releases fall conspicuously short.
José Daniel Ferrer, the prominent Cuban dissident now living in the United States after his own release last year, was unsparing in his assessment, writing on X Thursday night, Ferrer warned:
“They are desperate to buy time. The Cuban people who are rising up in our Homeland and in the Exile and in the United States must not give the tyranny any respite. We must not fall into the trap of the Castro-communist regime that only seeks to buy time and uses the Vatican for diabolical purposes.”
Inside Cuba, the reaction to Díaz-Canel’s press conference announcement was similarly skeptical. On social media, Cubans responded with irony and exhaustion—many anticipating that the speech would bring no concrete solutions to urgent crises. “A bit more of the same,” wrote one user. “I already know the song,” wrote another. Some noted the irony of Díaz-Canel scheduling a nationally broadcast address on a day when much of the country had no electricity to watch it.
What It Means
Díaz-Canel warned that negotiations were “long processes” that require willingness and channels for dialogue—“All of that takes time,” he said.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the confirmed talks.
What changed Friday morning is the existence of a confirmed diplomatic channel—one that both Washington and Havana now acknowledge publicly, with the most consequential figures in Cuban politics, including Raúl Castro himself, personally involved.
Whether that channel produces the three legal conditions required to lift the U.S. embargo, or merely produces enough gestures to relieve international pressure while extending the regime’s survival, is the question that will define Cuba’s 2026.
Miami’s Cuban exile community, on the other hand, which has watched seven consecutive nights of pot-banging protests across the island, received Díaz-Canel’s confirmation of talks not as an answer, but as the beginning of a harder negotiation. The drums are still banging in Havana. The question now is who blinks first.
