OPINION:
Mike Hammer is neither a baseball player nor a boxer, yet he has become the most popular foreign diplomat in Cuba. Since arriving in November 2024, the U.S. charge d’affaires has met with anti-Castro dissidents, political prisoners, religious leaders and families of detainees, spoken openly about forced labor on Cuban medical missions, and openly declared that he has “prayed for a free Cuba.”
Then he did something no recent diplomat dared: He invited Cubans to stop him on the street and ask him into their homes for a cafecito. The embassy published an email address so anyone could write to him directly.
Cuba’s communist dictatorship has dismissed Mr. Hammer’s passion as a public relations stunt, but Cubans are in love.
In a country where people have long been ignored by their authorities, Mr. Hammer’s approachability stands out. Though he is a seasoned diplomat, when he speaks (in increasingly fluent Spanish), he sounds less like a politician and more like a neighbor.
Soon, he was visiting homes across the island, and people were hugging him on the streets. On social media, messages flooded the U.S. Embassy pages: “This man could be our president” and “He cares more about us than any Cuban official.” Cubans even gave him a nickname, Mike El Martillo (“The Hammer”), and gave him a blue hat stitched with a hammer.
The ruling Cuban communist aristocracy is showing signs of concern.
After Mr. Hammer visited the tomb of Jose Marti and met with opposition figures, the Cuban government accused him of “interventionism” and “inciting Cuban citizens to commit criminal acts.”
For years, Havana has trained agitators, and Cuban officials in the U.S. have long welcomed meetings with radical activist groups, including those convicted of vandalizing property. In 2024, U.S. intelligence agencies identified Cuba as interfering in American elections alongside Iran, Russia and China. Yet when a U.S. diplomat walks Havana’s streets, the regime cries incitement.
Relentless state media attacks followed, only to backfire. Rather than diminishing Mr. Hammer’s profile, they amplified it in a country where barely 4% of the population belongs to the Communist Party — the only legal political party.
On Saturday night, the regime crossed a line. In my hometown of Camaguey, a conspicuously small mob appeared to shout slurs at Mr. Hammer, guided by men with walkie-talkies. This isn’t uncommon in Cuba, where government-aligned “committees for the defense of the revolution” are used like Nazi Brownshirts to terrorize those who speak out.
Anti-Castro Cubans rushed to Mr. Hammer’s defense on social media, saying the scene was staged. They even identified some government officials posing as citizens. A young Cuban who stood up for Mr. Hammer was reportedly detained. The U.S. Embassy soon warned that the “illegitimate regime of Cuba” must halt its repressive acts against American personnel.
The attack on Mr. Hammer wasn’t a show of strength; it was fear.
Assessments suggest Cuba’s fuel reserves may last only nine to 16 more days. In periods of control under authoritarian systems, repression is quiet: surveillance, selective arrests, bureaucratic harassment. Under stress, intimidation turns public. Symbolic enemies are created to distract the citizenry. Public spectacles replace silent management.
Targeting a foreign diplomat is not normal protocol. It’s deterrence theater, aimed less at Mr. Hammer than at Cubans watching in the dark: Do not mistake crisis for weakness.
Before Mr. Hammer’s arrival, state security summoned two Catholic priests from the archdiocese of Camaguey, the Revs. Alberto Reyes and Castor Alvarez, without explanation and in the middle of a retreat. Father Reyes has publicly criticized the government’s repression and economic failures and insists the church speak for those without a voice. Father Castor, a priest for more than two decades, already knew the cost of moral witness. During the July 11 protests, he walked the streets carrying the Virgin del Cobre on his shoulders, calling for nonviolence as church bells tolled. He was beaten in the head with a baseball bat by regime forces.
On Camaguey’s outskirts, the regime once ran forced-labor camps where tens of thousands — religious believers, political nonconformists and other “undesirables” — were sent without charges, subjected to brutal conditions.
Memory matters. So does fear.
Camaguey was chosen deliberately. It combines low regime support, strong religious networks that provide alternative legitimacy and a deep memory of repression in a province that, before communism, was among Cuba’s wealthiest and most educated. As fuel shortages deepen, churches and local networks become logistical hubs, not just moral ones. The regime knows it.
As a Cuban political refugee who reports on human rights abuses across the island, I am confident intimidation will fail. For decades, the regime relied on predictable American foreign policy to manage its survival. That is gone. Regime change isn’t guaranteed, but disengagement from the region is no longer the default U.S. posture.
The shift has reignited hope. Cubans’ social media walls are now filled with visions of what could come next: bridges connecting South Florida and Cuba, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump celebrating in a free Havana, a Trump Tower replacing the concrete relics of communism in what was once called the “Paris of the Caribbean.”
These aren’t policy proposals; they are signals of a society no longer debating whether the system works but expressing its hopes for what can replace it.
Mr. Hammer’s presence has further weakened an exhausted authoritarian system. He doesn’t bring down the wall, but in today’s Cuba, he signals that the bricks are falling.
• Gelet Martinez Fragela is the editor of ADN Cuba (www.adncuba.com), a news platform tracking human rights violations on the island. She has covered Cuba extensively as an investigative journalist.
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