A map is the most innocent-looking instrument of power.
It lies flat. It makes distances seem manageable. It turns water into blue space, cities into points, and people into terrain. A map permits a room full of officials to imagine that a country is a problem with an edge, a sequence, a number of men, an hour of first light. It conceals the apartment building where the water pump has stopped, the grandmother who has learned to sleep in the heat, the young man deciding whether to leave, the mother counting batteries. It does not show the queue.
This week, Cuba returned to the Pentagon’s table.
CBS News reported on July 16 that senior defense officials had examined possible military action against the island, including an Army-led air assault involving thousands of troops. The network’s sources also stressed that no operation had been decided. That distinction matters. A contingency plan is not an invasion. A briefing is not a landing. But a map does not need to become an order to alter the air in a room. It has already done its first work when people begin speaking of a neighboring country as a manageable next phase. (cbsnews.com)
The report arrived alongside a smaller but revealing piece of presidential language. Donald Trump said in a July 14 Fox News interview that “a lot of things” would happen in Cuba in the next couple of months, while declining to rule out force. The U.S.
Natalia Suyos writes for Cuba Journal on Dispatches.
