Option Zero

Option Zero was the revolutionary government’s contingency plan for the moment of total blockade from abroad and, therefore, the absolute lack of oil in the country. On July 26, 2010, in the small theater of the José Martí Memorial in Havana, a convalescent Fidel Castro, dressed in olive green and recovering from several operations, walked down the aisle greeting those in the nearby seats. He said conspiratorially to the woman sitting next to me: “There’s Rosa Miriam… Do you know that one day she asked me if we were going to survive the Special Period?”