[News] Cuba Must Not Fall!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

resumen-english.org
<https://resumen-english.org/2026/02/cuba-must-not-fall/>
Cuba Must Not Fall!
------------------------------

By Isaac Saney on February 7, 2026

<https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/c_2889-scaled.jpg?ssl=1>

“I am Fidel” Plaza of the Revolution, foto: Bill Hackwell

*The survival of Cuba’s socialist project remains one of the most critical
holdouts against hemispheric domination, making its defense a global litmus
test for sovereignty.*

The struggle to defend the Cuban Revolution—to preserve Cuba’s
independence, sovereignty, and right to self-determination—is not simply
the struggle of a small Caribbean nation resisting a powerful neighbour.
Nor is it confined to the geographical contours of an island of eleven
million people. It is, rather, a struggle with profound and incalculable
consequences for Latin America, the Caribbean, and the global fight for
justice, human dignity, and the right of peoples to live free from
imperialist diktat. What is at stake in Cuba has never been merely Cuba
itself. The fate of the Cuban Revolution is inseparable from the broader
historical contest between domination and emancipation, between empire and
sovereignty, between a world ordered by profit and power and one grounded
in human need and collective dignity.

>From its very inception, the Cuban Revolution represented a rupture in the
global order of imperialism. In the Western Hemisphere—long treated by
Washington as its private preserve—Cuba asserted the radical proposition
that a small, formerly colonized country could chart its own path, control
its own resources, and prioritize social justice over foreign capital. That
defiance, more than any specific policy or alliance, has been the enduring
“crime” of the Cuban Revolution. The relentless hostility directed at Cuba
for over six decades—economic warfare, political isolation, sabotage,
terrorism, and ideological assault—cannot be understood as a response to
Cuban actions alone. It is a warning, aimed at the rest of the Global
South, of the price of disobedience.

In 1991, amid the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the triumphalist
declarations of the “end of history,” Fidel Castro offered a stark and
prescient assessment of the moment. “Now internationalism means defending
and preserving the Cuban Revolution,” he stated. “To defend this trench,
this bastion of socialism, is the greatest service we can offer to
humanity.” This was not rhetorical flourish. It was a strategic and moral
diagnosis of a new global conjuncture. With the socialist camp dismantled
and neoliberalism ascendant, the survival of the Cuban Revolution itself
became an act of internationalism—an objective barrier against the
unchallenged expansion of imperial power and market fundamentalism.

Three years later, on November 25, 1994, Fidel sharpened this argument in
his closing speech to the World Conference in Solidarity with Cuba. “We
understand what it would mean for all the progressive forces, for all the
revolutionary forces, for all the lovers of peace and justice in the world,
if the United States succeeded in crushing the Cuban Revolution,” he
declared. “And because of this we consider defending the revolution along
with you to be our most sacred duty, even at the cost of death.” These
words captured a truth often obscured in mainstream discourse: the
destruction of the Cuban Revolution would not be a neutral event. It would
be a historic defeat for all those struggling against exploitation, racism,
militarism, and imperial domination.

History offers powerful confirmation of this insight. Just as the existence
of the Russian Revolution in 1917 ignited revolutionary movements and
anti-colonial struggles across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the
Cuban Revolution has functioned as an objective force against imperialism
since 1959. Its very survival has demonstrated that alternatives are
possible—that the rule of capital and empire is not immutable. Even when
materially constrained, besieged, and isolated, Cuba’s continued existence
as a sovereign, socialist project has exerted an influence far beyond its
borders, shaping political imagination and sustaining hope in moments of
global retreat.

But the Cuban Revolution has been more than a symbol. It has been an
active, conscious agent in the ideological and political struggle against
imperialism. Cuba has convened and hosted a remarkable array of
conferences, symposia, and international gatherings that challenge the
prevailing world economic and political order of neoliberalism. From
solidarity meetings with national liberation movements, to forums of
intellectuals and social movements, to initiatives linking struggles in the
Global South, Cuba has consistently worked to build what might be called
unity of awareness and unity of consciousness—with the ultimate aim of
unity in action. This work has been grounded in a vision of
internationalism not as charity or paternalism, but as shared struggle.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the impact of this orientation has been
especially profound. Cuba’s steadfast resistance helped create the
political and moral conditions for the resurgence of progressive
governments in the early twenty-first century and the emergence of regional
projects aimed at sovereignty and integration. Even when such efforts have
faced setbacks, the Cuban example has remained a reference point—a reminder
that dignity, social justice, and independence are not abstractions but
lived possibilities, even under conditions of extreme pressure.

Globally, Cuba’s role has extended to concrete practices of solidarity that
defy the logic of empire. Its commitment to international medical
cooperation, education, and disaster relief has offered a radically
different model of global engagement—one rooted in human need rather than
profit or geopolitical domination.

Besieged by the empire, the heroic island nation has made invaluable
contributions to the well-being of the world’s nations and peoples, having
established an unparalleled legacy of internationalism and humanitarianism.
Over 400,000 Cuban medical personnel have served in 164 countries fighting
disease. It is internationalist Cuba which selflessly dispatched tens of
thousands of medical personnel to dozens of countries across the world to
fight disease, be it Ebola or COVID-19.

More than 2,000 Cubans gave their lives in the struggles to liberate Africa
from the scourge of colonialism and the racist apartheid South African
state. As Nelson Mandela emphasized: “The Cuban people hold a special place
in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have
made a contribution to African independence, freedom, and justice,
unparalleled for its principled and selfless character.”

These practices underscore why the Cuban Revolution has been both a
symbolic and a concrete anchor in the struggle for a more just world. They
reveal a politics in which ethics and power are not divorced, and in which
the value of a society is measured by its contribution to humanity, not by
its accumulation of wealth.

This is precisely why Cuba must not fall. The crushing of the Cuban
Revolution would embolden imperial aggression everywhere. It would
reinforce the doctrine that no country, however principled its aspirations,
can defy the dictates of global capital and survive. It would deepen
cynicism and despair among oppressed peoples and movements struggling for
emancipation, sending a chilling message that resistance is futile and
alternatives are illusions.

Conversely, the defence of Cuba affirms a different historical logic. It
insists that sovereignty matters, that small nations have rights, and that
social justice is not a utopian dream but a concrete political project
worth defending. To stand with Cuba is not to romanticize its challenges or
deny its contradictions; it is to recognize that the broader struggle for
justice, peace, and human dignity is inseparable from the survival of one
of its most enduring and defiant embodiments.

In this sense, defending the Cuban Revolution remains, as Fidel insisted,
an act of internationalism in its most profound form. It is a defense not
only of a country, but of a principle: that humanity has the right—and the
capacity—to imagine and build a world beyond imperial domination. Cuba must
not fall because if it does, the loss will not be Cuba’s alone. It will
belong to all those who dare to believe that another world is possible.

*Isaac Saney* is a Black Studies and Cuba specialist and coordinator of
the Black and African Diaspora Studies (BAFD) program at Dalhousie
University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Source: Black Agenda Report
<https://blackagendareport.com/cuba-must-not-fall-imperialism-resistance-and-global-stakes-defending-cuban-revolution>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20260209/e95c5aee/attachment.htm>