[News] The Global Convoy to Cuba: Response to Washington’s Strangling of Cuba

[Anti-Imperialist News]

orinocotribune.com
<https://orinocotribune.com/the-global-convoy-to-cuba-response-to-washingtons-strangling-of-cuba/>
The Global Convoy to Cuba: Response to Washington’s Strangling of Cuba
Stansfield Smith
March 17, 2026
------------------------------

[image: Logo for the Nuestra America Convoy to Cuba. Photo:
NuestraAmericaConvoy.org.]

Logo for the Nuestra America Convoy to Cuba. Photo:
NuestraAmericaConvoy.org.

By Stansfield Smith  –  Mar 17, 2026

*Stansfield Smith, ChicagoALBASolidarity.org. Stan has worked in the Cuba,
Venezuela, and Nicaragua solidarity movements for close to half a century.
He also has put out the Venezuela & ALBA Weekly News since 2013.*

In 1962 the US imposed an economic blockade on Cuba designed “to bring
about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.
<https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/27400-document-1-state-department-memorandum-decline-and-fall-castro-secret-april-6-1960>”
Until 1990 this brutality was greatly alleviated by the solidarity of the
socialist countries which provided the Cuban people with essential trade
and aid. That provided some protection, but as 638 Ways to Kill Castro
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SymFxZHqd1A> illustrates, the US had other
tools, including many acts of terrorism and biological warfare.

Despite decades of resistance to the blockade by solidarity organizations
in the US, despite polls consistently showing most people being against the
blockade, despite the United Nations General Assembly votes for the last 33
years to demand the lifting of the US blockade, Washington has not only
been oblivious, but has ramped up the economic warfare
<https://portside.org/2026-02-26/trumps-cruelty-strangling-cuba-its-oil-reserves-could-be-empty-march?utm_source=portside-general&utm_medium=email>.
Washington again declared Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, providing no
basis for this allegation. This designation allows the US to use its
control over the world financial system (e.g., SWIFT, IMF, World Bank, and
the US dollar as the international currency) to sanction or block trade and
transactions with Cuba. Countries, banks, and companies having business
relations with Cuba face sanctions for supporting “terrorism.” This
severely restricts Cuba’s ability to trade, receive foreign investment and
credit.

The blockade cost Cuba $7.5 billion in 2025
<https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-to-the-economic-suffocation-of-cuba/>,
$20.5 million per day. Since 1960, this de facto fine for exercising its
right to national self-determination has cost Cuba $170 billion. On January
29, the US squeezed Cuba much more, imposing a blockade on all oil to Cuba,
ready to economically punish any country that ships oil. Because of US
world economic power, no country challenges this. Last year Mexico supplied
44%
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/02/20/the-cuban-revolution-holds-out-against-us-imperialism/>
of Cuba’s imported crude oil, and Venezuela 34%. Cuba has received no oil
since mid-December.

Obviously, these US actions violate international law, as did the attack on
Venezuela, the kidnapping of President Maduro, and imposing control over
its oil exports. And as did the slaughter in Gaza, the war on Iran and
assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei. But, like the yearly UN vote calling
for removal of the US blockade on Cuba, the US feels powerful enough to
simply ignore this.

Without living there, we still cannot really grasp how all-encompassing
this US war on Cuba <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eBpuUNUIKE> is. Marta
Jiménez, a hairdresser in Holguín, explained the present oil blockade on
Cuba to CodePink’s  Medea Benjamin
<https://peaceandjustice.org/suffocating-an-island/>:

“You can’t imagine how it touches every part of our lives. It’s a vicious,
all-encompassing spiral downward. With no gasoline, buses don’t run, so we
can’t get to work. We have electricity for only three to six hours a day.
There’s no gas for cooking, so we’re burning wood and charcoal in our
apartments. It’s like going back 100 years. The blockade is suffocating us
— especially single mothers … and no one is stopping these demons, Trump
and Marco Rubio.”

Now, the US is even working on criminal indictments against Cuban leaders
<https://groups.io/g/cubanews/topic/118188413>, not before the
International Criminal Court for violating international law, but in US
courts for breaking US laws, as it is doing to President Nicolas Maduro
right now. The US Treasury is even looking into charging Cuban leaders with
violation of the US blockade on their country!

Having visited Cuba about 15 times between 1979 and 2019, I have seen how
US economic warfare on the island has devastated Cubans’ standard of living
after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. It has seriously undermined many
aspects of the inspiring example of their socialist model. Compared to
1979, the tightening US blockade has brought much more inequality, fewer
social services, and more poverty. The US delivers Cubans deteriorating
general health by denying medicines and medical materials. Even hunger,
long ago eliminated, the US has reintroduced. The oil blockade aims to
disable the electrical system, all transport, and water pumping equipment,
recreating the desperation the US and Israel inflicted on Gaza.

Cuban President Díaz-Canel
<https://cubaenresumen.org/2026/03/13/cuba-comparecencia-del-presidente-miguel-diaz-canel-ante-la-prensa/>
added, “Right now in the country there are tens of thousands of people
waiting for surgery that cannot be performed due to the lack of
electricity.” Mothers now see their babies fighting for their lives in
incubators that have been turned off because of the oil blockade. Diesel
runs short, garbage trucks stop. Trash piles up. Mosquitoes spread. Disease
follows. This, Washington says, will bring freedom and democracy to Cuba.

Raúl Antonio Capote, the Cuban state security agent who infiltrated the
CIA, recently wrote that the Cuban economy now faces a deep crisis
<https://resumen-english.org/2026/02/analysis-of-possible-scenarios-cuba-us-in-2026/>.
But does that mean that the collapse of the Cuban government is imminent or
that “regime change” is about to occur?  Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Oscar
Perez-Oliva Fraga says absolutely not: “This is an opportunity and a
challenge that we have no doubt we will overcome. We are not going to
collapse.”

Cuba does carry unresolved problems from the past that the US weaponizes
against them. Cuba succeeded little in becoming self-sufficient in food,
unlike Nicaragua and even Venezuela, which imported 80% of its food 15
years ago. A country that must import its basic food – and we now witness,
energy – hands the US powerful tools for control and “regime change.” Henry
Kissinger noted, “Control oil and you control nations. Control food and you
control people.” Cuba still spends more than $2 billion a year to import 70-80%
of its food <https://wfpusa.org/place/cuba/>, even sugar and coffee.

Today Cuba struggles with the US empire using the energy weapon against
them, having relied heavily on imported oil. Cuba belatedly turned to solar
power, whose production has jumped from 5.8% in early 2025 to over 20% of
its total energy generation, most thanks to China’s aid. Renewable energy
now accounts for 50% of daytime electricity generation
<https://cubaenresumen.org/2026/03/13/cuba-comparecencia-del-presidente-miguel-diaz-canel-ante-la-prensa/>
.

Another problem President Diaz-Canel
<https://www.radiorebelde.cu/english/speech-by-cuban-president-miguel-diaz-canel-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-peoples-power-in-cuba-25022026/>
recently spoke out against: “we are still held back too much by centralism,
the excessive centralization that stifles the creative initiative of
individuals, groups, and municipalities.” Decentralization of planning
<https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2026-02-05/cuban-president-appears-before-the-media>
is a priority, moving toward a more market-based set of production
decisions and incentives.

Now Deputy Prime Minister Oscar Perez-Oliva Fraga says Cuba is open to
allow those of Cuban origin living abroad to open and invest in private
business on the island <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0WN44GLayo>. This
hardly means restoring capitalism. A socialist economic system does not
demand the abolition of the market nor private property. It means the
abolition of the hegemony of capital. The socialist economic system of the
Soviet Union (and Cuba during the Soviet period), the state planning and
control of all production and distribution, represented only one model. In
the present Chinese or Vietnamese model, the “commanding heights of the
economy <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/nov/13b.htm>” lie
in the nationalized state sector, under control of the Communist Party.
Widespread non-state sector business flourish in other spheres. Cuba
itself, since 2021, has slowly moved in this direction, and now over 11,000
private and state-owned Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises (MSMEs)
to revive a struggling economy. Today about 38% of the Cuban workforce are
said to be in private MSMEs and cooperatives
<https://horizontecubano.law.columbia.edu/news/challenges-private-sector-cuban-economic-model-part-two#!#text-3694>
.

Yet the overwhelming problem for Cuba remains the genocidal US oil
blockade, on top of the US State Sponsor of Terrorism listing that
criminalizes all trade, on top of the 65 year US blockade. Today many
organizations are stepping up to counter US strangulation. Organizations
around the world are raising funds and materials for Cuba. In the US,
prominent among them are Global Health Partners
<https://ghpartners.org/sutures/>, Medicc,
<https://mailchi.mp/medicc/light-for-life-generating-solar-energy-for-cuban-maternity-homes-2?e=8c4ea5eeaa>
Peoples
Forum <https://x.com/PeoplesForumNYC/status/2031853533436301686>, Code Pink
<https://www.codepink.org/cubaconvoypr>, and Hatuey Project
<https://www.hatueyproject.org/>. Probably thousands, like Greta Thunberg
<https://www.facebook.com/reel/4450433531895609>,  are coming with the Global
Convoy to Cuba <https://nuestraamericaconvoy.org/>, arriving March 21,
bringing desperately needed material aid. This will be a rebuke to
Washington’s brutality and will hopefully inspire nations around the world
to act.

David Adler <https://jacobin.com/2026/02/cuba-trump-nuestra-america-convoy>,
Progressive International organizer of the Global Convoy, explained:

*“When governments enforce collective punishment, ordinary people have a
responsibility to act…break the siege, bring food and medicine, and show
that solidarity can cross any border, land, or sea. The first aim is to
deliver critical aid to the Cuban people that can redress the humanitarian
consequences of the January 29 US executive order, which establishes a fuel
blockade around the island.” For instance, “the executive order means that
if a fire broke out, there’d be no fire truck to reach it. It’s a crisis
with consequences that rise exponentially as its effects multiply across
sectors.”*

*“The primary threat that Cuba represents [to Washington] is its example to
the world, about the nature of solidarity and the nature of
self-determination.” The US “actively seeks retribution on those who dare
to rebel. And no country, no revolution, no political project has been more
rebellious in the face of that imperial violence than Cuba…So the
resistance against this, the solidarity with Cuba, is also about stopping
the US government’s ability to isolate and punish anyone who dares to stand
up against it.”*

The Cuban Revolution represents an example for our human future: it
nationalized the country’s wealth and resources and placed them under the
rule of the direct representatives of workers and peasants and has stood up
to imperialism for over 65 years. It played a world historic role in
dismantling Israel’s twin apartheid state, South Africa. The destruction of
the Cuban Revolution would be a painful setback for the world movement
against imperialism, for the world anti-war movement, for the world human
rights movement. It would embolden US imperial aggression even more,
everywhere. For our own self-preservation, we must do what we can to aid
Cuba.

SS/OT

Stansfield Smith is a Chicago-based anti-imperialist activist. He was
active for over a decade in the Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5. His
work is now on ChicagoALBASolidarity.wordpress.com
<http://chicagoalbasolidarity.wordpress.com/>. He has written on Venezuela,
Bolivia, and Ecuador for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and on North
Korea for Counterpunch and others.
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