Nearly Four Decades of Solidarity and Action
Since 1990, Global Exchange has been at the forefront of efforts to challenge the U.S. embargo on Cuba and to build relationships between communities in our two countries. Our grassroots education programs, Reality Tours, publications, speaking tours, and campaigns have helped shape public understanding of U.S.-Cuba relations for decades.
Global Exchange has supported people-to-people exchange between the United States and Cuba by organizing hundreds of educational delegations and enabling thousands of U.S. citizens to travel legally to the island. We have also brought Cuban cultural leaders, artists, and community voices to the United States through speaking tours and public events. These exchanges have helped challenge the isolation that U.S. policy has tried to impose.
Our Cuba work began in the late 1980s, when the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples approached Global Exchange to help facilitate exchanges between U.S. visitors and Cuban communities. Over time, these programs grew into one of the longest-running people-to-people initiatives connecting communities in the United States and Cuba.
Throughout our history, Global Exchange has stepped forward in moments of crisis to stand in solidarity with the Cuban people.
In the early 1990s, during Cuba’s Special Period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Global Exchange launched the Soy Cuba campaign, mobilizing people across the United States to stand with Cuban communities facing severe shortages of fuel, food, and medicine and to build understanding about the impact of U.S. policy on everyday life.
In the mid-1990s, Global Exchange directly challenged U.S. embargo restrictions through a campaign called It’s Time to Play Ball with Cuba. During that effort, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control froze Global Exchange’s bank account because of our work to challenge travel and trade restrictions. Our leadership and board members traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for legal pathways for exchange. That period contributed to the expansion of people-to-people travel licenses, which allowed organizations like Global Exchange to legally organize educational delegations to Cuba.