Solidarity With Cuba in the Face of Economic Warfare

We are writing at a moment of grave urgency.

On January 29, the U.S. government took a dangerous step toward open economic warfare against the people of Cuba. President Trump declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and authorized sweeping new measures designed to cut the island off from fuel — the lifeblood of electricity, water, transportation, food systems, and hospitals.

This is an emergency.

It is now widely reported that Cuba has as little as 15–20 days of oil remaining. As a result of direct U.S. threats and economic coercion, Venezuelan shipments have been halted, Mexico’s state oil company has suspended deliveries, and other countries are being threatened with punitive tariffs if they continue fuel transfers. The consequences are already unfolding: prolonged blackouts, fuel rationing, stalled transportation, and deepening hardship across the island.

This is economic warfare waged through hunger, darkness, and the collapse of life-sustaining systems.

For more than six decades, the U.S. blockade has sought to break Cuba through economic strangulation. What we are witnessing now is not a departure from that strategy, but its most dangerous escalation yet, deliberately leveraging systemic breakdown in the hope that desperation will succeed where decades of coercion have failed.

Since 1990, Global Exchange has been at the forefront of the movement to normalize U.S.–Cuba relations and end the blockade (bloqueo). That same year, we launched our first travel challenge to Cuba under the Freedom to Travel campaign, demanding that the U.S. government: End the U.S. blockade on Cuba; End travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba; Remove Cuba from the U.S. list of terrorist countries

Through education, publications, speaking tours, campaigns, and our Cuba Reality Tours program, we have accompanied thousands of people to Cuba, breaking the blockade of information and building people-to-people solidarity grounded in truth, dignity, and mutual respect.

And yet, more than thirty years later, most of these demands remain unmet. Instead of normalization, we are witnessing renewed escalation. Instead of dialogue, coercion and the deliberate manufacture of crisis.

Global Exchange stands in unwavering solidarity with the people of Cuba. No nation should be starved into submission for refusing U.S. domination. Cuba is not a threat. What threatens peace and stability is the use of economic warfare as foreign policy.

Secondary sanctions criminalize trade and cooperation, using force and threat to bring the entire international community into line and making solidarity itself a punishable act. At the same time, the U.S. government is intensifying violence at home — against immigrants, workers, and communities demanding dignity and democracy. These are not separate struggles. They are rooted in the same system of militarism and coercion.

Cuba’s people know this reality intimately. And still, they organize, sustaining systems of collective care that have ensured universal health care, near-universal literacy, and strong community networks even under relentless pressure. Neighborhoods share resources, doctors continue to serve without basic supplies, educators keep schools open, and communities care for one another under conditions the U.S. government is actively trying to make unbearable. This is organized, collective resistance.

Year after year, the overwhelming majority of the world condemns the U.S. blockade at the United Nations. Washington persists — not because this policy brings peace, but because diplomacy has been replaced with economic war.

Ending the blockade is a legal and moral obligation. Solidarity with Cuba is inseparable from the fight against militarism, racism, and economic violence everywhere.

As the U.S. escalates economic war, we must deepen solidarity.

Cuba Under Siege: Voices and Analysis — This Thursday

Join us this Thursday at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET for La Encrucijada, featuring Elena Gutiérrez, Global Exchange’s Mexico–U.S. Program Director, who recently returned from Cuba after meeting with delegation partners and community organizers.

Elena will share reflections from her trip, what she witnessed firsthand, and voices from Cuban people navigating the deepening impacts of the blockade. Join here.

Travel in solidarity: Join a Global Exchange delegation to Cuba

Another powerful way to act in solidarity is to travel with Global Exchange on one of our upcoming Cuba Reality Tours. Participants bring life-saving donations, meet directly with community organizers, health workers, and cultural leaders, and help strengthen the people-to-people ties the U.S. government has worked for decades to sever. Traveling to Cuba is a way to break the blockade of information, bear witness to what communities are facing, and return with deeper relationships and responsibility.

Learn more about upcoming delegations here.

Act now: Support life-saving medical care

Cuba’s surgeons are facing severe shortages of basic medical supplies. Without a steady supply of sutures, doctors are unable to perform critical, life-saving surgeries.

One immediate way to act in solidarity is to support efforts to get surgical sutures to Cuban hospitals:
https://ghpartners.org/sutures/

Cuba is not alone.
And we will not be silent.