- by Graham Holton
- The Guardian
- Issue #2175
Cuba celebrated its 67th anniversary on 1 January this year. The CPA congratulates the Cuban people and its government, led by the Communist Party of Cuba, and we stand in solidarity with their just demands for the end of the criminal US blockade and Cuba’s self-determination. The blockade affects every single Cuban family who have resisted for decades the illegal sanctions and blockade of the sovereign country. This year is also the centennial year of Commander Fidel Castro Ruz, and the CPA joins the international commemoration defending Fidel’s teachings of internationalism and social justice.
After the US military kidnapped Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, President Donald Trump told reporters he believes Cuba’s communist government is “ready to fall” because it has lost its main economic support from Venezuela. Trump thinks Cuba will now collapse on its own. The US attack on Caracas on 3 January killed eighty people, including thirty-two Cubans.
Trump’s threats shouldn’t be taken lightly. The Trump administration has tightened sanctions on Cuba, re-listed it as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, and intensified the longstanding embargo, intending to weaken Havana’s economic base and political authority. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has not ruled out making Cuba’s communist government the Trump administration’s next target.
Cuba has survived a long history of US political, military and economic pressure. In 1959 Fidel Castro’s revolution overthrew the violent and corrupt US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The following year the government nationalised US-owned property. The US responded by cutting Cuba’s sugar quota and imposing export restrictions. In 1962 President John F. Kennedy imposed a full trade embargo to isolate Cuba economically and to encourage regime change.
After the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, the Cuban Missile Crisis followed, with the USSR and the US almost going to war. The Crisis ended, but sanctions became a central tool of US cold war strategy. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba entered the “Special Period,” suffering extreme economic hardship. The US continued to ratchet up the pressure: the Cuban Democracy Act (Torricelli Act) of 1992 prohibited foreign subsidiaries of US companies from trading with Cuba. The Helms–Burton Act (1996) codified the embargo into US law. The first Trump Administration (2017–2021) re-listed Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism and fully activated Helms-Burton III, enabling lawsuits against foreign firms trading with Cuba, tightened rules on remittances, and shutting off migration programs that allowed Cubans to work in the US legally.
The top US diplomat in Havana, Mike Hammer, has interfered in Cuban politics in a way the US would never permit at home, meeting with political activists and raising the ire of the Cuban government, which accuses him of fomenting unrest.
Johana Tablada, deputy director for US affairs in Cuba’s foreign ministry, accused the Trump administration of ratcheting up tensions, trying to provoke a military confrontation. Tablada said that the Cuban government was trying to ease the situation but that the US appears determined to encourage conflict. The Trump administration is targeting Cuba intending to “create conditions, in my opinion, for, if necessary, a military confrontation.”
Cuban officials have condemned US actions in Venezuela, accusing Washington of advocating “violent overthrow” of governments. This reflects Havana’s concerns about the US’s regional intentions for the Panama Canal, Colombia, Nicaragua, Mexico and even Greenland. Despite the renewed military and economic threats by the Trump administration, the Cuban government and the Cuban people are standing firm against any future US onslaught, as they have since 1959. With one voice: ¡Viva la Revolución!
