Cuba Has a Rich History of International Solidarity. US Wants to Extinguish It.

At night, the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo, Cuba appears like a tangled string of Christmas lights along the coastline, casting colored silhouettes across the waves that lap ashore. Sailors and Marines pack the local sports bar blaring pop music. Others frequent the bowling alley or play video games under intense strobe lights. Yet in contrast to the brightly illuminated base, nighttime blots out the nearby town of Caimanera, as a result of the energy blockade on Cuba that President Donald Trump tightened this January.

Trump claims that the embargo is necessary to promote a democratic transition in Cuba. Similarly, U.S.-backed opposition leaders in Miami such as Rosa María Payá argue that “the Cuban people [are] grateful” for the sanctions, which will help “make Cuba great again.”

But the truth is far more bitter. Trump’s sanctions are accelerating a social crisis that has immobilized Cuban industry, gutted public services, and forced over 10 percent of the population to leave the island in recent years. Hospitals lack electricity, and grocery store shelves are empty amid rolling blackouts. Ratcheting up pressure, U.S. authorities issued a new raft of sanctions against senior Cuban officials this May, while conducting military reconnaissance flights off the coastline.

Trump’s economic powerplay and preparations for a potential invasion are only the latest moves in an ongoing saga of aggression toward Cuba. Rather than prioritizing democracy, Washington has long deployed economic pressure to challenge the island’s fiercely independent social and foreign policies — above all, its commitment to wealth redistribution, solidarity with liberation struggles, and opposition to U.S. imperial hubris.

Forming the Noose

Washington’s professed support for democracy in Cuba rings hollow when placed against the historical backdrop. In the 1950s, U.S. officials assisted the island’s dictator Fulgencio Batista, as he attempted to extinguish a popular revolution spearheaded by Fidel Castro. His regime tortured over 700 dissidents to death, dangling mutilated bodies from telegraph poles and tossing them into gutters. While training Batista’s forces, the CIA confided that they were “too enthusiastic” about torture. Nonetheless, Washington organized “to prevent a Castro victory,” fearing that his leftist agenda would undermine its vice-like grip over Cuban politics and commerce.

After taking power in January 1959, revolutionary leaders nationalized strategic industries, outlawed formal racial segregation, and pursued a breathtaking array of anti-poverty reforms. In response, the State Department promoted “economic warfare” by plotting to reduce access to oil and the U.S. sugar market. Officials emphasized that they should “disguise these actions” as peaceful. But their objective was clear: “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of [the Castro] government.”

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy escalated pressure by bankrolling terrorist operations and a failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs. He also armed counterrevolutionaries that targeted the revolution’s literacy campaign, butchering teachers for teaching peasants to read.

To defend Cuba, Castro stationed Soviet missiles on the island. At the brink of nuclear war, Kennedy vehemently opposed a “no-invasion guarantee” in negotiations with Soviet leaders, while refusing to even talk to Cuban officials. Privately, he was blunt: “our objective is to preserve our right to invade” in an emergency. After the Soviets withdrew the missiles, U.S. officials insisted that their “ultimate objective” remained “the overthrow of… Castro,” sponsoring attacks against industrial sites and “tighten[ing] the noose around the Cuban economy.”

Yet their most cynical ploy targeted Cuba’s youth. As relations deteriorated, the U.S. government organized Operation Peter Pan, which sowed chaos and fractured families by convincing Cubans to ship their children to the United States. To spark a mass exodus, the CIA published false propaganda announcing that authorities planned to abolish parental authority. Radio advertisements warned that socialists would seize and “indoctrinate” every minor. “Don’t let your child be taken!” broadcasts warned.

Meanwhile, the State Department colluded with Father Bryan Walsh and the Catholic Welfare Bureau in Miami, which oversaw the transfer of over 14,000 Cuban children to the United States. Many never reunited with their families. Walsh packed Cuban children into orphanages, foster homes, and makeshift facilities. One Peter Pan survivor, Alex López, recalled living for one year in a snake-infested camp in the Everglades. Residents slept in canvas tents and washed in the swamp. But the worst part was the priests. López described the sadistic cruelty of one of the camp rectors and “being raped by that horrible man.” Many others also experienced sexual abuse, violence, and neglect. Walsh himself forced campers to strip before beating them with paddles. In 2006, one survivor claimed that the priest raped him.

Today, Cuban American leaders cite Operation Peter Pan as an example of principled resistance against communist tyranny. In reality, the operation was a cruel microcosm of U.S. policy toward Cuba, revealing both the cynicism of the counterrevolution and rapacity of Washington. Although under siege, the island became the only Latin American country without malnutrition or illiteracy, prompting UNICEF to call it a “paradise for children” in the region in 2010. Yet it was precisely these reforms that infuriated the U.S. and Cuban elite, turning Cuba into an intolerable symbol of dignity and defiance.

The Reverse Passage

The United States has not only targeted Cuba because of its socialist system but also due to the country’s commitment to radical solidarity. Throughout the Cold War, Cuban leaders repeatedly challenged U.S. aggression abroad and efforts to assert Western supremacy in the Global South.

In particular, Cuba offered a model for decolonization, while actively supporting national liberation movements. In 1959, the Cuban-Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara led a solidarity trip to Gaza. Afterward, Cuba became a leading champion of Palestinian rights, offering substantial economic and military aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also was a major ally to Vietnamese nationalists during the Vietnam War, sending equipment to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And Cuba became a safe haven for political refugees as U.S.-backed dictatorships ravaged Latin America through the 1980s.

Most notably, half a million Cubans fought for decolonization in Africa. Their sacrifices helped Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, and other countries gain independence. Recognizing their contribution, the Algerian leader and herald of Pan-Africanism, Ahmed Ben Bella, declared that without the Cuban Revolution, “no place for justice, for dignity [would exist] in this world.”

Above all, Cuban support for Angola proved decisive. In 1975, U.S. officials encouraged apartheid South Africa to topple President Agostinho Neto and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which had recently wrested independence from Portugal. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger hoped that ousting Neto’s leftist government would enhance U.S. prestige. But as South African armor approached Luanda, Castro initiated Operation Carlota — airlifting thousands of Cuban troops to repel the invasion.

The historian Piero Gleijeses concludes that the operation embodied a genuine commitment to racial justice. It entailed a sort of reverse passage, as the Cuban descendants of African slaves crossed the Atlantic to vanquish white supremacy and the last vestiges of colonialism. Within months, Black Cuban and Angolan troops repelled the offensive. A South African military analyst lamented that “over 300 years of colonialism” was disappearing. “White elitism has suffered an irreversible blow.”

Cuban solidarity stabilized Angola yet infuriated President Ronald Reagan, who aimed to crush the MPLA and reinforce Pretoria. In Saving Apartheid, Augusta Dell’Omo demonstrates that Reagan mobilized to insulate South Africa from international pressure, prompting Bishop Desmond Tutu to call the U.S. president’s policy “immoral, evil and totally un-Christian.” U.S. officials regarded Cuban forces in Angola with exasperation. Referencing Cuba, Secretary of State Alexander Haig asked Reagan for permission to “turn that island into a fucking parking lot.”

In 1987, the United States again conspired with South Africa, as apartheid forces streamed across the border and cornered Angolan units at the town of Cuito Cuanavale. Cuba responded with a massive troop surge. “[W]e placed ourselves in the lion’s jaws,” Castro recalled, claiming that his soldiers maneuvered “like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and with his right – strikes.” Against the odds, Cuban reinforcements secured a smashing victory. The counteroffensive not only preserved Angola’s sovereignty, but forced South Africa to grant Namibia independence and fatally weakened the apartheid regime. Nelson Mandela concluded that Cuba’s victory was “the turning point for the liberation of our continent, and of my people, from the scourge of apartheid.”

In short, the island’s pugnacious opposition to imperialism made it a permanent target of U.S. aggression. Historically, Cuba has spent a greater proportion of its GDP on foreign aid than virtually any other country. And unlike the United States, it is famous for fighting colonialism and directing medical missions, treating millions of poor patients across the world. Demonstrating their anticolonial convictions, 32 Cuban security personnel died defending Venezuelan territory from Trump’s illegal invasion this January. For these reasons, Washington has regarded Cuba as a threat to U.S. imperial leadership and the geographical hierarchies — in Venezuela, Palestine, Africa, and elsewhere — that it aims to preserve.

Unrestrained Extremism

After the Soviet Union dissolved, Cuba lost an essential lifeline, and its economy slid into a prolonged crisis. Smelling blood, Cuban American conservatives lobbied to tighten the blockade in order to instigate regime change. Miami remained the strategic base of the counterrevolution, as right-wing residents flexed their political connections to block the normalization of relations, strengthen the embargo, and trigger an uprising.

Despite their pro-democracy rhetoric, conservative Cuban American activists had an embarrassing record. For decades, they had used Florida as a launching pad for violent operations against Cuba, while viciously attacking moderate voices — at one point, perpetrating 45 percent of all terrorist bombings in the world. Far-right community leaders such as Jorge Mas Canosa, Luis Posada Carriles, and Orlando Bosch strafed beaches with machine guns, planted explosives, and even bombed a Cuban airplane killing 73 civilians. “All of Castro’s planes are warplanes,” Bosch explained in a chilling deadpan.

Under Mas Canosa’s guidance, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) became the main powerbroker shaping policy. Although posing as an independent grassroots actor, the foundation maintained deep ties to the U.S. government. CANF co-founder Raul Masvidal explained that “the National Security Council wanted to start an organization that would help popularize” its campaign of economic pressure and diplomatic isolation against Cuba.

And the foundation was its answer. Over the 1990s and 2000s, CANF laundered federal funds for activists bombing the island and the electoral campaigns of hardline politicians. The godfather of the Cuban American exile community, CANF president Mas Canosa aimed to turn Cuba into an anarcho-capitalist paradise, promoting “a very aggressive privatization campaign” that “has to be radical and… immediate. Privatize everything.” In 1992, he revamped sanctions with the Cuban Democracy Act, which Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-New Jersey), a leading recipient of foundation funds, designed to “wreak havoc on that island.”

Meanwhile, CANF financed Brothers to the Rescue, a self-identified humanitarian group of airplane pilots helping Cuban rafters reach the U.S. shoreline. Yet Fernando Morais’s book The Last Soldiers of the Cold War demonstrates that the Brothers were intensely political. Flying U.S. government aircraft, they frequently penetrated Cuban airspace to jam transmissions at Havana’s international airport, putting thousands of lives in danger. Director José Basulto boasted that pilots dumped a “tremendous amount” of propaganda exhorting citizens to “overthrow” the socialist state. The Brothers even passed reconnaissance information from flights to Cuban Americans planting bombs on beaches.

In 1996, Cuba shot down two of their aircraft, after persistently warning U.S. authorities against future incursions. Exploiting the incident, CANF pressed President Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, which drastically tightened the blockade. Facing an election year, Clinton signed the bill to win Cuban American votes, while privately recognizing that it violated international law. Beside themselves with victory, CANF then ramped up bombing attacks in Havana to undermine the tourist industry. Posada, who directed the strikes, admitted that Mas Canosa “controlled everything,” slipping him cash “[w]henver I needed money.”

Despite relentless harassment, Cubans successfully rebuilt their economy. Between 1999 and 2014, the election of left-leaning “Pink Tide” governments in Latin America allowed Cuba to escape its isolation, while securing new allies and trade partners. In 2015, President Barack Obama opened talks with Havana, taking the first step toward the normalization of relations. The diplomatic thaw eased restrictions on travel and remittances, relaxed controls on investment, and promoted bilateral cooperation in medical research and other areas.

More than anything, it signaled the failure of U.S. aggression. Since the 1990s, the Cuban American right had led a campaign to strangle the island, attempting everything from economic subterfuge to terrorism. Instead, its efforts revealed the revolution’s resilience, as well as the unrestrained extremism of its leading adversaries.

The Price of Dignity

The thaw did not last long. In 2017, the State Department claimed that Cuba launched “acoustic attacks” against its Havana embassy, harassing U.S. diplomats with a weapon that emitted a high-pitched noise powerful enough to inflict brain injuries. FBI investigators and medical specialists found no evidence that Cuba deployed such technology, or that the sci-fi device even existed. The most likely culprit for the sound was crickets chirping.

Yet Trump exploited the scandal to slam Cubans with heavy sanctions, which President Joe Biden later maintained, instigating a humanitarian crisis. In 2018, Cuba’s infant mortality rate was lower than the rate in the United States. Since then, it has increased 148 percent, as hospitals face acute shortages of medicine and equipment. The Center for Economic and Policy Research bluntly concluded this May that the blockade “has killed a lot of babies.”

While tightening sanctions, the State Department has boosted funding for regime change programs. Leaked documents reveal that officials have plotted in recent decades to build a militant opposition movement. They hope to respond “rapidly, discreetly, and opportunistically” to crises, “hastening a peaceful transition to a… market-oriented society.” The department has funneled illegal funding to government critics, sponsored dissident rappers, and attempted to create a social media platform to spark an uprising. To block access to foreign currency, it is even bullying poor countries into expelling Cuban doctors, depriving some communities of healthcare altogether.

A darling of the Cuban American right, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is leading the latest drive to destabilize the island. Rubio grew up amid the rabid politics and violence of counterrevolutionary Miami. In his memoir, he fondly recalls buying baseball tickets with cocaine money from his brother-in-law, who smuggled drugs with a Bay of Pigs veteran. Since January, he has overseen the energy embargo that frequently plunges the island into darkness.

Claiming Rubio as “one of our own,” CANF debuted a “roadmap” for the island this May, promoting the privatization of healthcare and education, dismantling of welfare programs, and end to “restrictions on profit repatriation.” Authors portray the United States as “the salvation of Cuba,” while asking Cubans to accept Cuban American leadership since, they say, “We know how a capitalist system works.” As the humanitarian disaster worsens, CANF continues to champion hardline tactics, including the indictment against Raúl Castro announced by the U.S. on Tuesday for his role in the 1996 defensive operation against Brothers to the Rescue. Appealing to Cuban American extremists, Trump now speculates about “taking Cuba.”

Nevertheless, Cubans continue to challenge oppression worldwide. The Palestinian doctor Murid Abukhater, who recently studied medicine in Cuba, emphasizes that they educate Palestinians for free to “save the lives of our people” from genocide. This solidarity is breathtakingly poignant since the island’s population has itself lived “under a long siege, just like us in Gaza,” Abukhater explained.

Ultimately, the blockade isolates Cuba precisely because its revolutionary idealism mocks U.S. imperial ambitions. The sanctions are the culmination of seven decades of coercion and obscene hypocrisy. An empire that spreads war is strangling a country that exports doctors. Indeed, a rich government that claims vaccines are dangerous is persecuting a poor society that not only invents vaccines, but shares them with the world. And while celebrating genocide and deportations, U.S. leaders throttle a nation for its defiant tradition of solidarity: Its refusal to tolerate the suffering of the exploited. Decades after the Cold War, Cuba remains an obsessive target of a U.S.-backed counterrevolution, as well as the storm-lashed epicenter of the struggle against U.S. imperialism.

The author would like to thank Sarah Priscilla Lee of the Learning Sciences program at Northwestern University for reviewing this article.