Cuba Under Siege: Chronicle of an Island That Refuses to Surrender
Traveling into a blockade and the people who live through it every day.
Arriving in Cuba means crossing six decades of blockade.
On January 29, Trump decided to intensify the blockade against Cuba by imposing sanctions and tariffs on anyone transporting oil to the island, thereby worsening the energy crisis. In this context, I traveled to Cuba as part of the First Rosa Luxemburg Brigade in solidarity with Cuba. Solidarity brigades are international groups of people who have been traveling to the island since 1960 to carry out volunteer work and learn about Cuban reality firsthand; in our case, we also brought medicines and medical supplies.
It took us three days to arrive due to the cancellation of our flight caused by a lack of fuel and a strike at the airport. We were finally able to fly via Mexico, where we received assistance from the government to cross the border due to the medical supplies. Even before taking off (on a trip that was on the verge of being canceled several times following the January aggression by the United States against Venezuela and the new measures against the island), we understood that traveling to and being in Cuba always means navigating a path full of obstacles, sustained only by the will and determination of those who strive to make it possible.
“The Blockade is Everywhere”
Manuel, a guajiro we met on our first day in Cuba, spoke about geopolitics as if he were talking about the weather. He began mentioning Russia, China, the United States, Latin America, and the changes in the political balance of the region with a naturalness that surprised us. We had arrived in Cuba expecting to find a failed state and isolation: an island surrounded not only economically, but also informationally. However, the conversation quickly took another direction.
The blockade soon appeared in his words, not as a propagandistic idea, but as something that runs through everyday life: fuel that does not arrive, spare parts that cannot be obtained, medicines that are almost nonexistent, and the decreasing number of tourists.
He spoke without dramatism, almost with a practical calm. As if describing just another difficulty of working in the countryside. For him, the blockade was a constant condition, one that forces people to reinvent solutions every day. In that conversation, we began to understand that many of the country’s contradictions cannot be explained without this context of economic war that has lasted for more than six decades, in which several generations have already grown up. Manuel spoke of difficulties, yes, but also of resistance. Of the capacity of a small country to continue functioning under constant economic warfare.
As the days went by, we began to understand that this resistance is not only a political slogan, but a daily practice: adapting, reorganising, and finding new ways to sustain life when the context constantly pushes in the opposite direction.
An Economic War
The economic blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba began to take shape in the early 1960s. In 1960, a memorandum by U.S. official Lester Mallory already proposed the idea of exerting economic pressure on the island to weaken the new revolutionary government: “The only foreseeable means of losing internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection arising from economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” Mallory proposed “denying money and supplies to Cuba, in order to reduce monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger and desperation, and to overthrow the Government.”
“This proposal of collective punishment and economic warfare was made at a time when socialism had not yet even been declared,” Fernando González Llort, president of ICAP (the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples), one of the institutions organising the brigade, told us.
Two years later, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy formalised the total embargo, prohibiting almost all trade between the two countries. Since then, Cuba lost its main market and had to reorganise its economy, first seeking new partners in the Soviet Union and later in other countries.
Over the years, the blockade was expanded through new laws. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the socialist camp, Cuba entered the “Special Period,” a deep economic crisis. People who lived through that time told us that supplies disappeared overnight. In this context, in 1992 the United States Congress passed the Torricelli Act, prohibiting subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with Cuba and preventing ships that had docked in Cuban ports from entering the United States.
In 1996, the Helms-Burton Act made the blockade permanent by sanctioning foreign companies that maintained commercial relations with Cuba or used properties nationalised after the Revolution, extending its reach beyond U.S. borders. More recently, the inclusion of Cuba on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism during Donald Trump’s first term has reduced access to external financing in an increasingly financialized world, due to the risks involved for financial institutions.
In addition, Cuban economist Gladys Hernández told us that Chinese investment has historically been very limited due to its (commercial) relationship with the United States.
She also explained that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cuban economy has been undergoing a process of decentralisation with the creation of private MSMEs (micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises), which, linked with the state sector, aim to address supply problems. Likewise, the economy is shifting its main productive sectors—from tourism and biotechnology toward agriculture, energy, and mining—at a time when the tightening of the blockade points to the need for energy sovereignty. All of this is approached from a perspective centred on sustaining life. Although contradictions remain profound, progress in rights continues, as does the effort to deepen the achievements of the revolutionary process.
Growing Up with Greater Difficulties
“It’s hard to explain,” a group of students we met at the University of Havana told us.
Despite everything, Cuba continues to face the challenge of rebuilding itself. Advancing and sustaining social achievements is not easy, especially because “every time there is an improvement or progress, a new form of blockade also appears.” At present, the university is closed due to a lack of fuel. Despite this, the students told us with pride that it had been possible to organise three trains to take all university students back to their places of origin so they could continue classes online. In addition, each locality has managed to organsze itself to try to ensure that students who need it have access to the internet to continue their courses.
At the same time, a generational shift is taking place, in which young people face greater material difficulties in accessing new rights than the generation that lived through the Revolution.
Even so, amid the problems and contradictions that Cuban society faces today, a strong spirit of solidarity and defence of sovereignty persists—even among those we spoke with who were more critical of the government. Since the Revolution, the priority has been to leave no one behind, and this principle applies not only internally, but also internationally. Internationalist solidarity has been, and continues to be, a priority.
Palestinian students we met during our visit told us that around 250 young Palestinians are currently studying medicine in Cuba thanks to scholarships granted by the Cuban government. For them, this opportunity represents much more than higher education: they see it as a gesture of international solidarity. In our conversations, they explained that Cuba has historically supported different peoples fighting for dignity and self-determination, and that this support gives them strength to continue their struggles. From their perspective, training as doctors on the island also implies a greater responsibility: to one day return to their communities with the tools to care for life and continue confronting colonialism and imperialism.
“A Patient Is Not a Client”
Without a doubt, one of the most moving encounters was with biotechnologist Manuel Raíces, who reminded us that before the Revolution nearly 91% of the population was illiterate, and that in 1961, thanks to a national campaign that mobilised thousands of Cubans—including young people as young as 16—to teach reading and writing across the country on a voluntary basis, this situation was transformed. That experience, he said, was above all an expression of political will and collective commitment.
That same logic is reflected today in the healthcare system: there, he repeated, “a patient is not a client, but a problem to be solved.” Based on this idea, a healthcare system and a biotechnology sector have been developed that are capable of exporting medicines and vaccines to 49 countries, while treatments such as the hepatitis B vaccine are provided free of charge on the island.
We were able to see this during the delivery of medicines at Salvador Allende Hospital, where we witnessed firsthand the progress toward a fully universal and free healthcare system, which nonetheless cannot meet all needs due to the difficulties imposed by the blockade.
This vocation also extends beyond the island through Cuban medical missions in dozens of countries, which help guarantee basic primary care services in places where, under market logic, it would not be profitable to maintain doctors. However, several of these missions are currently being withdrawn in countries such as Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Jamaica, largely due to pressure exerted by the United States.
A Struggle That Resonates Beyond the Island
In the face of global military escalation and the unrestrained power embodied today by Donald Trump, the question arises again and again: who can set limits?
After our visit to Cuba, the answer seems less abstract. For more than six decades, the Cuban Revolution has remained one of the most persistent challenges to the Monroe Doctrine. But its meaning goes beyond the island: it speaks of sovereignty, of cooperation among peoples, and of a different way of understanding relations between countries—based on solidarity rather than domination.
For this reason, Cuba’s struggle also resonates in all forms of resistance around the world: in that of the Palestinian people, in those who defend public services, in the struggle for peace, and in every community fighting to decide its own future.
These are different struggles, but they are united by the same intuition: that only solidarity among peoples and the defence of sovereignty can open the path toward another way of organising life, beyond capitalism and imperialism.
As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, it is about fighting “for a world in which we are socially equal, humanly different, and totally free.”