This article was originally published on Claudia De la Cruz’s Substack.
I have traveled to Cuba for nearly three decades. The first time was during the Special Period. I was young and convinced I understood Cuban solidarity because I had read about it in books. After all these visits and building lasting relationships with the Cubans on the island, I have learned that solidarity is a verb. It is a principle that acknowledges the humanity in others and allows us the privilege to act from our own humanity as well.
Solidarity is sitting in the dark on a porch in Havana telling stories, catching a night breeze when the country’s power grid collapses. It is hugging a pediatric doctor who cries as she shares that they lack electricity to perform transplants on children in urgent need. It is walking with people who cannot get on the bus because there is no fuel. It is holding hands with a community leader who says his organization feeds 11,000 people a day—but that this work would be less needed or would not exist at all if the U.S. government recognized the humanity of the Cuban people and lifted the blockade.
The Weight of Return
Returning to the U.S. becomes more gut wrenching each time. The moment the plane touches down in Miami, whiplash begins. I carry with me the joy and creative resistance of the Cuban people alongside the misery imposed by U.S. government policies. Then I experience the targeting and harassment of U.S. Border Patrol, as many others do. Without having done anything wrong except express solidarity with Cuba one is subjected to detention and questioning. The anger makes me sick. It also confirms that the people of the U.S. have more in common with the Cuban people than with our own government. The same system that attempts to break the dignity of the Cuban people seeks to dehumanize us at every turn.
After the disorientation and grief, I recommit and feel stronger about the necessary work of building an anti-imperialist movement here, in the belly of the beast. A system built on collaboration, solidarity, and dialogue. A system that prioritizes humanity – not profit.
What the Revolution Built, What the Blockade Seeks to Destroy
The Cuban Revolution transformed the lives of its people in ways that were once unimaginable. It took a nation where illiteracy was rampant and built a free education system that produces teachers, doctors, scientists and engineers. It took a country where healthcare was a privilege for the few and established a free, universal healthcare system that became a model for the world. It declared that housing is a human right, not a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. The Revolution raised the confidence and sense of dignity of a people who had been treated as a colony, as property, as a backyard to be exploited. For the first time, Cubans were told they mattered, and they believed it. A new system and a new culture were built.
But the blockade is designed to undo all of this. Cuba provides free healthcare but cannot access the materials, equipment, and medicine needed to keep its hospitals fully functioning. It provides free education but cannot purchase the computers, laboratory equipment, and classroom supplies that would allow its schools to thrive. It values housing as a human right but lacks the raw materials (i.e. cement, steel, lumber, etc) to build new homes or maintain existing ones. The state has the will, the infrastructure, and the trained professionals. What it does not have is the ability to acquire basic goods from a world from which it is systematically cut off. The blockade ensures that every achievement of the Revolution exists under constant threat.
This is what the U.S. blockade represents: a threat of regressing to the decadence and misery that capitalism subjects people to, both inside and outside the United States. The same system that leaves millions in the U.S. without health insurance, that treats housing as an investment for billionaires rather than a home, that educates children in crumbling schools, that system now seeks to force Cuba back into the very conditions from which the Revolution liberated it.
What the Blockade Looks Like
In January 2026, the U.S. administration conducted an illegal military operation in Venezuela, kidnapping President Maduro. This was an act of war against a sovereign nation and a strategic move to remove Cuba’s main oil supplier. Then they threatened Mexico with tariffs, economic blackmail to halt oil shipments to the island. They told every nation in the region that if they dared to help Cuba keep its lights on, they would pay. Most of them were forced to listen.
Cuba has not received fuel or relief in three months. The island, one of the most oil-dependent countries in the world for electricity, produces barely thirty-nine percent of the fuel it needs. This has resulted in frequent power outages, shortages of essential medicine, and the inability to operate critical equipment.
At University Pediatric Hospital William Soler, pediatricians shared that oncology care, dialysis, emergency services, and infant care have faced major disruptions. A hospital that performed nearly ten thousand surgeries a year for children now performs barely three thousand. As doctors told our delegation, they have the commitment, training, and dedication—but the blockade prevents them from providing urgent care to children.
These are the voices the U.S. ruling class does not want you to hear. Consider:
– 16,000 cancer patients need radiotherapy and cannot get it
– More than 12,000 people depending on chemotherapy cannot receive treatment
– Nearly one million people depend on water delivered by tanker trucks—trucks require fuel
– More than 80 percent of water pumping infrastructure relies on electricity
– Ambulances struggle to obtain fuel, delaying urgent care
Something as mundane as ice cream or as urgent as insulin is hard to keep refrigerated. And the blackouts keep coming.
Meanwhile, Trump and Rubio ramp up fuel exports to the private sector while the U.S. embassy requests fuel for its generators from the same government they are squeezing. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Medical Internationalism Under Attack
For more than sixty years, Cuba has sent doctors to the world’s most impoverished places. Since 1963, over 600,000 Cuban health workers have served in more than 160 countries. Cuba produces doctors, not bombs. It has the highest density of doctors in the world, and they have used their resources to serve and save lives: from West Africa during Ebola to indigenous communities neglected by their own governments.
The U.S. wants to stop this. A month ago, tearful scenes unfolded in Honduras as people said goodbye to Cuban health workers. In Jamaica, long lines of people waited desperately to be seen by Cuban doctors before they were set to leave. Six countries have abruptly ended their Cuban medical missions under pressure from the Trump administration.
This is not about “forced labor” or “human trafficking” as Marco Rubio claims. Anyone who has spoken to Cuban medical volunteers knows they receive salary, remuneration, and their families are cared for. What the U.S. cannot tolerate is Cuba’s example. A small island under blockade that sends doctors to the most remote places on earth. This is a living rebuke to everything U.S. imperialism stands for.
Sixty-Seven Years of Resistance
Cuba has been under some form of embargo, blockade, or economic warfare for sixty-seven years. Longer than many of us have been alive. Longer than any country in modern history has been subjected to sustained, comprehensive economic warfare by any adversary.
And still, they have not been broken. The blockade has cut off the ability for Cubans to have electricity, but Cuba’s light does not disappear. It lives on!
There is a narrative U.S. imperialists like to tell: the Cuban people are trapped, oppressed, waiting for the U.S. to liberate them. If only Washington applied enough pressure, Cuba would collapse.
But here is what I have seen for almost three decades: the Cuban people are not waiting for Washington. They are a sovereign nation that liberated itself from U.S. imperialism. They are building a socialist project—and their only request is that the U.S. lift the blockade and let them live.
This is what colonial logic cannot understand: the Cuban people are among the most resilient in the world. They want to live dignified lives without having their existence controlled by the U.S. government. They want what all human beings want- to live, work, raise children, have electricity and functioning hospitals. But they will not trade their dignity for comfort. They will not trade sovereignty for survival. They will not trade their revolutionary project for the momentary privilege of safety and become the property of a foreign entity.
U.S. imperialists call this stubbornness or brainwashing. But what if this is what any people would do when faced with a power that refuses to let them exist? What if this is the same spirit that drove the Vietnamese to defeat the most powerful military on earth? The same spirit that drove South Africans to tear down apartheid? The same spirit that drives the Palestinian people to resist displacement and annihilation?
A Choice We Must Make
I do not know how to end this reflection really. There are so many things to say and do.
What I do know is that U.S. imperialism will not rest in its attempt to eliminate all that Cuba represents for me and for millions around the world who believe a better world is possible.
The people of the U.S. have a choice. We can look away and believe the lies about Cuba being a failed state waiting for Trump to save it. Or we can open our eyes, wake up and get to work.
The Cuban people are not waiting to be saved. They are the protagonists of their own destiny, fully capable of building the society they want and need. They are resilient. Resisters. Survivors of the most egregious acts from the most powerful empire in modern history. They do not need our interference, they need our solidarity.
Cuba is now the frontline of a struggle that includes all of us who struggle to protect humanity and the planet. Their voice is ours. Their message is ours. Their struggle is ours. From Palestine to The South Bronx, and we must amplify it with all our being:
We will not surrender our dignity.
We will not surrender our will to live.
We will not surrender our right to decide our own future.
We the people of the U.S. have a historic responsibility and must refuse to be the mouthpieces and foot soldiers of U.S. imperialism. We must demand an end to the blockade. We must demand that our government stop using the starvation of children as a weapon of war, stop dismantling hospitals, and stop pretending that cruelty is foreign policy.
The Cuban people will not surrender. Neither will we.
