In recent days, a new and alarming phase in U.S. imperialist aggression toward Cuba has begun. President Donald Trump’s statements represent a qualitative leap in direct threats against the Cuban people, deepening the historic attacks and blockade against the island.
After the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and wife Cilia Flores and threats to invade Greenland and Iran, Trump has now set his sights on Cuba. On Thursday, the U.S. president stated that the island “will not be able to survive” without oil, and he has threatened countries that supply energy to the country with severe tariffs. This is an open escalation of economic and political pressure to further isolate Cuba and cut off its vital resources.
This offensive, directed in large part by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the right-wing war hawk linked to the Cuban exile community, is supported by various figures from the Republican Party, particularly sectors of the gusano and anti-Castro lobby based in Miami. These sectors have intensified their openly belligerent rhetoric in recent weeks. For example, Florida Representative Carlos Gimenez threatened Mexico with economic sanctions, and suggested that regional agreements between the U.S. and its neighbors, such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), could be jeopardized if the country continues to send oil to Cuba.
This pressure shows the openly coercive nature of Washington’s policy, which disregards any notion of national sovereignty.
We are entering a new stage in the U.S. imperialist offensive against the island nation, which combines the uninterrupted blockade since 1962 with increasingly aggressive economic warfare and the coercion of other countries.The political objective is plainly transparent: to force a collapse that will pave the way for regime change and a complete restoration of capitalism.
These policies have one aim:subjugating the country and further impoverish the its people, through military threats and imperial control over Cuba’s financial system, trade, and energy resources.
Cutting Off Energy to Paralyze Cuban Society
Oil is not just another resource for Cuba — it is the material condition for the functioning of electricity, transportation, industrial production, hospitals, the water supply, and the daily lives of millions of people on the island. U.S. imperialism’s current offensive is deliberately cutting off energy to paralyze Cuban society.
As he did in Venezuela, Trump said that the “policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat,” to the United States and announced tariffs on products from foreign countries that “directly or indirectly” sell or supply crude oil to Cuba.
These threats are a form of extraterritorial blockade against the island. For years, Venezuela was a key energy supplier for Cuba. Venezuela’s deep economic and social crisis — driven by imperialist pressure, international sanctions, and the Maduro government’s own policies — deteriorated its export capacity and drastically reduced energy supplies.
The supply of oil from Venezuela has now been completely halted, showing the disastrous role of the government of Delcy Rodríguez. While accepting U.S. orders to reform hydrocarbon laws to suit the Yankees, she has committed to stop sending oil to Cuba. In this context, Mexico has come to play a central role in energy shipments through contracts with the state-owned PEMEX, as well as in the form of “humanitarian aid.”
The suspension of oil shipments in January clearly shows that imperialism not only directly punishes Cuba, but also pressures and disciplines (even more) other governments of the region. These governments, like Claudia Sheinbaum’s in Mexico, are collaborating decisively in cutting Cuba off from energy.
This strategy takes on an even more serious dimension when considering the already drastically reduced supply of oil to Cuba. Following the decline in shipments from Russia and Algeria during 2025 and the recent cancellation of shipments by Venezuela, Mexican oil had become the last significant source of energy. The halting of these shipments left Cuba facing an extreme energy crisis, leading to prolonged blackouts, rationing, and the paralysis of already weakened production infrastructure.
But this oil offensive is not happening in a vacuum — it is part of a broader pattern of U.S. military, economic, and geopolitical interference in Latin America, and the impotence or outright collaboration of the bourgeois nationalists in the region. In this context, the U.S. military intervention in Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores is a qualitative leap in the methods of imperialism in Latin America. It combines prolonged economic wars, blockades, sanctions, financial suffocation, and destabilization with open force when these pressures fail to achieve the desired “regime change.”
Venezuela has been a laboratory for this strategy — part of a revival of the Monroe Doctrine, through which Washington reaffirms that no country that attempts to maintain energy or geopolitical autonomy is safe from sanctions, coercion, or intervention. It is a disciplinary message for the entire region, putting pressure on governments like those of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. And Trump’s openly neocolonialist formulations on strategic territories like Greenland seek to reinforce the United States’ control over what it considers its most immediate “zone of influence.” This comes in the context of its disputes with powers such as China and the European Union over resources, markets, and geopolitical positions.
In this neocolonial strategy, Latin America and the Caribbean are once again treated as a backyard, and the bourgeois governments of the subcontinent are offering virtually no serious resistance to confront it.
The Goal: Destroy Every Remaining Vestige of the Cuban Revolution
These imperialist policies seek not only to economically suffocate the island to force a government collapse, but to destroy every remaining vestige of the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba is not simply a country with economic difficulties; it became the first workers’ state on the continent, emerging from a revolution that expropriated capital, expelled U.S. imperialism, and held out for decades against the world’s greatest power. Its mere existence — despite the bureaucratization of its political regime; the decomposition of the state that emerged from the revolution, and the reversal of economic and social gains — constitutes a political and symbolic affront to imperialist arrogance.
That is why the criminal blockade was not dismantled previously by any U.S. government, neither Republican nor Democratic. Instead, it has remained state policy and is now being intensified. The oil blockade is central to a historic strategy aimed at defeating — through hunger, blackouts, and social attrition — what they failed to destroy through direct invasions.
Although the blockade is a central cause of the crisis in Cuba, the Diaz-Canel government has been passing reforms that strengthen pro-capitalist tendencies. The administration’s measures have deepened social inequalities that erode popular gains and further degrade living conditions.
Likewise, the government continues to restrict the independent organization of workers and youth and represses demonstrations by the popular masses in response to the worsening social crises. These actions are an obstacle to resistance to imperialism. This is what happened in 2021 and in subsequent years, when the ruling bureaucracy deepened political repression against those who mobilized with legitimate demands. Hundreds who had no connection to counterrevolutionary or imperialist forces were taken prisoner.
Our opposition to both Trump’s new measures and the criminal, 64-year blockade is unconditional. We raise this from a position independent of the bureaucratic Cuban regime. This means confronting the measures of capitalist restoration and the attacks on the democratic rights of workers and popular sectors, and demanding legality for all political parties that defend the social gains of the revolution.
In this context, the governments of the region are playing a reprehensible role, submitting to the dictates of the U.S… Javier Milei in Argentina and other right-wing governments are the greatest expression of this. Even the self-proclaimed “progressive” governments are subordinating to Washington’s criminal policies against Cuba. Lula’s government in Brazil widely celebrates its good relations with Trump and, beyond a few criticisms, facilitates Trump’s objectives in the region.
Meanwhile, Sheinbaum suspension of critical oil shipments is, like other measures implemented since the start of her term, a leap in subordination to U.S. imperialism. The move makes the Mexican government an accomplice to brutal imperialist aggression, which it seeks to cover up by talking vaguely about the need for “humanitarian aid,” all while the Cuban energy crisis is increasingly catastrophic.
The policies of these “progressives” reinforce subordination to the dictates of the hegemonic power and are opposed to the anti-imperialist mobilization that we urgently need.
Nor will powers such as Russia or China defend Cuba, despite what its defenders claim. Far from representing a progressive opposition to the U.S., the BRICS nations have shown absolute passivity in the face of the bombing of Venezuela.
We Need International, Anti-imperialist, Working-Class Mobilizations Against U.S. Interference
For all these reasons, we reaffirm that the response to the current offensive against Cuba must be an anti-imperialist mobilization of the working class and popular masses throughout the continent, denouncing Trump’s offensive and the complicity of right-wing governments.
At the same time, the Cuban government must stop repressing, persecuting, and imprisoning those who denounce the inequalities and political oppression that exist in the country. It must also put a stop to the repression of those who fight to preserve the remaining achievements of the revolution in the face of increasing measures to restore capitalism. That is why we demand full freedom for workers and young people imprisoned for protesting, as well as full freedom of organization and demonstration for the Cuban people, which is essential to defend themselves against the attacks of imperialism and to fight alongside workers and poor people across the continent against Trump’s plans.
Solidarity with the Cuban people must be expressed in concrete actions: trade unions, popular organizations, student organizations, and left-wing organizations throughout the continent and around the world must promote mass mobilizations against the blockade and sanctions. These sectors must launch a major international campaign denouncing the economic and geopolitical violence of U.S. imperialism against the island, promoting anti-imperialist unity throughout the continent.
It is from this perspective that we call on the trade union federations of the region to promote a major continental strike against imperialist aggression against Venezuela and Cuba. At the same time, in the United States, it is essential to coordinate the important mobilizations against ICE in cities such as Minneapolis, where the labor movement and self-organization play an essential role in confronting the persecution of immigrants, with the construction of an anti-imperialist mobilization against the attacks and interference in Venezuela, and against Trump’s threats and energy blockade against Cuba.
The crisis Cuba is passing through is not a historical accident nor a minor episode. It is the result of an imperialist offensive that combines economic coercion, military and geopolitical threats, and pressure on third countries to conform to its neocolonial agenda in order to impose greater subordination and dependence and finish off the social gains that remain in Cuba. That is why, today more than ever, we must say firmly:
Down with the imperialist blockade against Cuba! U.S. out of Guantanamo! Stop the Trump administration’s sanctions and aggression! No to the obstruction of oil shipments!
For international, working-class, and popular mobilization against Trump’s threats and imperialist aggression against Cuba! Active solidarity with the Cuban people!
For the Socialist United States of Latin America!
Originally published in Spanish on January 31 in La Izquierda Diario.
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