After the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores in Venezuela, and the threats against Iran and Greenland, Trump is now once again targeting Cuba. The United States is reinforcing its criminal embargo against Cuba, now sanctioning companies and countries that sell oil to the island, directly or indirectly.
Mexico stopped sending oil to Cuba, once again aligning with the criminal economic offensive driven by Donald Trump’s authoritarian administration against the island. President Claudia Sheinbaum first tried to deny the news, before finally confirming it. She has publicized that Mexico is sending boxes of food to Cuba, a PR move for Mexico,
This suspension of energy supplies coincides with an executive order from Washington, which threatens to impose punitive tariffs on countries that sell crude oil to Cuba. This measure is designed to deepen Cuba’s isolation, escalating the decades-long criminal and illegal blockade. Economic collapse is now very likely.
Furthermore, the Trump administration is threatening sanctions against companies and countries that sell oil to the island, which could include the Brazilian company Petrobras.
Oil is essential to guaranteeing energy, transportation, hospitals, and basic living conditions for the Cuban people. The United States is using this dependence on oil as a weapon of economic warfare.
The U,S. sanctions are a direct attack on the living conditions of millions of Cubans, aimed at suffocating the country and imposing regime change. In response, it is essential to break with submission to imperialism and establish a policy of concrete solidarity among the peoples of the Americas.
Cuba is experiencing a severe energy crisis, exacerbated by the interruption of Venezuelan supplies and the financial embargo imposed by the United States. In this context, Mexico had become one of the main suppliers of crude oil, with shipments averaging around 20,000 barrels per day; however, cutting off this supply directly impacts the daily lives of millions of people.
As part of an international campaign of solidarity with the Cuban people and in defense of the remaining gains of the country’s revolution, Leandro Lanfredi, an oil worker and director of Sindipetro-RJ (the Rio de Janeiro oil workers’ union), argues that Brazil and Petrobras should export oil to Cuba, defying the criminal blockade and sanctions imposed by the United States.
Brazil is producing more and more oil, yet it is becoming less and less Brazilian. Only 61 percent of Brazilian production is currently owned by Petrobras, and almost 50 percent of the company’s shares are already in imperialist hands. The struggle to ensure that oil and all of Brazil’s natural resources belong to the Brazilian people also involves solidarity with the struggles of the Venezuelan, Cuban, and Palestinian peoples, and with the struggles in support of every people oppressed by imperialism and Zionism throughout the world. The victory of the people’s struggles strengthens the anti-imperialist struggle in Brazil.
The Cuban people’s need for oil in relation to what is produced in Brazil is negligible. What Cuba needs in a year is equivalent to six days’ worth of Petrobras’s reserves. It would be nothing if Petrobras wanted to stand up to Trump and support the Cuban people. Furthermore, Petrobras is not the only Brazilian alternative to the embargo against Cuba: PPSA, a company wholly owned by the Brazilian state, will hold an oil auction to sell the equivalent of ten years’ worth of Cuba’s oil imports.
This shows once again that appeasement governments like Lula’s will not truly challenge imperialism. Meanwhile, the suspension of Mexican oil imports, accepted in the face of Trump’s tariff threats, confirms that Claudia Sheinbaum’s government has chosen to be part of the imperialist machine rather than defend the lives and self-determination of a people who have endured more than six decades under a criminal blockade. That is the real impact of this criminal and reactionary policy, and sending boxes of food does not change the nature of the harm.
Diplomatic gestures and conditional aid are insufficient to counter this aggression. It is necessary and urgent to call for a general strike and a continental work stoppage against imperialist blackmail and the blockade.
As Lanfredi says, “A general strike is necessary, from Alaska and Minnesota, through Patagonia and Mexico, to defeat imperialism in Cuba and Venezuela; to expel ICE, Trump’s racist police force, from cities in the United States; and to defeat Trump and imperialism on our continent.” We make this call from the currents that drive the International Network La Izquierda Diario, such as the MRT of Brazil and the MTS of Mexico, and we demand that both Petrobras and PEMEX send oil to Cuba NOW.
This article was first published in Spanish on February 7 at La Izquierda Diario.
The post Socialists in Latin America Demand Brazil and Mexico Send Oil to Cuba Now! appeared first on Left Voice.
From Left Voice via This RSS Feed.