The People’s Health Movement (PHM) in the last week released a statement in solidarity with the people of Cuba as the island continues to resist a decades-long illegal blockade imposed by the United States, whose impacts have only been worsened by the second Trump administration’s chokehold. “This escalation constitutes a prolonged policy of economic warfare aimed at undermining the sovereignty of a country that chose to build a social project independent of the interests of transnational capital,” the network stated.
“PHM, as it has been doing with other countries besieged by imperialist war, joins the internationalist efforts and calls in solidarity with Cuba, supporting and calling for the creation of concrete support networks,” Jennifer Cardona of PHM Colombia adds on the movement’s plans. “Medical supplies, food, and support for the installation of solar panels are being collected from different parts of the world, given the complex energy situation facing Cuba, which is heavily dependent on oil and affected by limitations in the electricity supply.”
Read more: Medical workers of conviction: Speaking to Cuban doctors who heal the world
Despite over six decades of US blockade, Cuba persists in the pursuit of an internationalist and socialist project in which global medical solidarity plays a crucial role. Hundreds of thousands of doctors, nurses, and other health workers have been deployed across over 150 countries to respond to pandemics, natural and man-made disasters, and to support building sovereign health systems in the Global South. “This concrete internationalism represents a real alternative to a world order where cooperation is often subordinated by geopolitical, military, or corporate interests,” PHM emphasized.
Since the inauguration of the second Trump administration, the Cuban medical brigades’ program has come under targeted attacks with the aim of severing this essential line of work – to which thousands of people owe their lives. Over the past weeks, unable or unwilling to stand up to the US, a number of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have announced the end of medical cooperation with Cuba. Advanced by governments, these notices have been protested by the people.
Read more: Cuba’s medical brigades in Africa embody a long tradition of solidarity
At the same time, Cuba’s remarkable health system stands at risk from ongoing shortages of essential materials caused by the US campaign. “We denounce these policies as a contemporary form of economic warfare, which is not merely about sanctions: it is a systematic strategy aimed at provoking the material collapse of daily life, generating social discontent, and forcing regime change,” PHM stated. “The Cuban case clearly illustrates the imperial logic of global discipline: any political project that seeks to maintain a degree of sovereignty in the face of transnational capital is subjected to mechanisms of economic coercion, isolation, and destabilization.”
“To defend Cuba today is to defend the right of peoples to determine their own destiny and to build societies based on social justice,” PHM concluded.
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