U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference Maps Out Action Plan

(This article was published on March 21, 2026, at 5 a.m. EST, and was updated at 12:45 p.m. EST with links to projects where donations can be made to help with material aid for Cuba and to the conference’s adopted “Action Plan.”)

By Argiris Malapanis

NEW YORK CITY — About 225 delegates representing organizations across the United States and Canada attended the conference “Cuba Under Siege: Strategies for Resistance and a United Response.” The gathering took place at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center here March 14-15, 2026. Another 190 people participated in the plenary sessions through online streaming, according to organizers.

“The conference is taking place at an ominous time,” said Ike Nahem of the New York-New Jersey Cuba Sí Coalition in welcoming delegates to the meeting. “A time of imperialist war in the Mideast and intervention in our hemisphere, marked by the January 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of the country’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, and the siege of Cuba under the U.S. blockade of petroleum to the country.”

Nahem called on delegates to focus on actions that represent a united response to this qualitative turn of events in the world situation.

During the conference opening, Gail Walker of IFCO/Pastors for Peace paid tribute to and introduced Rosemari Mealy, author of Fidel and Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting, and a long-time educator and leader of the Cuba solidarity movement.

The conference featured presentations by representatives from Cuba. They included leaders of the Federation of Cuban Women (known as FMC, its Spanish-language acronym), who were in New York to take part in the 70th session of the United Nations (UN) Commission on the Status of Women.

Tamara Hansen of the Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba and César Omar Sánchez of the National Network on Cuba, who co-chaired the first session, introduced the Cuban guests.

‘Cuba has not stood idly by’

“This important event takes place at a time when the Cuban people are experiencing a profound energy crisis as a result of the policies of maximum pressure imposed on our country by the U.S. government,” said Osmayda Hernández Beleño, the FMC’s director of international relations, in opening the first plenary session.

“What historically has been an economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba that has lasted for more than six decades has recently mutated into a qualitatively different and qualitatively even more aggressive and inhumane stage,” the FMC leader added.

Preventing even one drop of oil from entering Cuba over the last three months, Hernández Beleño explained, is “affecting access to essential goods and services such as food, water, medicine, fuel, and electricity, which are vital to guaranteeing the right to life and other basic human rights.”

Facing such a severe energy blockade, the FMC leader noted, “Cuba has not stood idly by.”

She outlined expanding efforts in Cuba to install solar systems now powering social centers and homes in isolated areas; residences for children with illnesses requiring constant air conditioning; workplaces of more than 10,000 health and education workers; more than 900 state enterprises; and hundreds of water pumps and agricultural irrigation systems.

“Cuba does not represent a threat of any kind to the United States or to any other country in the world, as Donald Trump has claimed,”  Hernández Beleño emphasized. “The ‘problem with Cuba’ is that it spread its example of solidarity and internationalism within a destructive capitalism that expresses the opposite.”

The FMC leader’s entire speech, already published by World-Outlook, can be found here.

‘Cuba is not alone’

“Today, more than ever, the support we receive from you takes on special significance,” Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, Cuba’s ambassador to the UN, told the delegates.

“Since January 3, 2026, the United States aggression against our peoples, and Cuba in particular, has escalated alarmingly. An extremely complex situation has emerged” after Trump’s January 29 executive order, he added.

“The objective of this criminal policy by the United States is to exacerbate the suffering of the Cuban people,” Soberón Guzmán continued, “to force a social uprising that would fulfill their desire of destroying the Cuban Revolution. However, we will prevent a crisis of such magnitude from occurring. The Cuban government, with the help of friends around the world — some of them are right here right now in this room — is taking measures to prevent it.”

Cuba’s envoy to the UN said his country has “increased our oil production capacity.” He also detailed Cuba’s rapid advances in installing solar farms.

Other sources have confirmed these statements by Cuban officials.

“Chinese exports of solar equipment to Cuba skyrocketed from about $5 million in 2023 to $117 million in 2025 and show no sign of stopping,” the Washington Post reported on March 17. “Beijing pledged last year to help Cuba build more than 92 solar parks by 2028, and more than half of these projects have come online, authorities say. Satellite imagery from 2025 shows clusters of solar panels springing up over a matter of weeks.”

According to the Post, about 10% of Cuba’s current electricity needs comes from such solar installations. “That would be among the fastest expansions of solar energy anywhere,” the Post reported, “and [would] place Cuba ahead of most countries — including the U.S. — in the share of electricity generated by sun power.”

“Of course, the challenges are immense,” the Cuban ambassador to the UN explained, describing the rolling blackouts and breakdown in freight and passenger transportation, the undermining of medical care for many patients with critical conditions, and curtailment of other key services. “It is difficult for a country in the 21^st century to function normally when a superpower blocks access to a key resource such as fuel.”

And there are no bounds to Washington’s criminal cruelty.

On March 19, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that Washington won’t allow Cuba to take delivery of Russian crude, as the fuel-starved island was poised to receive two tankers carrying oil and gas from Russia. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added Cuba to a list of countries that would be blocked from such transactions. The White House took the action even though it had temporarily authorized in mid-March the purchase of Russian oil stranded at sea to stabilize energy markets rattled by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. This short-term measure suspended sanctions imposed on Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine, but apparently not for Cuba.

However, what the Trump administration fails to consider is the “resilience of the Cuban people,” Soberón Guzmán told the delegates. In addition to installing solar panels where possible, Cubans are cooking with wood and charcoal, turning to bicycles and motorcycles for transportation, and enduring many hours without electricity to allow the power grid to keep essential services up and running, he said.

“The Cuban people and their revolution will continue the steadfast defense of our right to sovereignty,” the Cuban ambassador concluded. “Despite the blockades and aggressions, we will continue to resist. No matter how great the challenges, we will overcome them because Cuba is not alone.”

Corinna Mullin, a former CUNY adjunct professor and delegate to the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) Delegate Assembly, the faculty union, who was fired last year for her pro-Palestinian advocacy, also spoke at this session, as did Kevin Kucera, a leader of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) in California.

In a video message, Kucera outlined his union’s opposition to the U.S. blockade. “There is an amazing pushback” against the Trump administration’s policies, the IAM leader said, highlighting the recent protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “The attack on Cuba… is an attack on workers’ rights around the world,” he continued. “Our union and the AFL-CIO stand with the Cuban people in solidarity.”

Solidarity from Latin America

Sara Flounders of the International Action Center and Tarisse Iriarte of the NY/NJ Cuba Sí Coalition chaired the second plenary session, which focused on solidarity efforts with Cuba in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Such campaigns are necessary to counter Washington’s intensifying efforts to smear and isolate Cuba in the western hemisphere, Flounders and Iriarte pointed out.

The Trump administration is pushing hard to break ties between Cuba and other Caribbean and Latin American countries, and to prevent those trying to extend a hand of solidarity from doing so.

In February, for example, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a tanker full of Colombian fuel oil en route to Cuba that had gotten within 70 miles of the island.

On March 7, Trump organized the “Shield of the Americas” summit at his golf club in Miami, which was attended by government officials from 12 countries — Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Under the guise of “fighting drug cartels,” the summit aimed at minimizing China’s influence in the region and isolating Cuba.

On March 18, less than two weeks later, the government of Costa Rica closed its embassy in Havana and told Cuba’s government to pull its diplomats from San José.

In this context, delegates welcomed a video message to the conference from Mexican journalist Alina Duarte, who reported on grassroots efforts in Mexico to collect and send humanitarian aid to Cuba.

“The hegemony of the U.S. empire in the Americas is diminishing, so it is attacking, kidnapping, blockading,” Duarte said. She described a popular outpouring across Mexico of solidarity rallies and donations of food, medicine, and other humanitarian aid for Cuba.

In February and early March, three Mexican navy vessels delivered more than 3,000 tons of such aid to Cuba, including rice, beans, milk, and meat products, and personal hygiene items.

While the conference was going on, Mexico’s former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and the country’s current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, made unusual public calls urging the people of Mexico to step up solidarity and increase donations for the island nation.

At the end of January, Sheinbaum halted oil shipments to Cuba, bowing to Washington’s threats to impose punitive tariffs on any nation that trades petroleum with Cuba. Until then, Mexico was Cuba’s main source of oil following the imposition of a de-facto blockade by the U.S. navy of Venezuelan oil to Cuba.

Similar aid efforts are being organized by Cuba solidarity groups in Argentina, the Movement of Landless Rural Workers and the Unified Federation of Petroleum Workers in Brazil, and the government of Chile, among others.

Berthony Dupont, director of the weekly newspaper Haiti Liberté, and Artemio Camacho of the Cuba solidarity movement in Puerto Rico, also addressed the second plenary session. David Abdullah of the Movement for Social Justice in Trinidad and Tobago sent greetings to the conference.

Workshop on role of Cuban women, impact of U.S. economic war

Delegates concluded their work on the first day of the gathering with a number of workshops.

The most popular was the workshop on Cuban women. Its panel featured Maybel González Marino, regional coordinator of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, and Yamila González Ferrer, a jurist in Cuba. Both were part of the Cuban delegation to the 70^th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

González Marino explained how ordinary women were transformed through the revolution, which combated social prejudices that previously prevented most women from assuming leadership positions in the workforce, society, and government.

About 55% of the workforce in Cuba today are women. This includes more than 67% of teachers and other personnel in education, 62% of doctors, 64% of those engaged in internationalist missions around the world, and 35% among the self-employed.

Women’s participation in leadership positions at the local and national level of the Cuban state has also increased, she pointed out. Nearly 52% of the decision-making positions in government are occupied by women, she said, including nearly 58% of the members of the National Assembly, Cuba’s parliament, and 59% of the People’s Power municipal assemblies.

One of Cuba’s recent revolutionary achievements was a major revision of the country’s Family Code, which a large majority of the population adopted in a 2022 referendum. The FMC played a major role in the campaign that led to its ratification, González Ferrer noted.

The Code legalized gay marriage and civil unions, as well as the adoption of children by same-sex couples. The new law also strengthened the rights and protections of children and adolescents, further ensuring the rights of women, and promoting equality in sharing domestic rights and responsibilities between parents — regardless of sex or gender. It also strengthened the progress that Cuba has made in addressing domestic violence and codified the rights of the disabled and the elderly within the family.

At the same time, González Ferrer explained, Washington’s economic war, and especially its recent escalation with the blockade of oil, is undermining the exercise of these fundamental rights enshrined in the new Family Code.

“In today’s emergency situation, women bear more of the burden of where to buy food, how to preserve it, where to cook without gas — often using a wood fire on sidewalks since houses are not built for this kind of food preparation,” she said. “We sometimes walk long distances to fill jugs with water and then figure out how to boil it for those who need it sanitized.”

In cases of domestic violence, “how do authorities come since transportation is at a standstill due to lack of fuel?” she asked.

The blockade also undermines the rights of the elderly and handicapped outlined in the Family Code, González Ferrer pointed out. “It is much harder now to get access to wheelchairs, or hearing aids. When batteries run out for cochlear implants you can’t replace them,” she said.

“Your solidarity is essential in countering the blockade and breaking down these barriers,” she emphasized.

Material aid campaigns, travel to Cuba, legislative work

Other workshops focused on material aid campaigns, travel to Cuba, and legislative work.

Bob Schwartz, executive director of Global Health Partners, outlined a new neo-natal and maternal care initiative his organization has undertaken in collaboration with Cuba’s ministry of health. This is focused on raising funds to obtain specialized equipment — including incubators, ventilators, fetal heart rate monitors, portable X-ray machines, and spare parts for this machinery — first for Havana and scaling it across Cuba over the next five years.

The program’s goal is to restore Cuba’s exemplary infant mortality rate of just over 5 deaths in 1000 live births, Schwartz said.

“Before the revolution the infant mortality rate exceeded 70 per 1000 live births,” Schwartz pointed out. “The revolution changed all that. Cuba’s public health system, focused on preventive care available free of charge to all, brought down infant mortality to 5.2 as of a decade ago, comparable to that in wealthy capitalist countries. Because of extreme sanctions, this has now increased to 9 per 1000 live births.”

Other material aid campaigns delegates focused on include the International Humanitarian Convoy/Flotilla to Cuba, departing from Mexico March 21. The European delegation to this convoy arrived in Cuba on March 18. The U.S. contingent was slated to leave Miami with a charter plane full of medicines and other aid on March 20.

Projects where individuals and organizations can make donations to help with material aid to Cuba include: Global Health Partners; Let Cuba Live, focusing on sending solar generators and panels to Cuba; and The Hatuey Project, providing medicines for Cuban children with leukemia and lymphoma.

Many plans for group travel to Cuba were also outlined. These include several brigades going to Cuba for May Day and participation in an August international conference on the centennial of the birth of Fidel Castro, the central leader of the Cuban revolution. All participants in these trips are urged to fill suitcases with medical supplies and other humanitarian aid for Cuba.

A public event on the evening of March 14 included greetings from the Cuban guests and music from the band Bomba Yo.

Action Plan

The conference concluded on March 15 with discussion and adoption of a Cuba solidarity Action Plan. About 55 delegates in person and 71 online attended the final session.

Fernando González, president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (known as ICAP, its Spanish-language acronym) and one of the Cuban Five,^[1] and Leima Martínez Freire, also from ICAP, addressed delegates in this session through video streaming.

“Trump and secretary of state Rubio believe that the overthrow of the Cuban revolution is nigh,” Jason Corley of the NY/NJ Cuba Sí Coalition told the delegates in introducing the action plan.

“This solidarity conference therefore takes place at a time of critical importance for the future of the Cuban revolution. The objective imperative for us to step up our solidarity work, both quantitatively and qualitatively, has never been greater. Of greatest importance is mounting a political defense of Cuba as it faces the onslaught, while doing everything we can to lessen the dire economic situation by the sending of humanitarian aid.”

Among other items, the 16-point action plan includes:

• Organizing street protests and public visibility, with local and nationally coordinated actions, to win broader layers of the population to oppose the U.S. blockade.
• Promoting all forms of sending material aid to Cuba, giving priority to the International Humanitarian Convoy/Flotilla to Cuba, departing from Mexico March 21.
• Maximizing the amount of travel to Cuba from the U.S. and Canada and involving those who travel in activities against the blockade upon their return.
• Reaching out to the more than 2.4 million Cubans who live in the United States to broaden active opposition to U.S. government policies against Cuba among Cuban Americans.
• Building connections between the Cuban workers movement and workers/union struggles in the U.S., with an emphasis on interacting with those who are part of the upsurge of struggles against ICE and Trump’s agenda for the mass deportation of immigrants.
• Publicizing Cuba’s internationalism, especially the incredible work worldwide of Cuba’s volunteer medical brigades.

NOTES

[1] The Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González — are Cuban revolutionaries who, in the 1990s, accepted assignments from the Cuban government to gather information on the activities of Cuban American counterrevolutionary groups operating in southern Florida. On September 12, 1998, the five were arrested by the FBI. They were framed up and convicted on a variety of charges, which included acting as unregistered agents of the Cuban government and possession of false identity documents. Without a shred of evidence, three were charged with “conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information.” The Five were reunited on Cuban soil in 2014, when the last of them were finally released from prison. Today, they are considered national heroes in Cuba.

If you appreciate this article, share it with friends and subscribe to World-Outlook (for free) by clicking on the link below.

Type your email in the box below and click on “SUBSCRIBE.” You will receive a notification in your in-box on which you will have to click to confirm your subscription.