On March 21, 2026, the Nuestra América convoy — including activists from the United States and countries throughout Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Canada — converged in Havana, bringing tons of humanitarian aid, including medicines, food, and solar panels. Medea Benjamin, a founder of CODEPINK — a U.S.-based nonprofit that provides humanitarian aid to Cuba, and Hasan Piker, the popular Twitch streamer, were among the contingent.

On March 24, the U.S. treasury department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sent the two activists letters demanding information and documentation related to their participation in the convoy. In an interview with Belly of the Beast, Benjamin explains the motivations for the trip and their response to the OFAC probe. Belly of the Beast is “U.S.-based media outlet that tells Cuba’s untold stories through hard-hitting journalism and stunning cinematography,” according to its website.

“[The OFAC letter is] a form of intimidation to try to get people who travel to Cuba to be afraid that the government’s going to go after them,” Benjamin explained. “It’s not a tactic that works with CODEPINK because we’re certainly not afraid of our government. We’re afraid of our government’s policies like the government policy towards Cuba and what it’s doing to the Cuban people. That’s what we’re afraid of.”

World-Outlook is publishing the interview below for the information of our readers. The headline and introduction that follow are from the original. Transcription, photos, and notes are by World-Outlook.

— World-Outlook editors

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Code Pink Co-Founder Responds to U.S. Investigation

May 28, 2026

What happens when a U.S. citizen tries to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba and criticizes the U.S. government’s economic war on Cuba?

That was what Medea Benjamin did, and now the U.S. government is investigating and intimidating her.

Last March, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink, traveled to Cuba as part of the Humanitarian Convoy Nuestra America, amid a devastating economic crisis brought about by U.S. sanctions and an oil blockade designed to choke the island.

She came to bring food, medicines, especially to the children’s hospitals, where the maximum pressure sanctions are killing babies.

Medea explains to Liz Oliva Fernández what the investigations really are, how she was saved by Cuban doctors, why Hasan Piker’s reach made him a target and why this won’t stop the solidarity towards Cuba.

“It’s a form of intimidation, to try to get people who travel to Cuba to be afraid that the U.S. government’s going to go after them,” she said.

Transcription of ‘What Happens When U.S. Citizens Defy Cuba Policy? Medea Benjamin Responds’

Liz Oliva Fernández (LOF), Belly of the Beast: Fox News recently reported on an investigation by the U.S. treasury department, specifically the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). According to the report, you and others were cited in connection with your participation in the Nuestra América humanitarian convoy to Cuba in March 2026. Is it true?

Medea Benjamin (MB): It’s not a subpoena. It’s a letter asking for information about the trip, what we did, what flight we took, what aid we took with us, what did we do while we were there, those kinds of things.

LOF: Where are they trying to get without asking?

MB: It’s a form of intimidation to try to get people who travel to Cuba to be afraid that the government’s going to go after them. It’s not a tactic that works with CODEPINK because we’re certainly not afraid of our government. We’re afraid of our government’s policies like the government policy towards Cuba and what it’s doing to the Cuban people. That’s what we’re afraid of.

LOF: Have you or CODEPINK violated any U.S. laws in your visits to Cuba?

MB: We didn’t violate the law. In fact, we followed the letter of the law. We did not want to stay in a fancy hotel in Havana. We would much prefer to stay in a very simple hotel, but we weren’t allowed to by the U.S. government.

You know, they have a list of hundreds of hotels we’re not allowed to stay in and only a handful that are foreign owned. In this case, we stayed in a Spanish-owned hotel. We also came under the category of aid to the Cuban people and we brought humanitarian aid.

We also did not go to the beach. We were not tourists. We spent our time in educational activities learning about the situation in Cuba.

So, we certainly are in compliance with the law. That’s why we feel that this request for information is really just a form of intimidation. We didn’t try to hide that we were going. On the contrary, we encourage people to speak out to use their social media.

It’s interesting that Hasan [also got a letter], who has millions of viewers, and lots of them young people [who] have really been educated for the first time about what the U.S. government is doing in Cuba. And I think it’s the kind of social media reach that we had on that trip that is something that irritated a lot of the members of Congress and pushed them to push the Treasury Department to do something.

LOF: How does CODEPINK plan to respond to this?

MB: We will be responding legally. We don’t want to confront the government over a trip. We want to confront the government over their policies.

That’s why we’re organizing demonstrations to try to stop the U.S. from an invasion of Cuba. And that’s why we’re doing so much educational work to make the American people aware of how sadistic the U.S. policy is towards Cuba.

LOF: Why are you taking so much time and energy to try to educate people in the United States about Cuba? Why do you care about Cuba?

MB: I personally first encountered Cuba when I lived in a poor village in Africa and I was dying from malaria and it was Cuban doctors who saved me. And then I saw Cuban doctors all over Africa saving lives. And I thought, “Wow, what kind of country is this that sends their doctors overseas living very, very simply and very dedicated to helping people who never had access to a doctor?”

And then I visited Cuba. I spent a lot of time in Cuba. And I was really quite amazed, as somebody myself who studied nutrition and worked with poor, malnourished kids around the world, to see the kind of care that the Cubans put into their own children as well as children in other countries.

And when the U.S. under Trump has so severely increased its pressure on the Cuban economy, I’ve seen how so many of those gains have deteriorated, how difficult it is for doctors to take care of the babies in the incubators.

I’ve seen the infant mortality rate more than double in the last few years. And that is so painful to think that my government’s policy is literally killing babies in Cuba.

And I think the American people have to know that because, if they knew that, I think they would be appalled at what we’re doing.

LOF: Medea, how are you sure that the cause of the crisis that we are going through right now in Cuba is because of your government and not because of the Cuban government?

MB: The Cuban government has had a very difficult time since 1960 when the blockade was first imposed.^[1]

And it was eased up during Obama. I remember being in Cuba visiting those years when things were much better for the Cuban people. And when Trump came in and erased all of those gains, you could visibly see how that affected the Cuban economy and the Cuban people.

COVID certainly hurt Cuba, especially because so many tourists stopped coming. But it really has been these this last period under Trump with the oil blockade that has to so totally affected all of the people living in Cuba. It’s become a catastrophe.

And I want people who are watching this, who are not in Cuba, just to think what their lives would be like if they didn’t have access to electricity, if they didn’t have fuel, if they didn’t have public transportation. I mean, all of the ways that the lack of fuel has is affecting the lives of Cubans and the way that it’s creating hunger, the way that it’s stopping doctors from performing operations, thousands and thousands of people who can’t get those operations.

I mean, this is a sadistic policy. And for [U.S. secretary of state] Marco Rubio to say with a straight face that it’s the Cuban government, that there is no blockade, is just ludicrous and it’s mean. It’s inhumane and it’s a big fat lie.

The first time I visited Cuba was in 1979 and I’ve been going to Cuba many times ever since then. Particularly now with the difficult economic situation in the last few years, I’ve been going every few months taking food and medicine, focusing particularly on the children’s hospitals.

The children have nothing to do with politics. They’re not socialists. They’re not capitalists. They’re just children and we need to help them.

LOF: The situation now between the United States and Cuba is getting tense and you can feel it. Are you afraid right now?

MB: I’m not afraid at all. I think the government is wasting its time going after me.

I’m afraid for what the government is doing and might do in Cuba. I pray every day that the U.S. is not going to invade. I want to change my government’s policy so desperately that I am focusing so much of my time now on this issue because I never thought we would be in this situation where the U.S. would want to invade.

It’s quite ironic, Liz, that Marco Rubio is so determined to see private enterprise thrive in Cuba and yet the very policies that are destroying the private businesses that do exist in Cuba. And we know that Cuba is open to foreigners coming in and investing.

And there are so many ways that this could be a win-win situation like we started to see under the Obama years. It really is so sad that we have this horrible tense situation instead of a normal relation with Cuba.

You know, if the guiltiness of Cuba is because it’s a communist country, then why do we have billions and billions of dollars of trade with China? Why do we have billions of dollars with trade with Vietnam? If we think that Cuba is a country that doesn’t allow freedom in terms of human rights and free expression, why do we have such great relations with countries like Saudi Arabia or Egypt, including here in my own country where we’ve seen what ICE has been doing in our communities, destroying the lives of people, tearing families apart, throwing people in detention centers.

And it’s not fair to the Cuban people, who should be the ones to decide their own future.

LOF: What do you think that is the goal of the U.S. government with Cuba?

MB:I think there might be different goals, that perhaps the goal of Donald Trump is to have a Trump resort in Cuba, to have beachfront property, to have his name up in lights, and be in charge of tourism in Cuba.

But then there’s Marco Rubio. And Marco Rubio and the few congresspeople want to see regime change. They want to see an absolute change of government.

Some people say, “Well, why don’t they do a kind of Venezuela thing where they just take out the president and continue to work with the other people in charge?”

Well, Cuba is not like that. It wouldn’t happen in Cuba.

And that would not be enough for Marco Rubio and his cohorts like Díaz-Balart and María Salazar and Carlos Giménez. They want to see an absolute change.

LOF: [Do] you think like the Cuban Americans, politicians like Marco Rubio that is now secretary of state, or the ones that you mentioned like Mario Balart and the rest, actually represent the will of the Cuban Americans in the United States or the Americans in general?

MB: Well, when it comes to Cuban Americans, they represent only one portion of Cuban Americans. There’s certainly millions of Cuban Americans, especially the young people, who don’t want to see U.S. military intervention and don’t want to see a policy that hurts the ordinary Cuban people, which is what the blockade is doing.

When it comes to the general American public, the overwhelming majority are against a U.S. invasion of Cuba.^[2]

And of course, Liz, as you well know, we have the overwhelmingly majority of people around the world on our side because we see that every year at the United Nations, almost the entire world, except for the U.S. and Israel, voted against the U.S. policy.^[3]

So, this is a policy that really only represents a small minority of Cuban Americans that unfortunately have a voice that is way louder than they should have because of the small group that they represent.

LOF: What is your take on the media coverage of your humanitarian work and activism with Cuba?

MB: Well, first of all, we didn’t even get the letter until after we heard it on Fox News, and it was sensationalized. It was very misleading.

And on the one hand though, I must say it did give U.S. a chance to talk. We’ve had many media interviews since then. We’ve had a lot of people who didn’t know about our efforts now learn about them and asking how can they join, how can they help.

So, in one sense it worked to the benefit of educating people about U.S. policy towards Cuba.

We will keep working and keep pushing and will not be intimidated. And those people who think that we are that easily intimidated, they don’t know CODEPINK. They don’t know the other groups who have been committed to supporting the Cuban people.

But they will find out how determined we are.

NOTES

[1] In April 1960, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state wrote an internal memo “The Decline and Fall of Castro,” giving a brief analysis of “considerations in respect to the life of the present Government of Cuba” and proposing the initial steps that led to a ban on all U.S. trade with Cuba later that year. In 1962, then-president John F. Kennedy instituted a full, official embargo and travel restrictions. Since then, successive administrations — both Democratic and Republican — have continued these policies, which have been dramatically intensified under U.S. president Donald Trump, with the addition of a naval blockade of oil shipments to Cuba and the threat of harsh tariffs and other sanctions on any nation that tries to break that blockade.

The full text of the Mallory memorandum can be accessed here: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960, Cuba, Volume VI – Office of the Historian.

[2] The Center for Economic Policy and Research reported on May 6, 2026, that a YouGov poll found 64% of Americans oppose U.S. military intervention in Cuba, while only 15% support the idea and 21% are “unsure.”

[3] In October 2025, the United Nations General Assembly voted for the 33rd time to condemn “the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” See World Votes with Cuba to Demand an End to U.S. Blockade.

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