By Pete Seidman
MIAMI — Forty people attended a June 18, 2026, speak out here opposing U.S. war threats against Cuba. The Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and the campus Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) sponsored the meeting. The event took place on the main campus of Florida International University (FIU).
Gerardo Delgado, a young Cuban American who works at FIU, welcomed people to the gathering. Delgado is a leader of the Miami Coalition and took part in the March “Nuestra America” Convoy to Cuba. He also joined a delegation organized by the Los Angeles U.S. Hands Off Cuba Committee to Cuba’s May Day mobilizations.
Delgado introduced Adrián Heredia, the second secretary of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. Speaking by video conference, Heredia cited the dire consequences of the stepped-up campaign of unilateral coercive measures being carried out against Cuba. Washington is seeking to “bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the government,” he explained.
“This is not a conspiracy theory,” he stressed. “It has been the documented policy of the United States government since Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory spelled it out.” In a now infamous memorandum in 1960, Mallory wrote: “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.”
Heredia made clear however, that “Cuba is not waiting to see what happens. Cuba is taking measures every day. Our National Assembly [just] had a huge debate about new measures…. We are trying to improve production in Cuba, mainly production of food, but it is about the production in every sector of the economy. For both sectors: for private business and state business.
“We are willing to have a dialogue. But the situation right now is that there is a collective punishment against our country, trying to sabotage any kind of business that we could have…. Cuban people understand now, more than ever, that the cause of this is not about the government. It’s about the United States actions against our country.”
Carlton Daly, a co-chair of the campus YDSA, explained: “As a Black person I see a lot of parallels with how the disenfranchisement of my people parallels the Cuban people’s struggle against starvation. The struggle is not only for our people, but it is also in the fate of the Caribbean and the Cuban people.”
Danny Valdez, the founder of the Cuban Americans for Cuba, also joined the meeting remotely. “I am Cuban American, I was born in Miami with Cuban parents, and Cuban grandparents and, you know I also have all the baggage that you might think a person with my upbringing has around Cuba and Cuba’s politics,” explained Valdez, who graduated from FIU in 2008.
“It is doubly devastating for me that Marco Rubio, the person leading the charge on this mass immiseration campaign, is a Cuban American himself,” Valdez said. “We need an organized counterweight to the dominant Cuban American voices in American politics right now.
“We have allowed them to capture the narrative around Cuba and around what Cuban Americans specifically want for Cuba. And I can tell you, since I founded this organization just a few months ago, we’ve seen growing support from Cuban Americans all over the United States who are saying, thank God, I thought I was the only one.
“Cuban Americans,” Valdez continued, “need to take the inspiration from our Jewish brothers and sisters when they said, ‘not in our name.’
“It’s past time for Cuban Americans to come out and do the same thing en masse, and say, we want a different policy toward Cuba, we want policies that are pro-engagement, we want policies that don’t hurt our aunts and uncles and parents and grandparents and friends who still live on the island.”
“As a Cuban American,” Valdez said, “doubly, triply, I say, we do not want this done in our name. And we don’t want this done at all. We want a new era of U.S., Cuba, relations where both countries can benefit, both countries can prosper.
“Where both countries respect each other’s sovereignty and decisions on how they want to run their own economies and their own societies. We do it with many other countries all over the world: single-party states, multi-party states, communists, capitalists, everything in between. Why can’t we have that same relationship with our neighbor, 90 miles away?”
Andres Sanchez, a Cuban American FIU student who also participated in the Nuestra America convoy and the May Day delegation, took up the connection between the fight against the blockade and the YDSA’s campus fight against university collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Last year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis pushed through legislation requiring every local police department to sign a contract of cooperation with ICE, known for its illegal and murderous raids throughout the country.
Sanchez explained that the contract has led to the detention of foreign students for checks on their legal status. At a meeting held the same day as the meeting, the University Board of Trustees discussed charging immigrant students an additional fee to attend school here and allowing authorities to label students “illegal” and then barring them from campus.
“As we fight against the blockade of Cuba,” Sanchez concluded, “We also have to fight in our own backyard!”
Felipe Ramos is a field director for the campaign of Oliver Larkin, a Democratic Socialists of America-supported candidate in the Democratic Party primary contest for Florida’s 25th congressional district. Ramos commented, “In really talking to people, you’d be surprised to find how many people feel like they are alone in their opposition to war and imperialism. It is up to us to take an educational role, to host wherever we can groups like this, but also to reach beyond activist circles and try to bring people who have skin in the game, either from their family, or that they understand that interventions in Latin America are happening not just in Cuba, but all throughout.
“We need to start having those hard conversations,” Ramos said, “and it starts with our friends, families, and neighbors, but it has to go beyond activist circles.”
Uriel Ramirez is a graduate of Cuba’s Latin American Medical School (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina — ELAM) and director of the Pan-American Medical Association (PAMA). Ramirez, who is of Salvadoran descent and grew up in Los Angeles, noted there are “over 200 American physicians who graduated from ELAM now practicing in the United States.” He said he was happy to see so many Cuban Americans taking part in the meeting. “What’s going on is something devastating, and it’s even more devastating seeing the Cuban diaspora against their own people. Something disheartening to be honest. But I’m glad that you guys are here.”
Ramirez reported that in 2025, the PAMA, working with Global Health Partners and others, was able to deliver more than $1.95 million in essential medical supplies to hospitals, clinics, and frontline professionals in Cuba. The Association expects that this year it will send $3-4 million more to major hospitals on the island.
Claudia Rodriguez, also a Cuban American activist and Convoy participant, introduced Kimberly Miller, co-coordinator of the Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace. Miller explained the June 14 Caribbean Day of Solidarity with Cuba, which was called by the Assembly of Caribbean People a group including trade unions, civic organizations, Cuba solidarity, and Pan African groups throughout the region.
“June 14 marks the birthdays of two revolutionary figures whose lives embodied anti-colonial struggle and internationalism,” Miller explained, “Antonio Maceo, the Bronze Titan of Cuba’s war for independence, and Ernesto Che Guevara, whose commitment to liberation extended far beyond the borders of any one nation.”
“The Caribbean and Latin America should be free from military intervention, sanctions, occupation, coercion, and foreign domination. No Dunroe Doctrine!” she insisted, referring to the nickname for the “Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” issued by the current U.S. administration.
“For us, peace is not merely the absence of war. Peace requires sovereignty. Peace requires self-determination. Peace requires the ability of peoples and nations to decide their own future without being threatened, punished, or controlled by powerful outside forces, she said. “That is why the blockade against Cuba is not only a Cuban issue. It is a Caribbean issue.”
Judith Echeveria, a long-time member of the Social Justice Group at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Miami, opened by boasting that U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth had included her religion among those kicked off the list of Pentagon-recognized faiths on June 4, 2026. “I’m very proud of that. That’s my claim to fame these days,” she quipped.
After talking about the trauma and grief that grips many Cuban Americans in the Miami diaspora, Echeveria read a letter to the meeting penned by Rev. Dr. Harold Marrero on behalf of the church’s congregation.
Marrero wrote that he is “a Cuban refugee” who supports regime change in Cuba. “I support a peaceful, democratic transition, chosen and led by the Cuban people, with free expression, accountable government, human rights, and room for every person to live without fear.”
However, he stressed, “I do not support military intervention. I do not support replacing one form of domination with another…. I reject the idea that we can free a people by starving them.”
In a lively discussion period that concluded the meeting, Valdez noted, “Anyone who tells you there’s no freedom of expression or speech in Cuba has never asked a Cuban in Cuba any question about anything regarding Cuba in any way.
“There’s a wide variety of opinions in Cuba, just like you would find here. There are people who, you know, support the government 100%, there are people who support the government 50%, there are people who support it 0%, and there’s everything in between,” Valdez explained. “But I have never heard a single Cuban say, ‘Please, Donald Trump, come in and bomb my country, or please, Marco Rubio, save our country from ourselves.’
“Cubans are very clear-eyed as to what U.S. intervention means,” Valdez noted. “The United States does not have a good track record of post-intervention nation building. I mean, even just this year, we’ve seen so many vivid examples of American war-making abroad. So, there is a huge variety of opinion of what should come next for Cuba in Cuba, but nobody there supports anybody but themselves making those choices for themselves.”
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Categories: Cuba/Cuba Solidarity