(This is the first of two parts. The second can be found in Part II.)

By Yvonne Hayes and Argiris Malapanis

Cuba: The Capital of 21^st Century Communism, released by the U.S. Department of State on July 20, 2026, is a monumental distortion of history.

The same government that recently threatened to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, backs genocide in Gaza, and put militarized thugs on the streets to terrorize its own population labels Cuba the “Espionage Empire,” the global center of a new “red menace.” Under that rationale, it lays the groundwork for escalating government repression — reminiscent of McCarthyism^[1] during the Cold War — against perceived “domestic enemies,” in essence, targeting anyone who speaks out against U.S. policy.

In the document’s opening lines, the scribes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio claim:

“For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States. It is a campaign that has infiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government, recruited and cultivated generations of American activists, backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable and damaging foreign intelligence penetrations in American history….

“[Cuba] has sought to undermine, degrade and destabilize America with spies and soldiers, but also with students and intellectuals; with terrorist cells, but also with solidarity committees and nonprofit networks; with intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover, but also with ostensibly private exchanges, nonprofits, political organizations, and activist networks.”

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All the while, the document asserts, Havana has also been orchestrating every struggle for freedom and equality around the world.

It is of course true that the Cuban Revolution has been a source of political inspiration to tens of millions all over the world from the moment it overthrew the hated dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista^[2] — backed by Washington — and began building a new society with entirely different values; a society based on fulfilling the needs of the great majority, the workers and farmers. Supporters of the Cuban Revolution do not deny that. We are proud of it.

But it is a very different matter to claim that the fight for social justice on every continent is somehow masterminded from Havana. That is absurd and there is no evidence to support it.

There is one example, in particular, that graphically illustrates this point. In September 1960, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s prime minister at the time, and the rest of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations were enthusiastically received in Harlem, New York. During that visit, Fidel met with Malcolm X, the outstanding revolutionary leader of the U.S. Black liberation struggle, at the Hotel Theresa. Both men were proud of the meeting and publicized the encounter. But no one thought to claim that Fidel was “instructing” Malcolm on how to carry out the fight for Black rights in the United States.

Rubio’s narrative turns reality on its head to frame this tiny island nation of 11 million people as the chief cause of suffering and violence in the world, while presenting the powerful behemoth to its north as a hapless, innocent victim. It pulls out all the stops to try to validate U.S. president Donald Trump’s claim in his January 29 executive order that Cuba poses “an unusual and extraordinary” threat to the United States.

To people familiar with the actual history, the State Department “analysis” sounds ridiculous. But its implied threats are not a laughing matter. They are dead serious. Its release not only aims to justify the intensification of Washington’s policy of trying to overthrow the Cuban Revolution by suffocating the Cuban people. It is a direct assault on civil liberties in the United States, particularly the exercise of free speech in opposing U.S. imperialism’s wars and other interventions abroad and the drive toward autocratic rule at home.

In a welcome statement pointing out the Trump administration’s hypocrisy, Veterans for Peace wrote:

[We condemn] the recent report by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accusing Cuba of interfering in the internal affairs of the U.S. and, conversely accusing U.S. peace and solidarity activists of being agents of a foreign country, Cuba…

It is the U.S. that has waged an economic war against Cuba for 64 years….

It is the U.S. CIA that organized a failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961…^[3]

We reject the Trump administration’s sudden return to “anti-communism” as a means of undermining the credibility of its political opponents.

Targeting free speech, civil rights

Students protesting Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, observers standing watch to protect their immigrant neighbors, journalists, trade unionists, members of Congress and other elected officials, and private individuals are all on the list of groups acting at Havana’s behest, according to Rubio’s propagandists.

Among those named are the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the People’s Forum, CODEPINK, Black Alliance for Peace, and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The state department labels the DSA a “particularly potent illustration of the ideological victory of Cuba’s effort to position itself as the spiritual capital of Third Worldist radicalism.”

Their “crimes”? Opposing the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Demanding that Cuba be removed from the spurious State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Contributing material aid to the Cuban people, from medical supplies to pencils. Traveling to Cuba. Or, in the case of several individuals, attending the wedding of a CODEPINK founder.

The message is clear: Voicing opposition to U.S. government policies and actions means acting as the agent of a hostile foreign power, in this case, the “communist nexus” in Havana. The parallel to the McCarthyite witch hunt and blacklisting of civil rights activists, trade unionists, and peace advocates of the Cold War era is unmistakable.

This broadside attack on civil liberties is not just about Cuba. It is a transparent attempt to distract attention from the real purveyors of terror and war — U.S. imperialism and its allies.

It comes as Washington faces serious challenges. It has lost ground on the world stage to China. It has taken humiliating blows in its ongoing war on Iran. It faces an increasingly disgruntled population at home, as real wages decline and healthcare, education, and housing deteriorate and become less accessible.

Nevertheless, the super wealthy families that rule the United States retain enormous military and economic power, which — as their empire is declining — make them that much more dangerous, especially with an unpredictable would-be autocrat like Trump at the helm.

Every working person in the United States, along with our allies, has a stake in stopping this latest assault in its tracks. The only effective way to defend those being targeted today and debunk the lies that bolster the government’s attack is to forge a broad, inclusive united front.

Regardless of important differences of opinion that exist among those seeking social justice, agreement can and should be prioritized on working together to oppose this deeply serious threat to the democratic rights of all.

The method of the ‘Big Lie’

It would require volumes to untangle fact from innuendo and reality from lies in this document. But it is worth dissecting a few of its claims to highlight the authors’ method, how they frame world events to cement the false narrative that the U.S. government is a shining light of justice and liberty and that those who dare stand in its way are part of a global “terrorist conspiracy.”

The method of the Big Lie begins with repeating — as often and as loudly as possible — the same colossal fabrications and libels until the public begins to accept them.

The Cuban revolutionaries wrote a “new story,” say Rubio’s minions, that was “both more romantic and more radical than [that told by] its Soviet predecessor.” The future was not just about a conflict between the proletariat and capital, but “a much larger civilizational conflict, demanding not just economic equality, but social, cultural, and even spiritual transformation.”

According to the state department scribblers, even before the ouster of Batista, Cuban revolutionaries began to promote the idea that “the Black Panther, the Puerto Rican militant, and the anti-war student radical were part of the same global drama as the Cuban revolutionary, the Algerian insurgent, and the Colombian guerrilla.”

“In Cuba’s telling, the oppressed peoples of the world — from Harlem to Hanoi — all shared one enemy,” they write. “The same racist Yankee imperialism victimizing Africa, Asia, and Latin America was victimizing blacks and other minorities inside the United States.”

The fact is, while Cuban rebel forces were fighting the dictatorship from their base in the Sierra Maestra mountains, workers, peasants, and youth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were beginning to rise up against colonial and neocolonial rule in their own countries. On their own, they drew the very conclusions the state department writers find so bizarre, so dangerous.

By the time the Cuban rebels marched into Havana in January 1959, the Vietnamese people had already driven the French colonialists out (although it would take them another 16 years to defeat the massive U.S. invasion that followed).

The civil rights movement in the United States was well under way before the success of the Cuban revolution.

The massive antiwar movement that ensued mushroomed in response to the U.S. slaughter in Vietnam, not at the bidding of Castro and Cuba.

Where was the U.S. government in all of this? Even a short list of examples from Latin America alone reveals that Washington was the perpetrator of oppression and exploitation, collaborating with dictatorial regimes or masterminding their ascent to power.

Missing from Rubio’s dossier is how Washington:

• Used its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — at the behest of the United Fruit Company — to back the 1954 coup in Guatemala and to overthrow the democratically elected government of Jacobo Árbenz.
• Invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965 to prevent a “communist” victory in that country’s civil war.
• Backed the 1973 military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, having failed in efforts by the CIA to prevent his election.
• Provided weapons, training, and cash to counterrevolutionary forces — the contras — seeking to overthrow the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution, during which the Nicaraguan people had ousted the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza.
• Supported a bloody military junta in El Salvador during the 1980s that murdered nuns, an archbishop, and countless civilians during that country’s civil war.
• Invaded Grenada following the 1983 assassination of the country’s prime minister Maurice Bishop, in an attempt to prevent reconsolidation of a revolutionary government and to break the ties between Grenada and Cuba.
• Invaded Panama and, on January 3, 1990, captured its president Manuel Noriega and whisked him off to prison in Florida.
• Carried out a pre-dawn raid in Venezuela on January 3 of this year — 36 years to the day from Noriega’s capture — and abducted its president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Celia Flores, both now imprisoned in New York.

‘Imperialism made us anti-imperialist’

As Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel noted in a speech in honor of the 32 Cubans killed during the January 3 U.S. assault on Venezuela, “The Cuban people are not anti-imperialist by default. Imperialism made us anti-imperialist.” 

This statement applies to every anticolonial fighter, every opponent of U.S. imperialism’s wars. That many of them — including in the United States — have drawn inspiration from the victory of the Cuban Revolution and the social advances achieved by the island nation is not proof that Havana is the mastermind of rebellion around the world. It is the policies of the U.S. government and its proxy regimes abroad that have fomented revolt.

Nor were the rise of the colonial revolutions and the movements for social change in the United States the brainchild of a single leader driven by a personal vendetta, as Rubio and his ilk imply.

The state department report highlights a 1958 note from Fidel Castro — the central leader of the Cuban rebel forces — to fellow revolutionary Celia Sánchez.^[4]

“I swore to myself that the Americans were going to pay dearly for what they were doing,” reads an excerpt of the note. “When this war is over, a much wider and bigger one will begin for me: the war that I’m going to launch against them. I am saying to myself that this is my true destiny.”

This quote, like every other bit of “evidence” the U.S. government offers, is pulled out of context, neatly sidestepping the crime that inspired Castro’s declaration. Written from the guerrilla encampment in the Sierra Maestra, where he had witnessed the dictatorship shelling the home of a peasant with “Made in the USA” rockets, the note actually began: “Seeing the rockets fired at Mario’s house, I swore to myself that the Americans are going to pay a very high price for what they are doing.”

Undermining Cuba’s moral stature

What makes the hair of the U.S. rulers stand on end is that a tiny country in its own “backyard,” with extremely limited resources, not only freed itself from the yoke of U.S. domination but then dared to attend to the basic needs of its population, all while offering solidarity to peoples around the world engaged in their own battles for independence and social justice.

This “failed nation,” as the document calls Cuba, has managed — despite the decades-long U.S. blockade — to feed and educate its population, bring women and Blacks into the center of public life, instill dignity among working people in the factories and other workplaces, as well as the countryside, and push the boundaries of medical science.

In 1959, more than 41% of adults in the Cuban countryside were illiterate, just over half the territory had electrical service, and there was only one rural hospital on the entire island. The Cuban revolution electrified the country (until the U.S. oil blockade shut off the lights again). Overall adult literacy now stands at more than 95 percent. And the universal healthcare system reduced mortality rates and increased life expectancy to levels comparable with the world’s industrialized nations. (Cuba’s recent setbacks on some of these fronts are largely due to Washington’s escalating economic war.)

These accomplishments earned Cuba a place of respect worldwide. That high regard enrages Trump, Rubio, and other U.S. politicians who refuse to provide decent education and housing, affordable health care, or even clean air and water in their own country.

To undermine Cuba’s prestige in the world, Rubio’s diatribe takes aim at the country’s advances in the field of medicine. The state department suggests that the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) near Havana is “proof” of the insidious nature of the Cuban regime. ELAM is “offering full-ride scholarships to low-income American students and affiliates of Cuban-aligned solidarity networks at U.S. universities,” the document says. “The idea for the scholarship was first proposed — and actively lobbied for — by Fidel Castro himself.”

But, once again, an element of truth is trotted out while details are omitted, and the lie is presented as truth.

Castro did make this proposal, after hearing from members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus, who during a visit to Cuba in 2000 were impressed with a medical system that far exceeded the health care standards in some of their home states.

ELAM graduates do commit to return to the United States — to practice medicine in under-served communities like the ones from which these young doctors came. This is not a conspiracy to create a nest of spies within the U.S. healthcare system. It is human solidarity.

(This was the first of two parts. The second can be found in Part II.)

NOTES

[1] McCarthyism was the most virulent expression of the Cold War witch-hunt period. Joseph R. McCarthy, elected to the U.S. Senate from Wisconsin in 1946 with the support of the Communist Party and liberal organizations, suddenly emerged in 1950 as the extreme exponent of the anticommunist witch-hunt then being carried out by the Truman administration.

McCarthy whipped up widespread middle-class and even working-class support in charging that the State Department was Communist-infiltrated, that “Communists” in high office had deliberately “lost” China, and that the American political “elite” was betraying the country to the “Communists.” Coming into conflict with the top leaders of both capitalist parties and even with the U.S. Army, while spreading terror among socialists, labor militants, and liberals, McCarthy’s movement clearly evinced fascist characteristics.

McCarthyism reached its peak during and immediately after the Korean war (1950-1953), when World War III was widely expected. With the turn away from head-on confrontation with the Soviet Union and China, and the extension of prosperity into peacetime, McCarthy rapidly lost support and was deserted by his allies in the Republican Party. He was censured by the Senate in 1954 and died in 1957.

Today, the term “McCarthyism” is commonly used to describe all forms of the anticommunist witch-hunt of the post-World-War-II period, as well as the incipient fascist development spearheaded by the Wisconsin senator.

What Is American Fascism? Writings on Father Coughlin, Mayor Frank Hague, and Senator Joseph McCarthy by socialist leaders James P. Cannon and Joseph Hansen offers a succinct description of McCarthyism.

[2] Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba in the early hours of January 1, 1959, as Cuban revolutionary forces advanced on Havana.

[3] In April 1960, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state Lester Mallory wrote an internal memo under the heading “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.

In 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.

In recent years, the first Trump administration tightened sanctions against Cuba, adding 243 new restrictions to the list and restoring Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism list — all of which were kept in place under Biden. Today, a total blockade of Cuba’s foreign oil supply is in effect, and other nations have been threatened with even more draconian sanctions if they engage in any trade with the island.

Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) was where counterrevolutionary forces — organized and backed by the U.S. government — landed in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the Cuban Revolution in April 1961.

[4] Fidel Castro was the central leader of the Cuban Revolution and the country’s president from 1974 until his retirement in 2008. He led the group of Cuban rebels that opened the final phase of the fight to topple the Batista dictatorship. Castro died in 2016.

Celia Sánchez joined the struggle against the Batista government in1952 and became a close colleague of Fidel Castro. She was the first woman to join the guerilla forces in the Sierra Maestra and eventually become a part of the rebel army’s general staff. She worked for the Cuban Council of State until her death in 1980.

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