The article below was first published on July 28, 2026, on the website of cubaperiodistas.cu. The author, Enrique Ubieta Gómez, is the editor of Cuba Socialista, the theoretical magazine of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Ubieta Gómez discusses the current economic and social crisis in Cuba, the recent measures the Cuban government adopted in an attempt to confront this dire situation, and the international conjuncture.

We publish this article for the information of our readers. The headline, subhead, and text that follow are from the original. Translation from the Spanish-language original, breakers, photos, and notes are by World-Outlook.

Due to its length, we are publishing the article below in two parts, the first of which follows.

— World-Outlook editors

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

Cuba at the Crossroads of the ‘New Trumpist/Fascist Order’

Dialogue as a media operation

July 28, 2026

By Enrique Ubieta Gómez

The first premise of these reflections is categorical: the Trump administration has never wanted to dialogue with Cuba. Its proposal for dialogue, assumed in principle by Cuba, is a feint to untie the Gordian knot of popular resistance and of the international prestige we have gained in decades of consistent results; it is a detailed political and media operation to delegitimize the Revolution, externally and internally.

For the current U.S. government, the only possible solution is destruction, total submission of the rebel island. Enemies and friends (who stick to the manual of old-time diplomacy) ask that the military threat against the island cease, and that the conflict be resolved peacefully, which means negotiating a way out. But the roads are obstructed as long as the exit is unacceptable. And a large part of humanity (the peoples, and I would say many governments affected by Washington’s chaotic policy) secretly aspires for Cuba to resist.

In the history of countries, as in that of individuals, there is a point of no return. If a people challenges the greatest powers to the point of endangering its very existence, it cannot back down. (“Those who are going to die salute you,” Fidel^[1] challenged Bush Jr., who was threatening the country.) In addition to the Venezuelan case, SYRIZA’s betrayal of the Greek people comes to mind. After consulting them and receiving their support for repudiation of the debt, it chose to cave in to European pressure.^[2] In both cases (Venezuela and Greece), the authorities claimed they were acting to prevent a massacre or famine.

What matrices of opinion has imperialism built for its current media campaign? I am talking about a strategy to divide and discredit the Revolution, and to delegitimize President Díaz-Canel,^[3] based on lies, half-truths, and manipulated facts.

They are all linked: the presentation of Cuba as a failed state, in need of external support to survive, such as that of the Soviet Union or Venezuela, and the presentation of the current extreme crisis as a consequence not of sanctions, but of the government’s inability to manage the country and the diversion of available resources to the satisfaction of a government elite; the presumption that the real power lies in the “Castro family” and its circle, and that Díaz-Canel is merely an administrator without the ability to make decisions.

Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro,^[4] Raúl’s grandson and head of his bodyguard, has played a symbolic role in this purpose. Did the emissaries of the empire insist that he be one of the interlocutors?

Because we remained silent, in line with traditional diplomatic behavior for sensitive meetings, they immediately leaked and exaggerated his presence, announcing that “negotiations” were taking place (I put the word in quotation marks, because negotiating peace Trump-style implies major concessions that we will never make). “In a few weeks I will take over Cuba in a friendly way,” the emperor said. That statement was enough to break off any contact. It has not been the only one. Cuba, however, is betting that the alleged or real talks will provide those who oppose Trumpism with one more argument to fight for military demobilization.

‘We don’t like to be threatened’

However, to think that Trump’s statements are acts of personal reaffirmation, and that there is a segment of his government, including within the military, that is more serious and pragmatic, capable of stopping him, is an illusion. The Trump-Rubio duo controls Cuba policy.

Our previous conversations with U.S. governments, all the way up to Obama, took place in different contexts. Let’s be clear: Fidel always said — and a video that was broadcast repeatedly on television recalled this — that Cuba would never negotiate with a gun to its temple. “We don’t like to be threatened,” he used to say.

Power in Washington today is fascist; what it understands as convenient goes beyond the concept of moderately hegemonic relations; it needs colonies. Its presidential model for Latin America already has several faces: Milei, Kast, Noboa, Fujimori, Bolsonaro,^[5] but none of these lackeys would be suitable for Cuba. Nor is there a Delcy Rodríguez,^[6] an impossible option in the Cuban political framework.

The current government of Venezuela’s betrayal of its people is an open wound in Latin America, especially painful for Cuba. In our country, according to the Helms-Burton Act,^[7] a Puerto Rico-style governor would be needed, preceded by a massacre of revolutionaries to make that possible.

We reactively acknowledged publicly that we had accepted an offer of dialogue, which has been an attitude of principle in the history of the Revolution. In several speeches, Díaz-Canel has ratified that willingness.

Two maneuvers of imperialism, linked in their apparent antithesis, occurred to strengthen the delegitimizing message: Raúl Castro,^[8] the Cuban hero and leader, supposedly leading the “negotiation” (according to the enemy’s media), is tried in absentia for the “murder” of the pilots of the terrorist group Brothers to the Rescue;^[9] and a manipulated interview/profile of Raúl Guillermo is offered with extreme political naiveté, revealing his real weaknesses. As expected, the latter generated revulsion and legitimate protests among revolutionaries, but it also led the 21^st-century counterrevolutionaries and reformists/autonomists^[10] to take advantage of this performance to point to the existence of individuals who betray socialist ideals.

It is not a question of marginalizing the descendants of historic leaders, who should be citizens with equal living conditions and political and social participation; in fact, there are some who stand out for their contributions and modesty. I suppose it is a terrible drama, one that Martí’s^[11] son experienced. But these individuals have a historical responsibility in a society that upholds the paradigm of social justice.

The idea they are trying to spread, which is that it is Raúl “and his men,” holding economic and military control, who rule in the Cuban Revolution, is counterproductive. It leads to the idea that different interests exist, and even that some of these men, or all of them, could use for their own benefit, or by force, decision-making in the name of a legendary hero who — it should not be forgotten — is 95 years old.

The persistence of imperialism in using sanctions to besiege the GAESA conglomerate^[12] — a successful economic structure created within the Armed Forces, inheriting its discipline and discretion, to break the U.S. blockade — in addition to hitting a vital sector of the Cuban economy, is associated with the matrix that places the Revolutionary Armed Forces (and its historical leader) as the real power.

It is true that Díaz-Canel has insisted, without complexes, that joint decisions are made in his government and that there are no differences of opinion with Raúl. But its legitimacy, won at the grassroots level, and that of future governments in our country, cannot depend on the backing of any historical figure.

The economic measures and their ideological impact

I would like to dwell on the 176 measures^[13] recently approved by the Cuban Party and government. My analysis, I admit, is ideological, not economic. Although both dimensions are interrelated, I view the economy from the ideological vantage point and not the other way around. Many of these measures already had been discussed and approved in principle.

Others went further (some local reformists have stated that the measures went further than what they themselves had proposed), introducing typically capitalist economic mechanisms. I do not intend to argue whether another way was possible; I recognize that financing channels for life in Cuba have been obstructed to the point of causing a general paralysis. I only intend, as I said, to assess its ideological implications.

The process of accepting market economy mechanisms has been pushing forward in a comprehensive manner since the approval of the [Economic and Social Policy] Guidelines (2011).

To reiterate: in a comprehensive manner, although precedents can be found. For that path to be accepted, three unfailing elements are converging: the desperation and impotence of the population in face of the effects of the intensified blockade; a media bombardment by counterrevolutionary and reformist/autonomist forces; and the proposal originating in the leadership of the Revolution itself.

It is not a minor fact that the first version of the new Constitution (2019) dispensed with the word communism. Despite the fact that sociological research had shown significant weakening of popular consensus around socialism, the people demanded that horizon, and the word was reinstated. No matter how distant the communist horizon may seem (and be), if we stop considering it, our navigation loses meaning, the river is transformed into a lake, and capitalism seems “perfectible,” but not surmountable.

If we take into account that economic growth was perceived as the main ideological task, while mobilizations and missions of the people and pedagogical discourse were abandoned; and that the changes that have been introduced since then have their own ideological wake, the current situation — cited as a starting point (when in reality it is a point of arrival) — is one of retreat in the consensus around socialism that was attained and maintained for decades.

Battle of Ideas

I would add that the ideological war went from being a “person to person” battle (the Battle of Ideas^[14] and Fidel’s revitalized medical internationalism, his last efforts to recover the essences of socialism) to being a social media war, where the supposed victory lay in the number of followers and retweets.

An overestimation of the capacity of social media to carry out revolutionary politics (and an underestimation in practice, despite continuous declarations to this effect, of their capacity for doing counterrevolutionary politics) produced a deterioration in possibilities of ideological influence among young people. Social media is designed, like ocean currents, to lure swimmers away from shore.

Finally, from the “universalization” of education proposed by the Battle of Ideas (Fidel spoke of turning Cuba into the most cultured country in the world) there was a shift toward reducing academic curricula (2013 – 2018) in accordance with “modern” models, and vital subjects (Marxist history, philosophy, and political economy) were eliminated for college majors that apparently did not need them.

Although I would insist that the school of a Revolution is less in books or social media (both are necessary complements), and more in the street, in people’s participation, in the pedagogy of doing, in revolutionary practice.

The Cuban, Latin American, and world revolutionary movement has always aspired to the nationalization of large foreign companies and the elimination of large, landed estates, productive or not. That is also part of the history of the Cuban Revolution. The most important question that we must answer in these conditions, to be able to recover the dignity of that consensus, is simple: why weren’t these measures taken earlier?

The reformists (a term that in the history of Cuba is associated with a non-revolutionary projection, and not with the adoption of reforms) say that this package should have been implemented 30 years ago, and they argue it was not done because of dogmatism and schematicism among some leaders and officials.

Was Fidel dogmatic? It is true that at certain times he accepted changes that were inevitable, but not without resistance, and under the assumption that it was a retreat. If we understand his words correctly, in the conditions of the Special Period we had to devote ourselves to the preservation of the conquests of socialism. This did not mean renouncing the building of socialism as soon as it was possible. Adversity never stopped him.

However, the concept of “conquests of the Revolution” has become more relaxed, and privatization is beginning to court sectors such as health and education. The most useful justification for each measure is that what is being accepted already existed illegally, and it is simply a matter of legalizing it. But we revolutionaries do not administer consensus or pre-formed realities; we tear down what is established in practice and in minds to build our own consensus and realities.

Understanding what we mean by socialism is vital to sustaining national sovereignty. To speak of patriotic feelings in the abstract is a bourgeois strategy: the palm trees, the sea, the neighborhood, friends, family, the game of dominoes, even music, are not the Homeland, not the free Homeland, not the just, internationalist Homeland of the followers of Martí and Fidel.

The abstract Homeland that is already manifesting itself without any counterweight in social media and in a segment of official discourse is merging the two possibilities of national destiny: Miami and Havana, colony and independence (and we know that the two cannot coexist), in favor of the first, which is where the money is.

On the other hand, what is a conquest of the Revolution? For example, was the nationalization of the Yankee Electric Company a revolutionary conquest? Don’t tell me that the state-owned company doesn’t work, because the private one in Puerto Rico, without a blockade, doesn’t work either. Was the Agrarian Reform a conquest of the Revolution?

Conquests of revolution

In a deeper and more complex sense: will we be able to sustain the greatest of the conquests of the Revolution: national pride — for being the first free country of America; the country that was victorious against imperialism at Girón;^[15] the country of internationalism and the defeat of apartheid in Africa;^[16] the one of unbeaten champions, outside the market, such as Stevenson, Juantorena, Ana Fidelia, Mijain, the “Morenas of the Caribbean;”^[17] the baseball teams capable of victory against any rival, professional or amateur; the homemade vaccines, more efficient than those of the large transnationals?

Why are those who oppose or question some of the measures adopted condemned as dangerous pseudo-Marxists and ultra-leftists? We need a real debate, and if the views of revolutionaries who think differently are considered “misunderstandings,” the debate is reduced to “they must understand.”

In some ways, in the economic aspect, we are closer to a social democratic concept of socialism (solidarity-based redistribution of wealth through taxes and social policies, in a so-called Welfare State, only possible in countries with a high level of economic development).

With the difference being that we intend to preserve our current political system (the single party as leader of society and People’s Power, which can and must be deepened if we want it to play the role that socialism requires), in the hopes of ensuring that investments and profits are directed toward social benefit and interest, in line with the Chinese and Vietnamese models, two countries with enormous natural riches, very far from the United States, which grew without a blockade and with friendly emigration. The culture of being, as opposed to one of having, was certainly not a conquest; it was a horizon, which for now is vanishing.

In those countries of ancient cultures, patriotic sentiments do not depend on socialist concepts like they do in Cuba. The Cuban nation emerged from a Revolution that began to germinate in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries among a privileged layer of its population, exploding in 1868, to encompass, over the years, all social strata in successive battles against slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, tied to an increasingly broader and more radical concept of social justice.

It is not a nation (or if you prefer, adjusting the Marxist concept of nation to the bourgeois state, a proto-nation) that was colonized by a foreign power, like the Asian nations were; it is a nation that colonialism engendered. It is Caliban, son of Prospero,^[18] made up of the most diverse influences and at the same time a denier of them. A parricidal nation. It is either anti-colonial and anti-imperialist, that is, anti-capitalist, or it is not.

The debate could even extend to an extreme assumption: did socialism really exist in Cuba? We had a state-controlled economy, some allege, but not true popular control in every factory, enterprise, and community. Our concept of socialism was weighed down by historical practice and imperialist encirclement, and despite this, thanks to Fidel’s genius, it was more democratic and participatory than other experiences. Not only do we exercise solidarity within the country, but we also practice it in the world.

It is true that it did not pull up its citizens evenly: social differences, eliminated from legal regulations and from material possession, maintained their presence in our culture and economy of underdevelopment, in customs and in diverse origins and identities. Some areas far from metropolitan centers did not achieve expected benefits.

But the people felt it was the protagonist of history, with a consolidated sense of nation and a vision of a common horizon.

Will we be able to sustain and elevate the central role of the people and the Party in the new social and class structure, the existing and the one to come?

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

NOTES

[1] Fidel Castro was the central leader of the Cuban revolution. He headed the July 26 Movement, the main organization that led the guerilla struggle which toppled the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. He served as prime minister of Cuba from 1959 until 1976 and as the country’s president from 1976 until his retirement in 2008. He died in 2016.

[2] In January 2015, SYRIZA (the Greek acronym of the Coalition of the Radical Left), led by Alexis Tripras, won parliamentary elections in Greece, and Tsipras became prime minister. The outcome was a major upset. Electoral support for the conservative New Democracy (ND) and social democratic Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) — the two parties that had alternated in running the Greek government for decades — collapsed.

SYRIZA’s electoral victory came amid an economic depression in the country, which faced bankruptcy due to an enormous, unpayable foreign debt. After the 2008-2010 worldwide financial crisis, New Democracy and PASOK had implemented waves of austerity measures demanded by the country’s creditors in exchange for fronting new loans so Greece would keep paying interest on its foreign debt.

Unemployment mushroomed to more than 35%. The government gutted labor laws, slashed pensions and the minimum wage, and decimated social services to meet the financiers’ demands. Strikes, student walkouts, and other protests, as well as demonstrators’ clashes with the police, swept the country for five years. Right-wing members of parliament openly floated the idea of “deploying the tanks,” talk reminiscent of the 1967-74 military dictatorship. Political polarization sharpened. In addition to the growth of socialist groups, Golden Dawn, a fascist party, grew in spades and used armed goon squads to target immigrants, trying to blame them for all social ills.

SYRIZA won the 2015 elections on promises it would stand up to the foreign creditors and reverse the harsh austerity measures its predecessors had implemented. In June of that year, SYRIZA called a referendum and campaigned for rejection of a new “bailout” package that meant extending the austerity regime. On July 5, 2015, a whopping 61% majority rejected the bailout conditions. But weeks after the result — wildly celebrated in working-class neighborhoods and rural areas across the country — Tsipras made a U-turn and signed the package demanded by the domestic and foreign financial oligarchy. That resulted in rapid erosion of support for SYRIZA, and the return of New Democracy to the government in 2019. ND has ruled the country ever since.

[3] Miguel Díaz-Canel is Cuba’s president since 2018.

[4] For more information on Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, and the controversy in Cuba over his participation in Cuba’s talks with U.S. government representatives in May 2026, see The Crab, the Vampire, and Social Differentiation in Cuba.

[5] Javier Gerardo Milei is a right-wing Argentine politician who has been president of Argentina since 2023.

José Antonio Kast is a far-right politician who was elected Chile’s president in December 2025 and took office on March 11, 2026.

Daniel Noboa is Ecuador’s president. First winning a snap election in November 2023 at age 35, he became the youngest president in modern Ecuadorian history and secured re-election to a full four-year term in 2025. A right-wing politician, he is the son of Álvaro Noboa, one of Ecuador’s wealthiest businessmen and a banana magnate.

Keiko Sofía Fujimori Higuchi is a Peruvian politician who was elected president of Peru in 2026. The eldest daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, she is the leading figure of Fujimorism, the conservative political movement associated with her father, and has led its party, Popular Force, since 2009.

Jair Messias Bolsonaro is an ultra-rightist Brazilian politician and former military officer who was Brazil’s president from 2019 to 2023.

[6] Delcy Rodríguez was Venezuela’s vice president under the Nicolás Maduro administration. She led Venezuela’s capitulation to Washington after the January 3, 2026, U.S. military attack on the country and the abduction of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores by the U.S. invaders. She is currently the country’s acting president. For more information see Washington’s Conquest in Venezuela and Venezuela After the U.S. Coup: Interview with Federico Fuentes.

[7] The Helms-Burton law, officially known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996, is a U.S. federal law that significantly escalated Washington’s economic war against Cuba. It extended the reach of the U.S. embargo against Cuba by penalizing international companies that do business with or use property confiscated from U.S. citizens by the Cuban government. It was enacted under U.S. president Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The legislation was approved by huge bipartisan majorities in the U.S. Congress (74-24 in the Senate and 336-86 in the House).

[8] Raúl Castro, 95, is a lifelong leader of the Cuban Revolution. He served as Commander of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008, and as the country’s president from 2008 to 2018 (having become acting president in 2006). He holds the title General of the Army, Cuba’s highest military post. Castro was indicted by the U.S. justice department on May 20, 2026, on bogus charges of murder and conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens stemming from a 1996 incident over Cuban territorial waters.

[9] Brothers to the Rescue is a Florida-based group led by Cuban American counterrevolutionaries. In 1996, four of its members died as they were provocatively flying two planes toward Havana.

The planes, accompanied by a third aircraft piloted by Brothers to the Rescue founder José Basulto, repeatedly violated Cuban air space and ignored warnings to turn back. The Cuban air force shot them down over the country’s territorial waters as they were headed toward Cuba’s capital.

The February 24, 1996, incursion into Cuban airspace followed a long string of violations of Cuban sovereignty by the organization, provocations organized from U.S. soil with the U.S. government’s complicity. After the pilots were warned by Cuban air traffic control, Basulto responded that he knew their actions put them in danger, but that they were going to do it anyway as “free Cubans.”

[10] Autonomists (autonomistas in Spanish) refers to supporters of the pro-autonomy (autonomismo) political movement in Cuba during colonial times, roughly between 1878 and 1898. They advocated autonomy from the Spanish colonial power, placing their hopes on U.S. intervention as a solution to the country’s colonial status and as an alternative to revolution.

[11] José Martí, born in Havana in 1853, was a poet and essayist who died in battle in 1895 fighting for Cuba’s independence from Spain. His patriotism and martyrdom made his name a symbol for liberty throughout Latin America. He is considered Cuba’s national hero.

[12] GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., or Business Administration Group) is a major business association in Cuba owned and operated by the country’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. It controls an estimated 40% to 70% of the Cuban economy, managing the most important sectors that generate foreign currency, such as tourism, hotels, gas stations, supermarkets, and major financial institutions.

[13] See Cuba Adopts Major Economic Reforms.

[14] The Battle of Ideas, begun in late 1999 and early 2000, was a political campaign in Cuba led by Fidel Castro. It was initiated during the country’s recovery from the severe economic crisis of the Special Period — the time in the 1990s when Cuba’s agricultural and industrial production declined steeply following the fall of the Soviet Union, and the abrupt end of substantial Soviet aid and trade with Cuba. The Battle of Ideas started as a mass mobilization campaign to demand the return of Elián González. It then expanded into a broad domestic policy framework focused on heavy investments in education, social programs, culture, and re-engagement with the Revolution’s socialist values.

Elián González Brotons (born in 1993) is now a Cuban engineer and politician. As a six-year-old child, he was at the center of a high-profile international custody dispute between members of his family that also involved Cuba and the United States.

On November 21, 1999, Elián’s mother and her partner fled Cuba by boat, taking Elián with them without his father’s knowledge or consent. They were part of a group of Cubans attempting to reach the United States. The boat sank during the journey, and Elián’s mother, along with most of the passengers, drowned. Elián was found floating on an inner tube and rescued by two fishermen, who turned him over to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the predecessor of ICE, granted Elián temporary permission to stay in the U.S. and placed him with his great uncle, Lázaro González, in Miami. His great uncle wanted Elián to remain in the country, while his father, Juan Miguel González, sought his return to Cuba. This led to a high-profile and protracted custody battle involving Elián’s father, his Miami relatives, and the U.S. and Cuban governments. Elián was returned to his father’s custody after an INS raid on his Miami relatives’ home on April 22, 2000. Elián and his father returned to Cuba when the legal dispute concluded on June 28, 2000. Elián González has openly stated that he never had regrets about his return to Cuba.

[15] “Girón” is a reference to Playa Girón where a U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba by Cuban counterrevolutionaries was soundly defeated within 72 hours in April 1961 by a combined mobilization of Cuba’s armed forces and popular militias. In the United States, the episode is known as the “Bay of Pigs” invasion.

[16] In November 1975, the Cuban government responded to a request from the government of Angola, sending thousands of volunteer troops to help defeat the invading armed forces of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Pretoria was determined to block the Angolan people from realizing their hard-fought independence from Portugal, set for November 11, 1975. Cuba’s mission in Angola was code-named Operation Carlotta, named in honor of Carlota Lucumí, an enslaved Black woman who led a historic anti-slavery revolt at the Triunvirato plantation in Matanzas, Cuba.

When Cuban volunteers arrived, South African troops had already pressed more than 400 miles into Angolan territory and anti-government forces had reached the outskirts of the capital city of Luanda. By late March 1976, however, the last invading forces had been pushed back over Angola’s southern border into Namibia, at that time still a South African colony.

This initial defeat of apartheid’s army gave new impetus to the struggle for a nonracial, democratic republic inside South Africa. The new rise of struggles reinforced the African National Congress (ANC), which had been banned in 1960 and many of whose leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were imprisoned for their anti-apartheid activities. The advancing struggle inside the country increased the pariah status of the apartheid regime worldwide.

In November 1987, in the face of a critical situation in which South African troops had encircled Cuito Cuanavale in southeast Angola, Cuba made the decision to send thousands of volunteer reinforcements and massive amounts of weaponry and supplies. By March 1988, the South African troops had been dealt a decisive military defeat there by the combined forces of the Cuban volunteers, the Angolan army, and fighters from SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation) in Namibia. The South African invaders were forced to withdraw from Angola.

In subsequent negotiations, the apartheid regime ceded independence to Namibia, which celebrated the end of colonial domination and the establishment of its own government in March 1990. The outcome at Cuito Cuanavale gave another impulse to the battle against apartheid — leading to the unbanning of the ANC and the release of Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders from prison and its eventual defeat inside South Africa. On July 26, 1991, ANC president Nelson Mandela — who was elected president of the country in 1994 — and Cuban president Fidel Castro spoke together for the first time at a historic rally in Matanzas, Cuba.

“The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa!” Mandela said in his speech. “The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa! Without the defeat at Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned! The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today! … Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!”

For more information see How Far We Slaves Have Come by Nelson Mandel and Fidel Castro.

[17] Teófilo Stevenson (1952–2012) was a legendary Cuban heavyweight amateur boxer. He is widely considered one of the greatest amateur boxers of all time, famous for winning three Olympic gold medals (1972, 1976, and 1980) in the same weight class.

Alberto Juantorena is a legendary Cuban former runner who made Olympic history at the 1976 Montreal Games by becoming the only athlete ever to win gold medals in both the 400-meter and 800-meter flat races at the same Olympic Games.

Ana Fidelia Quirot Moré (known as the “Caribbean Storm”) was a legendary Cuban middle-distance runner. She dominated the 400-meter and 800-meter events in the late 1980s and 1990s, winning two World Championship gold medals (1995, 1997) and two Olympic medals (bronze in 1992, silver in 1996) despite overcoming a life-threatening domestic accident.

Mijaín López Núñez (born August 20, 1982) is a retired Greco-Roman wrestler from Cuba. Widely considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, López is a five-time Olympic gold medalist, five-time World Champion, for a total of 10 world gold medals (second highest, behind Aleksandr Karelin’s twelve), and a five-time Pan American Games champion.

“Morenas of the Caribbean” is the legendary nickname for the Cuban women’s national volleyball team that dominated international volleyball during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The team made history as the only women’s indoor volleyball dynasty to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals (1992 in Barcelona, 1996 in Atlanta, and 2000 in Sydney), alongside multiple World Championship and World Cup titles.

[18] In William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Caliban is the son of the wicked witch Sycorax and a demon. Prospero is his master and captor. It is likely the author did not use the term “son” literally. The relationship between Prospero and Caliban is a dark master-servant dynamic that mirrors the political conflict between a colonizer and the colonized. Prospero rules Caliban through strict control and magic, viewing him as a lesser, uncivilized creature, while Caliban fiercely resents Prospero for stealing his island.

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