This is an article co-published by Drop Site News and Belly of the Beast on how the people of Cuba and their government are grappling with the dire economic situation the Caribbean country faces since Washington imposed a de-facto blockade of sales of oil to the island nation.
On January 29, 2026, U.S. president Donald Trump issued a new executive order declaring a “national emergency” due to the “unusual and extraordinary threat” that Cuba allegedly poses to the United States. The White House announced it will impose harsh punitive tariffs on any country that trades oil with Cuba. This is unvarnished economic warfare, a major escalation of Washington’s unrelenting efforts over more than six decades aimed at asphyxiating the Cuban people and overthrowing their socialist revolution.
Over the last month, the U.S. government has intensified its decades-long aggression against Cuba. Oil shipments to the island from Venezuela have been cut off since Washington’s January 3, 2026, attack on that country. On January 22, the Trump administration threatened a full naval blockade of the island nation. And on January 29, Trump signed an executive order labeling Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States and declaring that Washington will impose punitive tariffs on any country trading oil with Cuba. In a statement published here, Isaac Saney, a Cuba specialist and Black studies professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, takes apart Trump’s latest imperial edict.
On January 29, 2026, U.S. president Donald Trump issued a new executive order declaring a “national emergency” because of the “unusual and extraordinary threat” the island nation allegedly poses to the United States. Trump declared his administration would impose punitive tariffs on any country sending oil to Cuba. Earlier, Trump had threatened to impose a naval blockade around Cuba to completely cut off the supply of oil to the island. We publish in this post the response by Cuban leader Ernesto Limia Diaz and other Cuban revolutionaries to the latest Yankee assault on Cuba.
On January 16, 2026, hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched and rallied in Havana to pay homage to their countrymen killed during the U.S. assault on Venezuela two weeks earlier. Thirty-two Cuban soldiers died while putting up fierce resistance to U.S. forces that stormed the presidential residence in Caracas and ultimately kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel delivered the speech published here to honor the 32 fallen combatants and respond to Washington’s escalating threats against his nation.
On January 3, 2026, the U.S. military invaded Venezuela and abducted its president Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Among the approximately 100 civilians and security personnel killed in the assault were 32 Cuban nationals. Since then, there has been rampant speculation about how the U.S. forces were able to breach Maduro’s security, what the Cuban nationals were doing in Venezuela, and the nature of the relationship between Cuba and Venezuela. This article clarifies Cuba’s role in Venezuela and answers many of the claims peddled as part of Washington’s propaganda.
“It is elementary that ‘a superior capacity for material production is the necessary basis for a superior cultural superstructure,’” Cannon writes in this 1961 letter. “Even the Cuban leaders, who don’t profess to be practicing Marxists, know that and are working night and day to improve productive capacities to provide the means for all the other things. But in my opinion, there is also merit in [Mills’] concern for ‘moral, cultural, and intellectual superiority,’ because it cannot be taken for granted that this will follow automatically from the reorganization of the productive system. This aim must be deliberately stated and consciously fought for all the time.”
The following is a 1961 letter and postscript by Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leaders George Novack and Evelyn Reed to James P. Cannon, who was then SWP national chairman, describing a visit by Novack and Reed with sociologist C. Wright Mills. What is striking in the exchange is the open-mindedness of socialist leaders at the time, the interest in finding common ground with fighters committed to struggle for a world of social equality and human solidarity. This attitude permeates the writings of Novack, Reed, and Cannon. It is the polar opposite of sectarianism. And it is central to Marxism and to the spirit of the Communist Manifesto, the founding document of the communist movement.
The following article was published on December 17, 2025, by Belly of the Beast, a “U.S.-based media outlet that tells Cuba’s untold stories through hard-hitting journalism and stunning cinematography.” As Cuba’s economy has been devastated by Washington’s economic war, the article reports, and a mosquito-borne epidemic has swept through the island, the country’s universal, free healthcare system is being stretched to its limits.
This is the second part of a speech by Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Cuba’s president, at the closing of the 11th Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba on December 13, 2025, in Havana. The Cuban leader addresses the impact on the people of the Caribbean nation of the relentless U.S. economic war, Hurricane Melissa, the U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan oil, as well as “bureaucracy, formalism, and inertia [that] are putting unacceptable brakes on the will of the Party and the needs of the people.” He points to the working people of Cuba and its youth as the main social forces that can confront the dire economic situation facing the country today.
This is the first part of a speech by Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, Cuba’s president, at the closing of the 11th Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba on December 13, 2025, in Havana. The Cuban president addresses the impact on the people of the Caribbean nation of the relentless U.S. economic war, Hurricane Melissa, the U.S. naval blockade of Venezuelan oil, as well as “bureaucracy, formalism, and inertia [that] are putting unacceptable brakes on the will of the Party and the needs of the people.” He points to the working people of Cuba and its youth as the main social forces that can confront the dire economic situation facing the country today.
This article was first published on November 16, 2025, by Trabajadores, the daily newspaper of the Confederation of Cuban Workers. World-Outlook is encouraging everyone to take part in the campaign outlined in the article on pressing the U.S. government to let Cuban athletes participate in the 2028 Olympics.
We are pleased to publish the third and last part of an interview with Ernesto Limia Díaz, a historian, writer, member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (known as UNEAC, its Spanish-language acronym), and director of the TV program MARCAS. He is also the author of the bilingual book Patria y cultura en Revolución (Homeland and Culture in Revolution).
We are pleased to publish below an interview with Ernesto Limia Díaz (EL), a historian, writer, member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (known as UNEAC, its Spanish-language acronym), and director of the TV program MARCAS. He is also the author of the bilingual book Patria y cultura en Revolución (Homeland and Culture in Revolution).
We are pleased to publish below an interview with Ernesto Limia Díaz (EL), a historian, writer, member of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (known as UNEAC, its Spanish-language acronym), and director of the TV program MARCAS. He is also the author of the bilingual book Patria y cultura en Revolución (Homeland and Culture in Revolution).
The world has spoken. An overwhelming majority of United Nations (UN) member states voted for the 33rd time at the UN General Assembly to demand an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba. The resolution on the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” passed with 165 votes in favor, 7 against, and 12 abstentions.
Fifty people attended a meeting at Florida International University in Miami on October 21, 2025, to hear reports from four Cuba solidarity activists who had just returned from the island. “We’ve got to end the blockade! And the fight to do that inside the United States will be decisive.”
The Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Blockade of Cuba held a successful educational and fundraising event on the evening of September 5 at Florida International University’s main campus. Despite stormy weather, 30 people attended and raised just over $2,000 for the national Saving Lives Campaign, which aims to send cardiac pacemakers to Cuba. The effort addresses a shortage of vital medical devices caused by the U.S. blockade.
This is a statement by the U.S.-Cuba Normalization Coalition. It outlines how the Trump administration — by canceling Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants — is targeting many Cuban Americans for deportation. These are the same people that successive U.S. governments for decades have tried to lure to leave Cuba as “victims of Communism” seeking freedom.
This opinion column was published on Facebook on July 16, 2025. The author, Isaac Saney, is on faculty at the College of Continuing Education, Dalhousie University, and an adjunct professor of International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University, both in Halifax, Canada. The essay is one among many articles and posts by revolutionaries in Cuba and supporters of the Cuban Revolution in other countries addressing a public debate that erupted in Cuba in the middle of July 2025. The controversy was triggered by contentious remarks that Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera, Cuba’s former Minister of Labor and Social Security, made on July 14 at the National Assembly, the country’s parliament, dismissing begging and homelessness as fictitious problems.
This essay was first published on Facebook on July 18, 2025. The author, Ernesto Limia Díaz, is First Vice-president of the Writers Association of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. His essay is part of a public discussion that has swept Cuba over the last week. The debate broke out into the open in the aftermath of the resignation of Cuba’s Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera, on July 15.
This article, published on July 15, 2025, on the website of the Presidency of the Cuban government, reports on the response by Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s president, to controversial remarks a day earlier by the country’s Minister of Labor and Social Security, Marta Elena Feitó Cabrera. On July 14, Feitó Cabrera told Cuba’s parliament that there are no beggars in Cuba, that the island’s beggars are faking poverty in search of easy money, and that those cleaning windshields on the streets or collecting rubbish from trash bins are actually collecting raw materials without paying taxes. Her televised remarks went viral on social media, causing an uproar by the public and government officials alike. Feitó Cabrera resigned her post on July 15.
The National Network on Cuba and the U.S.-Cuba Normalization Coalition have announced a campaign that combines raising money to send crucially needed cardiac pacemakers to Cuba with boosting efforts to end Washington’s economic war against Cuba, defend Cuba’s internationalist medical missions, and remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) list. That designation makes it almost impossible for Cuba to buy pacemakers commercially.
About 5.3 million people, nearly half of the country’s population of 11 million, filled the streets of cities, towns, and municipalities across the Caribbean island today to celebrate International Workers’ Day. “A sea marched toward Revolution Square this May Day,” began the report in Trabajadores, the daily newspaper of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, covering the mobilization of 600,000 in Havana. “It was certainly a sea of workers and other people, men, women, old, young, teenagers, and kids who came together to form this multicolored and enthusiastic stream, showing the world once again that Cubans defend their revolution and won’t be intimidated by blockades and other threats.”
This article by Helen Yaffe outlines the essential facts on Cuba’s internationalist medical programs. It also exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty of the escalating U.S. campaign aimed at tarnishing Cuba’s revolutionary example and undermining its medical missions around the world at the cost of countless lives.
Dozens of activists participated in the 14th annual protest to demand U.S. Out of Guantanamo, organized by the Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.
Unionists across the United States are organizing a campaign to get fellow trade unionists, elected officials, and others to sign a letter to President Biden demanding he remove Cuba from the U.S. list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.”
SAN DIEGO, California — More than 700 delegates representing 2.3 million workers in nearly 2,000 union locals throughout California gathered here for the state AFL-CIO convention on July 16. Delegates unanimously passed a resolution opposing Washington’s inclusion of Cuba in its notorious list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” (SSOT) and urging Cuba’s removal from it.
The National Network on Cuba and the U.S.-Cuba Normalization Coalition have launched a new campaign that combines raising money to send crucially needed cardiac pacemakers to Cuba with boosting efforts to end Washington’s economic war against Cuba and to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) list. That designation makes it almost impossible for Cuba to buy pacemakers commercially.
This article appeared in the May 27, 2024, issue of Trabajadores (Workers), the daily newspaper in Cuba of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC). Miguel Bautista, the U.S. unionist interviewed in the story, visited Cuba in late April-early May as part of the “Labor and Youth Activists” delegation organized by the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee.
HAVANA, Cuba — Keffiyehs and Palestinian flags were among the most visible symbols as Cuban workers began massing at 4:30 a.m. on May 1 for the 200,000-strong rally hosted by the five municipalities closest to the U.S. embassy here. It was one of several May Day rallies in Cuba’s capital. Ten other mass gatherings took place in Havana alone. More than 4 million Cubans celebrated May Day — the international workers’ holiday — in avenues, town centers, and plazas across the island. They gathered within walking distance of their homes and workplaces instead of joining a single, massive march in each city, in order to save fuel, which is in short supply due to the ever-tightening U.S. blockade.
MIAMI — An important frontline engagement in the battle of ideas took place on the main campus of Florida International University (FIU) here on Friday, April 12. About 25 people attended a showing and discussion of the documentary “Cuba’s Life Task: Combatting Climate Change.” The film was made by Helen Yaffe, a lecturer on economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and a frequent visitor to Cuba who is widely respected for well-known books about the Cuban Revolution.
Activists in Miami made significant advances towards unity in action and in winning new people to the struggle against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba over the weekend of March 8-10. These were registered in a March 8 event at Floriday International University marking International Women’s Day, and a teachers’ march two days later to oppose antidemocratic measures enacted by the Florida state government.
This article appeared in the online edition of Radio Miami. It reports on an important Cuba solidarity activity on March 8, in which about 40 Florida International University students and others participated to mark international women’s day and call for an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba.
This article reports on the Oct. 3-Nov. 20 U.S. speaking tour by the award-winning Cuban journalist Liz Oliva Fernández. The tour is promoting two soon-to-be-released documentary films — “Uphill on the Hill” and “Hardliner on the Hudson” — by Belly of the Beast. This is a “U.S.-based media outlet that tells Cuba’s untold stories through hard-hitting journalism and stunning cinematography,” according to the group’s website. The tour is also helping expand support for the campaign to end Washington’s economic war against Cuba.
MIAMI—Fifty people attended an event organized by the Miami Caravan Against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba here on June 25. The event was one of many across the nation in support of a national march in Washington demanding the removal of Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. The national action was organized by the National Network on Cuba and endorsed by more than 70 organizations. Estimates of the size of that action range from 300-500.
MIAMI — On Sunday, May 28, about 35 people in 30 vehicles, plus two courageous bicyclists, brought to the streets of this city our call to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba and for Washington to remove the island nation from the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism.” The caravan ended with participants lined up along a sidewalk at the Miami International Airport, where hundreds of drivers and others saw and heard our demands. The action took place without incident despite threats by right-wing supporters of U.S. policy toward Cuba. This was a different outcome than those during the January, February, and March caravans.
HAVANA, Cuba — Over 1,300 delegates from 58 countries, representing 271 organizations, congregated here on May 2 to celebrate the “International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba and Anti-Imperialism – 200 Years After the Monroe Doctrine.” The conference at the Palacio de Convenciones was the closing event in a series of gatherings that, beginning on April 25, brought union activists and other friends of Cuba from outside the island together with workers and other Cuban citizens. The goal was to acquaint international visitors with the growing systemic difficulties faced by the Cuban people due to the economic, commercial, and financial blockade the U.S. government has imposed for 61 years and to give them an opportunity to see first-hand the creative resilience with which many ordinary Cubans face the resulting scarcities and continue to resist.
On May 3, U.S. Homeland Security agents at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, airport detained three young activists returning from their first trip to Cuba. The three were released four hours later with just enough time to catch their connecting flight to Los Angeles. In a violation of constitutional rights, the agents took the travelers’ phones and presumably inspected them. The cops offered no reason for the detentions. A handful of other people returning from Cuba were also detained at the Miami and Newark airports, so the Florida detentions were not an isolated incident.
NEW YORK CITY, March 12, 2023 — About 200 people from across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico gathered at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus here March 11-12 for the fourth International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference. They came to discuss and plan this year’s activities around three demands: 1) Removing Cuba from Washington’s spurious list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” (SSOT); 2) Ending Washington’s more than six decades long economic, commercial, and financial blockade of Cuba; and 3) Revoking all U.S. travel and economic sanctions against Cuba. More than 100 organizations from the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico endorsed the gathering. It was the second such in-person event since the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is an appeal to encourage donations to help workers from the United States, involved in union organizing efforts at Amazon warehouses, participate in an upcoming trip to Cuba. The Los Angeles US Hands Off Cuba Committee is organizing the delegation, which will coincide with May Day celebrations on the island.
After the November 3, 2022, UN vote overwhelmingly favoring the resolution introduced by Cuba on ending the U.S. blockade, U.S. representative John Kelley took the floor to defend his government’s position. Alleging Washington’s commitment to the well-being of the Cuban people, Kelley tried to justify U.S. policy by charging Cuba with human rights violations, pointing to supposed U.S. aid to the Cuban people, and claiming the U.S. Agency for International Development was poised to send “$2 million in funding for emergency relief to those in need in Cuba.” In a 10-minute rebuttal on the floor of the UN General Assembly, Yuri Gala López, Cuba’s alternate permanent representative to the United Nations, rejected Kelley’s allegations. Gala’s rebuttal follows.
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In early November, representatives to the United Nations (UN) debated U.S. policy toward Cuba, and — as they have done every time for the last 30 years — overwhelmingly condemned the decades-long U.S. embargo. Speaking before the UN General Assembly on November 3, Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla presented a resolution titled, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba. Rodríguez explained the toll that the U.S. economic war — in place for more than six decades — takes on the Cuban people. When the resolution came to a vote, 185 UN member states registered their agreement with Cuba. Only two — the United States and Israel — opposed the resolution; two more — Brazil and Ukraine — abstained. The entire speech by Rodríguez follows.
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On November 3, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly voted 185 – 2 to approve a resolution introduced by the government of Cuba. The resolution called on the U.S. government lift its six-decade-old economic, commercial, and financial embargo against the Caribbean nation — what many refer to as the “blockade.” The only UN member states voting no were the United States and Israel. Brazil and Ukraine abstained. It was the 30th year in a row the international body demanded the end of Washington’s economic war against Cuba. To mark this important occasion, we publish here the link to a YouTube video. This Breakthrough News documentary provides a brief but informative overview of how and why the U.S. government launched its economic war against Cuba, the impact the blockade has had on the Cuban people, and why the overwhelming majority of the world stands with Cuba in the battle to end this cruel and inhumane U.S. policy.
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On the last Saturday of October, rallies, marches, and other actions took place in dozens of U.S. cities as well as Canada and other countries. Organizers called these actions to coincide and highlight the annual vote scheduled at the United Nations (UN) for November 3 on a resolution introduced by the government of Cuba. The resolution demands the U.S. government lift its economic, commercial, and financial embargo against the Caribbean nation — what many refer to as the “blockade.” About 100 organizations endorsed the call for these actions. We are publishing here reports from two of the most prominent of these activities — in New York and Los Angeles — that organizers sent World-Outlook.
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The United Nations General Assembly’s annual vote demanding an end to the “the Economic, Commercial and Financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba” — the blockade — will take place November 2 and 3, 2022. This is the 30th consecutive vote in which the world community overwhelmingly condemns the cruel, unjust, & illegal US blockade! We are publishing here flyers for actions on Saturday, October 29, in New York City and Los Angeles to demand: Take Cuba off Washington’s list of state-sponsored terrorism; End all US Anti-Cuba economic, trade, travel sanctions; End the US blockade against Cuba. World-Outlook encourages its readers to build and participate in the October 29 actions, as well as related activities around the world between October 27 and November 3.
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On September 25, at 24,000 polling stations across the Caribbean island, Cuban citizens voted on a new “Families Code,” replacing existing statutes regulating family relationships. The old code — in place since 1975 — has been rendered obsolete by new family structures and the deep social changes that have occurred in Cuba in the ensuing decades.Ratification of the new code is a truly revolutionary achievement. The process of its passage also showed the strength of working-class democracy in Cuba. The referendum was the culmination of years of activism, discussion, and an evolving consensus across the country that ultimately broadened the concept of what the Cuban family looks like today, in its growing diversity.The Code redefines “family” as an association that may take different forms, but is based on values of love, respect, and solidarity. This represents a further break from the traditional “father family” — a heterosexual couple with children and sometimes elders, in which the father is dominant in both financial and social matters. That was the model in pre-revolutionary Cuba. With this new definition, the Code legalizes gay marriage and civil unions, as well as the adoption of children by same-sex couples. The new law also strengthens the rights and protections of children and adolescents, further ensures the rights of women, and promotes equality in sharing domestic rights and responsibilities between parents — regardless of sex or gender. It also strengthens the progress that Cuba has made in addressing domestic violence and codifies the rights of the disabled and the elderly within the family.
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On the last weekend of September, local coalitions organized car caravans and other actions demanding an end to Washington’s economic war against Cuba. The activities took place in cities across the United States, as well as other countries. Organizers of these actions in two U.S. cities sent World-Outlook the reports that follow.
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On September 27, 2022, hurricane Ian made landfall in Cuba. Despite Cuba’s well-known preparedness for natural disasters, the damage from this hurricane has been immense. In the western province of Pinar del Rio, famous for its tobacco production, over 5,000 farms were destroyed. In small towns like San Luis, the storm left damaged 80% of all homes. The hurricane affected Cuba’s power grid and the country’s electrical system collapsed. Concerned organizations and activists in the United States issued an urgent appeal, published in the Sunday, October 2, 2022, edition of the New York Times. The appeal demands that Biden temporarily lift sanctions and allow Cuba to purchase urgently needed supplies for reconstruction after Hurricane Ian. We publish here an article about this appeal that appeared in Spanish in the Cuban news publication CubaDebate; CubaNews translated the article and published it into English. We also publish below the text of the appeal to Biden as it appeared in the Times, along with a link on how people can donate to help Cuba’s recovery effort.
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On the last weekend of August, local coalitions organized car caravans and other actions demanding an end to Washington’s economic war against Cuba. The activities took place in more than 20 cities across Canada and the United States, as well as other countries. Organizers of these actions in five Canadian and two U.S. cities sent World-Outlook the reports that follow.
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