President Fidel Castro would’ve been 98 last month, but since his death in 2016, I’ve held that he was not entirely wrong for refusing to engage in serious bilateral talks or actions with any US administration, until and unless Washington’s decades-long blockades and sanctions were lifted.
No longer in office, Fidel signed a front-page comment in the daily ‘Granma’ newspaper during outgoing US President Barack Obama’s March 2016 visit to Cuba that wasn’t unwelcome, but didn’t overly applaud it either.
Fidel died eight months later, at the ripe old age of 90 – just ahead of the November 4, 2016, US election won by Donald Trump, who reversed every positive step taken under Obama.
In four years, Trump returned US-Cuba ties to the era of diplomatic isolation, and economic strangulation, tightened travel restrictions and strengthened sanctions, including declaring the island a ‘State-sponsor of Terrorism’.
Fidel always held that the US Democratic and Republican parties were two sides of the same American coin when it comes to Cuba – as President Joe Biden also confirmed throughout his only term, trying hard to show he was “no less tough” on Cuba than Trump.
Under Presidents Raul Castro and Miguel Diaz Canel, Havana has had more international solidarity and support against US sanctions.
English-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations, for example, have long joined the rest of the world in annually demanding that Washington roll back its punishing unilateral measures; and in July, they also called for the removal of Cuba from the unilaterally designated ‘terrorism list’.
Obama and the Democrats turned the decades-old US military base in Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay into the safest permanent place to house what Washington considered ‘the world’s most dangerous terrorists’ after ‘9/11’ (September 11, 2001).
Obama also fulfilled US policy at home and abroad in every way required of any US President — no matter party or colour, class or creed.
Same with Vice President Harris – the prosecutor in her more easily expected to make the case for how else Uncle Sam can further persecute and prosecute Cuba – and hopefully hasten regime change in Havana.
The over-expectations from US Presidents who look different were very real with Obama, one of whose first acts in 2008 included bailing out J.P. Morgan Chase and other major US banks from the ‘Sub-Prime’ crisis.
Under Obama’s watch too, the number of US military operations in Africa multiplied by 200%.
Unlike when the Soviet Union and the Moscow-led socialist community were alive, the American flag is visible everywhere in Cuba today – from t-shirts to taxis, to telephone cases and umbrellas- and Havana has developed a fine reputation today as ‘South America’s LGBT Tourism capital’.
But none of that means anything to the hawks in Washington ever-planning how best to swoop on Havana at all times and in any and every way possible.
Cuba today has a president born after the revolution, a commander-in-chief who isn’t president and veterans of liberation struggles abroad are octogenarians, as early revolutionary activists, diplomats, soldiers and participants in making the revolution dwindling in number.
Today’s young Cuban generation is as consumed in and by the global telecommunications revolution as everywhere else, but also a potential warrior force for current and future stages of the never-ending information battles for truth to always triumph over lies.
With Cuba, Brazil, Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela – like most nations everywhere – always under the national footprints of overseas and local right-wing media, armies of young IT soldiers can easily be engaged and unleashed everywhere today, against the external forces invading, hacking and hijacking local communications facilities.
As recently seen before and after the recent elections in Venezuela and Mexico, Elon Musk’s direct and personal interventions confirm his determination to use his ‘X’ platform to pursue right-wing agendas in South America, just like in the UK and USA.
Thanks to the plethora of worsening sanctions, Cuba continues to have more university graduates than jobs available today, but it continues to offer scholarships and health services to developing nations everywhere, no less than under Fidel.
But this is also a time when the tens of thousands of beneficiaries of Cuba’s revolutionary largesse since the 1970s — in every world region, including the Caribbean – need to also step up to the plate and show more revolutionary appreciation by engaging in and offering more solidarity personally (first-and-foremost) and in the private and public positions they hold.
Cuban scholarships were always intended to prepare beneficiaries to contribute more and better to positive and progressive change at home, in keeping with the political circumstances that made their scholarships possible – and the vast majority have returned home better able to do more than most are at present.
They weren’t trained to return home and ‘Join the Club’, so all who haven’t need to join Cuba Friendship associations and students’ alumni in their home countries asap — and find ways to share their services voluntarily with the many who can’t afford them.
Cuba has never begged for charity, only solidarity – and while it is free, solidarity also always has inestimable value.
After Fidel, Havana has continued to earn the world’s admiration for how it’s shown flexibility while holding on to principle, despite 60+ years of punishing sanctions by its nearest neighbour.
But Washington has also doubled down to ever-deepen the punishment of Cuba’s 11 million people, for daring to defy Uncle Sam for so long.
Today, more emphasis is on Venezuela, but no-less on Cuba, where the Helms-Burton Act and other earlier laws are also still in effect and Washington never thinks twice to remind the world that it considers Cuba always in its ‘backyard’ – and treated likewise, under Monroe Doctrine principles.
Governments in developing countries also need to start thinking of engaging in more direct trade with Cuba and Venezuela to help them circumvent the US sanctions and make it easier for Cubans to survive, including through payments in respective national currencies.
Uncle Sam has stepped up his game everywhere – and so should the international solidarity movement!