Cuba

2026-03-19 - 01:44

The Cuban people are under severe economic and social pressure. They are literally operating in darkness and living with hunger. Cuba is a Caribbean country 90 miles south of Key West, Florida, and 90 miles north of Jamaica. In 1898, the United States took ownership of Cuba, along with Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam from Spain, through a treaty signed in Paris. In Cuba, the US established military occupation and solidified it through Guantanamo Bay and with extensive economic control over key resources. The 20th century saw a restless Cuba. There were several rebellions, much political instability and corruption. Fulgencio Baptista, a military officer, emerged as a political agitator and leader in the 1930s and enjoyed power off and on. But in 1952, he seized political power in a bloodless coup, backed by the US, and ruled viciously until the Fidel Castro Revolution of 1959. The 1959 Revolution in Cuba was one of the most popular revolutions in the world. It captured youthful imagination internationally. Castro became a romantic figure, a revolutionary celebrity. Fulgencio Baptista was a horrible human being, corrupt to the core. He murdered many who opposed him, repressed the Cuban people, helped to entrench the Italian-American mafia and turned Cuba into a gambling whoredom for the callous and reckless who could pay. This alone justified Fidel Castro’s revolution, but what legitimised it was Castro’s sincerity, his commitment to social justice, his passion for nationalism and for sovereignty, his charisma as a leader and his compelling, mesmerising, communication skills. But the Cuban revolution soon lost its way. First of all, it would have made enemies of the mafia, business and political interests in the United States. It seized and nationalised US-owned assets. This led to US sanctions, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, and ships from the Soviet Union making their way to Cuba with missiles. The entrenchment of the Cold War increased the hemispheric reach of the Soviet Union, which solidified a loyal alliance between Cuba and the Soviet Union against the US. This continued with Russia, after the breakup of the Soviet empire and deepened with every increased sanction or pressure from the US. The Mighty Sparrow wrote a calypso about the confrontation over Cuban missiles in 1963: “We going to sink them ships to the bottom of the ocean, Kennedy is the man for dem” (Kennedy and Kruschev). And so, in the Cold War that was evolving, Sparrow had signalled the coming isolation of Cuba as ideological positions hardened and alignments evolved. Ernest Hemingway, the great American writer who covered the Spanish Civil War and wrote a moving novel about that war, lived in Cuba at the time of the Castro revolution and supported the revolution. He met Castro, interacted with him and spoke well of him. But early on, while Hemingway felt that the US press was biased toward the revolution, he also felt the Cuban revolution was going wrong with its excess of ideology and with growing political repression. Over time, repression and authoritarian power only got worse. After years of sanctions, isolation and recently a “maximum pressure” assault by the Trump administration – the most aggressive US action since the missile crisis – the US government is going to effect the take over of Cuba and bring to an end the Castro Revolution. At a media conference on Tuesday at the White House, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, of Cuban ancestry, said the Cuban economic system does not work and the political system cannot be fixed. True, infrastructure is crumbling and there is no economic cushion and “maximum pressure” is accelerating the collapse and causing a humanitarian emergency. Since the St Kitts-Nevis Heads meeting, at which both Rubio and Raoul Castro’s grandson were present, negotiations began on a Caricom-US agreement. It is likely to be settled by May 2026. The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and President of Guyana have already signed an agreement with other hemispheric members who attended the Shield of the Americas Summit. So two countries will straddle Shield and Caricom, which would inevitably be contradictory. Before May, however, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, nicknamed “the Crab” (El Grangejo), the 41-year-old grandson of Raoul Castro, deeply embedded in the military-business conglomerate that controls a dominant part of Cuba’s economy (GAESA), may well be installed as working president of Cuba. It is not a certainty, but it is likely. A new oligarchy, supported by the military, will be in charge in Cuba, under US direction, just like in Venezuela. So a new hemispheric model is emerging which puts stability first and the will of the people later.