the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 18, 2026
This article is translated from the May 15 issue, #3015 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
While Trump is embroiled in the war he launched against the Iranian regime, he is also targeting the island of Cuba. He suggested that an American aircraft carrier could besiege Cuba “on the way back from Iran” and signed an executive order on May 1 expanding the list of U.S. sanctions against Cuba.
The island has been under embargo since 1962. Cuba has been suffocated since January by the U.S. oil blockade, which deprives it of energy, in addition to all other essential goods such as medicine. Without oil, Cuba can’t generate electricity, which is vital to daily life. Hospitals can’t function. Gas stations don’t even have fumes. Transportation is reduced to barely a crawl. Major international airlines have canceled all their flights. This deprives the island of its main source of income and its only source of dollars: tourism.
The Cuban economy never recovered from the halt in tourism caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Now it has ground to a halt yet again. Tens of thousands of Cubans have lost their jobs. They are unable to support their families. The prices of the few goods still available have skyrocketed. A quart of cooking oil now costs a quarter of the average salary. Poverty and a lack of prospects are accelerating the exodus of the population. Since 2020, two million people have left—a quarter of the population—often clandestinely, to try their luck elsewhere in Latin America.
If Trump is so relentless in his attacks on Cuba, and especially on the poorest segment of its population who bear the greatest brunt of the embargo, it’s not because this small island represents “an extraordinary threat,” as he repeatedly claims. Cuba has lacked ballistic missiles ever since Soviet missiles were installed in 1962 and then quickly removed. Its army carries only outdated equipment.
But what Trump cannot accept—like every American president since John F. Kennedy—is that the people of a country located just 90 miles from Florida were able to overthrow a pro-American dictatorship and replace it with a regime that stood up to imperialism and brought some progress and dignity to its people.
That was over 65 years ago. Since then, Fidel Castro and the generation that seized power and embodied independence from the U.S. in the eyes of the world have departed. Deprived of Soviet support, suffocated by the American embargo, and subjected to an authoritarian regime, the island has steadily sunk deeper into poverty. But for Trump and his administration, that’s not enough. They want to overthrow a regime that is heir to a popular uprising. This would mean Cuba reverting to being the “American brothel” it was before 1959.