The US’s strangulation of Cuba has created an acute crisis, we need international solidarity to demand an end to the blockade now, writes Jonathan Maunders

Cuba’s latest nationwide blackout is the sharpest expression of a long campaign of US imperialist strangulation.

Around 10 million people were plunged into darkness this week in a blackout that lasted more than 29 hours, after months in which many Cubans were already enduring daily outages of 12 to 16 hours or more.

The immediate background is not hard to identify. On 29 January, Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency over Cuba and setting up new measures against countries supplying oil to the island.

The White House openly framed this as a move against the Cuban government, claiming Cuba posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. That is absurd on all levels. What it really means is that Washington has once again tightened the screws on a country that has refused to submit to US domination since 1959.

This followed Washington’s January attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro, removing Cuba’s main regional ally and oil supplier. The US military and Coast Guard seized multiple Venezuela-linked tankers and deployed nearly a dozen warships in the Caribbean, policing oil flows and cutting off a vital lifeline to Cuba.

The effects have been brutal. Reuters reported last week that no fuel had entered Cuba for three months, leaving diesel and fuel oil reserves dangerously depleted and the electricity grid increasingly unstable.

Reuters also reported that Cuba has received only two small oil vessels this year. In a country where power generation, transport, hospitals, refrigeration and food distribution all depend heavily on imported fuel, that amounts to death sentence for the Cuban people.

As Cuba reeled from blackout and shortages, Trump said Washington would be doing “something with Cuba” very soon, while Marco Rubio declared that Cuba’s system had to “change dramatically.”

Venezuela, Iran, threats against Greenland and now openly talking of “taking” Cuba, Trump has put US gangster imperialism in full view of the world. This is not diplomacy. It is the old regime-change script, dressed up in the language of concern. First create intolerable hardship, then blame the victim, then present imperial as the solution.

None of this is surprising. The blockade has always been about crushing an example of dissent in the US’s ‘backyard’. Cuba’s revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship, expropriated American capital and insisted that the island’s future would not be dictated from Washington.

For that crime, it has endured decades of sanctions, sabotage and diplomatic siege. Last October, even after heavy US lobbying, the UN General Assembly again voted overwhelmingly for an end to the embargo, with 165 countries in favour and just seven against. The blockade is widely understood for what it is: collective punishment.

That is why international solidarity matters. The Nuestra América Convoy is due to arrive in Havana on 21 March, bringing much-needed aid to the island. According to organisers, CodePink alone is bringing 6,300 pounds of medical equipment and medicine, alongside other donated supplies intended for hospitals and maternity clinics.

We also need to ramp up the political pressure to stop the US’s attempt to throttle the island into submission. The task for the left in Britain, junior partner to US imperialism, is clear. We should oppose every sanction, every threat and every move towards regime change. Cuba’s future must be decided by Cubans, not Trump, Rubio or reactionaries in Miami.

The answer to blackout and hardship is not imperialist “liberation” but solidarity: end the blockade, stop the economic war, and let Cuba breathe.