By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
4,000-1492: PRE-COLUMBIAN CUBA DIVERSE PARTNERSHIP-ORIENTED CARIBBEAN INDIANS PEOPLED CUBA
Long before Spanish ships landed in 1492, the island was home to diverse Indigenous peoples whose ways of life were rooted in local ecology, kinship, and cooperative subsistence rather than domination hierarchies.
Earliest inhabitants / Archaic cultures (c. 4000 BCE onward): Archaeological evidence shows human presence in Cuba dating back to about 3100 BCE — hunter-gatherer groups using ground-stone and shell tools, living in the landscape through fishing, gathering, and small-scale horticulture.
Guanahatabey / Ciboney
The Guanahatabey (also called Ciboney by some sources) were among the oldest known groups on Cuba — generally in the western parts of the island — living as hunter-gatherers and foragers with a distinct language and traditions. They made stone, shell, and bone tools and relied on fish and game.
Taíno (Arawakan agriculturalists)
By the time Columbus arrived, the Taíno — part of the broader Arawak language family — were the dominant Indigenous group across most of Cuba (and the Greater Antilles). They cultivated crops, maintained villages, and organized communal life with chiefs (caciques), and systems of shared labor and ritual. TAÍNO settlements were built around central plazas for community gatherings, rituals, and games. Agriculture, trade, healing knowledge, and cooperative labor tied villages together. Indigenous cosmologies emphasized balance with nature and kin-based social ties — a form of organized partnership rather than hierarchical domination.
Indigenous voices & resistance
One of the earliest recorded Indigenous resisters of the Spanish conquest was Hatuey, a Taíno chief who fled Hispaniola to warn Cuban communities of the approaching Spaniards and fought colonial intrusion — later remembered as “Cuba’s first national hero.”
Across Cuba’s modern history, Domination Consciousness keeps reappearing—through empires, party-states, secret police, embargoes, and great-power “spheres of control.” Yet inside that pressure-cooker, ordinary Cubans repeatedly built Cooperative (Great Goddess) consciousness in daily life: teaching, healing, building, sharing, improvising survival—often while officials (Havana and Washington alike) tightened the screws.
1895–1898: CUBA’S WAR FOR FREEDOM HIJACKED — THE SPANISH–AMERICAN WAR FROM THE CUBAN SIDE
By the time U.S. forces entered Cuba in 1898, Cubans had already been fighting and dying for independence for three years. Cuban insurgents—the mambises—had crippled Spanish control through guerrilla warfare, burning plantations that financed the empire and enduring starvation, executions, and reconcentration camps that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. When the United States intervened, it did so not as a partner in Cuban liberation, but as an imperial power seeking to displace Spain. Figures like Theodore Roosevelt, glorifying violence and conquest, treated the campaign as a proving ground for American manhood. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders charged Spanish positions with theatrical bravado, yet Cuban fighters—who knew the terrain, had fought longest, and bore the highest casualties—were routinely sidelined, dismissed, or erased from American narratives of victory. U.S. commanders relied on Cuban scouts and intelligence while denying them recognition, arms parity, or command authority.
The betrayal deepened after Spain’s defeat. Cuban allies who had fought alongside U.S. troops were excluded from the surrender ceremonies, barred from the peace negotiations, and shut out of decisions about their own country’s future. American forces treated Cuban independence fighters not as co-liberators, but as an inconvenient population to be managed. The U.S. imposed a military occupation, rewrote Cuba’s political future without Cuban consent, and dictated the terms of sovereignty itself. What Cubans had hoped would be independence became a transfer of domination, from Madrid to Washington. The war that Cubans had bled for ended with their voices silenced, their revolution interrupted, and their island reframed as a U.S. sphere of control—setting the stage for decades of resentment, resistance, and ultimately, revolutionary rupture.
The Spanish–American War turned Cuba into the prize at the hinge of an empire. U.S. forces defeated Spain, which then governed Cuba during a U.S. military occupation. Washington shaped the terms of Cuban sovereignty and set patterns that later Cuban revolutionaries defined as domination from abroad.
1898–1902: U.S. WAR, OCCUPATION, AND THE “INDEPENDENCE” FRAME
Voices from the island (composite, not verbatim):
Spain left—then another power wrote the rules.”
In my neighborhood, people still acted like a village: mutual aid, meals shared, children watched by everyone.”
1933–1952: STRONGMEN, U.S. INFLUENCE, AND THE PRE-REVOLUTION PRESSURE COOKER
Cuba cycled through coups, authoritarian policing, labor unrest, and corruption—conditions that later made “order vs. dignity” the core dilemma. Many Cubans experienced politics as something done to them, not by them.
Voices (composite):
We survived by family networks, not by institutions.
Politics felt like a club—everyone else paid the bill.
1953–1959: REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE OVERTHROW OF BATISTA
Castro’s movement defeated Batista in 1959.
Hope surged—especially among poor rural communities—alongside fear among those who expected retaliation. The revolution arrived as both liberation and the seedbed for new forms of centralized control.
Voices (composite):
“At last—dignity. But I worry: who holds the gun after victory?”
“We organized ourselves fast—work brigades, food sharing, rebuilding.”
1959 CASTRO VICTORY: EXECUTIONS, HOPE & HELP
TRIBUNALS, EXECUTIONS
Cuba’s early revolutionary tribunals included executions that drew regional concern about due process and “wholesale killings.”
1898–1902: U.S. WAR, OCCUPATION, AND THE “INDEPENDENCE” FRAME
By the time U.S. forces entered Cuba in 1898, Cubans had already been fighting and dying for independence for more than three years. Cuban insurgents—the mambises—had devastated Spanish control through guerrilla warfare, destroying sugar plantations that financed the empire and surviving Spain’s brutal reconcentration policy, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians through starvation and disease. The Cuban War for Independence was real, mass-based, and costly. When the United States intervened, it did so not as a junior partner in Cuban liberation, but as an ascending imperial power intent on replacing Spain as the dominant external authority in the Caribbean.
American military leaders relied heavily on Cuban fighters for intelligence, scouting, and local support, yet systematically marginalized them once Spanish defeat was assured. Cuban officers were denied equal rank, Cuban troops were excluded from formal victory ceremonies, and Cuban representatives were barred from peace negotiations. Figures such as Theodore Roosevelt treated the campaign as a proving ground for American martial vigor, while Cuban revolutionaries—who had endured the longest struggle and the greatest losses—were reduced to background players in U.S. public memory. The war was recast internationally as an American victory, erasing the central Cuban role in winning it.
After Spain’s defeat, the betrayal became structural. Rather than granting immediate independence, the United States imposed a military occupation (1898–1902) and reshaped Cuba’s political future without Cuban consent. American authorities dismantled revolutionary institutions, disarmed Cuban fighters, and supervised the creation of a new state tightly constrained by U.S. power. Independence was granted only after Cuba accepted conditions that limited its sovereignty and allowed the U.S. to intervene at will. What Cubans had fought for as liberation became a transfer of domination—from Madrid to Washington. This interruption of Cuban self-rule planted the seeds of enduring resentment, resistance, and the revolutionary break that would come decades later.
LITERACY FOR ALL CUBANS; KIDS TAUGHT EACH OTHER
Cuba launched a 1961 literacy campaign, mobilizing youth brigades and volunteer teachers to teach reading across the countryside. Before 1959, Cuba’s literacy rate was significantly lower, with estimates ranging from 60% to ~77% due to uneven educational access, especially in rural areas. UNESCO data indicates that approximately 23.6% of those aged 10 and older were illiterate before the campaign began. After the 1961 Campaign: By December 22, 1961, the government declared Cuba “Territory Free of Illiteracy,” with illiteracy reduced to around 3.9% nationwide (down from ~20–25%)—one of the most dramatic reductions in Latin American history. Over 700,000 adults were taught to read and write during the campaign. Cuba’s adult literacy has remained extremely high, typically around 99% in recent decades, on par with wealthy nations and above the Caribbean average.
Cuba organized and trained over 100,000 volunteers (often called “brigadistas”), many of whom were students and young adults, to travel to rural homes across the island to teach literacy. 7,000+ previously illiterate people successfully learned basic reading and writing. Prior to the campaign, rural illiteracy was significantly higher than in urban areas; the campaign effectively reduced this gap by bringing teachers into remote areas. After the initial drive, Cuban education policy continued to expand schooling at all levels, dramatically increasing school enrollment. Primary school enrollment rose from 56% in 1953 to 88% in 1970.
1903–1959: NEO-COLONIAL “INDEPENDENCE,” U.S. DOMINANCE, AND THE LONG ROAD TO REVOLUTION
Cuba formally became an independent republic in 1902–1903, but its sovereignty remained sharply constrained from the outset. The new nation emerged under conditions dictated by the United States, which retained decisive influence over Cuban political life, foreign policy, and economic development. American military interventions followed quickly, justified as efforts to maintain “order” but experienced by many Cubans as continued external domination. Key industries—especially sugar, banking, utilities, and transportation—fell increasingly under U.S. ownership, while political elites aligned themselves with foreign capital rather than popular needs. Independence existed in name; power flowed elsewhere.
Throughout the early decades of the republic, Cuban governments struggled to balance nationalism with dependence. Elections alternated with repression, and reform movements repeatedly collided with entrenched interests backed by U.S. power. Periodic uprisings and labor actions reflected widespread frustration among workers, peasants, students, and veterans of the independence wars who concluded that Castro had broken his promises of liberation. While Havana displayed prosperity and cosmopolitan flair, much of the countryside remained impoverished, and racial and class inequalities hardened. For many Cubans, the republic came to symbolize a hollow democracy—institutions without participation, laws without dignity.
The crisis deepened after the upheavals of the 1930s and culminated in the rise of Fulgencio Batista. Initially emerging as a behind-the-scenes military strongman, Batista later ruled openly, consolidating authority through patronage, censorship, and violence. His regime aligned closely with U.S. strategic and economic interests, while tolerating corruption, organized crime, and extreme inequality. By the 1940s and 1950s, Cuba had become a paradox: a country with modern infrastructure and dazzling urban culture alongside profound rural misery and political exclusion. Batista ignored reform, crushed opposition, andincreasingly relied on fear to govern.
By the late 1950s, the legitimacy of the existing order had collapsed. Batista’s 1952 coup—canceling elections and suspending constitutional guarantees—marked a turning point. What remained of the republic’s democratic façade dissolved, and a growing number of Cubans concluded that peaceful change was impossible. The revolutionary struggle that began in 1953 did not arise suddenly or irrationally; it emerged from five decades of frustrated sovereignty, from a society trapped between formal independence and absolute subordination. When Batista fled in January 1959, it marked not only the fall of a dictator but the implosion of an entire political system that had failed to deliver dignity, autonomy, or genuine participation to the Cuban people. The revolution of 1959 did not erupt from nowhere; it was the delayed answer to a republic that never entirely belonged to its people.
1903–1960: NEO-COLONIAL “INDEPENDENCE,” U.S. DOMINANCE, AND THE LONG ROAD TO REVOLUTION
Cuba formally became an independent republic in 1902–1903, but its sovereignty remained sharply constrained from the outset. The new nation emerged under conditions dictated by the United States, which retained decisive influence over Cuban political life, foreign policy, and economic development. American military interventions followed quickly, justified as efforts to maintain “order” but experienced by many Cubans as continued external domination. Key industries—especially sugar, banking, utilities, and transportation—fell increasingly under U.S. ownership, while political elites aligned themselves with foreign capital rather than popular needs. Independence existed in name; power flowed elsewhere.
Throughout the early decades of the republic, Cuban governments struggled to balance nationalism with dependence. Elections alternated with repression, and reform movements repeatedly collided with entrenched interests backed by U.S. power. Periodic uprisings and labor actions reflected widespread frustration among workers, peasants, students, and veterans of the independence wars who concluded that Castro had broken his promises of liberation. While Havana displayed prosperity and cosmopolitan flair, much of the countryside remained impoverished, and racial and class inequalities hardened. For many Cubans, the republic came to symbolize a hollow democracy—institutions without participation, laws without dignity.
The crisis deepened after the upheavals of the 1930s and culminated in the rise of Fulgencio Batista. Initially emerging as a behind-the-scenes military strongman, Batista later ruled openly, consolidating authority through patronage, censorship, and violence. His regime aligned closely with U.S. strategic and economic interests, while tolerating corruption, organized crime, and extreme inequality. By the 1940s and 1950s, Cuba had become a paradox: a country with modern infrastructure and dazzling urban culture alongside profound rural misery and political exclusion. Batista ignored reform, crushed opposition, andincreasingly relied on fear to govern.
By the late 1950s, the legitimacy of the existing order had collapsed. Batista’s 1952 coup—canceling elections and suspending constitutional guarantees—marked a turning point. What remained of the republic’s democratic façade dissolved, and a growing number of Cubans concluded that peaceful change was impossible. The revolutionary struggle that began in 1953 did not arise suddenly or irrationally; it emerged from five decades of frustrated sovereignty, from a society trapped between formal independence and absolute subordination. When Batista fled in January 1959, it marked not only the fall of a dictator but the implosion of an entire political system that had failed to deliver dignity, autonomy, or genuine participation to the Cuban people. The revolution of 1959 did not erupt from nowhere; it was the delayed answer to a republic that never entirely belonged to its people.
1961 U.S PRESIDENT KENNEDY LIED THAT HE LET THE CIA TRAIN & SUPPORT CUBANS FROM AMERICA INVADE CUBA
External conflict hardened everything: the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961) and the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) pushed the revolution toward securitized, one-party consolidation.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis (Oct 1962), a U-2 reconnaissance plane piloted by U.S. Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. was shot down over Cuba by a Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile (S-75 Dvina). He was the only U.S. fatality from enemy fire during the crisis.
BAY OF PIGS INVASION — “PLAYA GIRÓN” AND CUBA’S RAPID MOBILIZATION
The invasion was a CIA-organized force of Cuban exiles (Brigade 2506) that landed on Cuba’s south coast at the Bay of Pigs, aiming to trigger an uprising and topple Castro. The operation depended on air support and the assumption that Cuban civilians and military units would defect. On April 15, 1961, American planes attacked Cuba’s small air force. The air strikes, however, did not eliminate Cuba’s aircraft. Cuban planes survived and were prepared to strike the invading expat Cuban force. On April 17, Brigade 2506 landed. Cubans hit it hard and fast. Cuban aircraft strafed invaders, sank supply/escort ships, and destroyed much of the exiles’ supplies and air support; bad weather and soggy equipment worsened the landing. April 18–19, Castro sent his surviving aircraft to hit the invaders’ ships, supplies, and beachheads, and concentrated his Revolutionary Armed Forces and militia in the invasion zone. Cuban forces militia counterattacked decisively; by April 19–20, the invaders were killed, captured, or pushed to surrender/escape. 1,100+ survivors were captured, tried, and imprisoned after the invasion failed.
Prisoners were held for many months and treated as criminals/traitors under the revolutionary legal framework, not as ordinary POWs in a conventional war. In December 1962, Castro released the prisoners in exchange for $53 million in food and medicine. Many former Brigade members describe harsh imprisonment and propaganda use; some accounts also describe moments of humane treatment by individual guards/doctors/locals.
1962 BOBBY KENNEDY TURNED THE CRISIS FROM RUSSIAN NUKES IN CUBA INTO THEIR REMOVAL FOR A STAND-DOWN OF U.S. NUKES FROM TURKEY & ITALY
October 16–28, 1962 — thirteen days when nuclear war was narrowly avoided
By October 1962, U.S. reconnaissance discovered that the Soviet Union was installing medium- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, capable of striking Washington, New York, and much of the continental United States within minutes. Once operational, these missiles would collapse the U.S. first-strike advantage and radically alter Cold War power dynamics. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by Air Force General Curtis LeMay, recommended immediate air strikes on Cuban missile sites Followed by a full-scale invasion of Cuba and even pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union if escalation followed. LeMay dismissed diplomatic caution outright, telling President Kennedy that anything short of an attack was “Almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich, that nuclear war against Russia was winnable. He said that the Soviet retaliation could be limited and that the delay strengthened the Soviet position. The General said, We’ve got to use our nuclear advantage before we lose it.
EXCOMM: CIVILIAN CONTROL VS. MILITARY ESCALATION
President John F. Kennedy convened the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, a group that met secretly for nearly two weeks. The diplomatic bloc, led quietly by Robert F. Kennedy, urged restraint. JFK was deeply shaken by the Bay of Pigs disaster. Intelligence estimates that any invasion of Cuba would trigger Soviet retaliation in Berlin, and that, within mere days, nuclear war with Russia would incinerate the Earth. The President sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, as his personal intermediary to the Soviets. RFK was willing to act where formal diplomacy could not. RFK had no public diplomatic role, giving him deniability. He understood that face-saving for Khrushchev was essential and concluded that the crisis could only be resolved by offering the Soviets something tangible—but secretly. On October 27, 1962, Bobby Kennedy met secretly with Anatoly Dobrynin at the Soviet Embassy.
Off the record, Bobby Kennedy said that the United States would remove its Jupiter nuclear missiles from Turkey within a few months but that the deal must remain secret. Publicly, the U.S. would only promise not to invade Cuba. This was the true quid pro quo. At the time, the U.S. had Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy, aimed directly at the Soviet Union. But these nukes were obsolete. vulnerable, and, though already scheduled for removal, were symbolically enormous to Moscow. The U.S. missiles in Italy and Turkey mirrored the Soviet missiles in Cuba almost exactly, and Khrushchev had repeatedly cited these missiles as justification for the Cuban deployment. By agreeing to remove them—quietly—the U.S. gave Khrushchev a strategic win, a face-saving exit from Cuba, and proof he had not backed down unilaterally to the Americans. The deal had to be secret, since publicly admitting the Turkey concession would have triggered NATO outrage, undermined U.S. claims of strength, provoked the Joint Chiefs, and damaged JFK politically at home. The secrecy lasted decades.
On October 28, Nikita Khrushchev announced the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. Nuclear war was averted—by hours, possibly minutes because Soviet commanders in Cuba already had tactical nuclear weapons, Russian advisers in Cuba could use them if the Yanks invaded, and another American invasion of Cuba would almost trigger nuclear detonation on Cuban soil, followed by escalation.
The crisis led to the establishment of the Washington–Moscow “hotline”, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty negotiations, and the Kennedys’ growing distrust of military leadership. The Soviet retreat weakened Khrushchev’s standing in Russia and led eventually to his ouster. Bobby Kennedy demonstrated that back-channel diplomacy saves lives and proved that civilian restraint can override military momentum. The world survived not because of doctrine, but because one small group rejected nuclear war.
1970s–1989: SOCIAL SYSTEMS—DOCTORS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD, HOUSING BRIGADES, INTERNATIONALISM
Cuba built a dense social-service infrastructure, including the Family Doctor and Nurse program (announced/rolled out in the 1980s) that embedded care teams in communities. It also used microbrigades—collective self-help housing brigades in which future residents helped build housing blocks—an organized form of cooperative labor within a state plan. To supporters, these were solidarity systems; to critics, they sat inside a political structure that punished dissent.
Voices (composite):
“Our doctor lived down the block—we didn’t feel abandoned.”
“We built our own building—proud work. But politics still watched us.”
1898–1902: U.S. WAR, OCCUPATION, AND THE “INDEPENDENCE” FRAME
By the time U.S. forces entered Cuba in 1898, Cubans had already been fighting and dying for independence for more than three years. Cuban insurgents—the mambises—had devastated Spanish control through guerrilla warfare, destroying sugar plantations that financed the empire and surviving Spain’s brutal reconcentration policy, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians through starvation and disease. The Cuban War for Independence was real, mass-based, and costly. When the United States intervened, it did so not as a junior partner in Cuban liberation, but as an ascending imperial power intent on replacing Spain as the dominant external authority in the Caribbean.
American military leaders relied heavily on Cuban fighters for intelligence, scouting, and local support, yet systematically marginalized them once Spanish defeat was assured. Cuban officers were denied equal rank, Cuban troops were excluded from formal victory ceremonies, and Cuban representatives were barred from peace negotiations. Figures such as Theodore Roosevelt treated the campaign as a proving ground for American martial vigor, while Cuban revolutionaries—who had endured the longest struggle and the greatest losses—were reduced to background players in U.S. public memory. The war was recast internationally as an American victory, erasing the central Cuban role in winning it.
After Spain’s defeat, the betrayal became structural. Rather than granting immediate independence, the United States imposed a military occupation (1898–1902) and reshaped Cuba’s political future without Cuban consent. American authorities dismantled revolutionary institutions, disarmed Cuban fighters, and supervised the creation of a new state tightly constrained by U.S. power. Independence was granted only after Cuba accepted conditions that limited its sovereignty and allowed the U.S. to intervene at will. What Cubans had fought for as liberation became a transfer of domination—from Madrid to Washington. This interruption of Cuban self-rule planted the seeds of enduring resentment, resistance, and the revolutionary break that would come decades later.
1933–1952: STRONGMEN, U.S. INFLUENCE, AND THE PRE-REVOLUTION PRESSURE COOKER
Cuba cycled through coups, authoritarian policing, labor unrest, and corruption—conditions that later made “order versus dignity” the central political dilemma. After the fall of Gerardo Machado in 1933, a brief opening for reform collapsed into instability and military dominance. Fulgencio Batista emerged as the key power broker, first ruling indirectly through puppet presidents and later consolidating control more openly. Although elections and constitutions existed on paper, real power rested with the army, elite networks, and U.S. influence, not with the Cuban people. Politics felt imposed from above, something done to citizens rather than shaped by them.
The United States remained deeply entangled in Cuba’s internal affairs, backing regimes that protected American business interests—especially sugar, utilities, and tourism—while tolerating repression as the price of “stability.” Havana became a playground for foreign capital, organized crime, and corrupt officials, while rural poverty and urban inequality worsened. Labor organizing and student movements repeatedly challenged the system, only to be met with arrests, censorship, and violence. Many Cubans learned that peaceful reform led nowhere, reinforcing the sense that formal democracy masked an underlying domination structure.
By the early 1950s, frustration hardened into anger. Batista’s 1952 military coup, canceling elections and suspending constitutional rule, shattered any remaining faith in gradual change. For a generation of young Cubans, the lesson was unmistakable: the political order served outsiders and a narrow elite, not the nation. This period forged the psychological and moral conditions for revolution, convincing many that only a radical break—not negotiation—could restore dignity, sovereignty, and genuine participation in public life.
1991–2000: “SPECIAL PERIOD” SURVIVAL AFTER THE SOVIET COLLAPSE
When Soviet support vanished, Cuba endured extreme shortages—food, fuel, transport. Daily life reorganized around improvisation: bicycles, ration lines, informal barter, communal cooking. Cooperative consciousness often intensified at the neighborhood level because survival demanded it.
Voices (composite):
“We shared everything—soap, rice, news, rumors.”
“The state rationed; the people networked.”
2000–2016: CHÁVEZ–CASTRO AXIS, OIL-FOR-SERVICES, AND THE OBAMA THAW
Cuba rebuilt energy lifelines through Venezuela: an Integral Cooperation Agreement (2000) created a services-for-oil relationship widely described as “doctors/teachers for oil.” Meanwhile, the U.S. and Cuba began a short-lived normalization: Obama announced a new course in 2014, leading to the reestablishment of diplomatic relations in 2015. Obama’s thaw in U.S.–Cuban relations was negotiated primarily with Raúl Castro, who was Cuba’s president at the time; Fidel Castro was retired and not a negotiator.
Voices (composite):
“My sister went abroad as a medic—our family ate because of it.”
“When embassies reopened, it felt like a window cracked open—then it slammed again.”
2016–NOW: AFTER FIDEL—DÍAZ-CANEL, PROTESTS, CRISIS, BLACKOUTS, MIGRATION
After Fidel Castro’s death, Cuba entered a long transition under Miguel Díaz-Canel, with the old-guard leadership stepping back further when Raúl Castro resigned as Communist Party First Secretary in April 2021. Cuba then faced a major legitimacy shock: the July 11, 2021 protests and subsequent crackdown became a pivot point in state–society relations. Economically, the country endured severe strain—shortages, inflation, rising inequality, and a partial return of dollar-use measures described as “partial dollarization” in coverage of 2025. Energy insecurity became constant: Reuters and other reporting describe grid collapses and chronic outages driven by fuel shortages and aging infrastructure.
Voices (composite):
“The blackout lasts longer than my patience.”
“We don’t need speeches—we need electricity, medicine, food.”
2025–2026: RUBIO, FLORIDA HARDLINERS, AND “TRUMP-ENROE” PRESSURE POLITICS
Current U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Cuba policy has been consistently hardline for years, closely aligned with Florida’s anti-Castro political base. Recent official U.S. actions associated with this posture include retightening Cuba-related restrictions and sanctions (including the re-created “Cuba Restricted List” announced by the State Department in January 2025). Rubio, at his January 2025 nomination hearing, said that Cuba met the criteria for designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. At his prompts, U.S. President Trump escalated pressure on Cuba’s oil lifelines, the end of Venezuelan oil for Cuba, and discussions of maritime interdiction/blockade of the country. This leaves Cuba dependent, despite Trump’s annoyance, on Mexico’s oil shipments and U.S. pressure dynamics.
Cuban Voices (composite):
“Florida politics squeezes us, then calls it ‘freedom.’”
“Our country’s not a pawn in anyone’s doctrine—Monroe, Trumproe or otherwise.”
VIDEOS (ENGLISH) — SHORT NOTES + URLs.
FRONTLINE / PBS-style history (Castro era / U.S.–Cuba):
- “Castro, the CIA, and the Flight of Cuba’s Children” (Operation Peter Pan context; Cold War framing; strong archival storytelling).
PBS NewsHour (post-Castro / what comes next):
- “What lies ahead for Cuba after the Castros?” (transition politics + daily life pressures).
Cuba 2021 protests explainer (English):
- Overview of July 11 protests, causes, and the state response.
Straight-news clip of 2021 protests
- A short report showing the scale of demonstrations and immediate grievances.
- “Castro, the CIA, and the Flight of Cuba’s Children”
- “What lies ahead for Cuba after the Castros?” (transition politics + daily life pressures).
- Overview of July 11 protests, causes, and the state response (good quick context piece).
- A short report showing the scale of demonstrations and immediate grievances.
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