Imperialism coldly plans its timing. Every step is part of its historic obsession with taking over Cuba.
To the historic blockade —the longest in history— it added a fuel blockade through blackmail and threats against anyone attempting to sell oil to Cuba. On top of that, it imposed a new set of sanctions between January 29 and May 7.
Against this backdrop of calculated deprivation bordering on suffocation, and amid the titanic efforts of Cuba’s Revolutionary Government to install solar energy sources, a ship sent by Russia arrived in April, helping to ease the country’s severe energy crisis.
It is no coincidence that, as fuel supplies dwindled and summer approached, the Trump administration played two cards: requesting permission for a visit by the CIA director and offering $100 million in humanitarian aid.
Amid enormous pressure, the phrase repeatedly imposed like a mantra is Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement: “Cuba is a failed state.” Added to this is Trump’s belief: “They will come to us.”
Marco Rubio has once again pulled from his arsenal of falsehoods the warning that “Chinese and Russian bases installed in Cuba are a threat to the Western Hemisphere.”
This is completely false, and they all know it —from the members of Congress who have visited Cuba to the major media outlets.
This is not a diagnosis; it is the perverse planning of a declining empire against what it believes to be its ripe fruit. Now a new narrative has begun: “Cuban drones could be activated.” They are trying to prepare the final blow.
Their defeat in Iran, the proximity of the midterm elections, the signatures of more than six million Cubans willing to defend their sovereignty, their failure to provoke an internal uprising, and the realization that the Cuban people continue to work and resist have left them desperate.
The anti-Cuban fascist minority rooted in Florida has finally found a government they can ride, pressure, and attempt to bend through electoral blackmail. They want a quick victory. They want to restore casinos, drugs, and prostitution. They want the ports, the schools, and the nationalized properties back.
It is the haste of an empire that feels time slipping away.
A brutal blockade lasting more than six decades has failed to make them understand the cost of their punitive and failed policy. They do not understand the people they are dealing with.
This is the same people and the same Rebel Army that, after years of internationalist struggle in Africa, sat down at a negotiating table where imperialism sought certainty about whether Cuba would cross Namibia’s border. And the Cuban commander replied: “We can neither say that we will nor that we will not.”
They will never know our silent decision.
They will never know the sacrifices we are willing to make.
That internationalism inherited from Fidel and Raúl did not expand our geographic borders, nor did it carry away gold and silver; it only brought back to our soil the dead we gave in sacrifice. But it forever expanded our political frontiers of solidarity and unmatched respect.
And that is what the empire, in its desperation, fails to understand: an invasion of Cuba would not be only against Cuba. It would be against all the peoples of the world who are beginning to sign up and prepare themselves, just as they did at Playa Girón to defend Cuba against aggression.
Resistance will not have a single trench: it will multiply in every corner of Our America and beyond.
Cuba knows the script because it has suffered through it for more than sixty years. It knows that behind every accusation there is a plan for domination, behind every invented “threat” there is a fleet ready to sail, and behind every “failed nation” lies the greed of those who dream of dividing its spoils.
But this people are not new to resistance. They come from far away and remember the origin of their first mission.
When U.S. rockets fell on the home of humble peasant Mario Sariol in the Sierra Maestra, Fidel spoke words that still resonate with the same force today:
“Upon seeing the rockets they fired at Mario’s house, I swore to myself that the Americans are going to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war is over, a much longer and greater war will begin for me: the war I am going to wage against them. I realize that this will be my true destiny.”
That conviction was not an emergency slogan; it was the founding compass of the Revolution. And that compass continues to guide us today.
They want our collapse. They want our humiliation. They are mistaken about this people. They are mistaken about this history.
They will only learn, when they attempt the final blow, that Cuba still stands, firmly attached to its first mission, which is also its last trench: the struggle against imperialism.
Until victory, always!
(Cubaminrex-REDH)