Cuba Journal:  US oil blockade

Friday, March 6, 2026

 Just arrived in Havana this afternoon on a flight from Miami, along with Gary and Jerry. We are staying at the VOYA, a delightful, service-centered, Cuban-owned 17-room hotel. The VOYA is located on the outskirts of town, a 15-minute ride from the tourist center of Old Havana and surrounding areas, home to the big hotels. Some of these larger establishments are state-owned, but the most exclusive ones are operated by international capital. 

It was an eerily quiet ride from the airport to the VOYA in the charming automobile, a reconditioned 1952 Mercury, sent by the hotel. It was mid-afternoon, but few cars were on the road, with gas at a whopping $20 per gallon. None of this seemed to faze the cowboy, dressed the part, with hat and all, attending to his two cows by the side of the road. Against the adversity of the imperialist blockade, the human spirit seems determined to triumph.

 Saturday, March 7, 2026

Went for a walk this morning. Just around the corner from the hotel, I happened upon a farmer’s market running several blocks long on a street that had been blocked off for that purpose. It was obviously a producers’ market, offering vegetables, bananas and root crops of various sorts. Seemingly, the market caters to the lower classes, which coincides with those of a darker hue. These shoppers likely have few friends, family and benefactors in Miami – the kind of people who were on the flight to Havana yesterday – sending them dollars and bringing them stuff. With declining state support, these poorer folk are more and more on their own. There they were, armed with their shopping bags, standing in line and moving about, evidently angling for bargains. 

Image: Farmer’s market

I bought some garlic, which had been carefully sorted and graded according to size, with prices ranging from 20 to 70 pesos per head. ($1 fetched 430-500 pesos in the hotels and restaurants.) But as I had no pesos, I gave the vendor $1 for my four heads of garlic, one from each of the four grades. As I turned to leave, the vendor summoned me back and handed me several more heads of the higher-grade garlic. My aimless purchases had amounted to about 150 pesos, but he would not shortchange what he apparently understood to be an unsuspecting foreigner. 

In the afternoon, Gary, Gerry and I traveled to Old Havana, accompanied by my old guide-cum-cultural/language interpreter Edelso Darcourt. We set up shop at La Barca, a sidewalk restaurant on the Malecon, the seawall and esplanade that runs along the Havana Harbor. Chastened by the previous night’s experience at Vistamar, a restaurant by the sea where something resembling tilapia was passed off as snapper, we opted for the safer choice: rice and beans. The drinks we ordered were promptly delivered, but the food seemed to take forever, eliciting a joke that the rice was coming from Guyana and the beans from Ecuador. We had inquired about whole fish, which is more challenging to fake. But no such luck. La Barca, like Vistamar, had no whole fish.

Then it came to pass. Suddenly, as if by apparition, a bare-footed, white-looking man in a black scuba diving suit, dripping wet, appeared on the sidewalk next to us, carrying a huge, snapper-like fish. When the proprietor of the restaurant declined to purchase his catch, just out of the sea, we immediately made a bid, conditional on the restaurant cooking it for us. This they agreed to do, for all of $10. The deal sealed, we relieved the scuba-diving fisherman of what turned out to be a ten-pound burden for the asking price of $25, a virtual steal by Northern standards, even if inflated by local ones. The lord of the sea works in mysterious ways, wonders to perform.

 Scaling, gutting and cooking the fish, no easy tasks, were left to human agency. We waited, and waited, as if for Godot. And we ordered more mojitos. All the while the band, consisting of several male instrumentalists and a female vocalist, played on. Their repertoire included all the classical genres of Cuban music: Son Cubano, Mambo, Cha-cha-cha, and more. All the patrons were having a good time, with the more fleet of feet taking to the dance floor. Our own Gary was among the latter, twirling with the band’s vocalist. For all its blockade and bluster, imperialism was not going to rob these revelers of their joy.

Image: Band at La Barca

In-between, hawkers of various goods and services, along with sundry solicitors, sought the attention of the diners, including our group of four men. All the hawkers and solicitors defied the attempts by the proprietor of the restaurant to shoo them away. The defiers included two young women with cigarettes dangling from their mouths and inquiring about a light. This turned out to be a ploy, an opening gambit for pliers of the reputed oldest profession to make their pitch. The women seemed most unimpressed by Edelso’s dissuading protestation that all four of us have women or wives at home. After some persistence by the solicitors, a member of our quartet agreed to have his picture taken with them, handing over $10 for the privilege. With that, the ladies of the night sauntered into the setting sun, though not before informing us that their (non-photographic) services would remain at our disposal after hours. Their cigarettes were still unlit.

Far less colorful, in so many ways, were two small children, a male of perhaps seven and a girl, maybe aged five, her face distorted by severe swelling on one side. The boy placed his cupped hands around her face to draw attention to her condition, an entreating exhibition that cannot have been the children’s idea. All of which begs the question: Is this little girl a victim of the oil embargo, one the tens of thousands of Cubans unable to get treatment because of the lack of power in hospitals and other medical facilities? Anyhow, the sign language of the boy accompanying her spoke of hunger, while his English vocabulary seemed to consist of two words: “one dollar.” His request readily granted, along with two small bags of nuts & fruit, the pair continued on their way. Such is the state into which Cuba has fallen.

Even more than the sex workers and other vendors and solicitors, the children seemed to call forth the displeasure of the restaurateur, who tried to move them along, again without much success. All the subjects of his resentment seemed to be aware of their right to use the public sidewalk, and defiantly asserted it. The restaurateur apparently had little recourse. That he did not call the cops to do his bidding suggests that, even in the current conjunction, the police are not at the beck and call of the emerging capitalist sector. Cuba remains a socialist state, not a bourgeois state where the repressive apparatuses enforce the whims of privately-owned businesses.

At long last the fish arrived. Godot had appeared. While under-seasoned, the huge catch had the great virtue of freshness. Its vice - and here the chef may be permitted some grace - was that it was overcooked on the outer edge, cooked just right further in, and undercooked in the center. We ate what we could, dispensed with the head and bones, and packaged the remainder. It was then on to the next destination. 

This was the Lopez household, inclusive of Magia, a cultural creator and member of the hip-hop group, Obsesion, and her mother, Claridad. I had met the pair on a visit to Cuba nearly three years prior. At that time, Claridad, then aged 86, was sprightly and moving about the apartment, serving refreshments but mostly sharing stories of her trials, and triumphs, in the early days of the revolution. I recall confiding to my notes from that trip that meeting her was the highlight of the sojourn. Now with bad, painful knees, Claridad is reduced to moving about in a borrowed wheelchair. But as sharp of mind and fleet of tongue as before, she has lost none of her revolutionary zeal. In response to a question by Gary, she straightened herself up on the couch while recalling a couple of personal encounters with Fidel. Also at the apartment was Claridad’s other daughter, Tamara, whom I was meeting for the first time. Tamara, who lives elsewhere, is a veteran of the Cuban army who specialized in broadcasting. She is now teaming up with Magia to care for their mother. She is quite a lively and spirited soul, Tamara. Regarding our fish experience, she was glad to receive the remainder but mortified to learn that we had discarded the head, with which, she indicated by expression, she could have worked culinary wonders. It had indeed been a wonderful evening, and day.

Sunday, March 8, 2026

The main event today was a rumba performance at the Pena Cultural AfroCubana center. No sooner had we arrived than two reconditioned 1950s pink convertibles, blaring music by Tupac, pulled up to the center. Three women emerged from each vehicle, the six grandly making their entrance into the center without so much as batting an eye at the men who opened the doors of their vehicles. These ladies of ceremony, seemingly spanning multiple generations, were visiting from Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. In North American terminology, they could be fairly described as black cultural nationalists, it later transpired.

Their visit had obviously been carefully planned. As if by clockwork, Elias Assef, head of the center and a kindred spirit, waltzed out to meet the Charlotte delegation. With his impeccable colloquial English, Elias is an earnest ambassador for his causes, prominent among them AfroCuban spiritualities and their interlocution with related phenomena in other parts of the Americas. I had met Elias during a previous trip to Cuba. Today, arriving just ahead of the Charlotte delegation, he was welcoming enough to me and my comrades, Gary, Gerry and Edelso, who first introduced me to him. With his signature cigar, I jestingly pointed out to Elias that we (all nonsmokers) had nothing to puff on, whereupon he offered us all cigars, teasingly saying they were illegal.

Image: Elias Assef, flanked by the author on the left and Edelso on right

But, as visitors go, we were curtain-raisers. The Charlotte delegation, let’s say the Charlotte sisters, were the main event. A smooth talker familiar with aspects of the literature of African diaspora spiritualities, Elias was in his element holding forth before the Charlotte sisters, his seemingly well-rehearsed presentation leavened with references to various merchandise on sale at the center. This was cultural nationalism on a business basis. Elias was disdainful in equal measure of christianism (as he calls it) and communism, viewing both as inimical to African-derived, Cuban-centered cultural authenticity.

Here was further evidence of the uninhibited speech a visitor encounters in this society. In this, as in my previous visit, the latter to attend a conference at the University of Havana, I encountered freewheeling discussions, in private and public spaces alike. Concerning speech, Fidel had pronounced: “Within the revolution everything, outside the revolution nothing.” With apparently little in the way of self-censorship, Elias, like so many others, seemed to be expanding the boundaries of revolutionary speech, if not discarding the boundaries altogether. It may be that certain actions are out of bounds in Cuba, which officially remains a one-party state, but at present speech seems safe.

Having received Elias’ call of a sermon – this was around midway Sunday – with affirming responses, the Charlotte sisters retired to the center’s tavern to enjoy mojitos. Then the rumba performance got underway. A short procession led to a small unelevated staging area. With percussion dominating the accompaniment, the singing and dancing proceeded, with members of the audience joining the fray, at least the dancing. Magia, in attendance, declined repeated pleadings to have a go at singing. Others – lesser talents, according to those in the know – were not so bashful, and let loose with abandon. It was quite the show.

The event doubled as a runway, a place to do the catwalk. Fashion of various sorts, some of them long since out of vogue, were on display. One man, of rather advanced age and sporting a suit, necktie and felt hat, took up his place next to the performers and remained there throughout. Stern and unrumba-like in bearing, he seemed an embodiment of counter-tropical fashion. Some women, not wearing their Sunday best and more revealing of dress, unabashedly displayed their stuff, with some possessed of more stuff than others. The show also provided business opportunities. Moving among the crowd with his camera, Gary, a former college newspaper photographer, reported being offered his pick among multiple women by an apparent pimp. Pickpockets are also known to circulate among the crowd. Standing near the front of the performance with my bag on my side, I was repeatedly cautioned to put it in front of me. In this case, a pilferer potentially stood to gain some packets of nuts, dried fruit and assorted snacks.

But the show was going on too long, at least for our liking. Folk, our folk, were getting hungry. And thirsty. It was time to go, though not before the plate was passed for a well-earned love offering for the performers. With the quartet from yesterday (Edelso, Gary, Gerry and me), along with Magia and Carina, a Brazilian visitor who turned up at the Lopez household as we were leaving there the night prior, we took our bow and made our exit. Also joining us for a meal at a nearby restaurant, a place near the university, was Amhel. I had met Amhel on my previous visit to Cuba, when he joined Magia in closing out the conference with a cultural performance. Another memorable day in Havana.

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Having, alas, spent yesterday at the hotel attending to job-related matters, today I went to the city of Matanzas, about an hour and a half outside of Havana. The driver picked up Gary, Gerry and me at the hotel, and then collected Edelso, Magia and Amhel before heading out of town. A conspicuous new feature of the city is uncollected garbage, yet another consequence of the imperialist oil embargo. Amid it all, however, a sense of order is being maintained. For the most part, the garbage is not strewn haphazardly, but gathered at specific points. With reduced or minimal garbage collection, and few trash bins on the streets, the city is surprisingly clean. Nor was there much evidence that the uncollected garbage was attracting feral dogs or rats. Evidently, little food is being discarded as waste. Belt tightening is hardly new in this country, and from all indications the belt has rarely been pulled tighter. But not necessarily. Samuel Furé Davis, a professor of English literatures at the University of Havana who visited us at the hotel yesterday, suggested that things may have been worse during the “special period” of the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withdrawal of the subsidies it had provided.

Image: Gary, Amhel, Jerry in back; Edelso, the author, Isabel, Magia, Annia in front

 We practically had the road to ourselves on the drive to Matanzas. There were very few vehicles traveling in either direction. It was the same story on the way back. On the return, we entered Havana after 4pm, but it might as well have been 4am: so little traffic. The dearth of vehicles contrasted sharply with the long lines of people waiting for transportation, mostly public transportation. There are private vehicles serving the public. Some of these are cars from the 1950s that are showing their age, unlike the reconditioned rides in which the Charlotte sisters arrived at the rumba center a couple of days back, or the ones that ferried us from the airport to our hotel. I gather, however, that such private vehicles cost more than the public buses, and are therefore unaffordable for many. On the way down to Matanzas, more than one person flagging down vehicles or thumbing rides seemed to look askance at a comfortable seven-passenger vehicle (the driver excluded) whizzing by with six passengers—that vehicle being ours. On the way back from Matanzas, we did offer the extra seat to a woman we met at an oasis on a hill overlooking the sea and famous for its pina coladas. She may have been a worker at the oasis and was going home to Santa Cruz, a town located between Matanzas and Havana.

One result of the gas shortage, seemingly, is an increase in the deployment of that most faithful (if plodding) of African workers: the donkey. (As a species, donkeys are native to Africa.) It is not my recollection from a couple of years back, when I made this same journey from Havana to Matanzas, that there were so many donkey carts on the road. The cow may be following suit. On the return from Matanzas, a heifer was lazily occupying one lane of the four-lane highway (two lanes on either side), quite oblivious to traffic, such as it was, and forcing our driver to switch lanes.

Our first stop on arrival in the city Matanzas was a museum dedicated to slavery in the province. (The city of Matanzas is the capital of the province of Matanzas.) Said to be the oldest building in the city, the museum began life in the early 1700s as a fort, built by the Spanish colonialists to guard against invasion by competing European powers. But internal enemies, prominent among them rebellious enslaved Africans, soon proved to be a greater threat, or at least a more immediate threat. Accordingly, the fort was repurposed. Turned into a prison, it served enslavers, colonialists and postcolonial rulers alike. Even the revolution of 1959 used the fort as a carceral facility. It was finally decommissioned in 1978 and repurposed, once again, this time as a museum. Alas, the revolution did little to change the colonial narrative told in the museum, where plaques on the walls still inform visitors that Matanzas was first inhabited by Spanish settlers. Here, as elsewhere, the erasure of the First Nation peoples is much in evidence.

At the museum, located outside the city center, Edelso had arranged an appointment with the director, Isabel. She arrived late, which may be her style. This was not my first encounter with Isabel. I met her on my previous visit, in the city center, when she also ran behind schedule. But what Isabel lacks in punctuality she more than compensates for in verbosity. She has much to say about the story of Matanzas, and she takes her time in saying it. But today, she met her match. With Edelso struggling to interpret her monologue, which I had heard before, Isabel was just warming up to her subject when, mercifully and ever so delicately, Magia intervened. Isabel, Magia deadpanned, is a true daughter of Matanzas, an apparent reference to the province’s reputation as a producer of bards and a center of Afro-Cuban folklore. The resulting laughter provided just the opening needed to end the professorial-style disquisition. (If I recall correctly from my previous visit, Isabel said she was a PhD candidate at the local university.)

We then descended to the lower level of the museum where the painter Emilio, whose studio (where I first met Isabel) I had visited on my previous trip to Matanzas. Now, Emilio had some of his work on display at the museum. His wife Jacquelyn, a nurse whom I also met previously, was present. After a short visit with them, a purchase of some bags with Emlio’s artwork on them, and a handoff of some medical supplies to Jacquelyn, we left for lunch in town. Isabel came along.

At the main square in the city center, we met up with Annia Sansaric, a rendezvous arranged by Magia. Like Isabel, Annia is not unknown to me. I also encountered Annia on my first go-round in Matanzas. She directs a group of young girls, some of them survivors of abuse in various forms, including sexual violence. She had fashioned these girls, at that point seemingly ranging in ages from around six to early teens, into dancers, singers and models. They staged a lovely performance at the main municipal building in the city, seemingly for the benefit of Lydia Lindsey, professor of history at North Carolina Central University, and me! (Lydia and I had attended the above-mentioned conference at University of Havana.)

With Edelso’s museum tour as an add-on, my main reason for returning to Matanzas today was to thank Annia for her labor of love. When I first encountered her, Annia, seemingly barely out of her teens, despite reporting being much older, was obviously determined but also appeared diffident. What a difference three years have made. Smartly turned out for the meeting today, she was more poised, confident and self-assured. She will soon complete the requirements for a degree in the arts, she reports. She wants to link up with fellow black cultural activists and artists in the Caribbean region, and dreams of an African sojourn. A good deal of her engagement with Gary and me was conducted in English, a language in which she has gained some proficiency (unlike my Spanish). As we parted with Annia by the side of our vehicle after lunch, she was practically in tears, apparently overcome by the show of solidarity for her work. Matanzas. A journey well worth the making.

Wednesday, March 11

Today is my last full day on the island. It is also a day for cooking. The meal will be lunch, to be prepared at the Lopez household. I had been enjoined to play a role in the preparation. To that end, I met Edelso at a supermarket he recommended, Infanta y Santa Maria. This is a dollar shop that is strictly off limits to those possessing only the lowly peso, which is to say the great masses of Cubans. Prices are denominated in dollars, the currency of payment, whether cash or credit (though, because of the blockade, US-issued credit cards are not accepted). The store stocks the basics: cans and dry goods and such. The only oil available was sunflower. All the meat offerings, heavy on pork – this is Cuba – were frozen. The fish, so called, was also frozen. There was only one kind of fish, and that one had a striking uniformity. Every package was roughly the same size, including thickness and length. It was filleted, likely farm raised and likely imported.

Incredibly, there seems to be no fish market in Havana. I asked the cooking staff at the hotel yesterday, and they drew a blank. Perhaps, they surmised, I would be able to get fresh fish in Santa Cruz, on the way to Matanzas. It was in vain that a few of us, the driver included, craned our necks looking for signs of fish for sale while passing through Santa Cruz. The result is that eating establishments market what is evidently the same product in the supermarket under all kinds of labels. An island devoid of fresh seafood; fishers unable to fish. One of the great culinary crimes of imperialism.

After leaving the supermarket, we bought some vegetables from a street vendor— tomato, carrot, bell pepper – all very tired, a far cry from the fresh and crisp produce at the farmer’s market last Saturday morning. (No fresh produce, or anything fresh at all, was available at the supermarket.) After getting the vegetables, we bought rum and wine. The rum shop accepted dollars but, interestingly, the wine shop wanted no part of the greenback, insisting on pesos. By now, we had about seven bags of stuff.

Laden and late, we arrived at the Lopez household. Magia had alerted me that she would be making a pumpkin soup, while Carina would contribute a Brazilian dessert. Both were already hard at work when I finally appeared in the kitchen. It now remained for me to do my part. In a nod to Cuban gastronomy, I had picked up some pork loin at the supermarket, but decided against cooking it at the last minute, in the interest of time. The question then became: what to do with the fish? Could this dry bone live—that is to say, could this frozen fish of unknown provenance be made palatable? On my tasting of the finished product, the answer was no. At least I had not succeeded in making it palatable. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” So said Samuel Beckett of Waiting for Godot fame. But I could neither try nor fail again: lunch was being served at 4pm. Not to be deterred, the diners – there were eight of them, myself excluded – polished off my culinary offering in short order. Mercifully, Magia’s pumpkin soup, more agreeable to my palate, had previously been served, while Carina’ dessert made for a gratifying conclusion. Of the beverages offered to wash it all down, an aged bottle of Santiago rum, courtesy of Gary and Gerry, stole the show.

Image: Carina (with bottle); going left: Gerry, Edelso, Magia, Amhel, Tamara

 By now, it was around 6pm. Vivacious and expressive, as ever, Tamara rose to speak. She thanked the visitors, the North American threesome and Carina, for coming to Cuba in solidarity, especially at this moment. In response, I offered that the debt was the other way around, and that Cuba and Cubans owe folks like us nothing. On the contrary, we owe them everything for sacrifices made – in material support, in treasure, in blood – on behalf of struggling humanity in the Caribbean, elsewhere in the Americas, in Asia, in Africa, indeed the world. Gary seconded these sentiments.

In closing, Claridad gave me two old 3-peso denominations. One is a banknote while the other is a coin, both historical treasures now out of circulation. The banknote and the coin – and this is the key point – each bears the likeness of Che Guevara, one the finest revolutionary internationalists of the last century, some would say the finest. Between participating in four revolutionary movements worldwide – in Guatemala, in Cuba, in the Congo, and in Bolivia, where he died on the battlefield, murdered by imperialist-trained forces specially assigned to track him – the Argentinian-born Guevara served as governor of Cuba’s central bank, among other posts in the Cuban government. Then, divesting himself of state power, Guevara returned to the path of making revolution anew. The revolutionary, he once posited, is motivated by love. It is impossible, he added, to think of an authentic revolutionary without this quality, meaning love. Claridad, who did not discourse on revolution tonight, as she has done in the past, including a couple of nights ago, is an authentic revolutionary. What an honor to receive her treasured gifts!

Image: The author with Claridad displaying her 3-peso banknote gift, and Magia

Back at the hotel, Gary, Gerry and I walked to a nearby store before calling it a night. It is a bourgeois establishment, this little store, with products unavailable at even the supermarket where Edelso and I shopped this morning. Those products include olive oil and soy sauce, both of which I had wanted for my failed dish. With a much smaller space than the supermarket, and more time to explore its more limited offerings, I paid closer attention to the provenance of the goods in this store. There were two kinds of sugar on sale there, granulated from Brazil and powdered from the USA, where the olive oil and soy sauce were also made, the blockade notwithstanding. Incredibly, Cuba is now importing sugar, at least for the likes of those who shop at this store.

This emerging bourgeoisie, centered on a parallel dollarized economy, is highly racialized. The owners, managers and customers of the enterprises at the foundation of this new class are disproportionately white and light. In no way are they representative of the Cuban population, in which those of a darker hue form a large group, if not an outright majority. To be sure, unlike North America, with its more rigid system of racial classification, racial identity has always been more fluid in the Caribbean, as in South America and Central America. But regardless of how Cubans may choose to self-identify, the fact remains that the color of the emerging bourgeoisie, some of them reportedly subsidized by family and friendship networks, especially in Miami, is predominantly of a lighter hue. Invariably, such material or socioeconomic realities are associated with ideologies of whiteness and white superiority. The reverse side of this coin is degradation of blackness and brownness, which is manifested in various forms, including racial exclusion and racial profiling, as has been reported in Cuban hotels, especially those owned and operated by international capital. These two, capitalism and white supremacy, have always been conjoined. Consistently, it has been racial capitalism.

Not that the Cuban Revolution, contrary to its previous conceit, since attenuated, has solved the issue of white supremacy. The revolution did, however, fling open doors to education, health, housing and employment previously closed to Cubans of color, especially AfroCubans. These gains, they will assuredly fight to keep, come what may. If these people have anything to do with it, the Cuban Revolution will not be overturned, certainly not in this, the centennial year of the birth of Fidel Castro.

For all its contradictions, dysfunctions and imperfections, at this writing Cuba remains a socialist society. The commanding heights of the economy – the banks, the industries, the commercial houses, and so forth – are still under state control. The growing private sector notwithstanding, there is nothing inevitable about a capitalist restoration.

Cuba still stands for something in the world. Consider the following. On the terrace of our hotel, my comrades and I met two young people who had wandered in for dessert or a beverage, as local residents sometimes do. One of the teatime partners (male) was an engineering student from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, while the other (female) was a medical student from Jamaica. Days earlier, the Jamaican government, admittedly under pressure from the U.S. regime, had expelled the Cuban medical mission, which had cared for Jamaicans through thick and thin, including during the Covid pandemic. Yet despite the current crisis – economic, social, political – not a single student, medical or otherwise, from anywhere in the world, has been ousted from Cuba. Moreover, none of these students leave Cuba at the end of their studies owing Cuban institutions, or the Cuban state, a single peso. Their training – and many, if not most, are first-generation professionals from the laboring classes and the peasantry – is provided free of cost. It’s called standing by one’s principles, even in the worst of times—also known as revolutionary solidarity, or, more prosaically, international duty.

Transparently, the greatest danger to the Cuban state right now is the imperialist sable rattling and threats emanating from Washington, D.C., a menace exemplified by the oil embargo, enforced by naval patrols and the intimidation of nations across the Americas and beyond. But Cuba, as the strategists of empire are well aware, is no Venezuela, where the president was kidnapped and his deputy, transformed into a compliant servant of U.S. imperialism, installed in his place.

The Cuban Revolution has deep roots and will not be so readily decapitated. At this writing, the predicted domino, which has Venezuela, Iran and Cuba falling one after the other, is being thrown into disarray. Despite the cruel and criminal U.S.-Israeli destruction of the Iranian state and society alike, Iran currently fights on gamely. The Cuban Revolution, which has deeper roots, politically and socially, is unlikely to be any less difficult to dislodge. The record of U.S. attempts to destroy revolutionary Cuba over nearly seven decades does not bode well for Trump’s “Donroe Doctrine” of hemispheric hegemony. “Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!” So goes the slogan of the Cuban Revolution. “Homeland or Death! We will Win!” United in solidarity, lovers of peace and justice everywhere will win with them.

Michael O. West teaches at Penn State University. 

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Gary King for photos; Laura Warren Hill for encouragement to find an outlet for the piece and for editorial and technical support; and Horace Campbell for finding a place for it in this publication.