The Blockade Against Cuba: Confession & Evidence

by Mirko Casale – Jun 11, 2026

Although it is difficult to use the verb “thank” with the subjects “Donald Trump” and “Marco Rubio” in the same sentence, we will make a linguistic exception to state that if there is anything to be grateful to the US president and his Secretary of State for, it is the brutal bluntness with which they detail US foreign policy against Cuba.

Involuntarily, of course—because the paradox is that they admit the crime by describing it, yet deny it when it comes to naming it. Something like: “Yes, your honor, I strangled the victim with my own hands, but if she ran out of air that was her own responsibility.”

Criminal cynicism
Let us analyze the most recent events to go deeper into the subject. Since the beginning of the year, the US government has imposed a complete oil blockade against Cuba, preventing crude from reaching the island by various means. This is not something we uncovered in some newly declassified secret document—they do it publicly and openly, as you yourselves have witnessed in recent months.

Yet these measures have nothing to do with the lengthy power outages on the Caribbean island, as Marco Rubio asserted a few weeks ago in statements that would break the most robust cynicism meter on the market: “The reason [Cubans] are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to a US oil blockade,” said the Secretary of State without so much as a blush.

This is exactly the same modus operandi as in the hypothetical situation we mentioned earlier—the serial killer who confesses his crimes but takes offense if called a criminal… with the difference that the serial killer is proportionally less harmful than the duo in question.

The more the resistance, the more the illegal pressure
In this case, moreover, the victim refuses to be suffocated, which causes the criminal—in this case, Washington—to keep tightening its grip, making itself even more exposed before the world.

How? Well, when the Trump administration realized that not even the total oil blockade—barely eased by the arrival of a Russian cargo ship in March—was enough to twist Cuba’s arm, it added new illegal coercive measures.

On the one hand, the White House threatened to freeze the assets of companies or entities participating in key sectors of the Cuban economy, including tourism. The threats must have been credible because shortly after being announced, several foreign companies in the sector announced they were leaving the island—despite the enormous revenues they had earned over the past two decades in particular.

For example, the Spanish chain Meliá Hotels, which has the largest presence in Cuba, announced its withdrawal from the Cuban tourism market, leaving behind the 15 properties it managed in the country. On the other hand, but in the same direction and with the same intent, Washington’s measures against Havana took on another dimension with the announcement of new sanctions against GAESA, Cuba’s largest state company—a move with several serious repercussions for the Cuban economy. The conglomerate, focused primarily on tourism, investment, and trade, is central to the country’s financial functioning.

However, since that announcement also failed to produce the “regime” change so desired by Trump and Rubio, Washington decided to go further and sanctioned one of its subsidiaries, FINCIMEX, which acts as an intermediary between foreign banking systems and the national banking network. Almost immediately, payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard announced their departure from the island, citing the fact that, with the company’s ability to connect Cuban businesses to their network now sanctioned, their cards would cease to operate in the country.

Although other payment cards—such as Russia’s MIR and China’s UnionPay—will continue to operate, the measure is undoubtedly another severe blow to Cuba’s tourism sector, as it will particularly affect visitors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Western Europe, and Canada.

The death of the argument
In other words, each of the increasingly frequent coercive measures approved by the Trump administration against Cuba is more obvious, aggressive, and crude than the last—revealing the essence of the US blockade strategy that, as we all know, has not been running for six months or six years but for more than six decades.

Throughout that entire time, the US always tried to maintain a minimum of appearances, clinging to its narrative that these were surgical sanctions targeting specific officials or entities and not the general population.

It is obvious that this narrative was full of holes, yet there was never a shortage of people—and not a few—who genuinely believed it. Today, that set of arguments is dead forever, and its self-confessed killers are none other than Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

This text is an adaptation of a video produced by the “¡Ahí les va!” team, written and directed by Mirko Casale.

Capitalist Rulers in Canada Back Washington’s Assaults on Cuba

 

 

 

(RT Actualidad) by Mirko Casale

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/CB/SL