Like harbingers of the underworld, Donald Trump and his clique send messages of desolation and death against the Cuban people. The Executive Order of January 29 issued by the president exudes this sentiment; for the emulators of Thanatos, the goal is clear: to turn Cuba into a modern Numancia.
For the island, this siege is nothing new. Convinced of the majority support of the people for the Revolution, since its inception the United States has set out to undermine the foundations of the new power and induce rebellion.
The strategy has been unchanged: weaken the economy to provoke hunger, despair, and the overthrow of the government. A coldly conceived policy to plunge the Cuban people into misery. Thus, on April 6, 1960, the memorandum from Lester D. Mallory, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, defined the soul of this war.
Shortly thereafter, in June 1960, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz appeared on Cuban television to denounce that, on instructions from Washington, foreign companies were attempting to boycott oil processing.
The reduction in fuel supplies, the refusal to refine Soviet crude oil, and the elimination of the sugar quota were only the prelude to what would become the longest genocide in history. On February 7, 1962, Executive Order 3447, signed by President John F. Kennedy on the 3rd, came into effect, formalizing the blockade by invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917.
That was only the beginning. Looking back at the history of this unilateral war, it seems that Washington’s arsenal of evil is inexhaustible. Administration after administration, the mechanisms of coercion and encirclement were perfected: of the 32 tasks of “Operation Mongoose”—the vast terrorist plan designed after the defeat at Playa Girón—15 were specifically directed against the island’s economy.
Frustration, arrogance, and hatred gave rise to laws such as the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, or the Bush Plan, which reinforced them. During his first term, Trump issued more than 243 hostile measures, a policy that Joe Biden continued despite his campaign promises.
Now, the White House has set out to bring surgical precision to its aggression against the nation’s economy and life, seeking to leave no stone unturned. But it is not so easy to defeat the Cubans, as a recent statement by the U.S. president says it all: “The only option left is to go in and destroy Cuba.”
During more than six decades of economic warfare imposed by the world’s greatest power, the Cuban project has shown extraordinary resilience, achieving victories in all areas that defy the logic of the siege.