Cuba must not be left alone: if the response of governments to the oil blockade decided by Trump is generally timid and inadequate, it is time for the people to intervene. For this reason, following the example of the Global Sumud Flotilla for Gaza in 2025, the Progressive International – the organization inspired by Bernie Sanders and Yanis Varoufakis and supported by the former British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, the US Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and the US activist David Adler – has announced the launch of a flotilla with the aim of bringing food, medicines and other essential goods to Cuba next March, symbolically bypassing the blockade imposed by Washington.
«We are sailing to Cuba», we read on the Progressive International website, where the mission, called «Nuestra América», is presented, which will hold its first assembly today: «The Trump administration – we read in the first official statement – is strangling the island, interrupting fuel supplies, flights and supplies of basic necessities», with lethal consequences for the population, and in particular for newborns, the elderly and the sick. Thus, to force the US embargo – the lifting of which the United Nations has asked for 30 times, the last of which last October – the flotilla will set sail from several points in the Caribbean Sea, right where the US military fires on the alleged drug traffickers’ boats: around forty attacks have already taken place, the latest of which on Friday, when three people were killed, for a total of 133 victims in five months.
“When governments impose collective punishment, ordinary people have a responsibility to act: break the siege, bring food and medicine and demonstrate that solidarity can cross any border or sea,” said David Adler, who has already taken part in the Gaza flotilla. And ordinary people responded: from Mexico City to Bogotá, from Barcelona to Detroit, volunteers are stepping forward to equip ships, gather supplies and “open new routes of solidarity.” In the awareness, as highlighted by Thiago Avila, coordinator of the Global Sumud Flotilla, that «this initiative will bring more than simple aid. By breaking the US blockade on the island, the mission sends the message that the Cuban people are not alone.”
All the more so since that blockade, Corbyn denounced, “has tried for more than sixty years to stifle the example of a country which, despite incessant economic pressure, has built a universal healthcare system and a life expectancy comparable or even superior to that of the USA”.
date: 2026-02-14 23:18:00
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