By G. Dunkel
April 2, 2026

A Russian tanker with about a month’s load of crude oil arrived in Cuba on March 30 bringing the much needed fuel as the brutal U.S. blockade of Cuba was creating a humanitarian crisis. The following article provides background on U.S. imperialism’s economic war against socialist Cuba over six decades.

Ever since Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement overthrew the U.S. proxy Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and began challenging U.S. domination of Cuba, U.S. imperialism has put the island under siege, using its financial and economic power to hinder and prevent its people from accessing resources they need to build a socialist society.

Conducting a siege is a form of warfare usually used to isolate a fortified location. It’s almost always aimed at starving the defenders and depriving them of necessities for their defense.

When Cuba built an alliance with the Soviet Union against imperialism in the early 1960s, the United States openly began an embargo that grew into an ever more restrictive blockade. The U.S. enforces this blockade even more brutally now, six decades later.

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies in 1991, Cuba was able to depend on trade under equal terms and mutual aid for some economic development. Especially important were petroleum products and technology. Socialist Cuba made tremendous advances in developing its public health system and in biological science, even in the face of the U.S. embargo.

When it could no longer get aid from and trade with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there was an immediate 35% drop in Cuba’s gross domestic product. The Cuban government quickly responded with a series of “humanistic” austerity measures.

Cuba still increased its spending on public health and education. For example, the government encouraged urban community gardens, which not only improved the nutrition of community members but also reduced transportation costs.

At the end of the 1990s, returns from an expanded tourism sector kicked in along with the austerity measures and relieved some of the economic pressure.

When the Bolivarian Revolution under the leadership of Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1999, his government and Cuba forged a close alliance of mutual aid, trade and solidarity. Venezuela provided up to 90,000 barrels of oil a day. Cuba sent over 30,000 doctors, teachers and sports trainers to Venezuela. It also offered experienced intelligence and military advisors to strengthen anti-imperialist capabilities of Venezuela’s state institutions.

Cuban doctors serve the world

While these economic and high-level measures were being taken, Cuba was sending medical missions to a whole host of countries — 150 by some estimates. Al Jazeera writes: “More than 24,000 Cuban doctors are working in 56 countries worldwide. This includes Latin American countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Mexico; Africa, including Angola, Mozambique, Algeria; and the Middle East, including Qatar.”

Providing medical services had been earning an estimated $8 to $10 billion a year for the Cuban economy. (aljazeera.com/)

Along with these medical missions, which Cuba began in the 1960s, and which have built enormous reciprocal solidarity, Cuba established the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in 1999 to respond to the desperate need these doctors were finding. ELAM’s mission is to train students from all over the world to provide care for their medically underserved communities.

After 25 years, thousands of well-trained doctors, many of whom have received scholarships to study in the six-year program, have returned to their homelands to provide this care. There are a few dozen U.S. students who have been trained at ELAM and returned to serve in critically underserved communities in the United States.

Brazilian activist Thiago Ávila, who was a crew member on the Maguro, which is the flagship of the “Nuestra América” Solidarity Convoy that recently reached Havana, was thanked by the Cubans. Ávila told the Cuban newspaper Granma: “Much more than you should thank us, we and all the free peoples of the world must thank Cuba. …

“It is the country that sent medical brigades to every corner of the world; the country whose doctors were the first to go fight Ebola in Africa and COVID-19 in Italy; the country that went to provide support when the earthquake struck in Haiti and in Chile; the country that treated 26,000 children affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster; the country that supported liberation struggles throughout the Global South; the country that sent thousands of people to fight in Africa against apartheid troops. … So, the world owes a great deal to Cuba, and now is the time to repay that solidarity.”

Let Cuba live as a sovereign socialist country!