The following article is adapted from a presentation given by the author at the 2025 annual general meeting of the Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee.

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“The Special Period never ended.”

As I read news from Cuba today, I think about these words, spoken by one of our guides during the 2022 Che Guevara Volunteer Work Brigade. The “Special Period” began in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s largest trading partner, and it was worsened by the tightening of the US blockade through measures like the Helms-Burton Act. The effects of the Special Period were catastrophic for the country’s trade, infrastructure, energy system, and food production, with the average Cuban’s caloric intake falling by 30 percent according to some studies.

Now, as the Cuban Revolution enters its 66th year, the country is still in a difficult position, perhaps its most difficult since the overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista government in 1959. Many of the struggles of the Special Period remain, not to mention a massive migration crisis, hundreds of thousands of Cubans having left recently and more attempting to leave through various channels, some dangerous. Most have left to help support their families back home by sending foreign currency.

In the meantime, the second Trump administration looms over Latin America. During his first term, Trump snapped Obama’s olive branch and imposed 243 new sanctions on Cuba, limited remittances from families living abroad, and added Cuba to the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list. These impositions, maintained under the Biden administration, have contributed to worsening shortages of food and fuel, a massive decrease in purchasing power, and increased inflation, which have inflamed the precarious conditions that cause some Cubans to migrate via dangerous irregular channels encouraged by the US government. Biden did not reverse any of these policies until his final week in office, when he repealed the SSOT designation and relaxed some sanctions. By this time, it was obvious that Trump would simply undo the changes upon returning to the White House.

The economic impact of this sustained assault has continued to degrade the quality of life in Cuba, leading to blackouts, including a four-day blackout resulting from the failure of the Antonio Guiteras Power Plant, and damaging the country’s agriculture, education, and health care systems. And on top of everything else, the threat of natural disasters remains, as evidenced late last year by the devastating trio of Hurricane Oscar, Hurricane Rafael, and the November 2024 earthquake.

Meanwhile, Trump is vowing to turn up the heat even more. On January 20, Senator Marco Rubio, a dedicated opponent of the Latin American left and the Cuban Revolution in particular, became Secretary of State after being unanimously confirmed by members of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. After his confirmation, Rubio released a statement titled “Restoring a Tough U.S.-Cuba Policy.” In the statement, Rubio announced the return of Cuba to the SSOT list and the reimposition of some sanctions that Biden had relaxed in his final week in office. Rubio accused Cuba of “providing food, housing, and medical care to foreign murderers, bombmakers, and hijackers,” “oppressing its people,” and exercising “malign interference across the Americas and throughout the world.”

Of course, the single worst site of oppression in Cuba is the US military prison in Guantánamo Bay. For over 120 years, the US military has occupied Guantánamo. In 1912, US troops used Guantánamo as a centre for repressing anti-government protests on the island led by Afro-Cubans. Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Fidel Castro government urged the US to leave Guantánamo. The Americans refused. From Guantánamo Bay, Washington began organizing covert operations to overthrow Cuba’s revolutionary government.

Over the past several decades, Guantánamo Bay has been the site of horrific human rights abuses under both Republican and Democratic administrations. In the early 1990s, thousands of Haitians fled to the US to escape a military dictatorship in their country. The George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations sent them to Guantánamo Bay where they were served maggot-ridden food, deprived of medical care, and denied legal counsel.

Since 2002, the US government has unlawfully imprisoned and tortured hundreds of people in the Guantánamo prison. In 2022, the Biden administration once more proposed holding Haitian migrants at Guantánamo. And after being sworn in for his second term, Trump announced plans to send up to 30,000 migrants to the prison, which former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and current “border czar” Tom Homan said will be expanded and administered by ICE. In this way, Trump’s brutal crackdown on migrants (many of whom were displaced by US imperialism in the first place) has yanked Cuba into its orbit. The Cuban government has fiercely denounced Trump’s plan. President Miguel Diaz-Canel called it “an act of brutality,” while Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez wrote that it “shows disregard for human conditions and international law.”

As Cuba continues to suffer under the blockade, the Trump administration surely smells blood in the water. In the coming years, we should expect further lies and vilification from Washington—and as the “Havana Syndrome” hoax demonstrated, it is more than likely that Western media will play its part to proliferate such disinformation. We should not be surprised to see an expanded Canadian role in these destabilization campaigns. After all, the Justin Trudeau government already ramped up the demonization of Cuba following the July 11, 2021 protests. And if Trudeau is succeeded by Pierre Poilievre, an avowed enemy of the Latin American left, we should not be shocked to find Ottawa drifting closer and closer to Washington’s Cuba position.

There are reasons for hope. In December, China sent 70 tonnes of equipment to Cuba to help restore the island’s electrical system. And on January 20, the same day as Rubio’s confirmation, Cuba joined the BRICS alliance. Nevertheless, as long as the US continues it campaign of hybrid warfare against the island, these measures will be a band-aid on a bullet wound, and the end of the Special Period will remain out of sight. As a result, it is more important than ever that Canadians visit Cuba, that we practice solidarity with its people, and that we show our appreciation for the Caribbean island’s revolutionary past and present.

Owen Schalk is a writer from rural Manitoba. He is the author of Canada in Afghanistan: A story of military, diplomatic, political and media failure, 2003-2023 and the co-author of Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy with Yves Engler.