Recent electoral victories of DSA candidates embedded in the Democrat Party of the billionaires have been hailed by some as a purported ‘progressive’ moment and a victory for working people and the oppressed.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Instead of a step in the right direction these developments are fairy dust sprinkled in the eyes of the working class to blind and lull us to sleep.

The DSA Rumpelstiltskins seek to enchain the working class in eternal bondage to capitalism, spinning our labor into gold for their capitalist kings.

In response, Democrat Party truth-tellers published a letter to rebuke the DSA liars, indignantly reaffirming the Democrat motto^[1]:

That statement is the genuine voice of their party, and the class it represents. They accurately and proudly hold up the bloody banner of slavery, capitalism, and imperialist war that is the 198-year record of the Democrat Party.

The DSA puts a humanitarian mask and make-up over the Democrat Party caked in the blood of millions, the party of the Wall Street bankers and landlords that stole the homes of millions of working families, of mass deportations and incarceration of workers, endless wars, and genocide.

Working people need our own party based on our unions — a Labor Party — to organize us to fight in our millions in our own interests against the two parties of Wall Street. The DSA would have us beg the capitalists for crumbs.

Workers need to build a union movement that can organize our real power — the power to halt the capitalist system and bring the capitalists to their knees — the power to overthrow the exploiters and oppressors and free humanity.

The DSA seeks to prevent that. These pseudo-socialists are trying to wipe the blood off the boots of their Wall Street masters, to con workers into voting for the socialist spear-holders of the capitalist exploiters. Working people need working class consciousness and independence, not the treacherous class collaborationism of the DSA liars.

As electoral bait, the DSA hustlers make vague and false promises of social programs they know full well can never be conquered by mere voting but only through sustained mass struggles of millions of organized workers.

For 250 years, all our democratic and social conquests and rights have been won through mass struggles in the streets, not by voting for crafty politicians and false promises.

Republicans and Democrats are a tag-team — Capitalism USA — our mortal enemies, not vehicles for working people to defend ourselves.

For over a century, Social-Democrats like the DSA have betrayed the working class to horrific defeats and the deaths of millions, from the slaughter of World Wars One and Two, to the bloody defeat of Italian and German workers by the Fascists and Nazis, to bloody betrayals of millions of colonized peoples enslaved by Social-Democrat parties representing European imperialists.

The DSA seeks to continue that tradition.

Today working people in America face a mortal threat, unique in its history: the drive towards authoritarianism and war by Donald Trump. His attacks on the working class and democratic rights on behalf of the capitalist rulers can only be fought by a mobilized working class in our millions, in our own interests.

Workers, young people, Blacks and Latinos, immigrants and women are looking for an alternative to fight against the attacks by the Trump administration.

Instead the DSA offers a death trap: “Vote Democrat!” they purr. “That’ll keep the fascist beast at bay,” they reassure. It is guarantee of defeat, just as the Social Democrats counseled German workers to merely vote but not fight the rising Nazi threat.

The passive course of action proposed by the DSA to look to a purportedly-enlightened wing of the capitalist ruling class will inevitably take the working class once again to the capitalist executioner’s block.

The DSA seeks to blindfold and tie the hands of the working class to prevent us from defending ourselves. With encouraging smiles they whisper in the ears of working people — trust us — and encourage us to meekly bend our knees and bow our head to Trump’s blade.

Instead of working class consciousness, independence, militancy, and self-confidence, the DSA preaches “solidarity,” not with fellow workers, but with the capitalist exploiters!

Rather than organizing sustained mass movements to oppose Trump’s deadly attacks on immigrants, abortion rights, his war on Iran and more to come, and threats of authoritarian rule, liberal Democrats and their DSA enablers call for meaningless “No Kings” middle-class be-ins to prance about in clown suits ridiculing the rising deadly threat of Trump’s Green Shirts. Fascism will be laughed away over lattes and voting. “Don’t worry, the courts will stop him.”

Trump could not be more tickled.

In response to the minor electoral victories of the DSA, Trump unleashed an anti-communist diatribe calling them, ”The Greatest Threat to Our Country since its Founding 250 years ago!” It is a dangerous threat and incitement to violence.

While the capitalist rulers know that Social-Democrats like the DSA pose no threat, they do know that working class socialism does offer a way forward to defeat them. It frightens and enrages them. Communism is hardly passé, it turns out.

Let us take Trump’s threats as an incentive to renew the socialist movement.

FELLOW WORKERS! Let us turn from them and to ourselves. Look to our coworkers and neighbors for solidarity. Talk to each other. Learn our own history of great struggles and victories. Organize ourselves. Trust in ourselves and learn to never trust our enemy or their hirelings. Have confidence in ourselves. We are billions worldwide.

FELLOW WORKERS! The crisis of capitalism is growing worse. Conscious workers can already smell the smoke of fascism and wars on the horizon. We must fight to prevent the growing threat.

We do need and want socialism. That means overthrowing the cruel capitalist monsters, not voting for their representatives or kissing their jackboots.

Subscribe now

^[1] Centrist Democrats Rebuke Party’s Left Wing: ‘We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist’

—Following high-profile primary victories by democratic socialists, some moderate Democrats are advocating a different course, highlighting tensions in the party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/moderate-democrats-capitalist-socialism.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Presently the US government is imposing a military starvation blockade against the Cuban people, cutting off fuel, food and medicine, precisely to increase hunger and deaths among the infirm, children and the elderly.

That has been explicit US policy against Cuba since 1960, now taken to new inhuman extremes.2

Separate from sanctions, U.S. wars, occupations, proxy conflicts, and support for allied dictatorships have resulted in tens of millions more deaths. While many of the figures below are approximate estimates, and ranges, and some are contested, the overall scale of the destruction is not. Millions more undoubtedly died from the indirect consequences of war, famine, disease, displacement, economic collapse, and social devastation flowing from these conflicts and interventions.

U.S.-CAUSED DEATHS

SANCTIONS, 1971–2021: ~38 million deaths.

WAR

—Vietnam: ~3.3 million deaths.

—Cambodia: ~1.5–3 million deaths.

—Laos: more than 200,000 deaths.

—Indonesia, 1965–66: ~500,000–1 million deaths.

—East Timor: ~100,000–200,000 deaths (⅓ the population!).

—Bangladesh, 1971: ~300,000–3 million deaths.

—Guatemala: ~200,000 deaths.

—El Salvador: ~75,000 deaths.

—Nicaragua, including the Somoza dictatorship and Contra war: ~80,000–100,000 deaths.

—Operation Condor and the military dictatorships of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil: ~50,000–80,000 deaths and disappearances.

—The post-2001 “War on Terror”: ~4.5–4.6 million deaths.3

 • Afghanistan: ~900,000–1.5 million deaths.

 • Iraq: ~1–2.4 million deaths.

 • Pakistan: ~200,000–500,000 deaths.

 • Syria: ~500,000–700,000 deaths.

 • Yemen: ~377,000 deaths.

 • Libya: ~30,000–250,000 deaths.

 • Somalia: ~300,000–700,000 deaths.

—Congo wars: ~5.4 million deaths.

—Southern Africa, including Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and apartheid destabilization campaigns: ~1–1.5 million deaths.

—Western Sahara: ~20,000–40,000 deaths.

Additional deaths occurred in the Philippines, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and other countries affected by U.S.-backed counterterrorism operations, drone campaigns, proxy wars, and military interventions.

Additional U.S.-supported dictatorships, occupations, and proxy conflicts include Haiti, Honduras, the Philippines, Iran under the Shah, Zaire under Mobutu, Liberia under Samuel Doe, Sudan, South Korea, Taiwan under Kuomintang rule, Iraq before 2003, Libya after 2011, and numerous Cold War client regimes throughout Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Estimates for these cases range from hundreds of thousands to several million additional deaths.

Even using conservative assumptions, the cumulative toll of sanctions, wars, occupations, proxy forces, and regimes armed, financed, trained, protected, or politically sustained by Washington exceeds 55 million deaths.

This figure does not include the full mortality resulting from hunger, disease, underdevelopment, displacement, environmental destruction, and state collapse. Including the broader human consequences of U.S.-supported dictatorships, civil wars, sanctions, and economic coercion would raise the total substantially higher.

Nor does this accounting include the ongoing genocide and destruction of Gaza, carried out with U.S. weapons, military assistance, diplomatic protection, and financial support.

Measured over the past half century, the human cost of American imperial power is in the tens of millions of lives.

Subscribe now

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF U.S. WARS, INTERVENTIONS AND ATTACKS ON LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

Below is a fuller chronological working list. It still cannot honestly be called “absolutely complete,” because covert operations and proxy actions are unevenly documented.

I included direct troop landings, occupations, blockades, CIA operations, proxy wars, coups, assassination plots, sanctions/blockades, and explicit military threats.

Main sources include CRS’s armed-forces deployment chronology, State Department/FRUS records, National Security Archive CIA collections, and standard Banana Wars chronologies.

U.S. INTERVENTIONS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN

1823 — Latin America/Caribbean — Monroe Doctrine proclaimed.

1831 — Argentina/Malvinas — USS Lexington raid.

1846–1848 — Mexico — U.S. invasion; annexation of northern Mexico.

1853–1854 — Mexico — Gadsden Purchase under military pressure.

1854 — Nicaragua — U.S. naval bombardment/destruction of San Juan del Norte/Greytown.

1855–1857 — Nicaragua — William Walker filibuster regime; U.S. recognition.

1856 — Panama/Colombia — U.S. troops land during transit crisis.

1857 — Nicaragua — U.S. naval intervention against Walker crisis.

1858 — Uruguay — U.S. naval landing at Montevideo.

1859 — Paraguay — U.S. naval expedition.

1860 — Panama/Colombia — U.S. troop landing.

1865–1867 — Mexico — U.S. pressure against French-backed Maximilian regime.

1868 — Uruguay — U.S. naval intervention.

1873 — Colombia/Panama — U.S. troops land.

1885 — Panama/Colombia — U.S. troops occupy Colón/Panama railroad zone.

1888 — Haiti — U.S. naval intimidation.

1891 — Chile — Baltimore crisis; U.S. naval pressure.

1894 — Nicaragua — U.S. Marines land at Bluefields.

1895 — Colombia/Panama — U.S. Marines land.

1898 — Cuba — U.S. intervention in war against Spain.

1898 — Puerto Rico — U.S. invasion and annexation.

1898–1902 — Cuba — U.S. military occupation.

1899 — Nicaragua — U.S. landing at Bluefields.

1901 — Cuba — Platt Amendment imposed.

1901 — Panama/Colombia — U.S. Marines land.

1902 — Colombia/Panama — U.S. troops land during civil war.

1903 — Panama/Colombia — U.S. backs Panamanian secession; blocks Colombian troops.

1903 — Honduras — U.S. Marines land.

1903 — Dominican Republic — U.S. Marines land.

1903–1914 — Panama — Repeated U.S. troop deployments to secure Canal Zone.

1904 — Dominican Republic — U.S. forces intervene; customs pressure.

1904 — Panama — U.S. troops land.

1905 — Dominican Republic — U.S. customs receivership imposed.

1906–1909 — Cuba — Second U.S. occupation.

1907 — Honduras — U.S. Marines land during civil conflict.

1909–1910 — Nicaragua — U.S. backs overthrow of Zelaya.

1910 — Nicaragua — U.S. Marines land at Bluefields/Corinto.

1911 — Honduras — U.S. Marines land.

1912 — Honduras — U.S. troop landing.

1912 — Panama — U.S. troop landing.

1912 — Cuba — U.S. Marines land during Afro-Cuban rebellion.

1912–1925 — Nicaragua — U.S. occupation/intervention.

1913 — Mexico — U.S. naval/troop pressure during revolution.

1914 — Haiti — U.S. Marines land; seizure of funds/customs pressure.

1914 — Dominican Republic — U.S. naval intervention.

1914 — Mexico — U.S. occupation of Veracruz.

1915–1934 — Haiti — Full U.S. occupation.

1916–1924 — Dominican Republic — Full U.S. occupation.

1916–1917 — Mexico — Pershing punitive expedition.

1917–1922 — Cuba — U.S. military intervention/occupation.

1918–1919 — Mexico — U.S. border incursions.

1918–1920 — Panama — U.S. troops deployed.

1919 — Honduras — U.S. Marines land.

1920 — Guatemala — U.S. Marines land.

1921 — Panama/Costa Rica — U.S. pressure during border conflict.

1924 — Honduras — U.S. Marines land twice.

1925 — Honduras — U.S. Marines land.

1925 — Panama — U.S. troops suppress rent strike.

1926–1933 — Nicaragua — U.S. occupation; war against Sandino.

1933 — Cuba — U.S. intervention during fall of Machado; warships deployed.

1934 — Nicaragua — U.S.-created National Guard consolidates power; Sandino assassinated by Somoza forces.

1941 — Dutch Guiana/Suriname — U.S. troops occupy bauxite zone.

1940s — Caribbean/British Guiana — U.S. base acquisitions under destroyers-for-bases agreement.

1947 — Venezuela — U.S. support/acceptance of military turn against Rómulo Gallegos.

1947 — Hemisphere — Rio Treaty institutionalizes U.S.-led military order.

1948 — Costa Rica — U.S. pressure during civil war.

1952 — Cuba — U.S. recognition/support for Batista dictatorship.

1954 — Guatemala — CIA Operation PBSuccess; overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz; bombing/blockade/psychological war.

1956–1959 — Cuba — U.S. arms and support to Batista regime.

1959–1960 — Caribbean — U.S. naval deployments after Cuban Revolution.

1960 — Guatemala — CIA-backed exile force uses Guatemala for anti-Cuba preparations.

1960 — Cuba — CIA begins sabotage/assassination planning against Castro.

1961 — Cuba — Bay of Pigs invasion.

1961–1963 — Cuba — Operation Mongoose sabotage/terror campaign and assassination plots.

1962 — Cuba — Naval blockade/quarantine during Missile Crisis.

1962 — Brazil — U.S. destabilization planning against Goulart begins.

1963 — Dominican Republic — U.S. acquiescence/support around coup against Juan Bosch.

1964 — Brazil — U.S. support for military coup against Goulart.

1965 — Dominican Republic — U.S. invasion; 20,000+ troops.

1966 — Guatemala — U.S. counterinsurgency support.

1967 — Bolivia — CIA involvement in hunt for Che Guevara.

1968–1970s — Uruguay — U.S. police/intelligence support against Tupamaros and left.

1970–1973 — Chile — CIA destabilization against Allende; Track II coup plotting.

1971 — Bolivia — U.S. support for Banzer dictatorship.

1973 — Chile — U.S. backing for Pinochet coup.

1975–1980s — Argentina/Chile/Uruguay/Paraguay/Bolivia/Brazil — U.S. support/toleration of Operation Condor.

1976 — Argentina — U.S. support for military junta.

1979–1990 — Nicaragua — Contra war, CIA sabotage, mining harbors.

1980s — El Salvador — U.S. military aid, advisers, death-squad-linked counterinsurgency.

1980s — Guatemala — U.S. military/intelligence support during genocidal counterinsurgency.

1980s — Honduras — U.S. militarization; Contra staging base.

1983 — Grenada — U.S. invasion.

1984 — Nicaragua — CIA mining of harbors.

1986 — Nicaragua — U.S. condemned by ICJ for unlawful force.

1989 — Panama — U.S. invasion; Noriega removed.

1990s — Cuba — Tightened embargo/sanctions.

1994 — Haiti — U.S. military intervention; Aristide restored under U.S. terms.

1996 — Cuba — Helms-Burton Act escalates extraterritorial embargo.

2002 — Venezuela — U.S. contacts/support around failed anti-Chávez coup.

2004 — Haiti — U.S. role in removal/exile of Aristide.

2009 — Honduras — U.S. recognition/legitimization of post-coup order after Zelaya overthrow.

2017 — Venezuela — Trump threatens “military option.”

2019 — Venezuela — U.S. recognizes Guaidó; regime-change campaign; sanctions escalation.

2020 — Venezuela — “Maximum pressure”; naval deployment; Operation Gideon context.

2021–2024 — Cuba — Continued blockade, state-sponsor designation, sanctions pressure.

2024 — Panama — Trump threatens to reassert control over Panama Canal.

2025 — Panama — Trump vows U.S. will “take back” Panama Canal.

2025–2026 — Mexico — Escalating U.S. threats of unilateral military action against cartels.

2026 — Cuba — Expanded sanctions; financial/tourism pressure.

2026 — Latin America broadly — U.S. declares cartels can only be defeated by military force; renewed Monroe Doctrine posture.

_____________

Bibliography

Bass, Gary J. The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

Bevins, Vincent. The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. New York: PublicAffairs, 2020.

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Rev. ed. London: Zed Books, 2003.

Burnham, Gilbert, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts. “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey.” The Lancet 368, no. 9545 (2006): 1421–1428.

Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste (CAVR). Chega! Final Report of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in Timor-Leste. Dili: CAVR, 2005.

Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (Guatemala). Guatemala: Memory of Silence. Guatemala City: CEH, 1999.

Conboy, Kenneth. Shadow War: The CIA’s Secret War in Laos. Boulder, CO: Paladin Press, 1995.

Crawford, Neta C. United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars Through FY2023: Twenty Years of War. Providence, RI: Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, 2021.

Cribb, Robert, ed. The Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966: Studies from Java and Bali. Clayton, Australia: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1990.

Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Gleijeses, Piero. Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Heuveline, Patrick. “The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia.” In Forced Migration and Mortality, edited by Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2001.

Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, Jeffrey J. Schott, Kimberly Ann Elliott, and Barbara Oegg. Economic Sanctions Reconsidered. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2007.

Kiernan, Ben. The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975–1979. 3rd ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

Kinzer, Stephen. Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. New York: Times Books, 2006.

Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. 2nd ed. New York: The New Press, 2013.

LeoGrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977–1992. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Lewy, Guenter. America in Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.

McSherry, J. Patrice. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005.

Mikell, Drew, et al. “Effects of International Sanctions on Age-Specific Mortality: A Cross-National Panel Data Analysis.” The Lancet Global Health (2025).

Montgomery, Tommie Sue. Revolution in El Salvador: From Civil Strife to Civil Peace. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995.

Prashad, Vijay. Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020.

Prunier, Gérard. Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Savell, Stephanie. How Death Outlives War: The Reverberating Impact of the Post-9/11 Wars on Human Health. Providence, RI: Costs of War Project, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University, 2023.

Shawcross, William. Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon, and the Destruction of Cambodia. Rev. ed. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.

Simpson, Bradley R. Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960–1968. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Turse, Nick. Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013.

United Nations. From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador. Report of the Commission on the Truth for El Salvador. New York: United Nations, 1993.

United Nations Development Programme. Assessing the Impact of War in Yemen: Pathways for Recovery. New York: UNDP, various editions.

United States Congressional Research Service. Luetje, Charles V. Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2023. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, updated editions.

United States Department of State. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, various volumes.

United States Department of State, Office of the Historian. Foreign Relations of the United States series. Washington, DC: Office of the Historian.

United States Central Intelligence Agency. CIA Reading Room (CREST): Declassified Intelligence Documents. Langley, VA: Central Intelligence Agency.

Wehrey, Frederic. The Burning Shores: Inside the Battle for the New Libya. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.

Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. New York: Doubleday, 2007.

Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.

Archival and Documentary Collections

National Security Archive. Electronic Briefing Books and Declassified Document Collections. Washington, DC: George Washington University.

International Rescue Committee. Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An Ongoing Crisis. New York: International Rescue Committee, various reports.

Amnesty International. Annual Report: The State of the World’s Human Rights. London: Amnesty International, various years.

Human Rights Watch. World Report. New York: Human Rights Watch, various years.

United Nations Human Rights Council. Reports and resolutions, various years.

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Country reports and thematic reports, various years.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Global Trends and country reports, various years.

United Nations Security Council. Resolutions and reports, various years.

United Nations General Assembly. Official Records, various years.

______________________________

U.S. use of armed force, naval coercion, occupations, coups, covert operations, proxy wars, sanctions/blockades, military aid to dictatorships, base regimes, and threats of force.

U.S. INTERVENTIONS WORLDWIDE
THE MACHINERY OF DEATH

Part 1 — Outside Latin America and the Caribbean, 1801–1949

1801–1805 — Tripoli/Libya — First Barbary War; U.S. naval war against Tripoli.

1815 — Algiers/Algeria — Second Barbary War; U.S. naval expedition.

1832 — Sumatra/Indonesia — U.S. naval attack on Quallah Battoo.

1838–1842 — Fiji/Samoa/Pacific — U.S. naval punitive expeditions.

1843–1844 — China — Treaty of Wanghia; U.S. extraterritorial privileges imposed under gunboat-era pressure.

1853–1854 — Japan — Perry expedition; U.S. naval coercion forces opening of Japan.

1855 — Fiji — U.S. naval expedition.

1856 — China — U.S. military action during Second Opium War period.

1858 — Fiji — U.S. punitive expedition.

1859 — China — U.S. naval action at Peiho/Taku forts.

1863–1864 — Japan — U.S. naval action at Shimonoseki.

1866 — China — U.S. punitive action after attack on U.S. consul.

1867 — Formosa/Taiwan — U.S. punitive expedition.

1871 — Korea — U.S. punitive expedition.

1882 — Egypt — U.S. Marines land during British intervention crisis.

1888–1889 — Samoa — U.S. naval intervention in Samoan crisis.

1893 — Hawaii — U.S. Marines support overthrow of Hawaiian monarchy.

1898 — Guam — U.S. seizure from Spain.

1898 — Philippines — U.S. invasion and occupation.

1898–1910s — Pacific — U.S. colonial consolidation across Guam, Philippines, Samoa, Hawaii, Wake, and other strategic islands.

1899 — Samoa — U.S. intervention and partition; American Samoa established under U.S. control.

1899–1902 — Philippines — U.S. war against the First Philippine Republic.

1899–1913 — Philippines/Moro regions — U.S. colonial counterinsurgency.

1900–1901 — China — U.S. intervention in Boxer Rebellion.

1901 onward — Philippines — U.S. colonial rule and counterinsurgency.

1903–1941 — China — Repeated U.S. troop and naval deployments to protect concessions, missionaries, nationals, and commercial interests.

1905 — Korea — U.S. acceptance of Japanese domination under the Taft-Katsura framework.

1911–1912 — China — U.S. troop deployments during Chinese Revolution.

1912–1925 — China — U.S. forces protect treaty-port concessions.

1914–1918 — Europe — U.S. arms, loans, and later direct intervention in World War I.

1917–1918 — France/Belgium/Germany — U.S. expeditionary force in World War I.

1918–1920 — Soviet Russia — U.S. military intervention in North Russia and Siberia against the Bolshevik Revolution.

1918–1922 — Europe/Russia — U.S. support for anti-Bolshevik White forces and allied intervention.

1919 — Dalmatia/Balkans — U.S. naval deployment during postwar settlement crisis.

1919 — Turkey/Ottoman region — U.S. naval presence during postwar partition conflicts.

1920 — China — U.S. troops protect foreign interests during unrest.

1920s — China/Yangtze — U.S. gunboat patrols and armed interventions.

1922 — Turkey/Smyrna — U.S. naval deployment during Greco-Turkish War crisis.

1924 — China — U.S. Marines land during disorder.

1925 — China — U.S. troops land in Shanghai.

1926–1927 — China — U.S. naval and Marine deployments during civil conflict.

1927 — China/Nanking — U.S. and British bombardment during Nanking Incident.

1932 — China/Shanghai — U.S. troops deployed during Sino-Japanese fighting.

1937–1941 — China — U.S. naval presence and support amid Sino-Japanese War.

1940 — Atlantic/Caribbean/Africa/Asia — Destroyers-for-bases system expands U.S. military basing empire.

1941 — Iceland — U.S. occupation before formal entry into World War II.

1941 — Greenland — U.S. military occupation/protectorate arrangement.

1941–1945 — Global — U.S. participation in World War II.

1942–1945 — North Africa — U.S. invasion and occupation operations.

1943–1945 — Italy — U.S. invasion, occupation, and postwar political intervention.

1944–1945 — France/Belgium/Netherlands/Germany — U.S. military operations and occupation.

1944–1945 — Philippines — U.S. reconquest and restoration of colonial authority until formal independence.

1945 — Japan — Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

1945–1952 — Japan — U.S. occupation.

1945–1949 — Germany — U.S. occupation zone and military-political restructuring.

1945–1955 — Austria — U.S. occupation zone.

1945–1948 — Korea — U.S. military occupation south of the 38th parallel.

1945–1949 — China — U.S. military, financial, and logistical support for Kuomintang forces in civil war.

1946 — Iran — U.S. pressure during Azerbaijan crisis.

1946–1949 — Greece — U.S. intervention on side of monarchy/right-wing forces in civil war.

1947 — Turkey — Truman Doctrine military and economic aid.

1947 — Greece — Truman Doctrine military and economic aid.

1947 onward — Global — CIA created; covert operations institutionalized.

1948 — Italy — U.S./CIA intervention in election against Communist and Socialist forces.

1948–1949 — Germany — Berlin Airlift and military confrontation.

1949 — Europe/North Atlantic — NATO founded as U.S.-led military bloc.

1949 — Taiwan/China — U.S. support for defeated Kuomintang regime after retreat to Taiwan.

Part 2 — Outside Latin America and the Caribbean, 1950–1979

1950–1979: Korea, Iran, Vietnam, Congo, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Greece, the Middle East, Angola, Afghanistan, and the rise of CIA/proxy war.

1950 — Taiwan Strait — U.S. Seventh Fleet deployed to prevent PRC victory over Chiang Kai-shek’s forces.

1950–1953 — Korea — U.S.-led war; mass bombing; permanent militarization of the peninsula.

1950s onward — South Korea — U.S. military basing, political control, and backing of anti-communist regimes.

1950s onward — Taiwan — U.S. arms, military protection, and political support for Kuomintang regime.

1952 — Egypt — U.S. support for Free Officers regime after monarchy’s fall.

1953 — Iran — CIA/MI6 coup against Mohammad Mossadegh; Shah dictatorship consolidated.

1953–1979 — Iran — U.S. backing, arming, and training of Shah’s regime and SAVAK.

1954–1955 — Taiwan Strait — U.S. military threats and protection of offshore islands held by Chiang Kai-shek.

1955 — Global — Baghdad Pact/CENTO system expanded U.S.-aligned military containment in Middle East/South Asia.

1955–1975 — Vietnam — U.S. intervention escalates from advisers to full-scale war.

1956 — Egypt/Suez — U.S. imperial pressure during crisis; regional maneuvering to preserve Western influence.

1957 — Jordan — U.S. military and financial support to monarchy during regional crisis.

1957 — Syria — CIA-backed destabilization and coup planning against Syrian government.

1957–1958 — Indonesia — CIA support for regional rebellions against Sukarno.

1958 — Lebanon — U.S. Marines land to defend pro-Western regime.

1958 — Taiwan Strait — U.S. military support during second offshore-islands crisis.

1959 onward — Tibet/China — CIA support for Tibetan armed resistance and exile operations.

1960 — Congo — U.S./CIA intervention during Lumumba crisis.

1960–1965 — Congo — U.S. support for Mobutu and anti-Lumumba forces.

1960s — Iraq — U.S. contacts and support around anti-communist Ba’athist repression.

1961 — Vietnam — Kennedy escalates U.S. advisers, special warfare, and counterinsurgency.

1961–1975 — Laos — CIA secret war; Hmong proxy army; massive bombing.

1962 — Thailand — U.S. troop deployment and war basing.

1962–1975 — Thailand — U.S. air bases used for Indochina war.

1963 — South Vietnam — U.S.-backed coup against Ngo Dinh Diem.

1963–1965 — South Vietnam — U.S. escalation after Diem coup.

1964 — Vietnam — Gulf of Tonkin incident used to authorize major escalation.

1964–1973 — Laos — One of the heaviest U.S. bombing campaigns in history.

1965 — Indonesia — U.S. support/knowledge during anti-communist massacres and Suharto consolidation.

1965–1973 — Vietnam — Full-scale U.S. ground and air war.

1965–1975 — Cambodia — U.S. bombing, destabilization, and later direct incursion.

1966 — Ghana — U.S. support/approval around coup against Kwame Nkrumah.

1967–1974 — Greece — U.S. support/toleration of military junta.

1967 — Middle East — U.S. backing of Israel after June War; regional military alignment deepens.

1967–1970s — South Africa — U.S. toleration/support of apartheid regime as anti-communist ally.

1968 — Vietnam — U.S. mass military escalation after Tet Offensive.

1969–1973 — Cambodia — Secret bombing ordered by Nixon/Kissinger.

1970 — Cambodia — U.S. invasion/incursion.

1970 — Oman — U.S./British support for Sultanate against Dhofar rebellion.

1971 — Pakistan/Bangladesh — U.S. support for Pakistani military regime during Bangladesh war.

1972 — Vietnam — Christmas bombing / Linebacker II.

1973 — Middle East/Israel — U.S. emergency resupply during October War.

1973 — Afghanistan — U.S. involvement begins around anti-left networks before later proxy war.

1974 — Cyprus — U.S. tolerance of Greek junta/Turkish intervention dynamics; NATO crisis management.

1975 — Cambodia — Mayaguez military operation.

1975–1991 — Angola — U.S. proxy war support for FNLA/UNITA against MPLA.

1975 onward — Morocco/Western Sahara — U.S. backing of Moroccan monarchy amid occupation of Western Sahara.

1975–1999 — East Timor — U.S. support for Indonesia after invasion and occupation.

1976 — South Africa/Angola — U.S. alignment with apartheid-backed forces in regional war.

1977–1978 — Ethiopia/Somalia — U.S. maneuvering during Ogaden War; later support for Somalia.

1978–1979 — Iran — U.S. support for Shah through revolutionary crisis.

1979 — Afghanistan — CIA aid to anti-government forces begins before Soviet intervention.

1979 — Yemen/Horn/Persian Gulf — U.S. regional militarization after Iranian Revolution.

1979 — Saudi Arabia/Persian Gulf — U.S. security expansion after Iranian Revolution and Mecca crisis.

1979 — Pakistan — U.S. revives strategic military relationship for Afghan proxy war.

This section rests on the wider criterion, not merely open troop deployments. CRS is useful for armed-force deployments, but it explicitly excludes covert action, routine military assistance, basing, and many proxy operations, so it must be supplemented by declassified archives and country studies. (everycrsreport.com) The Iran 1953 coup, Indonesia 1965–66, and Congo/Lumumba cases are examples where the record depends heavily on CIA/State Department and National Security Archive materials rather than deployment lists. (AP News)

Part 3 — Outside Latin America and the Caribbean, 1980–1999

1980 — Iran — Operation Eagle Claw hostage-rescue raid.

1980–1988 — Persian Gulf — U.S. naval buildup and military intervention during the Iran-Iraq War.

1980–1988 — Iraq — Intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military support to Saddam Hussein during the war with Iran.

1980–1989 — Afghanistan — CIA Operation Cyclone; funding, arming, and training of Mujahideen forces through Pakistan.

1980–1992 — Pakistan — Massive military and intelligence aid in support of Afghan proxy war.

1980s — Saudi Arabia — Expanded U.S. military cooperation, arms transfers, and intelligence integration.

1980s — Egypt — Large-scale military aid and strategic alignment.

1980s — Sudan — CIA/intelligence cooperation and shifting proxy relationships.

1980s — Somalia — U.S. military assistance and strategic basing.

1980s — Oman — Expanded U.S. access agreements and military facilities.

1980s — Bahrain — Permanent expansion of U.S. naval presence.

1980s — Diego Garcia (British Indian Ocean Territory) — Major expansion of U.S. strategic air and naval base.

1980s — Turkey — Expansion of NATO facilities, intelligence operations, and military assistance.

1980s — South Korea — Continued U.S. military presence and support for authoritarian governments until democratization.

1980s — Philippines — Continued military basing and support for Marcos regime until 1986.

1980–1990s — Japan — Expansion of U.S. military bases.

1980–1990s — Western Europe — Deployment of Pershing II and cruise missiles during Euromissile crisis.

1981 — Libya — U.S. naval confrontation in Gulf of Sidra.

1981–1988 — Libya — Repeated naval confrontations and sanctions.

1982 — Lebanon — U.S. Marines deployed as part of multinational force.

1982–1984 — Lebanon — U.S. combat operations supporting Lebanese government.

1983 — Lebanon — U.S. naval bombardment.

1983 — Lebanon — U.S. carrier-based air strikes.

1983 — Chad — U.S. support for Hissène Habré government.

1983–1987 — Chad — Military assistance against Libyan intervention.

1984 — Persian Gulf — Expansion of naval escort operations.

1985 — Middle East — Increased covert support to anti-Soviet regional allies.

1986 — Libya — Operation El Dorado Canyon; bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi.

1986 — Libya — Expanded economic sanctions.

1986 — Iran — Iran-Contra covert arms transfers.

1987 — Persian Gulf — Operation Earnest Will.

1987–1988 — Persian Gulf — U.S. naval escort operations.

1987–1988 — Iran — Direct naval engagements.

1988 — Iran — Operation Praying Mantis destroys much of Iranian navy.

1988 — Iran — USS Vincennes shoots down Iran Air Flight 655.

1988–1989 — Panama (Canal Zone) — Military buildup preceding invasion.

1989 — Philippines — U.S. military assistance against coup attempts.

1989 — Liberia — Initial naval deployments during civil war.

1989 — Persian Gulf — Continued sanctions and naval enforcement.

1990 — Iraq/Kuwait — Operation Desert Shield.

1990–1991 — Saudi Arabia — Massive deployment of U.S. forces.

1990–1991 — Gulf States — Coalition military buildup.

1991 — Iraq — Operation Desert Storm.

1991 — Iraq — Highway of Death attack.

1991 — Iraq — Postwar suppression of Iraqi military.

1991–2003 — Iraq — Northern and Southern No-Fly Zones.

1991–2003 — Iraq — Continuous air strikes.

1991–2003 — Iraq — Comprehensive economic sanctions.

1991 onward — Kurdish Iraq — U.S.-protected autonomous zone.

1992 — Somalia — Operation Provide Relief.

1992–1995 — Somalia — Operation Restore Hope and UNOSOM.

1992–1994 — Bosnia — Enforcement of no-fly zone.

1993 — Iraq — Cruise missile strikes.

1993 — Somalia — Battle of Mogadishu and expanded combat operations.

1993 — Macedonia — U.S. preventive deployment.

1994 — Haiti — (Covered in Latin America volume.)

1994–1995 — Bosnia — NATO air operations under U.S. leadership.

1995 — Bosnia — Operation Deliberate Force.

1995 — Croatia/Balkans — U.S. military support during final Yugoslav wars.

1996 — Iraq — Operation Desert Strike.

1996 — Taiwan Strait — Carrier battle groups deployed during missile crisis.

1996–1998 — Sudan — Escalating sanctions.

1997 — Albania — U.S. military evacuation operations.

1998 — Afghanistan — Operation Infinite Reach cruise missile strikes.

1998 — Sudan — Missile destruction of Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant.

1998 — Iraq — Operation Desert Fox.

1998–1999 — Kosovo — NATO military buildup.

1999 — Yugoslavia/Serbia — NATO bombing campaign.

1999 — Kosovo — U.S.-led occupation force.

1999 — East Timor — U.S. logistical and military support to multinational intervention.

1999 — Iraq — Continued enforcement of sanctions and no-fly zones.

Additional Categories for 1980–1999

CIA and Covert Operations

1980–1989 — Afghanistan — Operation Cyclone.

1980s — Poland — Financial and covert support for Solidarity movement.

1980s — Cambodia — Support for anti-Vietnamese resistance factions.

1980s — Angola — CIA support for UNITA.

1980s — Mozambique — Support for anti-FRELIMO regional allies.

1980s — Ethiopia — Covert regional operations.

1980s — Iran — Intelligence and covert operations.

1990s — Iraq — CIA-backed coup attempts against Saddam Hussein.

1990s — Serbia/Yugoslavia — Intelligence operations preceding NATO intervention.

Military Aid to Dictatorships and Authoritarian Governments

Saudi Arabia

Egypt

Pakistan

Turkey

Indonesia

Morocco

Tunisia

Bahrain

Oman

Kuwait

United Arab Emirates

Zaire (until Mobutu’s fall)

Rwanda (pre-1994 military assistance)

Uzbekistan (late 1990s security cooperation)

Azerbaijan (security cooperation)

Kazakhstan (security cooperation)

Sanctions

Iran

Libya

Iraq

Sudan

Yugoslavia

Afghanistan (Taliban)

India (after 1998 nuclear tests)

Pakistan (periodic nuclear-related sanctions)

Part 4 — Outside Latin America and the Caribbean, 2000–2026

• Global War on Terror by country (more than 80 countries with U.S. military operations)

• Every major drone campaign

• Every special operations deployment known publicly

• Every sanctions regime

• Every major CIA proxy program

• Ukraine (2014–2026)

• Syria in full detail

• Yemen in full detail

• ISIS operations by country

• Red Sea operations

• The 2026 Iran war

• Africa Command (AFRICOM) interventions country by country

2001–2021 — Afghanistan — U.S. invasion, occupation, counterinsurgency, drone war, night raids, torture sites, proxy forces.

2001–present — Global — “War on Terror”; U.S. military, intelligence, drone, special operations, or partner-force activity across scores of countries.

2001–present — Pakistan — Drone strikes, CIA operations, cross-border raids, intelligence war.

2001–present — Djibouti — Camp Lemonnier becomes major U.S. base for Africa/Yemen/Somalia operations.

2002–present — Horn of Africa — U.S. counterterror operations, proxy forces, raids, surveillance, drone warfare.

2002 — Yemen — First known U.S. drone assassination outside Afghanistan war zone.

2002–present — Philippines — U.S. special operations, counterinsurgency support, intelligence and training.

2003–2011 — Iraq — U.S. invasion, occupation, counterinsurgency, torture sites, sectarian restructuring.

2003–present — Iraq — Continued U.S. military presence, airstrikes, sanctions pressure, proxy warfare.

2004–present — Somalia — U.S. airstrikes, raids, proxy forces, CIA/Special Operations activity.

2004–present — Sahel — U.S. military training, intelligence, drone bases, counterterror operations.

2004–present — North Africa — U.S. counterterror partnerships, surveillance, special operations.

2005–present — Pakistan — Intensified drone assassination program.

2006–present — Somalia — U.S. intervention against Islamic Courts Union, al-Shabaab, and related forces.

2006–present — Lebanon — U.S. military aid to Lebanese state forces; support for anti-Hezbollah alignment.

2006–present — Gaza/Palestine — U.S. arms, financing, diplomatic protection, and political support for Israel.

2007–present — AFRICOM — U.S. Africa Command institutionalizes continent-wide military penetration.

2007–present — Ethiopia — U.S. support for regional counterterror operations.

2007–present — Kenya — U.S. military cooperation, counterterror operations, Somalia war support.

2008–present — Niger — U.S. drone and military basing; counterterror operations.

2008–present — Uganda — U.S. military assistance and regional operations.

2009–present — Yemen — Drone war, raids, special operations, support for Saudi/UAE war, direct strikes.

2009–present — Afghanistan/Pakistan — Obama surge; expanded drone war.

2011 — Pakistan — U.S. raid killing Osama bin Laden.

2011 — Libya — NATO/U.S. bombing campaign; overthrow of Gaddafi government.

2011–present — Libya — Continuing U.S./NATO destabilization, strikes, special operations, rival-force manipulation.

2011–present — Syria — CIA destabilization, proxy war, sanctions, airstrikes, troop deployment.

2011–present — Somalia — Expanded U.S. drone and special operations war.

2011–present — Uganda/Central Africa — U.S. special operations mission against Lord’s Resistance Army.

2011–present — South Sudan/Sudan region — U.S. political, military, sanctions, and intelligence involvement.

2012–present — Mali — U.S. training, intelligence, counterterror support; post-coup blowback.

2012–present — Niger — U.S. drone bases and military operations.

2013–present — Ukraine — U.S. political, financial, intelligence, and military intervention against Russian influence.

2014–present — Ukraine — U.S. support after Maidan; military aid, training, intelligence, sanctions against Russia.

2014–present — Iraq/Syria — U.S. war against ISIS; airstrikes, special operations, proxy forces.

2014–present — Kurdistan/Iraq/Syria — U.S. arming and directing Kurdish and allied proxy forces.

2014–present — Russia — Sanctions, NATO expansion pressure, military buildup on Russian borders.

2015–present — Yemen — U.S. arms, logistics, intelligence, refueling, diplomatic cover for Saudi/UAE war; later direct strikes.

2015–present — Saudi Arabia — Expanded U.S. arms and support despite Yemen war.

2015–present — UAE — U.S. arms, basing, intelligence, Yemen/Red Sea cooperation.

2015–present — Cameroon — U.S. troops, drone base, counter-Boko Haram operations.

2015–present — Chad — U.S. military support and counterterror cooperation.

2015–present — Nigeria — U.S. counterterror aid, intelligence, arms, Boko Haram operations.

2016 — Libya — U.S. air campaign in Sirte.

2016–present — Syria — U.S. occupation of northeast Syria; oil and strategic-zone control.

2016–present — Iraq — Expanded anti-ISIS operations and continuing bases.

2017 — Syria — U.S. missile strikes.

2017 — Afghanistan — “Mother of All Bombs” dropped in Nangarhar.

2017–present — North Korea — Maximum pressure sanctions, military threats, exercises.

2017–present — China — Escalating military, sanctions, technology, Taiwan, South China Sea pressure.

2018–present — Iran — Maximum pressure sanctions, assassination campaign, regional military escalation.

2018–present — Afghanistan — Intensified bombing before withdrawal.

2019 — Syria — U.S. troop redeployments; continued occupation of oil-producing areas.

2019 — Iran — U.S. designates IRGC terrorist organization; escalates sanctions and war threats.

2019 — Iraq/Syria — U.S. strikes on Kataib Hezbollah.

2020 — Iraq — U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

2020 — Iran — War crisis after Soleimani assassination.

2020–present — China — Intensified sanctions, tech war, naval operations, Taiwan Strait escalation.

2020–present — Ethiopia/Horn — U.S. sanctions and political intervention during Tigray war.

2021 — Afghanistan — U.S. withdrawal after defeat; asset seizure and sanctions deepen humanitarian crisis.

2021–present — Afghanistan — Financial strangulation after Taliban victory.

2021–present — Ukraine/Russia — Escalating U.S. military aid and intelligence support before and after Russian invasion.

2022–present — Ukraine — U.S. proxy war support: weapons, intelligence, training, sanctions, financial aid.

2022–present — Russia — Sweeping sanctions, asset seizures, NATO expansion, economic warfare.

2022–present — Europe — Massive NATO military buildup under U.S. leadership.

2022–present — Taiwan/China — Intensified U.S. arms sales, visits, military deployments, exercises.

2022–present — Philippines — Expanded U.S. base access under EDCA.

2022–present — Pacific — U.S. militarization of Guam, Northern Marianas, Palau, Micronesia, Australia, Japan, Philippines.

2023–present — Gaza/Israel — U.S. arms, funding, intelligence, diplomatic protection for Israel.

2023–present — Red Sea/Yemen — U.S. naval war against Ansar Allah/Houthis.

2023–present — Iraq/Syria — U.S. strikes on Iran-aligned militias.

2024–present — Yemen — Direct U.S. air and naval strikes.

2024–present — Haiti — U.S.-backed international security intervention framework.

2024–present — China/Taiwan — Intensified military planning, arms, advisers, island-chain deployments.

2024–present — Russia/Ukraine — Long-range weapons, targeting intelligence, sanctions escalation.

2025–2026 — Mexico — Threats of unilateral U.S. military action against cartels.

2025–2026 — Panama — Renewed U.S. threats over Panama Canal.

2026 — Cuba — Expanded sanctions, financial pressure, tourism pressure.

2026 — Iran/Persian Gulf — U.S. war operations, blockade pressure, regional escalation.

2026 — Red Sea/Yemen — Continued U.S. naval and air operations.

2026 — Latin America broadly — Renewed Monroe Doctrine posture and militarized cartel-war doctrine.

Part 5 — Global Sanctions, Blockades, Embargoes, Asset Seizures, and Economic Warfare

1917–1920 — Soviet Russia — U.S. blockade, non-recognition, support for anti-Bolshevik forces.

1935–1936 — Ethiopia/Italy — Selective neutrality policy effectively favors fascist Italy.

1940–1941 — Japan — Oil, scrap metal, and asset restrictions before Pacific War.

1945 onward — Soviet Union/Eastern Europe — Cold War trade restrictions and technology embargoes.

1949 onward — China/PRC — U.S. embargo and non-recognition after Chinese Revolution.

1950s–1970s — China/PRC — Total or near-total trade embargo, financial restrictions, military containment.

1950 onward — North Korea — Comprehensive sanctions and economic isolation.

1951–1953 — Korea/China — Wartime blockade and economic warfare.

1953–1979 — Iran — U.S. economic, military, and financial backing of Shah after coup.

1956 — Egypt — Financial pressure during Aswan Dam/Suez crisis.

1960 onward — Cuba — Embargo, sanctions, financial warfare, extraterritorial penalties.

1962 onward — Cuba — Full economic blockade after revolutionary alignment with USSR.

1965–1975 — Vietnam — Wartime embargo and destruction of economic infrastructure.

1970–1973 — Chile — Economic destabilization against Allende government.

1975–1994 — Vietnam — Postwar embargo and diplomatic/economic isolation.

1979 onward — Iran — Asset freeze, sanctions, embargoes after revolution.

1979–1980s — Afghanistan — Sanctions and proxy-war economic pressure against Soviet-backed government.

1980s — Nicaragua — Embargo and economic warfare against Sandinista government.

1981–2004 — Libya — Sanctions, asset freezes, air embargo, financial isolation.

1986 onward — Iran — Expanding sanctions after revolution and Gulf conflict.

1990–2003 — Iraq — Comprehensive sanctions regime; catastrophic civilian consequences.

1991–2003 — Iraq — No-fly zones, bombing, import controls, oil-for-food regime.

1992–1995 — Yugoslavia/Serbia-Montenegro — Sanctions during Yugoslav wars.

1996 onward — Iran/Libya — Iran-Libya Sanctions Act; extraterritorial sanctions.

1996 onward — Cuba — Helms-Burton Act; extraterritorial sanctions.

1997 onward — Sudan — Comprehensive U.S. sanctions.

1998 — India — Nuclear-test sanctions.

1998 — Pakistan — Nuclear-test sanctions.

1999–2001 — Afghanistan/Taliban — Sanctions and asset restrictions.

2001 onward — Global — Terror-finance sanctions regime; asset freezes, banking exclusions, blacklists.

2003 onward — Syria — Sanctions under Syria Accountability Act and later measures.

2003–2011 — Iraq — Occupation-era financial control and reconstruction conditionality.

2005 onward — North Korea — Financial sanctions and banking pressure.

2006 onward — Iran — Nuclear-related sanctions escalate.

2006 onward — Palestine/Gaza — U.S./Israeli-backed financial siege after Hamas electoral victory.

2007 onward — Somalia — Sanctions and counterterror financial restrictions.

2008 onward — Zimbabwe — Sanctions against state officials and ruling-party-linked entities.

2010 onward — Iran — Severe banking, oil, shipping, insurance, and SWIFT restrictions.

2011 — Libya — Asset freezes and sanctions before/during NATO war.

2011 onward — Syria — Sweeping sanctions, oil restrictions, financial isolation.

2011 onward — Yemen — Sanctions, asset freezes, and later war-linked financial controls.

2014 onward — Russia — Sanctions after Crimea and Ukraine crisis.

2014 onward — Crimea — U.S. non-recognition sanctions and investment bans.

2014 onward — Donbas/Russia — Sanctions tied to Ukraine conflict.

2015 onward — Venezuela — Sanctions escalate against state, oil, banking, officials.

2015 onward — Yemen — Sanctions plus blockade-linked Saudi/UAE war support.

2016 onward — North Korea — Maximum pressure sanctions.

2017 onward — Iran — Trump maximum-pressure campaign.

2017 onward — Russia — Expanded sanctions, oligarch designations, sectoral controls.

2017 onward — China — Trade war tariffs, technology controls, entity-list sanctions.

2018 onward — Iran — U.S. exits JCPOA; oil, banking, shipping, metals sanctions.

2018 onward — China/Huawei/ZTE — Technology sanctions and export controls.

2019 onward — Venezuela — Oil sanctions, asset seizures, recognition of parallel government.

2019 onward — Cuba — Tightened travel, remittance, shipping, and financial restrictions.

2019 onward — Syria — Caesar Act sanctions.

2020 onward — China/Xinjiang/Hong Kong — Sanctions, export controls, investment restrictions.

2020 onward — Iran — Expanded secondary sanctions.

2021 onward — Afghanistan — Asset seizure, banking cutoff, sanctions after Taliban victory.

2021 onward — Ethiopia/Eritrea — Sanctions threats and measures linked to Tigray war.

2022 onward — Russia — Sweeping sanctions after invasion of Ukraine.

2022 onward — Belarus — Sanctions for support of Russia.

2022 onward — Russia — Central bank asset freeze.

2022 onward — Russia — Energy sanctions, price caps, shipping restrictions.

2022 onward — Russia — Technology export bans.

2022 onward — Russia — Oligarch asset seizures and financial warfare.

2022 onward — China — Semiconductor export controls.

2022 onward — Iran — Drone/missile-related sanctions linked to Ukraine war and regional conflict.

2023 onward — Russia/China/Iran — Secondary sanctions threats against states and firms bypassing U.S. restrictions.

2023 onward — Gaza/Palestine — Financial restrictions, aid manipulation, and diplomatic-economic cover for Israeli siege.

2023 onward — Yemen/Ansar Allah — Sanctions and financial restrictions linked to Red Sea conflict.

2024 onward — Russia — Expanded secondary sanctions on global banking networks.

2024 onward — China — Further semiconductor, AI, investment, and military-technology restrictions.

2024 onward — Iran — Expanded oil, banking, shipping, and drone/missile sanctions.

2024 onward — Syria — Continued sanctions despite humanitarian crisis.

2024 onward — Afghanistan — Continued financial strangulation and conditional aid regime.

2025–2026 — Cuba — Expanded sanctions and financial/tourism pressure.

2025–2026 — Mexico — Tariff threats and military threats tied to cartel/drug-war policy.

2025–2026 — Panama — Economic and military threats over Canal control.

2026 — Iran — War-linked sanctions, blockade pressure, maritime restrictions, oil/shipping pressure.

2026 — Latin America broadly — Renewed sanctions-and-threat posture under Monroe Doctrine revival.

Part 6 — U.S. Support for Dictatorships, Monarchies, Military Juntas, Apartheid Regimes, and Repressive Security Forces

1945–1949 — China — U.S. backing for Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang regime.

1945–1948 — South Korea — U.S. occupation backs anti-communist repression.

1948–1960 — South Korea — U.S. support for Syngman Rhee dictatorship.

1949 onward — Taiwan — U.S. backing for Chiang Kai-shek/KMT martial-law regime.

1950s–1970s — South Vietnam — U.S. backing for successive anti-communist dictatorships.

1953–1979 — Iran — U.S. backing for Shah dictatorship and SAVAK.

1950s–1970s — Thailand — U.S. support for military regimes.

1950s onward — Saudi Arabia — U.S. strategic protection for absolute monarchy.

1950s onward — Jordan — U.S. support for monarchy.

1950s onward — Morocco — U.S. support for monarchy.

1950s onward — Ethiopia — U.S. support for Haile Selassie regime.

1950s–1990s — Zaire/Congo — U.S. backing for Mobutu dictatorship.

1957–1958 — Indonesia — CIA support for anti-Sukarno regional rebellions.

1960–1965 — Congo — U.S. support for anti-Lumumba forces and Mobutu consolidation.

1961–1975 — Laos — U.S. support for royalist forces and CIA proxy army.

1965–1998 — Indonesia — U.S. support for Suharto dictatorship.

1965–1999 — Indonesia/East Timor — U.S. support for Indonesian military through occupation and massacres.

1967–1974 — Greece — U.S. support/toleration of colonels’ junta.

1960s–1980s — South Africa — U.S. strategic toleration/support for apartheid regime.

1960s–1980s — Rhodesia/Zimbabwe — U.S. accommodation of white-minority regional order through Cold War policy.

1960s–1990s — Turkey — U.S./NATO backing despite coups, repression, and war against Kurds.

1970s–1990s — Pakistan — U.S. support for military/security regimes.

1971 — Pakistan — U.S. support for Yahya Khan regime during Bangladesh war.

1970s onward — Egypt — U.S. support for authoritarian military state.

1970s onward — Oman — U.S./British backing for Sultanate.

1970s onward — Bahrain — U.S. backing for monarchy and naval basing.

1970s onward — Kuwait — U.S. backing for monarchy.

1970s onward — UAE — U.S. strategic-military backing for monarchy.

1970s–1980s — Somalia — U.S. support for Siad Barre regime.

1970s–1980s — Sudan — U.S. cooperation with Nimeiry regime.

1970s–1980s — Chad — U.S. support for Hissène Habré.

1975–1991 — Angola — U.S. support for UNITA proxy forces.

1975–1999 — East Timor — U.S. support for Indonesia despite occupation.

1976–1980s — Argentina/Chile/Uruguay/Paraguay/Bolivia/Brazil — Operation Condor support/toleration belongs in Latin America volume.

1977–1990s — Morocco/Western Sahara — U.S. backing for Moroccan monarchy despite occupation.

1979–1989 — Afghanistan/Pakistan — U.S. backing for Islamist proxy forces through Pakistani intelligence.

1980s — Iraq — U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during Iran-Iraq War.

1980s — Saudi Arabia — U.S. arms and security partnership deepened.

1980s — Egypt — Massive U.S. military aid to authoritarian regime.

1980s — Philippines — U.S. support for Marcos dictatorship until collapse.

1980s — South Korea — U.S. support for military-backed regimes until democratization.

1980s — Tunisia — U.S. support for Bourguiba/Ben Ali state.

1980s — Kenya — U.S. support for Moi regime.

1980s — Liberia — U.S. support for Doe regime.

1980s — Rwanda — U.S./Western military and political engagement before genocide period.

1980s–1990s — Israel — Massive U.S. arms, funding, and diplomatic shield despite occupation and repression.

1990s — Turkey — U.S. support during intensified war against Kurds.

1990s — Egypt — Continued military aid despite dictatorship and torture state.

1990s — Saudi Arabia/Gulf monarchies — Expanded basing and protection after Gulf War.

1990s — Uzbekistan — Emerging U.S. security cooperation with authoritarian state.

1990s — Kazakhstan — U.S. security and energy relationship with authoritarian state.

1990s — Azerbaijan — U.S. security/energy cooperation with authoritarian state.

1990s — Albania/Balkans — U.S. backing for aligned forces during post-socialist restructuring.

2001 onward — Afghanistan — U.S.-installed and supported occupation governments.

2001 onward — Pakistan — U.S. support for Musharraf military regime and later security state.

2001 onward — Uzbekistan — U.S. support/cooperation with Karimov dictatorship after 9/11.

2001 onward — Tajikistan — U.S. security cooperation with authoritarian regime.

2001 onward — Kyrgyzstan — U.S. basing and security cooperation.

2001 onward — Djibouti — U.S. backing for authoritarian host regime.

2001 onward — Ethiopia — U.S. counterterror support for repressive state.

2001 onward — Uganda — U.S. military support for Museveni regime.

2001 onward — Kenya — U.S. security support despite police/military abuses.

2001 onward — Egypt — Continued support for military-security state.

2001 onward — Jordan — Expanded U.S. military/security support.

2001 onward — Saudi Arabia — Expanded counterterror and regional-war partnership.

2001 onward — UAE — Expanded arms, bases, intelligence cooperation.

2001 onward — Bahrain — U.S. Fifth Fleet protection for monarchy.

2001 onward — Qatar — U.S. base regime and monarchy partnership.

2003 onward — Iraq — U.S.-constructed state and security forces after invasion.

2004 onward — Somalia — U.S. backing for transitional governments, warlords, and proxy forces.

2006 onward — Palestine — U.S. support for security forces opposed to Hamas after 2006 election.

2009 onward — Yemen — U.S. backing for Saleh/Hadi security apparatus; later Saudi/UAE war.

2011 onward — Bahrain — U.S. continued backing after monarchy crushed uprising.

2011 onward — Egypt — U.S. support continues through SCAF, Morsi period, and Sisi dictatorship.

2011 onward — Libya — U.S./NATO-backed forces fragment state after regime-change war.

2011 onward — Syria — U.S. backing for anti-government armed proxies and later Kurdish-led forces.

2013 onward — Egypt — U.S. accommodation/support for Sisi after coup.

2014 onward — Ukraine — U.S. support for post-Maidan state, military, and security apparatus.

2014 onward — Iraq — U.S. support for Iraqi state forces and allied militias against ISIS.

2014 onward — Syria — U.S. support for SDF/YPG and allied formations.

2015 onward — Saudi Arabia — U.S. backing for Yemen war.

2015 onward — UAE — U.S. backing for Yemen war and regional interventions.

2015 onward — Cameroon — U.S. security cooperation despite abuses.

2015 onward — Chad — U.S. support for Déby regime as counterterror partner.

2015 onward — Nigeria — U.S. military support in counter-Boko Haram war.

2017 onward — Philippines — U.S. security support under Duterte despite drug-war killings.

2017 onward — India — Expanded U.S. military-strategic alignment despite authoritarian drift and Kashmir repression.

2020 onward — Morocco — U.S. recognition of Moroccan claim over Western Sahara.

2021 onward — Afghanistan — U.S. sanctions/asset seizure after Taliban victory.

2022 onward — Ukraine — Massive military/intelligence support.

2023 onward — Israel — Full-spectrum U.S. support during Gaza war.

2023 onward — Gulf monarchies — Continued U.S. arms, basing, and Red Sea coordination.

2024 onward — Kenya — U.S. backing for Kenya-led Haiti intervention framework.

2024–2026 — Philippines — Expanded U.S. basing and military integration.

2024–2026 — Japan/South Korea/Australia — U.S.-led militarization against China.

2025–2026 — Mexico — Threats and pressure for militarized anti-cartel operations.

2026 — Israel — Continued arms, intelligence, and diplomatic backing.

2026 — Gulf monarchies — U.S. regional war coordination against Iran/Yemen.

Part 7 — U.S. Bases, Occupations, Protectorates, Permanent Garrison Systems, and Treaty Coercion

This section documents the long-term infrastructure of U.S. global military power. Unlike combat operations, these interventions consist of occupations, treaty systems, permanent bases, strategic access agreements, and military protectorates that allow the United States to project force worldwide.

Nineteenth Century Expansion

1823 — Western Hemisphere — Monroe Doctrine asserts exclusive U.S. sphere of influence.

1846–1848 — Mexican Cession — Permanent military occupation following conquest.

1853–1854 — Japan — Perry expedition compels unequal treaty under naval coercion.

1893 — Hawaii — U.S. occupation following overthrow of Hawaiian monarchy.

1898 — Guam — Permanent colonial possession.

1898 — Puerto Rico — Permanent colonial possession.

1898 — Philippines — Colonial occupation.

1898 — Wake Island — Annexation.

1899 — American Samoa — Colonial protectorate established.

1903 — Panama Canal Zone — Perpetual U.S. occupation established by treaty imposed after support for Panamanian secession.

World War II and Immediate Postwar Occupations

1941 — Greenland — U.S. military protectorate.

1941 — Iceland — U.S. occupation.

1942–1945 — Pacific Islands — U.S. military occupations.

1945–1952 — Japan — U.S. military occupation.

1945–1955 — Austria — Occupation zone.

1945–1949 — Germany — Occupation zone.

1945–1948 — South Korea — Military occupation.

1945 onward — Okinawa — U.S. military government until 1972; major base complex retained afterward.

1945 onward — Pacific Trust Territories — U.S. strategic trusteeship over Micronesia.

Cold War Global Base System

1947 onward — Europe — Permanent occupation forces in Germany.

1948 onward — Japan — Permanent basing system.

1949 onward — NATO — Permanent U.S. military infrastructure throughout Western Europe.

1950 onward — South Korea — Permanent troop deployment.

1950 onward — Japan — Mutual Security Treaty creates enduring U.S. base network.

1951 onward — Okinawa — Largest concentration of U.S. overseas forces.

1951 onward — Philippines — Clark Air Base.

1951 onward — Philippines — Subic Bay Naval Base.

1950s onward — Taiwan — U.S. military mission and advisory structure.

1950s onward — Morocco — Strategic air bases.

1950s onward — Libya — Wheelus Air Base.

1950s onward — Spain — U.S. bases established under Franco.

1950s onward — Turkey — NATO bases.

1950s onward — Greece — NATO installations.

1950s onward — Italy — Major NATO headquarters and bases.

1950s onward — United Kingdom — Strategic bomber and nuclear bases.

1950s onward — Greenland — Thule Air Base.

1950s onward — Iceland — Keflavik Air Base.

1950s onward — Portugal (Azores) — Lajes Air Base.

1950s onward — Bahrain — Naval facilities.

1950s onward — Saudi Arabia — Air facilities and military infrastructure.

1950s onward — Pakistan — Intelligence and communications installations.

1950s onward — Iran — Intelligence listening posts under the Shah.

1960s onward — Thailand — Major Vietnam War air bases.

1960s onward — South Vietnam — Extensive base system.

1960s onward — Guam — Strategic bomber hub.

1960s onward — Diego Garcia planning begins.

Indian Ocean and Middle East Expansion

1971 onward — Diego Garcia — Massive strategic naval and bomber base after forced removal of Chagossian population.

1970s onward — Oman — Access agreements.

1970s onward — Bahrain — Fifth Fleet infrastructure.

1970s onward — Qatar — Air facilities.

1970s onward — Kuwait — Military access.

1970s onward — UAE — Military cooperation.

1979 onward — Persian Gulf — Rapid Deployment Force infrastructure.

1983 onward — CENTCOM established.

1980s onward — Saudi Arabia — Expanded military infrastructure.

1980s onward — Egypt — Access agreements.

1980s onward — Honduras — Soto Cano Air Base (Palmerola).

1980s onward — Turkey — Expanded NATO facilities.

1980s onward — Diego Garcia — B-52 and B-1 deployment capability.

Post-Cold War Expansion

1990 onward — Saudi Arabia — Massive permanent logistics network after Gulf War.

1991 onward — Kuwait — Permanent basing.

1991 onward — Bahrain — Fifth Fleet headquarters.

1991 onward — Qatar — Al Udeid Air Base.

1991 onward — UAE — Expanded naval facilities.

1992 onward — Bosnia — NATO/U.S. bases.

1995 onward — Kosovo — Camp Bondsteel.

1990s onward — Central Asia planning begins.

Global War on Terror Base Expansion

2001 onward — Afghanistan — Hundreds of U.S. forward operating bases.

2001 onward — Kyrgyzstan — Manas Air Base.

2001 onward — Uzbekistan — Karshi-Khanabad Air Base.

2001 onward — Tajikistan — Logistics facilities.

2001 onward — Pakistan — Airfields and intelligence facilities.

2001 onward — Djibouti — Camp Lemonnier becomes principal AFRICOM base.

2001 onward — Iraq — Major occupation bases.

2001 onward — Kuwait — Logistics hub.

2001 onward — Qatar — CENTCOM forward headquarters.

2001 onward — Bahrain — Fifth Fleet expansion.

2001 onward — UAE — Expanded facilities.

2001 onward — Oman — Logistics network.

2001 onward — Diego Garcia — Principal Indian Ocean strike platform.

2002 onward — Philippines — Rotational basing returns.

2002 onward — Horn of Africa — Network of drone and special operations facilities.

2004 onward — Romania — New NATO bases.

2004 onward — Bulgaria — U.S. military facilities.

2004 onward — Poland — Expanded military cooperation.

2007 onward — AFRICOM headquartered in Germany.

2007 onward — Niger — Drone Base 201 (Agadez).

2007 onward — Ethiopia — Counterterror facilities.

2007 onward — Kenya — Logistics facilities.

2007 onward — Cameroon — Military access.

2007 onward — Chad — Military cooperation.

2007 onward — Somalia — Rotational special operations facilities.

Indo-Pacific Expansion

2011 onward — Australia — U.S. Marines permanently rotate through Darwin.

2012 onward — Singapore — Littoral Combat Ship deployment.

2014 onward — Philippines — Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

2014 onward — Poland — Rotational armored brigades.

2014 onward — Baltic States — Expanded NATO deployments.

2016 onward — Norway — Rotational Marine Corps deployment.

2017 onward — Japan — Aegis, missile defense, expanded Okinawa presence.

2018 onward — Guam — Missile defense expansion.

2020 onward — Palau — New defense agreements.

2021 onward — Micronesia — Compact renewals expand military rights.

2022 onward — Australia — AUKUS military integration.

2022 onward — Pacific Islands — Expanded access negotiations.

2022 onward — Romania — Major reinforcement.

2022 onward — Poland — Permanent headquarters for V Corps.

2022 onward — Slovakia — New defense cooperation.

2022 onward — Finland — Defense Cooperation Agreement.

2023 onward — Sweden — Defense Cooperation Agreement.

2023 onward — Philippines — EDCA expanded to nine major sites.

2023 onward — Papua New Guinea — Defense Cooperation Agreement.

2024 onward — Japan — Command integration and force expansion.

2024 onward — South Korea — Expanded strategic deployments.

2024 onward — Northern Mariana Islands — Major infrastructure expansion.

2024 onward — Tinian — New bomber dispersal facilities.

2024 onward — Guam — Missile defense and strategic expansion.

2024–2026 — Philippines — Additional airfields and logistics sites.

2024–2026 — Taiwan region — Expanded unofficial military advisory presence.

Permanent Occupation and Colonial Territories Still Under U.S. Sovereignty

• Puerto Rico

• Guam

• American Samoa

• U.S. Virgin Islands

• Northern Mariana Islands

• Wake Island

• Johnston Atoll (restricted military use)

• Midway Atoll

• Palmyra Atoll

• Kingman Reef

• Jarvis Island

• Baker Island

• Howland Island

Part 8 — CIA Covert Operations, Election Interference, Destabilization, Assassination Programs, and Regime-Change Operations

1947 onward — Global — CIA established as permanent instrument of covert intervention.

1948 — Italy — CIA funding, propaganda, and political intervention against Communist/Socialist electoral victory.

1948–1950s — France — CIA support for anti-communist parties, unions, media, and cultural fronts.

1948–1950s — Greece — CIA/security support during and after civil war.

1949 onward — West Germany — CIA support for anti-communist parties, intelligence networks, and stay-behind structures.

1949 onward — Eastern Europe — CIA support for émigré, sabotage, propaganda, and exile networks.

1949–1950s — Albania — CIA/MI6 covert operations against socialist government.

1950s — Ukraine/Soviet Union — CIA support for anti-Soviet nationalist guerrilla networks.

1950s — Baltic States/Soviet Union — CIA support for anti-Soviet underground networks.

1950s — Poland — CIA support for anti-communist exile and propaganda operations.

1950s — China/Tibet — CIA support for Tibetan armed resistance.

1953 — Iran — CIA coup against Mossadegh.

1954 — Guatemala — CIA coup against Árbenz.

1956 — Hungary — U.S. covert encouragement and propaganda during uprising.

1957 — Syria — CIA coup plotting and destabilization.

1957–1958 — Indonesia — CIA support for regional rebellions against Sukarno.

1958 — Lebanon — CIA/political operations in support of pro-Western regime.

1959 onward — Cuba — CIA sabotage, assassination plots, exile forces, economic warfare.

1960 — Congo — CIA role in Lumumba crisis and assassination plotting.

1960s — Iraq — U.S. contacts/support around anti-communist Ba’athist repression.

1961 — Cuba — Bay of Pigs invasion.

1961–1975 — Laos — CIA secret war.

1961–1970s — Vietnam — CIA Phoenix Program, assassination, interrogation, pacification.

1963 — South Vietnam — U.S.-backed coup against Diem.

1964–1973 — Cambodia — Covert bombing, destabilization, support for Lon Nol.

1965 — Indonesia — U.S. support during anti-communist massacre and Suharto rise.

1966 — Ghana — U.S. support/approval around coup against Nkrumah.

1967 — Greece — U.S. tolerance/support for military junta.

1967 — Bolivia — CIA role in hunt for Che Guevara.

1970–1973 — Chile — CIA destabilization, Track II coup plotting, support for anti-Allende forces.

1972–1975 — Iraq/Kurds — CIA/Iran-backed Kurdish proxy operation against Baghdad, later abandoned.

1975 onward — Angola — CIA support for FNLA/UNITA.

1975–1999 — East Timor — U.S. support for Indonesian occupation.

1979–1989 — Afghanistan — CIA Operation Cyclone.

1980s — Poland — CIA support for Solidarity.

1980s — Cambodia — U.S./CIA support for anti-Vietnamese resistance forces.

1980s — Nicaragua — CIA Contra war.

1980s — Angola — CIA support for UNITA.

1980s — Mozambique — U.S. support for anti-FRELIMO regional proxies.

1980s — Libya — CIA destabilization and assassination planning.

1980s — Iran — Covert arms transfers and intelligence operations.

1980s — Iraq — U.S. intelligence support during Iran-Iraq War.

1980s — Pakistan — CIA partnership with ISI for Afghan war.

1980s — Philippines — U.S. management of Marcos transition and military influence.

1989–1990s — Eastern Europe — U.S. political intervention during post-socialist transitions.

1990s — Iraq — CIA coup plots against Saddam Hussein.

1990s — Serbia/Yugoslavia — U.S. political destabilization and opposition support.

1990s — Russia — U.S. political/economic intervention in post-Soviet restructuring.

1996 — Russia — U.S. support for Yeltsin reelection framework.

1990s — Georgia — U.S. political, security, and NGO penetration.

1990s — Ukraine — U.S. political, economic, and security influence operations.

1990s — Central Asia — U.S. security and intelligence penetration after Soviet collapse.

2001 onward — Global — CIA drone assassination program.

2001 onward — Afghanistan — CIA paramilitary operations, black sites, proxy militias.

2001 onward — Pakistan — CIA drone war and intelligence operations.

2001 onward — Yemen — CIA drone strikes and assassination operations.

2001 onward — Somalia — CIA/Special Operations proxy war.

2001 onward — Djibouti — CIA/Special Operations regional war platform.

2002 onward — Philippines — CIA/Special Operations counterinsurgency support.

2003 onward — Iraq — CIA operations under occupation.

2004 onward — Iran — covert destabilization, cyberwarfare, sabotage, assassination support context.

2005 onward — Syria — U.S. destabilization and opposition funding.

2006 onward — Palestine — U.S. support for anti-Hamas security forces after Hamas electoral victory.

2009 onward — Iran — cyber operations, sabotage, assassination-linked pressure.

2011 — Libya — CIA/NATO-backed regime-change war.

2011 onward — Syria — CIA Timber Sycamore and proxy-war program.

2011 onward — Yemen — CIA drone and special operations war.

2013–2014 — Ukraine — U.S. political intervention around Maidan and post-Maidan state.

2014 onward — Ukraine — CIA, military, intelligence, and training support against Russia.

2014 onward — Syria/Iraq — CIA/Special Operations role in anti-ISIS war and proxy forces.

2016 onward — Russia — cyber, sanctions, intelligence, and political warfare escalation.

2017 onward — Venezuela — U.S. regime-change campaign, opposition recognition, sanctions, covert pressure.

2018 onward — Iran — maximum pressure, sabotage context, assassination campaign.

2019 — Venezuela — Guaidó recognition and coup-pressure campaign.

2020 — Iraq/Iran — U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

2021 onward — Afghanistan — asset seizure, sanctions, intelligence pressure after U.S. withdrawal.

2022 onward — Ukraine — massive intelligence, targeting, training, arms, and proxy-war support.

2023 onward — Gaza/Israel — intelligence, arms, diplomatic, and operational support for Israel.

2023 onward — Yemen/Red Sea — intelligence and targeting support for U.S.-led naval war.

2024–2026 — China/Taiwan — intensified intelligence, cyber, military-advisory, and political warfare posture.

2024–2026 — Iran — sabotage, sanctions, regional proxy pressure, and war-planning escalation.

2025–2026 — Mexico — covert/intelligence pressure and threats of unilateral anti-cartel military operations.

Part 9 — Global War on Terror Operations by Country, 2001–2026

2001–2021 — Afghanistan — Invasion, occupation, counterinsurgency, drone war, raids, prisons, proxy militias.

2001–present — Pakistan — Drone strikes, CIA operations, cross-border raids, intelligence war.

2001–present — Yemen — Drone assassinations, raids, special operations, later direct air/naval war.

2001–present — Somalia — Airstrikes, raids, proxy forces, CIA/Special Operations war.

2001–present — Djibouti — Camp Lemonnier as regional strike, drone, intelligence, and logistics hub.

2001–present — Kenya — Counterterror training, intelligence support, Somalia operations.

2001–present — Ethiopia — U.S. backing for counterterror operations in Somalia/Horn of Africa.

2001–present — Uganda — U.S. military support and regional operations.

2001–present — Philippines — Special operations, counterinsurgency support, intelligence, training.

2001–present — Indonesia — Counterterror training and security cooperation.

2001–present — Malaysia — Counterterror and maritime security cooperation.

2001–present — Thailand — Intelligence, training, detention/transit, regional support.

2001–present — Singapore — U.S. military access and regional counterterror support.

2001–present — Uzbekistan — Basing/security cooperation after 9/11.

2001–present — Kyrgyzstan — Manas Air Base/logistics hub.

2001–present — Tajikistan — Military access and counterterror cooperation.

2001–present — Kazakhstan — Security cooperation and regional logistics.

2001–present — Georgia — Train-and-equip programs.

2001–present — Azerbaijan — Security cooperation and Caspian energy/military alignment.

2001–present — Turkey — NATO basing, Iraq/Syria war logistics, intelligence cooperation.

2001–present — Jordan — Major U.S. base/logistics/training platform for Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Gulf.

2001–present — Saudi Arabia — Counterterror, intelligence, arms, regional-war infrastructure.

2001–present — Qatar — Al Udeid Air Base; CENTCOM forward headquarters.

2001–present — Bahrain — Fifth Fleet headquarters.

2001–present — UAE — Air/naval facilities; regional operations.

2001–present — Oman — Logistics, air access, Gulf war support.

2001–present — Kuwait — Iraq-war logistics and permanent staging area.

2001–present — Iraq — Invasion, occupation, counterinsurgency, anti-ISIS war, continuing strikes and bases.

2001–present — Syria — Proxy war, sanctions, airstrikes, special operations, occupation zone.

2001–present — Lebanon — Military/security aid tied to anti-Hezbollah and counterterror policy.

2001–present — Israel/Palestine — Security coordination, arms, intelligence, diplomatic protection.

2001–present — Egypt — Counterterror aid, Sinai security cooperation, military dictatorship support.

2001–present — Morocco — Counterterror partnership, military exercises, Western Sahara alignment.

2001–present — Tunisia — Counterterror training and security cooperation.

2001–present — Algeria — Counterterror intelligence and security cooperation.

2001–present — Libya — Regime-change war, airstrikes, raids, proxy alignment, counter-ISIS operations.

2001–present — Mali — Training, intelligence, counterterror support.

2001–present — Niger — Drone bases, special operations, surveillance, training.

2001–present — Chad — Counterterror aid and regional war support.

2001–present — Cameroon — Troops, drone facilities, anti-Boko Haram support.

2001–present — Nigeria — Counter-Boko Haram training, intelligence, arms.

2001–present — Burkina Faso — Training, intelligence, Sahel counterterror cooperation.

2001–present — Mauritania — Counterterror training and military aid.

2001–present — Senegal — Security cooperation and AFRICOM access.

2001–present — Ghana — Security cooperation and regional logistics.

2001–present — Côte d’Ivoire — Security cooperation.

2001–present — Benin — Security cooperation and counterterror expansion.

2001–present — Togo — Security cooperation.

2001–present — Central African Republic — Special operations/regional counter-LRA mission.

2001–present — Democratic Republic of Congo — Counter-LRA and security operations.

2001–present — South Sudan — Security, sanctions, intelligence, and regional operations.

2001–present — Sudan — Sanctions, intelligence contacts, counterterror pressure, later political intervention.

2001–present — Eritrea — Sanctions and regional pressure.

2001–present — India — Counterterror and military-strategic cooperation.

2001–present — Bangladesh — Counterterror and security cooperation.

2001–present — Sri Lanka — Counterterror/military cooperation.

2001–present — Nepal — Security aid during Maoist insurgency period.

2001–present — Maldives — Maritime security cooperation.

2001–present — Australia — War-on-terror ally, basing/logistics, Indo-Pacific expansion.

2001–present — United Kingdom — Intelligence, bases, Iraq/Afghanistan/Yemen/Red Sea operations.

2001–present — Germany — Ramstein as major drone-war, logistics, and command hub.

2001–present — Italy — Aviano/Sigonella as air, drone, and Africa/Mideast support hubs.

2001–present — Spain — Rota and Morón as naval/air staging hubs.

2001–present — Greece — Souda Bay as Eastern Mediterranean/Mideast platform.

2001–present — Romania — Black Sea/NATO/war-on-terror facilities.

2001–present — Bulgaria — U.S./NATO facilities.

2001–present — Poland — NATO expansion, missile defense, Ukraine-war logistics.

2001–present — Norway — Arctic/NATO facilities and intelligence integration.

2001–present — Iceland/Greenland — North Atlantic military infrastructure.

2001–present — Diego Garcia — Indian Ocean bomber, naval, rendition, and logistics platform.

2001–present — Guam — Pacific bomber, naval, missile-defense, and China-war platform.

2001–present — Northern Mariana Islands/Tinian — Bomber dispersal and Pacific war infrastructure.

2001–present — Palau/Micronesia/Marshall Islands — U.S. military access and Pacific strategic denial system.

Part 10 — Drone Wars, Assassination Programs, Raids, Rendition, Torture Sites, and Black Prisons

2001–2021 — Afghanistan — Drone strikes, night raids, black sites, torture, proxy militias.

2001–present — Pakistan — CIA drone assassination campaign.

2001–present — Yemen — Drone assassinations, JSOC raids, CIA targeting.

2001–present — Somalia — Drone strikes, airstrikes, raids, proxy forces.

2001–present — Djibouti — Regional drone-war and special-operations hub.

2001–present — Diego Garcia — Rendition, bomber, logistics, and detention-linked role.

2001–present — Thailand — CIA black-site detention.

2001–present — Poland — CIA black-site detention.

2001–present — Romania — CIA black-site detention.

2001–present — Lithuania — CIA black-site detention.

2001–present — Afghanistan — Bagram prison, Salt Pit, CIA detention network.

2001–present — Guantánamo Bay/Cuba — Indefinite detention, torture, military commissions.

2001–present — Iraq — Abu Ghraib, Camp Cropper, Camp Bucca, interrogation and detention regime.

2001–present — Egypt — Rendition destination and torture partner.

2001–present — Jordan — Rendition destination and interrogation partner.

2001–present — Morocco — Rendition destination and interrogation partner.

2001–present — Syria — Rendition destination before U.S.-Syrian rupture.

2001–present — Uzbekistan — Rendition/intelligence cooperation with torture-linked regime.

2001–present — Pakistan — CIA/ISI detention, interrogation, rendition cooperation.

2001–present — United Kingdom — Intelligence cooperation, rendition facilitation, Diego Garcia link.

2001–present — Germany — Ramstein as command/logistics node for drone operations.

2001–present — Italy — Aviano/Sigonella as air and drone-war infrastructure.

2002 — Yemen — U.S. drone assassination of Abu Ali al-Harithi and others.

2002–2006 — Global — CIA “extraordinary rendition” system.

2003–2011 — Iraq — Kill/capture raids, torture prisons, death-squad-linked counterinsurgency.

2004–present — Pakistan — Intensified drone strikes in tribal areas.

2006–present — Somalia — U.S. targeted killing campaign.

2009–2016 — Pakistan/Yemen/Somalia — Obama expands drone assassination program.

2009–2016 — Afghanistan — Night raids and targeted killings escalate.

2011 — Pakistan — Abbottabad raid killing Osama bin Laden.

2011 — Yemen — Drone assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki.

2011 — Yemen — Drone killing of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

2011–present — Libya — U.S. raids, airstrikes, targeted killings after NATO war.

2013 — Yemen — Expanded drone and JSOC campaign.

2014–present — Iraq/Syria — Targeted killings under anti-ISIS war.

2015–present — Syria — U.S. special-operations raids and drone strikes.

2016 — Libya — U.S. air campaign in Sirte.

2017 — Yemen — Yakla raid.

2017–2020 — Somalia — Trump-era escalation of airstrikes.

2017–2021 — Afghanistan — Increased bombing and targeted killings.

2019 — Syria — Barisha raid killing Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

2020 — Iraq — U.S. drone assassination of Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

2021 — Afghanistan — Kabul drone strike kills civilians during withdrawal.

2022 — Afghanistan — Drone assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri.

2023–present — Iraq/Syria — U.S. targeted strikes against Iran-aligned forces.

2023–present — Yemen/Red Sea — U.S. targeting of Ansar Allah/Houthi forces.

2024–2026 — Yemen — Expanded direct U.S. air and naval strikes.

2024–2026 — Iraq/Syria — Continuing U.S. strikes, raids, and targeted operations.

2026 — Iran/Persian Gulf — Targeting, blockade, strike, and assassination-war posture.

Part 11 — U.S. Military Training, Police Training, Counterinsurgency Schools, Arms Transfers, Security Assistance, and Death-Squad-Linked Programs

This section covers a major dimension of U.S. intervention that is often omitted from chronologies: the creation, training, financing, and arming of foreign military and police forces. In many countries, the United States intervened not by deploying large numbers of troops but by building local security apparatuses that carried out repression, counterinsurgency, coups, and proxy warfare.

Global Institutions

1946–present — Worldwide — Military Assistance Program (MAP).

1947–present — Worldwide — CIA paramilitary training.

1949–present — NATO — Standardization, training, intelligence integration.

1950–present — Worldwide — Foreign Military Financing (FMF).

1950–present — Worldwide — Mutual Defense Assistance Program.

1950–present — Worldwide — Military Assistance Advisory Groups (MAAG).

1950–present — Worldwide — International Military Education and Training (IMET).

1950–present — Worldwide — Mobile Training Teams.

1950s–present — Worldwide — Counterinsurgency doctrine development.

1961–present — Worldwide — Alliance for Progress police training.

1962–present — Worldwide — Office of Public Safety (OPS) police training.

1960s–present — Worldwide — USAID police modernization linked to counterinsurgency.

1960s–present — Worldwide — CIA police and intelligence training.

1963–present — Worldwide — Foreign Internal Defense (FID).

1970s–present — Worldwide — Special Forces training missions.

1980s–present — Worldwide — Counterterror assistance programs.

1991–present — Worldwide — Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET).

1998–present — Worldwide — Section 333 security assistance.

2001–present — Worldwide — Global Train and Equip authorities.

2002–present — Worldwide — Counterterrorism Fellowship Program.

2005–present — Worldwide — Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership.

2006–present — Worldwide — Global Peace Operations Initiative.

2007–present — Worldwide — AFRICOM security cooperation.

Counterinsurgency Schools

1946–1984 — Panama Canal Zone — U.S. Army Caribbean School.

1963–2001 — Panama/United States — School of the Americas (SOA).

2001–present — United States — Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

1950s–present — Fort Bragg/Fort Liberty — Counterinsurgency doctrine training.

1960s–present — Fort Benning/Fort Moore — Foreign officer training.

1960s–present — Quantico — Police and intelligence instruction.

Asia

South Korea — Military reconstruction and officer corps training.

Taiwan — Military modernization and advisory missions.

South Vietnam — ARVN training.

Thailand — Counterinsurgency instruction.

Philippines — Counterinsurgency assistance.

Indonesia — Officer education before and after Suharto.

Pakistan — Officer training.

Afghanistan — Afghan National Army creation.

Afghanistan — Afghan National Police creation.

Iraq — Iraqi Army reconstruction.

Iraq — Iraqi police reconstruction.

India — Expanded military exercises and officer exchanges.

Japan — Self-Defense Force integration.

Australia — Joint planning and integration.

Middle East

Iran (1953–1979) — Imperial military modernization under the Shah.

Iran — SAVAK intelligence training.

Saudi Arabia — National Guard modernization.

Saudi Arabia — Air Force development.

Saudi Arabia — Intelligence integration.

Jordan — Officer training.

Jordan — Special Operations development.

Israel — Joint military development.

Israel — Missile defense cooperation.

Israel — Intelligence integration.

Egypt — Officer corps modernization.

Egypt — Annual Bright Star exercises.

Bahrain — Naval cooperation.

Qatar — Air operations integration.

UAE — Air Force modernization.

Oman — Counterinsurgency support.

Kuwait — Military reconstruction after 1991.

Lebanon — Lebanese Armed Forces modernization.

Yemen — Counterterror force development.

Africa

Egypt — Long-term military financing.

Morocco — Officer training.

Tunisia — Security-force assistance.

Algeria — Counterterror cooperation.

Kenya — Counterterror forces.

Uganda — Counter-LRA support.

Ethiopia — Counterterror assistance.

Somalia — African Union mission support.

Somalia — Danab Brigade training.

Nigeria — Counter-Boko Haram training.

Cameroon — Counterterror forces.

Chad — Counterterror support.

Niger — Counterterror forces.

Mali — Military assistance before 2012 coup.

Burkina Faso — Counterterror assistance.

Senegal — Military education.

Ghana — Military cooperation.

Liberia — Security-sector reconstruction.

South Sudan — Security-sector development.

Djibouti — Combined military training.

Europe

West Germany — NATO reconstruction.

Italy — NATO integration.

Spain — Military modernization after Franco.

Portugal — NATO modernization.

Turkey — NATO integration.

Greece — NATO integration.

United Kingdom — Strategic integration.

France — NATO cooperation after reintegration.

Norway — Arctic defense integration.

Denmark — NATO modernization.

Netherlands — NATO integration.

Belgium — NATO integration.

Poland — NATO modernization.

Romania — NATO modernization.

Bulgaria — NATO modernization.

Baltic States — NATO force development.

Ukraine — Military training beginning after 2014.

Georgia — Train-and-Equip Program.

Kosovo — KFOR training.

Bosnia — Security-sector reform.

Latin America and the Caribbean

(For integration with your regional chronology.)

Guatemala — Counterinsurgency.

El Salvador — Officer and death-squad-linked training.

Honduras — Battalion 3-16 intelligence training.

Nicaragua (Somoza) — National Guard support.

Dominican Republic — Security assistance.

Brazil — Military doctrine exchanges.

Chile — Military education before and after the 1973 coup.

Argentina — Counterinsurgency cooperation.

Uruguay — Police intelligence training.

Paraguay — Security assistance.

Bolivia — Ranger training.

Peru — Counterinsurgency.

Colombia — Long-term counterinsurgency assistance culminating in Plan Colombia.

Mexico — Drug-war militarization.

Panama — Canal Zone training institutions.

Police and Internal Security Programs

Office of Public Safety (OPS) police training in dozens of countries.

DEA foreign police assistance.

FBI international police training.

CIA internal-security advisory missions.

Treasury financial-policing assistance.

Border-security programs.

Prison modernization.

Surveillance systems.

Biometric security systems.

Counterterror intelligence fusion centers.

Intelligence Services Built or Modernized with U.S. Assistance

SAVAK (Iran)

KCIA (South Korea)

South Vietnamese Special Police

Pakistani ISI partnership

Jordanian GID

Egyptian Mukhabarat cooperation

Saudi General Intelligence Presidency

Lebanese intelligence cooperation

Iraqi intelligence reconstruction

Afghan NDS

Somali intelligence structures

Numerous NATO intelligence organizations

Global Arms Transfers

Major recipients have included:

• Israel

• Egypt

• Saudi Arabia

• Taiwan

• South Korea

• Pakistan

• Turkey

• Japan

• Australia

• Ukraine

• Iraq

• Afghanistan (pre-2021 government)

• Jordan

• UAE

• Kuwait

• Bahrain

• Morocco

• Colombia

• Philippines

• Thailand

• Indonesia

• India (increasingly since the 2000s)

Selected Bibliography

Primary Sources and Official Publications

Congressional Research Service. *Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2023* (updated editions). (FAS Project on Government Secrecy)

U.S. Department of State. *Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)*.

Central Intelligence Agency. *CREST (CIA Records Search Tool)*.

National Security Archive, George Washington University. Electronic Briefing Books and Digital National Security Archive. (National Security Archive)

U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command. *Instances of Use of U.S. Armed Forces Abroad*. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

Declassified CIA Operations

National Security Archive.

• CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup. 2013. (National Security Archive)

• Understanding the CIA: How Covert (and Overt) Operations Were Proposed and Approved during the Cold War. 2019. (National Security Archive)

• The Diem Coup After 50 Years. 2013. (National Security Archive)

• Extreme Option: Overthrow Allende. 2020. (National Security Archive)

• U.S. Covert Intervention in Chile. 2014. (National Security Archive)

• CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents. (National Security Archive)

General Histories

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Common Courage Press, multiple editions.

Blum, William. Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower. Common Courage Press.

Chomsky, Noam. Deterring Democracy. Verso.

Chomsky, Noam. Hegemony or Survival. Metropolitan Books.

Kolko, Gabriel. Confronting the Third World. Pantheon.

LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898. Cornell University Press.

LaFeber, Walter. America, Russia, and the Cold War. McGraw-Hill.

Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. W. W. Norton.

Williams, William Appleman. Empire as a Way of Life. Oxford University Press.

Immerman, Richard H. Empire for Liberty. Princeton University Press.

McCormick, Thomas J. America’s Half-Century. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Herring, George C. From Colony to Superpower. Oxford University Press.

CIA and Covert Action

Agee, Philip. Inside the Company.

Prados, John. Safe for Democracy.

Prados, John. Presidents’ Secret Wars.

Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow.

Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes.

Johnson, Chalmers. Blowback.

Johnson, Chalmers. The Sorrows of Empire.

McCoy, Alfred W. A Question of Torture.

McCoy, Alfred W. In the Shadows of the American Century.

Military Bases and Empire

Johnson, Chalmers. The Sorrows of Empire.

Vine, David. Base Nation.

Vine, David. The United States of War.

Lutz, Catherine, ed. The Bases of Empire.

Global War on Terror

Crawford, Neta C., ed.

• Costs of War project, Watson Institute, Brown University. (Federation of American Scientists)

Engelhardt, Tom, ed. The United States of Fear.

Scahill, Jeremy. Dirty Wars.

Mazzetti, Mark. The Way of the Knife.

Mayer, Jane. The Dark Side.

Priest, Dana. The Mission.

Iraq

Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

Ricks, Thomas E. Fiasco.

Ricks, Thomas E. The Gamble.

Gordon, Michael R., and Bernard Trainor. Cobra II.

Bremer, L. Paul. My Year in Iraq.

Afghanistan

Coll, Steve. Ghost Wars.

Coll, Steve. Directorate S.

Jones, Seth G. In the Graveyard of Empires.

Vietnam

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam.

Logevall, Fredrik. Choosing War.

Herring, George C. America’s Longest War.

Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie.

Korea

Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War.

Cumings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun.

Latin America

Schoultz, Lars. Beneath the United States.

Schoultz, Lars. National Security and United States Policy Toward Latin America.

Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop.

LeoGrande, William M., and Kornbluh, Peter. Back Channel to Cuba.

Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions.

Gleijeses, Piero. Visions of Freedom.

Indonesia

Simpson, Bradley. Economists with Guns.

Roosa, John. Pretext for Mass Murder.

Bevins, Vincent. The Jakarta Method.

Iran

Gasiorowski, Mark J., and Malcolm Byrne, eds. Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran.

Kinzer, Stephen. All the Shah’s Men.

Chile

Kornbluh, Peter. The Pinochet File.

Winn, Peter, ed. Victims of the Chilean Miracle.

Congo

De Witte, Ludo. The Assassination of Lumumba.

Palestine / Israel

Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine.

Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Sanctions

Hufbauer, Gary Clyde, et al. Economic Sanctions Reconsidered.

Gordon, Joy. Invisible War.

—AR

Cuba Adopts Major Economic Reforms

By world-outlook.com on June 22, 2026

On June 18, 2026, Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power — the country’s highest legislative body — adopted an extensive series of economic reforms. The Central Committee of Cuba’s Communist Party had approved the same measures a day earlier.

The National Assembly adopted the reforms after extensive debate. The Cuban government made these decisions as the Cuban people face a dire humanitarian crisis caused largely by Washington’s relentless economic war for nearly seven decades, exacerbated this year by a blockade of oil imports into the island and new draconian U.S. sanctions.

The measures include the virtual abolition of the state monopoly of foreign trade, allowing the establishment of private banks and the hiring by owners of private companies of more than 100 workers, loosening regulations for direct foreign investment, and instituting a partial dollarization of the economy.

The reforms seem to signal an organized retreat with substantial openings to the capitalist market. They “do not constitute a surrender” but are “conceived as a sovereign exercise to preserve the conquests of the Revolution without renouncing socialism,” as Cuba’s prime minister Manuel Marrero Cruz put it in introducing the package to National Assembly deputies.

World-Outlook is publishing below for the information of our readers the article from the Cuban daily Granma, which reports on the reforms and the debate at the National Assembly session that adopted them. Given the significance of these decisions, we plan to publish in coming days and weeks additional documents and commentary from Cuba on these reforms, as well as other articles that shed light on their significance, contemporary and historical context, and implications.

The headline, text, and photos that follow are from the original. The translation from Granma’s English-language edition has been lightly edited by World-Outlook to improve readability.

— World-Outlook editors

*

Economic and Social Transformations Presented to Cuban Parliament

The meeting included the participation — via teleconference — of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz. Also present in the room was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.

Author: Wennys Diaz Ballaga | internet@granma.cu

Author: Susana Antón | informacion@granmai.cu

June 19, 2026 15:06:15

To evaluate proposals for economic and social transformations, a topic of vital importance for the future of the country, the Third Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP), in its 10th Legislature, was held on June 18th.

The meeting took place in its usual venue at the Convention Palace with deputies from Havana and those residing in the capital due to their responsibilities, as well as all deputies from across the country connected digitally, including the participation — via teleconference — of Army General Raúl Castro Ruz.

Also present in the room was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez. The president of the National Assembly of People’s Power and the Council of State, Esteban Lazo Hernández, commemorated Vilma Espín Guillois, heroine of the Cuban Revolution, who died on this date 19 years ago.

The Prime Minister Reports on Transformations with Strategic Impact on the Cuban Economic and Social Model

In the most complex context that the country has faced since the special period, the member of the Political Bureau and Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, appeared before the ANPP to present transformations of strategic impact in the Cuban economic and social model, conceived as a sovereign exercise to preserve the conquests of the Revolution without renouncing socialism.

During his speech, the Head of Government contextualized the current situation: an unprecedented combination of coercive measures by the United States government, which has gone so far as to interrupt the supply of fuel and sources of foreign currency income, significantly affecting the stability of the energy infrastructure and the quality of life of the population.

He also recognized that errors and insufficiencies that we alone are responsible for have never been denied, but he stressed that this set of factors has had a sustained impact on the implementation of the transformations approved since the 6th Congress of the Party in 2011, whose positive results were maintained until mid-2019, when the sanctions policy was intensified, reinforced at the beginning of January 2025.

In this scenario, the Party and the Government, in the legitimate exercise of their sovereignty, have promoted measures to reactivate the economy and correct distortions, a process strengthened with the approval of the Government’s Economic and Social Program, validated by the people through popular consultation.

Taking popular sentiment as a direct reference, the Prime Minister announced transformations that find their first foundation in the thoughts of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz who, in 1993, in the middle of the special period, warned: “Life, reality, the dramatic situation that the world is experiencing, this unipolar world, forces us to do what otherwise we would never have done if we had had capital and if we had had the technology to do it.”

Under the guiding principle of doing what is necessary to preserve what is essential, the proposed measures include expanding the participation of all economic actors on equal terms, promoting foreign investment and admitting market mechanisms as an instrument for resource allocation. These actions – he emphasized – do not constitute a surrender, but rather the sovereign adaptation of the instruments for development to the specific circumstances of the country.

The Prime Minister recalled the principles set forth by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz in leading the update of the economic and social model: not to be dogmatic or unwilling to change, to banish the mechanical association between socialism and egalitarianism, and to recognize that socialist planning does not exclude, but must incorporate and regulate the rules of the market.

The transformations presented, which will be debated, are part of the collective effort to reactivate the economy and correct distortions, without ever giving up socialist construction, but as a condition for its preservation.

To prepare the transformation proposals – Marrero Cruz explained – the following were considered: the indications of the Army General and the First Secretary of the Central Committee, the 2026 Government Program, the proposal to update the Conceptualization of the Economic and Social Model, as well as the Agreements of the ANEC [National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba] Congress and leaders of the State and the Government of the country.

It meant that 390 proposals were received, 66.7% being accepted and the rest have to do with the implementation process, other positive evaluations, as well as aspects that do not constitute transformations.

As a result of the analysis of the transformation proposals carried out in the Political Bureau, 69 recommendations were incorporated into the document.

The Head of Government pointed out that the document presented includes 176 proposals for transformations, grouped into 23 fundamental axes of the economic and social life of the country.

AXIS 1: Transformations in the Management Model Employed by Economic Actors

State-Owned Socialist Enterprise

— Expand the powers of the state-owned enterprise system so that it operates with greater autonomy and under similar conditions to other economic actors. This includes carrying out any lawful activity, without abandoning its primary corporate purpose. From now on, any regulations approved for other actors will also apply to the State-Owned Socialist Enterprise.

— Decentralize the power to approve wholesale and retail prices to the state-owned enterprise system. Price setting will take into account costs, expenses, market trends, value chains, and the vertical and horizontal relationships between economic actors.

— Resize the State-Owned Enterprises (OSDEs),^[1] excluding state functions and those inherent to private companies.

— Empower the OSDEs to create state-owned enterprises and mipyme (micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises)^[2] and empower the companies to create subsidiaries and state-owned mipyme, and at both levels to carry out:

• Mergers, dissolutions, liquidations, and other organizational changes, as applicable.

• The OSDEs will be authorized to define their structures and group administrative positions or subcontract services.

— To make the approval and allocation of after-tax profits more flexible.

— To update the functions and powers of the Governing Boards to make their operation more flexible.

— To allow access to the foreign exchange market under the new conditions resulting from the implementation of the transformations, to business structures participating in supply chains.

• To eliminate the pay scale in the state-owned business system and establish a minimum wage that takes inflation levels into account:

• Salary levels, negotiated with workers and with the participation of the Union, will depend on the economic and financial capacity of the companies.

— Change the relationship between the state budget and the state-owned enterprise system, including reviewing the financial burden and eliminating subsidies to businesses.

— Empower Provincial Governments and Municipal Administrative Councils to create, merge, dissolve, and liquidate local state-owned enterprises, as well as carry out other organizational changes.

— Reduce to the bare minimum the indicators used to measure the efficiency of the state-owned enterprise system.

— Allow and encourage businesses (including private businesses) to make financial investments.

— Design financial instruments that allow for the capitalization of businesses without drawing on the state budget.

— Implement a National Program for the Valuation and Titling of State-Owned Enterprise Assets (appraisals) that:

• Conducts a national inventory of tangible and intangible assets of the state-owned enterprise system at market value.

• Issues enforceable ownership certificates that can serve as collateral for bank loans.

• Allow state-owned enterprises to monetize underutilized assets through long-term leasing to various economic actors and foreign investment.

— Design an efficient and competitive business system that generates revenue to support the services of social sector agencies.

— Establish procedures for bankruptcy, liquidation, and restructuring of assets with sustained losses in the state sector.

— Transform socialist state-owned enterprises into commercial companies with shares or equity interests:

• The State will define its equity stake in the sectors of the economy, guaranteeing its majority presence in strategic sectors.

• State-owned enterprises may purchase shares in other companies.

• Non-state management entities and individuals will also be able to purchase shares, according to a phased approach to be defined.

• For this process, it will be necessary to classify enterprises.

Non-state management entities

— Authorize the creation of non-agricultural mipyme and cooperatives pending approval of the Economic Actors Platform.

— Reduce the requirements, procedures, and timeframes for the creation, conversion, and operation of non-state management entities, defining approval timelines.

— Allow the hiring of more than 100 employees. Entities with more than 100 employees will be classified as private companies.

— Allow an individual to own more than one private company.

— Expand the corporate structures under which private companies can be organized, including public limited companies.

— Allow the same individual to hold shares in more than one private company.

— Grant true rights (usufruct and surface rights) to private companies or cooperatives to enable them to make investments for the development of their productive or service activities.

— Authorize that cash foreign currency deposits from non-state actors be credited to bank accounts in the same currency, subject to a declaration of the lawful origin of the funds and withdrawal rights.

— Allow non-state management entities to develop other productive and service activities without abandoning their main activity.

— Reduce the list of prohibited activities for non-state economic actors.

— Improve the Economic Actors Platform and incorporate the use of Artificial Intelligence. Guarantee its transparency, traceability, and agility.

— Transform the institutional structure and the forms of ownership and management of the agricultural sector’s productive base. Allow private companies to participate in agricultural activities.

— Develop an input market with the participation of all actors and with access to the foreign exchange market.

— Create a National Platform for Production Linkages that requires state-owned enterprises to publish their input and subcontracting needs, and that grants tax incentives based on purchase levels from national producers.

AXIS 2: Transformations in Property Relations. Differences Between Ownership and Management

The Head of Government indicated that, regarding changes in property relations and the differences between ownership and management, social ownership of the fundamental means of production is reaffirmed, and progress is being made toward non-state management of these means.

He added that among the new measures is the authorization for the purchase of shares and properties of state-owned enterprises by state and non-state legal entities, both national and foreign, as well as individuals, provided that the lawful origin of the funds is demonstrated.

He highlighted the creation of an Investment Program that incentivizes the participation of Cubans residing in the country and abroad in Cuban companies; in addition to recognizing the legitimate growth of the financial and material assets of legal entities and individuals and guaranteeing the protection of labor and social rights without allowing indiscriminate exploitation of man by man.

AXIS 3: Transformations in the Economic Planning System

— Improve medium- and long-term planning, focusing on development design, prioritizing macroeconomic stability, reducing structural problems, and providing policy signals for all economic actors.

— Incorporate the economic, commercial, and service activities of non-state economic actors into the projections of the National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030 and into the Provincial and Municipal Development Strategies.

— Transition to a financial planning model, where the State progressively relinquishes the physical distribution of resources, giving greater weight to market signals:

• State-owned enterprises will have decentralized access to inputs, foreign currency, and other resources for their production through market mechanisms.

• State requirements will be executed through a contractual framework between supplying and demanding entities.

• The planning process must take into account how to satisfy the demands of the internal market.

— Maintain the fundamental balances of the economy (agrifood, foreign exchange, energy, and the State budget), transforming them into instruments for diagnosing, anticipating, and correcting policies.

— Expand the limits for approving investments by decentralizing this authority to state-owned enterprises, commercial companies, or foreign investment entities, based on their financial capacity and access to resources.

AXIS 4: Transformations and Resizing of the Budgeted Sector

Marrero Cruz indicated that the proposals for economic transformation include a restructuring of the Central State Administration, which would involve a significant reduction in the number of ministries and budgeted agencies.

He explained that a legislative proposal is already circulating that outlines the reorganization of state and governmental structures, with the aim of adapting them to the country’s new economic conditions and making public administration more efficient.

This process, he said, would also directly impact provincial and municipal administrations, where a resizing of structures and workforces is planned.

AXIS 5: Transformations in Municipal Autonomy

Decentralize the following powers at the municipal level:

— Strategic planning.

— Soil and natural resources and urban planning.

— Food sovereignty and food and nutritional security.

— Community services.

— Promotion of local economic development:

• Diversify and strengthen its productive fabric, considering the participation of different economic actors — Cubans residing in the country and abroad — and including local production systems.

• Capacity to export and import, as well as generate and retain foreign currency for current and capital expenditures.

• Stimulate and manage foreign direct investment.

— Municipal administrative and human resources management.

— Local budgetary, financial, and tax management.

AXIS 6: Energy Transformations

— Allow the participation of private and foreign capital in the import and marketing of fuels, including the retail network.

— Expand and restructure the management of the service station network, including mobile service stations:

• Require service stations managed by various economic actors to incorporate photovoltaic systems with energy storage to become independent of the National Electric System.

• Encourage the installation of solar charging stations to market electric vehicle charging services.

— Design avenues of financing, streamline requirements, and expand guarantees for granting loans to legal entities and individuals to incentivize the energy transition. Stimulate investment from the demand side.

— Allow state-owned enterprises to use foreign platforms to process payments for fuel purchases and sales.

— Apply a tax of up to 1% to the import of physical or financial fuel destined for operational inventories.

— Reduce the tax, by an amount equivalent to the investment made, for state and non-state economic actors who invest in renewable energy sources as part of their social responsibility in public service, social, or care centers, including public lighting.

AXIS 7: Transformations to Incentivize Agricultural Recovery

— Modify land management and use for all economic actors:

• Maintain the principle of land ownership by the entire people.

• Grant the real right of usufruct over land to state, private, mixed, or natural legal entities that request it, for an indefinite period and for the amount of land specified in the submitted project, for all agricultural, forestry, and tobacco production, as well as for ecotourism and agritourism development projects.

• Authorize the state-owned enterprise that administers socialist-owned land of all the people to grant usufruct rights to applicants through the corresponding contract, in compliance with current legal regulations.

• Authorize the granting of land in usufruct to Agricultural Production Cooperatives (CPA), once approved by the cooperative’s General Assembly and in compliance with current legal regulations.

• Eliminate the requirement for usufructuaries to work directly and permanently on the land.

• Evaluate the definition of labor collectives and propose the necessary structural transformations.

— Transform the cooperative management model:

• Authorize cooperatives to import and market fuels as inputs.

• Grant cooperatives the authority to conduct foreign trade directly, for the export of their products and the import of agricultural inputs and technologies.

• Allow cooperatives to directly secure external financing for exportable production, import substitution, and investments.

• Allow cooperatives to open bank accounts abroad and in Cuban banks, in both pesos and foreign currency.

• Make agricultural marketing more flexible. Recognize the market in price formation:

• Decentralize and empower state and non-state business entities, cooperatives, and producers to set prices for agricultural products.

• The contracting and negotiation of prices for agricultural products will be agreed upon between the producer and the buyer.

• Standardize the tax structure for all economic actors involved in the production, processing, and marketing of food.

• Create a National Price Information System for agricultural product markets, publishing reference prices on digital platforms.

• Design incentives for all economic actors to market agricultural inputs in both foreign currency and pesos and to have access to the foreign exchange market:

• Authorize all economic actors to directly market agricultural inputs and equipment in both foreign currency and pesos.

• Promote the creation of input markets in foreign currency, where domestic and foreign individuals and legal entities participate, through a simplified process.

• Approve a special tax structure for all economic actors participating in the input market, with incentives and bonuses for the import and sale of inputs in foreign currency.

• Establish banking procedures that guarantee the execution of foreign currency transactions for the sale of inputs to producers and payments to suppliers abroad, through the use of POS terminals for payments by magnetic card, bank transfer, cash, e-commerce, and other authorized payment methods.

— Increase financing for the primary production sector by expanding and decentralizing the Agricultural Development Fund and creating an Agricultural Development Bank:

• Decentralize the use of the Agricultural Development Fund to municipalities, tailored to the characteristics of their territories, upon presentation of projects that contribute to Development Strategies related to food production.

AXIS 8: Social Transformations

— Digitize and make transparent the management of aid through the use of the SOBERANIA platform for real-time updates of the registry of individuals and families in vulnerable situations, thereby systematizing the different forms of assistance, their traceability, and governmental and public oversight.

— Establish that all economic actors (state and private – national and foreign), as part of their social responsibility at the community level, in the areas of finance, material resources, and services, participate directly in the following activities:

• Support pension payments through agreements with banks.

• Support the soup kitchens of the Family Support System and Community Food Centers.

• Support homes for children without parental care.

• Support nursing homes, maternity homes, senior centers, and other social centers.

• Establish differentiated pricing, discounts, free services, or solidarity quotas for people in vulnerable situations.

• Address cases of vulnerable situations identified by local governments.

• Support social and health transportation.

• Support public health institutions and educational centers.

• Contribute to community hygiene and sanitation in critical areas.

• Provide basic necessities to social institutions.

• Create monthly food baskets for vulnerable individuals and families.

• Offer employment, training, or apprenticeship opportunities to vulnerable individuals.

• Establish local emergency funds with private contributions.

• Designate private premises as collection and distribution points during emergencies.

• Support funeral services for low-income families.

• Promote fairs and community sales in vulnerable communities.

• Strengthen Social Work with a proactive and preventative approach by prioritizing its role within the municipality.

• Provide small-scale assets for the development of non-state activities to individuals experiencing multidimensional vulnerability, as a means to access employment and overcome this condition.

• Design educational, training, postgraduate, cultural, and other selected services that will serve as sources of income for the social sector.

— Design differentiated rates for childcare and daycare services based on family income.

— Design tax benefits for workshops employing people with disabilities to increase workers’ income.

AXIS 9: Transformation from Product Subsidies to Personal Subsidies

— Eliminate product subsidies and transform them into personal subsidies, implementing this in the following order:

• Products cross-cutting the economy (fuels, electricity, freight and passenger transport, and water rates) that impact production and services, in order to pass on real costs to wholesale and retail prices.

• Other products.

— Create a Social Protection Fund, as a prerequisite for the transformations, using a portion of the savings from eliminating product subsidies.

AXIS 10: Labor and Wage Transformations

— Implement a comprehensive wage reform in the state-funded sector.

— Set the minimum wage annually and, correspondingly, the amount of social security benefits and pensions, as well as wage increases, based on inflation trends.

— Regarding the social security pension system, establish:

• The elimination of the upper limit on the scale established for social security contributions in the non-state sector.

• That individuals working simultaneously in the state and non-state sectors can enroll in and contribute to the corresponding pension schemes for each activity.

• That, of the 30 minimum years of service required by the contributory pension system, up to a maximum of 10 be considered if the person has dedicated them to family care.

— Eliminate the administrative approval requirement for technicians, healthcare professionals, researchers, teachers, professors, and public officials to hold multiple jobs.

— Establish incentives to retain the skilled workforce, with an emphasis on young people.

— Establish a monthly income equivalent to one minimum wage as a repayable stipend for young people between 18 and 30 years of age who are neither studying nor employed and who enroll in a training course. Funding will come from the social assistance budget or the business sector, as appropriate. The training period will be recognized as time of service rendered.

— Authorize employers, in agreement with the union, to negotiate reduced work schedules and corresponding payments for professional activities, which will be incorporated into the collective bargaining agreement.

— Establish for the business and budgeted sectors that employees of the entity itself may perform professional activities, construction maintenance, and similar tasks.

— Permit teleworking from abroad, at the employer’s discretion.

— Include as a justified cause for suspension of social service, professional development abroad for personal reasons related to the professional profile, with the employer’s consent.

— Directly empower entities to determine which employees will terminate their employment for economic, technological, and structural reasons, after evaluation by the governing body, in agreement with the union, and analysis in the assembly of members and workers:

• Workers in this situation receive monetary protection equivalent to a minimum of three and a maximum of six times the basic salary of the position they held, on a one-time basis.

— Establish protection equivalent to one month’s remuneration for workers hired by self-employed workers (TCPs) in the event of temporary suspension or cancellation of their activity.

AXIS 11: Transformations and Modernization of the Banking and Financial System

— Promote private capital participation in banking:

• Expansion of banking and non-banking financial institutions by private companies, cooperatives, and foreign investment with corporate and universal banking licenses.

• Private banks will operate under the supervision of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) under the same regulatory conditions as state-owned banks.

• The establishment of non-banking or non-financial institutions that support the private capital banking sector, whether national or foreign, will be permitted for the granting of microloans.

— Eliminate restrictions on foreign currency payments between businesses with foreign capital and their national suppliers.

— Allow the opening of foreign currency accounts by legal entities and individuals without prior administrative authorization.

— Implement the regulatory framework for virtual assets and the use of financial technologies and expand their use for international and national collection and payment operations. Create financial entities for virtual assets.

— Update the interest rate system by adjusting it to current economic conditions (including sovereign bonds).

• Private banks will operate under the supervision of the BCC under equal regulatory conditions with state banks.

• The establishment of non-banking financial institutions, or non-financial institutions that support the private capital banking sector, national or foreign, will be allowed for the granting of microcredits.

— Implement the figure of last mile payment agent to formalize remittance flows through a private channel.

— Design other ways to capitalize banks, in addition to the resources of the State budget.

— Update the strategy with a new approach for the treatment of external debt, taking into account current conditions.

— Accelerate the automation process of banks and reduce the procedures associated with their services.

— Grant Transfermóvil a license as a non-banking financial institution.

— Complete the process of eliminating limits on bank transfers and withdrawals from natural and legal persons, national and foreign.

Exchange rate reforms

— Resize the official exchange and remittance market, with the participation of non-state economic actors, which includes granting licenses for private exchange house operations:

• Create a digital exchange market, in real time, with authorized agents.

• Implement a currency auction system.

— Carry out successive devaluations of the national currency to reduce exchange rate differences. Companies that do not support the devaluation will be liquidated.

• Incorporate cooperatives, diplomatic sector, state mipyme and foreign investment that operate with non-state forms of management into segment II, guaranteeing that arbitrage does not occur. State companies will compete freely for sales and in a controlled manner for purchases.

— Create state and private non-banking financial institutions that are dedicated to channeling financial flows, including remittances, through exchange operations.

— Establish single exchange windows for all economic actors that are decided.

— Expand the corporate purpose of non-banking financial institutions that offer the service for the administration of international cooperation funds.

AXIS 12: Transformations of the Tax System

— Improve consumption taxation, through the gradual implementation of the Value Added Tax (VAT). It will begin with certain production-consumption chains and will contemplate reduced tax rates on products in the basket of goods and services.

— Establish the electronic tax invoice with incentives that promote its assimilation by taxpayers.

— Apply a bonus to the sales and services tax based on the levels of banked sales.

— Reduce the fiscal burden of the business sector due to income tax, with the aim of increasing its growth and investment capacities. Expand the tax base by eliminating special deductions that are not economically justified and reducing the risk of tax evasion.

• Establish a tax on gross income for companies that declare losses for more than two fiscal periods.

— Apply a reduced tax rate of the Profit Tax for the agricultural sector.

— Simplify the calculation and payment of the Profit Tax, eliminating the term of per capita profit, which implies applying the tax to CAN [Non-Agricultural Cooperative], CPA and UBPC [Basic Units of Cooperative Production] partners.

— Design an accelerated depreciation regime for the acquisition of machinery, food production technologies and industrial processing, which favors the recovery of investments.

— Reduce the financial burden of entities, determined by the contribution of the return on state investment, earmarked for its use in development and capitalization.

— Apply tax incentives to state and non-state economic actors that finance investments in the social sector.

— Update the personal income tax, in accordance with the current inflationary scenario, through the following adjustments:

• Modify the progressive scale for the annual settlement and payment of the tax. Reduce the number of scales to homogenize the application of the tax.

• Increase the minimum tax-exempt threshold to the level of the country’s average salary by the end of 2025.

— Reinstate the simplified tax regime for less complex activities, with an automatic adjustment system based on annual gross income levels, allowing the National Tax Administration Office to focus its oversight on larger taxpayers.

— Increase the fixed amounts of the following taxes:

• Land transportation tax based on vehicle type, value, fuel, and other factors.

• Vessel tax.

• Document tax.

• Environmental taxes.

• Fee for registering advertisements and commercial publicity.

— Design tariffs and incentives that promote domestic production processes and the import of raw materials, materials, technologies, and equipment for the use of renewable energy sources.

AXIS 13: Transformations in Pricing Policy

— Decentralize the power to approve prices and tariffs to companies and territorial and local administrations.

— Eliminate price formation based on the cost-plus method and establish, for price formation, the market reference price or a correlation, defining its position in the value chain.

AXIS 14: Transformations in Foreign Investment

— Stimulate foreign investment participation in private and cooperative enterprises through the creation of joint ventures and international economic association agreements.

— Extend the limit for granting surface rights to 99 years and usufruct rights to more than 50 years for foreign investment.

— Allow businesses with foreign capital, in any form, to open bank accounts abroad without authorization. In all cases, the Central Bank of Cuba and the National Tax Administration Office must be notified.

— Allow real estate businesses to conduct sales and purchases of residential units.

— Eliminate the mandatory use of employment agencies for selecting and hiring personnel.

— Allow foreign investment to receive its income in foreign currency, operate flexibly in a partially dollarized economy, and access the foreign exchange market.

— Reduce documentation and processing times, and decentralize the approval of foreign investment, including the application of tacit approval. This will be applied to all permitting processes in the country related to issuing licenses for economic, financial, and commercial activities with a direct impact on the registry.

— Allow foreign investment in Old Havana and other heritage areas.

AXIS 15: Transformations in Foreign Trade

— Promote exports of goods and services that, through the decentralization of export powers, differentiated incentives, and productive integration with foreign capital, increase the total value of exports to achieve a sustained trade surplus in goods and services.

— Apply the principle of negative nomenclature for companies engaged in foreign trade, including foreign investment.

— Allow private companies and cooperatives to engage directly in foreign trade activities, subject to prior authorization from the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment.

— Approve the sale of trademarks and patents by institutions in the international market, subject to prior authorization.

AXIS 16: Scope of Partial Dollarization of the Economy

— Expand the scope of partial dollarization of the economy to include intercompany and commercial transactions, in accordance with the current situation.

— Modify the current conception of closed self-financing schemes in foreign currency towards a scheme of contributions from foreign currency transactions.

AXIS 17: Transformations in the Tourism Sector

— Add the following to the existing business models (joint ventures and management contracts) for all tourism activities:

• Leases.

• Granting of usufruct rights for a fee.

• Concessions for areas with assets or under development in different regions of the country, and the sale of real estate (approval on a case-by-case basis).

This applies to foreign investors, Cubans residing abroad, and those residing in Cuba.

— Include certain areas of the country in the Business Opportunities Portfolio as Economic Development Zones, where special regimes are established.

— Allow the application of all business models in the islands, heritage areas of Old Havana and Trinidad, as well as in all tourist destinations in the country where these models are beneficial for the sector and foreign investment is required for their development.

— Permit real estate development in all tourist areas of the country where this type of business is needed. Establish the possibility of developing real estate businesses in areas of Havana and other urban areas of the country linked to tourism.

— Allow joint ventures and lease agreements for the negotiation of tourist marinas.

— Approve tax and fiscal benefits for all economic actors involved in ecotourism projects and other specialized tourism models in order to attract foreign investment and diversify sustainable and responsible tourism development.

— Create an online corporate bank for the tourism sector with international ties that promotes virtual asset services.

— Open up the car rental activity (currently exclusive to two companies in the country) to include other state-owned enterprises, foreign investment, and non-state management models.

— Update the incorporation of travel agencies to joint ventures, 100% foreign-owned companies, as well as non-state management models.

— Authorize private tour guides and sales agents, subject to prior authorization due to the high level of specialization required for this activity.

— Approve local destination managers capable of integrating all stakeholders and ensuring the success of the mixed governance model.

— Evaluate the implementation of a special tax — which does not currently exist — or contribution from all tourists visiting a designated tourist area or resort, and allocate the revenue to the area’s sustainability, maintenance, and promotion.

— Promote Cuban brand franchises abroad as a way to generate revenue, for example: Casas Cuba, Casas del Habano, La Bodeguita del Medio, El Floridita, and Tropicana.

AXIS 18: Transformations in Transport

— Eliminate the restrictions on vehicle acquisition by various economic actors and individuals, as well as the established deadlines, while promoting photovoltaic electric mobility.

— Authorize the direct, non-commercial importation of a 100% electric car by individuals. Provided it is accompanied by a charging station with a fully renewable energy source, it will be exempt from taxes and duties.

— Allow the direct commercial importation of electric vehicles (mopeds, motorcycles, and tricycles) for assembly and sale by authorized state and non-state legal entities. Provided it is accompanied by a charging station with a fully renewable energy source, it will be exempt from taxes.

AXIS 19: Transformations in Commerce, Gastronomy, and Services

— Modify the policy on state administrative management of commerce, gastronomy, and services, prioritizing non-state management models and foreign investment options.

— Reorganize wholesale trade, prioritizing the creation of supply markets with direct access for individuals and legal entities. Do not place limits on the actors who carry out this activity.

— Authorize the marketing and provision of services by foreign entities based in the country, including branches and representative offices.

— Create chains of stores, restaurants, and a network of light food establishments under recognized brands or others, that extend throughout the country.

— Invite light food franchises to invest in the country.

— Put recreational parks, zoos, aquariums, protected areas, and lodging facilities out to bid for state-owned, foreign, private, and cooperative companies, establishing the conditions for their operation, including sales percentages in pesos and foreign currency.

— To formalize street vendors of various types within communities, issue “street vendor” permits, and implement a simplified tax system.

— To stimulate wholesale and retail public procurement, using the public procurement budget and bank loans as working capital.

— To create an automated, digital, auditable, and public system for tendering premises and assets to all economic actors.

— To transition from the regulated basic food basket to controlled sales without subsidies within the retail network.

— To authorize individuals to import goods for commercial purposes, levying tariffs in foreign currency. This does not imply granting foreign trade powers.

AXIS 20: Transformations in Insurance Policy

— Recognize that the financial resources mobilized in the insurance sector can be made profitable.

— Create life insurance as a complement to social security protections.

— Boost the marketing of foreign currency policies for transportation, travel, and medical expense risk coverage.

— Mandate civil liability insurance for vehicle drivers.

AXIS 21: Digital Transformations, Artificial Intelligence, and the Knowledge Economy

— Establish a national framework for mandatory interoperability, data governance, artificial intelligence, and territorial equity.

— Implement a competitive remuneration system that contributes to promoting the export of professional services in digital technologies and artificial intelligence.

— Allow foreign investment in expanding Etecsa’s data center capabilities.^[3]

— Allow the private sector to provide data center services that do not host the country’s critical infrastructure management platforms, equipment manufacturing, and the installation of mobile and fixed networks, triple-play services, data centers, cloud services, IP telephony, and contact centers.

— Establish a digital platform using artificial intelligence for the public procurement system and bidding processes, ensuring transparency, security, and including risk classification.

— Allow for the mixed management of postal infrastructure and last-mile logistics.

— Recognize data as the fifth factor of production (along with land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship), which implies considering it a non-renewable economic resource with the capacity to generate wealth.

AXIS 22: Transformations in the National Statistical System

— Design a statistical system that adjusts to economic and social changes.

— Complete the change of the base year of the National Accounts.

— Resume the construction of the producer price and foreign trade indices, maintaining the consumer price index, together with the products derived from the observed prices.

AXIS 23: Transformations in the Control and Inspection Mechanisms

— Create a working group, due to its importance and transversality, led by the Central Committee of the PCC and integrated by the ANPP, the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic, the Comptroller General’s Office of the Republic, the Supreme People’s Court, the Council of Ministers (DAOLPP [Department of Attention to Local Organs of People’s Power], DSPOD, and Department of Crime Prevention), the MININT [Ministry of the Interior] and the MINJUS [Ministry of Justice], in order to analyze existing controls and make proposals for reforms.

Preliminary findings identified that the implementation of these reforms will impact more than 148 provisions of the Cuban legal system:

• 15 regulations to be repealed.

• 22 regulations to be completely amended.

• 79 regulations to be partially amended.

• More than 50 lower-ranking complementary regulations (resolutions).

Additionally, it will be necessary to develop 32 new higher-ranking regulations (10 laws, 14 decree-laws and 8 decrees).

The Prime Minister of Cuba, Manuel Marrero Cruz, affirmed that the proposals for economic and social transformations are developed in line with the Government Program for 2026, considering that both strategies are complementary and respond to the objective conditions of the economy and the current sociodemographic dynamics.

As he explained, 76% of these transformations fully correspond to the content of the program, while the rest expand it, integrating changes in the business landscape, greater openness to national and foreign private capital, modernization of the banking system, coherence between exchange, tax and price reforms, as well as territorial decentralization and the resizing of the central administration of the State.

Marrero Cruz stressed that these transformations do not imply a renunciation of the social responsibility of the State, but rather they incorporate a recognition of market mechanisms as instruments for the efficient allocation of resources.

Likewise, he pointed out that among the main challenges for implementation are the definition of an operational sequence and adequate schedule, the strengthening of institutional capacities, ensuring social protection, securing legal legitimacy and fostering citizen participation, in addition to the mitigation of geopolitical risks.

The Prime Minister indicated that during the implementation of the process there will be contradictions to be resolved, including the impact of partial dollarization on the cost-benefit analysis of the economy, the elimination of subsidies and their relationship with prices, as well as the decentralization of powers without sufficient municipal capacity and the liberalization of agricultural prices without a proportional increase in production.

In this regard, he stated that the implementation process will be flexible, with constant review, adoption of corrective actions and a learning system aimed at managers and managers.

Marrero Cruz also highlighted that the proposals seek to address the current economic crisis through a window of structural transformation, the failure of which could generate irreversible consequences in the political and social order.

Finally, he reiterated that these measures do not constitute a deviation from the socialist project, but rather respond to the logic of its development, in a context in which Cuba continues the construction of socialism guided by the ideas of Fidel and Raúl.

In the Words of the Deputies

Deputy Danhiz Díaz Pereira stated that among the main feelings raised by the analysis of the document on economic and social transformations are the defense of socialism and the will to build a more developed country, with full dignity for all citizens.

He considered that the proposals represent an opportunity to move towards a model capable of guaranteeing quality education, better universities, better salaries for teachers and workers, as well as universal health with better institutions and availability of medicines.

Among his proposals, he proposed that in transformation 63, referring to the Sovereignty platform project, it be specified that it constitutes an additional way for the identification of vulnerable people and not the only one, taking into account that the Ministry of Labor and Social Security has other mechanisms for that purpose.

He viewed favorably the recognition of the social contribution that companies can make and considered that there should be a single business system in Cuba. He also suggested including caregivers among the beneficiaries of employment, training and learning opportunities.

He also proposed that specific crises, which do not necessarily constitute emergency situations, be incorporated into the provisions on the authorization of private spaces as collection and distribution points.

Díaz Pereira commented, in relation to the creation of a social protection fund and the implementation of a comprehensive salary reform, that these are priorities that must be realized before carrying out other transformations to avoid further negative impacts on the population.

Regarding the elimination of administrative prohibitions for the exercise of employment by professors and doctors, he suggested specifying the concept of civil servant for a better understanding of its scope.

He highlighted that more than 10 measures in the document explicitly include youth, in line with the policy approved for this sector.

Among the proposed complementary actions, he suggested creating a communication channel, possibly supported by artificial intelligence, to allow the public to clarify doubts about the transformations; reviewing personnel policy procedures to enhance the presence of top leaders in municipalities; and calling on the Ministries of Education and Higher Education to adapt curricula and programs of study to the new realities.

He also proposed completing a single, centralized, and digital national employment registry to facilitate the management of labor information.

The deputy emphasized the need to strengthen the management capacities of municipalities and pointed to positive experiences in Havana, where ministers and deputy ministers have directly supported local authorities in transferring management skills and competencies.

He expressed concern about the risks of corruption and influence peddling associated with the new measures, although he affirmed that the transformations should not be feared, but rather that control mechanisms and social protections should be strengthened. In this regard, he underscored the importance of preserving labor rights and continuing to improve existing safeguards.

Finally, he emphasized that communicating the transformations is a shared responsibility and affirmed that the 470 deputies, along with the various agencies and institutions, have a duty to explain the scope of the measures to the people. He stressed the need to pay special attention to Cuban youth and expressed confidence in the country’s capacity to save the Homeland, the Revolution, and socialism.

Deputy Carlos Miguel Pérez Reyes stated that, despite the policy of maximum pressure exerted against Cuba, the country remains steadfast in defending the Homeland and its social and economic model. However, he noted that alongside the effects of the blockade, there are internal obstacles that must be eliminated and emphasized that several of the transformations presented have been proposed for years.

He underscored that change does not mean renouncing socialism, but rather defending the country’s current conditions, and maintained that true social justice cannot exist in an economy that is not productive. In this regard, he supported the proposed reforms, which aim to grant greater autonomy to state-owned enterprises and open opportunities for all economic actors. He also emphasized the vision of a single Cuban business sector comprised of state, cooperative, private, and foreign entities.

During his remarks, he made several observations on the document under review. Regarding the reforms related to state ownership, non-state management, and the transfer of assets, he deemed it necessary to precisely define the concept of fundamental means of production and avoid vague statements about the gradual nature of the reforms.

He proposed revising point 32 to avoid contradictions between public ownership of the fundamental means of production and the expansion of non-state management models. He also suggested removing the word “private” from point 23 and clarifying that a single individual may hold equity and ownership interests in more than one company.

Regarding point 56, he called for clarification of the scope of the additional 1% fuel tax, considering that the accumulation of various taxes could increase the cost of a product that is highly sensitive for the population.

With respect to the tax system, he proposed that until the value-added tax and electronic invoicing are implemented, the sales and wholesale services tax be eliminated, arguing that it increases costs in the value chains.

In banking matters, he proposed explicitly including the Cuban private sector among the actors authorized to collect payments abroad, on equal terms with other economic entities.

The deputy identified five essential elements for the success of the reforms: public accountability regarding progress and challenges; swift implementation of the measures; active participation of economists, universities, businesses, local governments, and the population; support for those implementing the changes; and the need to subsidize people, not products, accompanying these actions with an increase in income.

He also called on the Cuban private sector to strengthen its social responsibility by supporting, to the best of its ability, retirees, family support systems, children’s homes, senior citizen centers, daycare centers, and other vulnerable sectors. He argued that the contributions of this sector should be organized to become a concrete force at the service of the people.

In closing, he stated that the greatest risk is not in over-transforming, but in doing so only partially, and he called for moving forward together, with the people and for the people, in the production, transformations, and development of the country.

“As I have said on several occasions, this is truly applying the concept of Revolution,” stated Deputy Emilio Interián Rodríguez, who acknowledged the work done in drafting the proposals and called for swift action, without bureaucracy or fear, to implement the transformations and help overcome the complex situation facing the country.

Referring to the agricultural sector, he considered that the measures presented address many of the problems that have limited the growth of food production. He highlighted the transformations related to marketing, contracting, and price formation, noting that these must correspond to real costs to incentivize producers and revive affected sectors, including livestock.

He emphasized the importance of maintaining tax incentives for production and promoting the import of inputs and raw materials through tariff and tax policies that reduce costs and increase the competitiveness of domestic production. He cited pork production as an example, noting that its development, he said, can benefit from better use of available raw materials and the production of higher-quality products.

Interián Rodríguez described the transformations related to land use and ownership as revolutionary. He considered it necessary to expand access to idle land for producers with a proven track record and eliminate limitations that hinder the incorporation of new land into production.

He also called for a review of the outstanding debts owed to agricultural producers, noting that payment delays affect motivation and constitute an issue that requires attention.

The deputy emphasized that the new measures demand greater initiative from producers and the search for their own alternatives through production chains and other forms of management, in accordance with the guidelines aimed at increasing national production.

He stressed that the economic and social transformations are the result of sovereign decisions of the country and assured that any future changes will continue to be carried out under the premise of preserving national independence and socialism.

As part of the debate, Deputy Laura Marian Bacallao Padrón praised innovative proposals such as 66 and 69, associated with the Social Transformations Axis, which require a responsible party for their implementation. She suggested considering the possibility of explaining the transformations to the population to foster greater understanding and to avoid misinterpretations.

Likewise, Deputy Francisco Ricardo Sagaró, from Santiago de Cuba, proposed incentivizing payments based on fulfillment of performance indicators and implementing wage differentials that encourage, among other things, the pursuit of higher education and performance-based pay.

On another note, Deputy Ailyn Febles asserted that these are changes for all Cubans, not just a select few, measures that will allow, despite the blockade, “more Cuban-style socialism.”

She acknowledged that all companies are national and that the functioning of the business system must be based on socialism, and she emphasized the importance of direct dialogue with the population regarding the significance of these measures.

Similarly, Ana Teresa Igarza maintained that the fundamental challenge of these reforms lies in their implementation and in preserving the Commander’s founding vision and the achievements already attained.

She considered it the right time, given the transformations, to discuss the Business Law, considering the multitude of stakeholders involved, and she emphasized that the productive linkage platform is applicable to the entire business sector.

She proposed that mipyme not be evaluated by the number of employees but by their revenue and profitability.

At another point, Deputy Leydis María Labrador commented on the legal safeguards for the proposals and transformations, noting that the Constitution supports the measures, and considered that based on the political foundations of the Magna Carta, there is a way to validate these proposals.

Deputy José Carlos del Toro Ríos, president of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba (ANEC), emphasized that the proposals presented are also the result of analyses and contributions made by Cuban economists. He indicated that the organization is committed to the process of communicating the reforms and to monitoring their implementation, in order to contribute to the identification and mitigation of risks. He also expressed his support for the changes and reaffirmed the commitment to advance in defense of socialism, under the premise put forth by Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz: to change everything that must be changed to preserve what is essential.

Speaking during the debate, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, stressed that the proposed economic and social transformations do not signify a renunciation of socialism, but rather a search for how to continue building it under the specific conditions of Cuba, a country that has faced the blockade imposed by the United States for decades.

He pointed out that this is Cuban socialism and explained that the proposals are the result of contributions from economists, the study of experiences in other socialist countries, and the extensive debate that has taken place in the country over the years.

He recalled that many of the measures were already included in the first version of the Guidelines and considered that, regardless of the current complex scenario, the country must move forward with these transformations.

“We have reached a moment of maturity, of reflection, characteristic of the debate that has taken place over all these years, which is telling us that we have to continue defending socialism, but building it with some transformations,” he stated.

Díaz-Canel noted that, even in a more favorable economic context, it would have been necessary to undertake these changes, albeit under more comfortable circumstances. He added that the main challenge is to preserve and expand the social justice built by the Revolution, for which it is essential to have an economy capable of generating the necessary resources.

“We all talk about maintaining social justice, but the first thing we have to do is produce. If we don’t produce, if we don’t generate wealth, if we don’t provide quality services that are inclusive and comprehensive, what kind of social justice are we going to defend?” he reflected.

The president affirmed that social justice requires a solid economic foundation and emphasized that the priority is to work, produce, and create wealth. “In such difficult conditions, there is only one way to do it right: by innovating,” he concluded.

Speaking at the close of the exchange, Political Bureau member and Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz highlighted the depth of the analyses conducted both in the Political Bureau and in the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party and in the extraordinary session of the National Assembly, and emphasized the enriching and transformative nature of the debate.

He emphasized that the interventions of the deputies in the debate were not limited to supporting the proposals, but also incorporated concrete proposals that imply modifications and even new changes. In that regard, he reported that the working group tasked with drafting the document will immediately begin a revision process to incorporate the proposals, opinions, and criteria contributed during the analysis, with the aim of creating a single document.

Marrero Cruz clarified that the proposed transformations constitute the “what” and that the next step is to develop the “how”; that is, the mechanisms for their implementation and a more precise definition of their scope. He noted that many of the proposals made by the deputies are precisely part of this implementation phase, where the measures must be finalized and expanded so that their results can be observed.

He acknowledged that this is an arduous and complex process, requiring rigorous management and coordination among various institutions. He explained that, by decision adopted at the highest level, the Government is responsible for directing and managing the entire implementation process; the National Assembly of People’s Power and its president, Esteban Lazo Hernández, are responsible for providing legal support for the changes; and member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the Party, Roberto Morales Ojeda, is personally responsible for giving this process a political guarantee.

The Prime Minister emphasized that the country’s top leadership has assumed responsibility for comprehensively guiding the process stemming from the proposed economic and social transformations.

José Amado Ricardo Guerra, member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of the Council of Ministers, read a letter from Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, in which he expressed his support for the proposed economic and social transformations. In the message, the leader of the Revolution expressed his agreement with the measures presented and his conviction that they contribute to the goal of strengthening socialism and preserving the gains achieved in the complex circumstances facing the country.

NOTES

[1] OSDE is the Spanish-language acronym for Organizaciones Superiores de Dirección Empresarial (Higher Organizations of Business Management). It refers to entities in Cuba that oversee state enterprises in sectors such as water and sanitation.

[2] The mipyme, an acronym in Spanish for micro-, small-, and medium-sized businesses, were permitted to operate in Cuba beginning in 2021. They can be established as state, private, or mixed entities, but are prohibited in certain strategic sectors such as health, telecommunications, energy, defense, and the media.

[3] Etecsa is the state-owned telecommunications company.

Subscribe now

Marrero Cruz: “These transformations do not constitute a deviation from the socialist project; on the contrary, they respond to the inherent logic of its development”

Statement by Manuel Marrero Cruz, Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, at the Third Extraordinary Session of the National Assembly of People’s Power in its 10th Legislature

Author: Manuel Marrero Cruz

June 22, 2026

(Shorthand Versions - Republic of Cuba)

Comrade Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution;

Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic;

Comrade Esteban Lazo Hernández, President of the National Assembly of People’s Power and of the Council of State;

Commander of the Rebel Army, José Ramón Machado Ventura;

Dear Deputies;

Fellow Cubans:

As we all know, our country is facing one of its most complex moments since the Special Period. A combination of unprecedented U.S. coercive measures against Cuba has been implemented, even leading to the interruption of fuel supplies and all sources of foreign currency revenue. This has logically had a significant impact on the deterioration and instability of the energy infrastructure and, consequently, on the quality of life of millions of Cubans.

We have never denied our own errors and shortcomings; however, this set of factors has consistently influenced the effective implementation of the transformations to our Economic and Social Model, approved at the 6th Party Congress in 2011. These transformations yielded positive results until mid-2019, when the U.S. government substantially intensified its sanctions policy, which was further reinforced in early January 2025.

In this context, the Party and the Government, in the legitimate exercise of their sovereign power, have been promoting measures to reactivate the economy and correct distortions, a process that has been strengthened by the approval of the Government’s Economic and Social Program, validated by our people through popular consultation.

In the current scenario, taking this vital force, this popular sentiment, as our direct reference point, we have decided to propose transformations of strategic impact on the nation’s Economic and Social Model, without this implying a renunciation of preserving the principal achievements of the Revolution.

The transformations we will present find their primary foundation in the thinking of the Commander-in-Chief, not as a renunciation of the construction of socialism, but as a condition for its preservation. In 1993, in the midst of the Special Period, he warned: “Today, life, reality, the dramatic situation the world is experiencing, this unipolar world, compels us to do what we would never have done otherwise if we had had capital and if we had had the technology to do it.”

Without ever abandoning socialism, these transformations have been designed based on the guiding principle of doing what is necessary to preserve what is essential.

The expansion of participation for all economic actors on equal terms, and of foreign investment, or the acceptance of market mechanisms as instruments for resource allocation, do not constitute, under this logic, a capitulation, but rather the sovereign exercise of adapting development instruments to the specific circumstances of the country.

Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, in leading the process of updating the Cuban Economic and Social Model, formalized in the Guidelines and Conceptualization approved at the last Party congresses, bases his premise on avoiding dogmatism and inertia; on rejecting the mechanical association between socialism and egalitarianism; and on recognizing that socialist planning does not exclude, but rather must incorporate and regulate, market rules.

Comrades:

In developing the proposed transformations, the guidelines of the Army General and the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic were considered, as well as the Government’s 2026 Economic and Social Program, the proposed update to the Conceptualization of the Economic and Social Model, and the resolutions of the Congress of the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba.

The results of consultations with 46 comrades were also taken into account. These included key State and Government officials, heads of national entities, presidents of State Business Organizations (OSDEs), experts and academics, representatives of the Party’s and National Assembly’s economic commissions, representatives of the National Association of Economists and Accountants (ANEC), economists, and 87 members of the Auxiliary Structure of the Party’s Central Committee.

A total of 390 proposals were received, of which 66.7% were accepted. The remaining proposals correspond to the subsequent implementation process, other positive assessments of the document, and aspects that do not constitute transformations per se.
As a result of the analysis of the proposed transformations made in the Political Bureau, 69 recommendations were incorporated into the document.

Yesterday, as Comrade Lazo stated, a broad debate took place during the Extraordinary Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, and the proposals and reflections from that debate are being analyzed to enrich this document.

The document presented here includes 176 proposed transformations grouped into 23 fundamental pillars of the country’s economic and social life.

Among the main transformations proposed as part of the Economic Management System are those related to the management model of economic actors. Regarding state-owned socialist enterprises, the following decisions were made:

To expand the powers of the state-owned enterprise system so that it operates with greater autonomy and under similar conditions to other economic actors. This includes carrying out any lawful activity, without abandoning its primary social purpose. From now on, any measures approved for other actors will also apply to state-owned socialist enterprises.

To decentralize the power to approve wholesale and retail prices to the state-owned enterprise system. The training will take into account costs, expenses, market trends, value chains, and the vertical and horizontal relationships between different economic actors.

Resize the higher-level business management organizations (OSDEs), excluding state functions and those that are the responsibility of individual companies.

It is essential to understand that the fact that companies are integrated into higher-level business management organizations does not mean they can lose autonomy in their management and operations.

The OSDEs (Superior Organizations of Business Development) will be empowered to create state-owned enterprises and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), and, in turn, the companies themselves will be empowered to approve their subsidiaries and state-owned MSMEs. Both actors—the OSDEs and the companies—will be empowered to decide on mergers, dissolutions, liquidations, and other organizational changes, as appropriate.

Currently, all these powers are centralized in the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
Furthermore, the OSDEs will be empowered to define their own structures and staffing levels, as well as to group administrative positions or subcontract services.

The established procedures for companies to approve the allocation of profits after taxes will be made more flexible.

The functions and powers of the Governing Boards will be updated to make their operation more flexible.

Allow access to the foreign exchange market under the new conditions resulting from the implementation of these transformations for business entities participating in supply chains.

The definition of salary scales is decentralized for the business sector. Salary levels negotiated with workers, with union participation, will depend solely on the companies’ economic and financial capacity.

It is proposed to change the relationship between the State Budget and the business sector, including the review and gradual elimination of the financial burden and subsidies to businesses.

To give an idea of the scale, the State Budget subsidizes the business sector with 92.5 billion pesos; of this, 50% is exclusively allocated to subsidizing electricity rates.

Provincial Governments and Municipal Administrative Councils are empowered to create, establish, merge, dissolve, and liquidate local state-owned enterprises and other organizational structures. This empowers municipalities to approve state and non-state economic actors within their jurisdiction.

Reduce to the bare minimum the indicators necessary to measure the efficiency of the state-owned enterprise system.

Enable and encourage companies, including private ones, to make financial investments.

Design financial instruments that allow for the capitalization of companies without the participation of the State Budget.

Implement a national program for the valuation and titling of state-owned enterprise assets. This refers to the well-known appraisals as a method to define the real value of our assets, and for this purpose, it is proposed to carry out a national inventory of tangible and intangible assets of the enterprise system with market valuation.

Issue enforceable ownership certificates that can serve as collateral for bank loans.

Allow state-owned enterprises to monetize underutilized assets through long-term leasing to different actors in the economy and to foreign investment.

It is proposed to design an efficient and competitive enterprise system that generates income to support the services of social sector organizations. This will allow for additional revenue streams, without neglecting the Budget’s responsibility to support our Health, Education, Culture, and Sports systems.

Procedures will be established for bankruptcy, liquidation, and asset restructuring in the business sector, addressing sustained losses.

A highly significant business proposal is to transform state-owned socialist enterprises into commercial companies, structured by shares or equity stakes. To this end, the State will define its shareholding in various sectors of the economy, guaranteeing a majority stake in strategic sectors.

State-owned enterprises will be able to purchase shares from other companies; non-state management entities and individuals will also be able to purchase shares, according to a phased approach to be defined. This process will require classifying the companies.

Specifically regarding non-state management entities and agricultural cooperatives, it is proposed to authorize the creation of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and non-agricultural cooperatives pending approval on the economic actors’ platform, a process that has been significantly delayed.

To date, 12,751 non-state MSMEs have been approved, and 7,254 applications are in various stages of processing. Of these, 3,505 have been certified and updated by the applicants—meaning they have been returned—and the remaining applications will be approved during the rest of the month.

The applicants who are updating those 3,505 applications have been asked to resubmit them to us once they are finished, so we can expedite their review and approval. We need to continue adding new actors who produce goods and services.

This will reduce the requirements, procedures, and timelines for the creation, conversion, and operation of non-state management entities, even defining and, in some cases, eliminating the need for administrative approval, thereby minimizing processing times.

Allow the hiring of more than 100 workers. Currently, MSMEs are limited to 100 employees, but exceeding this number will be classified as private companies, not MSMEs.

Allow an individual to own more than one private company. Currently, an individual can only own one MSME; this decision would allow them to own more than one.

Expand the corporate structures under which private companies can be organized, including corporations, as previously stated for state-owned enterprises.

Allow the same individual to hold shares in more than one private company. That is, they can own two or more private companies, but can also hold shares or stakes in several companies or MSMEs.

Grant real rights, usufruct rights, and surface rights to private companies or cooperatives for the purpose of making investments in the development of their productive or service activities. Currently, this is completely prohibited, which is why many businesses operate from people’s homes. With this decision, they can apply for land and construct the building they need to develop their business.

Authorize that cash deposits from non-state actors be credited to bank accounts in the same currency in which they were deposited, subject to a declaration of the lawful origin of these funds, but with the right to withdraw that money in the same currency in which it was deposited.

Allow non-state management entities to develop other productive and service activities without abandoning their main activity; that is, eliminate this complementary or secondary business purpose.

Reduce the list of prohibited activities for non-state economic actors.

We are finalizing the update of Decree 107, which currently includes—and remains in effect—125 activities not authorized for different forms of non-state management. As part of this process, which is nearing completion, we have identified that approximately 70 of the current prohibitions can be eliminated.

The decision to streamline and minimize the approval process for these non-state actors will require a review of the Economic Actors Platform, utilizing artificial intelligence to ensure its transparency, traceability, and efficiency at all times.

Transform the institutional structure and the forms of ownership and management of the agricultural sector’s productive base. Allow private companies to participate in agricultural activities within this sector. So far, we’ve seen cooperatives; some producers have over 300 farm workers, yet they aren’t organized. This means we must recognize that they are agricultural businesses.

We need to develop an input market with the participation of all stakeholders and with access to the foreign exchange market.

Create a National Platform for Production Linkages that establishes the obligation for companies to publish their needs, projects, input requirements, and subcontracting needs, as well as the granting of tax incentives based on the levels of purchases of national products.

I will now turn to the transformations in property relations, as well as the differences between ownership and management:

First, social ownership of the fundamental means of production is reaffirmed, and progress will be made toward non-state management of these means.

Allow the purchase of shares in state-owned enterprises by state and non-state legal entities, both national and foreign, as well as individuals.

Allow the sale of state-owned properties to national and foreign legal entities and individuals, including Cubans residing abroad, provided that the lawful origin of the funds is demonstrated.

Create an investment program that incentivizes the participation of Cuban companies, both those owned by Cubans residing in the country and those living abroad.

Recognize the legitimate growth of the financial and material assets of legal entities and individuals. It is logical that if we are providing the opportunity to expand businesses, to own more companies, this legitimate growth of both financial and material wealth should be recognized.

It is defined as guaranteeing the protection of labor and social rights without permitting the indiscriminate exploitation of man by man.

Regarding transformations in the economic planning system, the following is proposed:

Improve medium- and long-term planning, focusing on development design and prioritizing macroeconomic equilibrium; reduce structural problems and provide policy signals to different economic actors.

Incorporate the economic, commercial, and service activities of non-state economic actors into the projections of the National Economic and Social Development Plan up to 2030 and into Provincial and Municipal Development Strategies. We have recognized that there is currently no clear control over all of what these actors produce and do, and therefore, this incorporation aims to include them in strategic, territorial, and local planning.

It is vital to transform the planning system based on the powers granted to different actors through these transformations, in the pursuit of material and financial resources. For this reason, a transition to a financial planning model is proposed, where the State progressively relinquishes the physical distribution of resources, giving greater weight to market signals.

State-owned enterprises will have decentralized access to inputs, foreign currency, fuel, and other resources for their production through market mechanisms. The resources the State acquires will be prioritized for all social institutions and services; therefore, the entire state and non-state business system must use its own resources and management to meet these demands.

State orders will be executed through a contractual framework between supplying and requesting entities.

The planning process must consider the satisfaction of domestic market demand; regardless of the actors involved, it is essential to take into account and produce what is demanded in the country.

Maintaining the fundamental balances of the economy. We must have basic control over the balances of agriculture, food, foreign exchange, energy, and the State Budget, transforming them into instruments for diagnosis, anticipation, and policy correction.

Expanding the limits for approving investments through the decentralization of powers to state-owned enterprises, commercial companies, and foreign investment. Based on what? On their own capabilities, both financial and in terms of access to resources. In other words, making an investment less of a burden; if you have the resources, you can decide to make that investment.

Regarding the transformations and resizing of the budgeted sector, the proposal focuses primarily on resizing the Central State Administration.

A proposed law is already circulating that implies a significant reduction in ministries, which also includes the reduction and downsizing of all budgeted structures of the State and the Government.

The above will also impact the resizing of the structures and staffing levels of territorial and local administrations.

Transformations are proposed regarding the strengthening and autonomy of municipalities. This empowerment of municipalities, this need to achieve autonomy at the municipal level, we propose starting with the decentralization, from the different levels—national, provincial—to the municipalities, of the following: strategic planning; territorial and urban planning; food sovereignty and food and nutritional security; community services; and the promotion of local economic development, which includes diversifying and strengthening their productive fabric, considering the participation of different economic actors, Cubans residing in the country or abroad, and including local production systems.

This also includes the capacity to export and import directly, as well as to generate and retain foreign currency for current and capital expenditures within the municipality itself.

It also includes stimulating and managing foreign direct investment, which can be approved by the municipalities themselves without the need for further procedures.

It also includes the administrative management of the municipality’s human resources; local financial and tax budget management; environmental management and addressing climate change; social services and assistance; governance, popular oversight, and citizen participation; and the management of knowledge and training projects.

These transformations empower municipalities to approve investments, just like businesses, in accordance with their development strategy, which includes managing projects for Cubans residing in the country and abroad, and defining credit modalities that support their strategic planning.

It also includes creating funds within the municipalities based on contributions from the profits of the business system, whether state-owned, private, or cooperative, and from shareholdings. Because a municipality, in addition to having its own municipal companies, will be able to buy shares in state-owned companies and hold a stake. And all those dividends would form part of this development fund, where each participant can submit projects for the development and promotion of activities within the territory.

The municipal and provincial agricultural delegations are being eliminated, and a new structure is being created at the territorial level.

What would this look like? It must be said that today the functions of these provincial and municipal delegations are completely distorted. Rather than fulfilling the state functions for which they are designed, they even engage in business-like activities.

How would national subordination, that is, to the Ministry of Agriculture, be affected in the provinces and municipalities? Structures and offices will be created to manage state policy on land use and state control of livestock; and municipal subordination will be responsible for managing policy, promoting, and controlling food production.

With the same personnel we have today, we can create this national office to control land and livestock, and also provide municipalities with a structure to control and promote food production for different actors and production methods.

We must diversify the mechanisms and channels for revenue collection in municipalities to strengthen their management and development.

Consolidate the local economic system with the participation of different stakeholders.

Establish payment for solid waste collection. This is important, and despite the complex situation, we must continue seeking alternative solutions and ensure the cleanliness of our cities.

It is proposed to charge and apply differentiated rates, without subsidies, so that all economic actors, both state and non-state, pay for solid waste collection services. Subsidized rates for households, based on income levels, would be offered to the population, with the guarantee of collection.

Transform the requirements and management of local development projects. Greater incentives should be given to encourage economic and productive projects to transition to alternative state and non-state management models.

Recognize the capacity for association among municipalities to solve common problems. Today we have large municipalities with abundant resources and small municipalities with limited productive activity that can form partnerships. It’s even possible for two municipalities to decide on certain services and products located within the same territory, with those products destined for both municipalities. Examples of this exist today, but it would be recognized and generalized wherever it benefits both municipalities.

Given the complex energy situation, a series of actions have been implemented as part of General Objective No. 9 of the Government Program, to which we now propose adding the following energy transformations:

Allow the participation of private and foreign capital in the import and marketing of fuels, including the retail network. We have opened up the process and removed all obstacles so that all forms of management that are able to do so can acquire fuel and market it in the country.

Expand and restructure the management of the service station network, including mobile service stations. To this end, establish service stations managed by different economic actors, incorporating photovoltaic systems with energy storage so that they become independent of the national power grid, and encourage the installation of charging stations to market electric vehicle charging services.

Formulas are already being implemented where some micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) are operating service stations, while others are requesting permission to operate service stations or bring in mobile service stations. What we are asking is that everyone who is going to do this bring their own photovoltaic system so that it doesn’t become an additional burden. And, furthermore, we have asked that service stations that have been closed for years, located in various state-owned enterprises, be reopened and put back into operation.

We are also requesting the design of financing programs, the streamlining of requirements, and the expansion of guarantees for granting loans to legal entities and individuals that incentivize the energy transition, and the stimulation of investment from the demand side.

We are also requesting that state-owned enterprises be allowed to use foreign platforms to process payments for the purchase and sale of fuel.

We are finally requesting the application of a 1% physical or financial tax on fuel imports, earmarked for operational inventories and primarily for social institutions.

We are also requesting the application of a 1% physical or financial tax on fuel imports, destined for operational inventories and intended primarily for social institutions. Reduce the tax by an amount equivalent to the investment made by those economic actors, whether state-owned or non-state-owned, who voluntarily invest in renewable energy sources as part of their social responsibility in public service, social, or care centers, including street lighting. It is already known that several MSMEs and other actors have been installing these systems in clinics, funeral homes, and banks. And to incentivize this, what are we saying? Anyone who makes this type of investment will be able to deduct the amount from their taxes.

Regarding food production, which is another priority included in the Government Program under General Objective No. 3, the following transformations have been conceived:

Modify land management and use for all economic actors; however, it is made clear that the principle of land ownership by all the people will be maintained.

The real right of usufruct over the land is granted to legal entities, state, private, mixed or natural persons who request it, for an indefinite time and the amount of areas or lands, according to the project they present and thus it is approved, for all agricultural, forestry, tobacco productions, as well as for eco and agro-tourism development projects.

The above impacts the proposed Law on Land Use and Possession; that is, the limitations it imposes would need to be broadened somewhat. But one concept must be clear: we cannot continue to impose obstacles and limitations on those who have the will to make the land productive.

The state-owned enterprise that manages the land, socialist property of all the people, should be empowered to grant it in usufruct to applicants through the corresponding contract, complying with legal regulations. Currently, these powers do not belong to the enterprises. Currently, it is the enterprises, and even cooperatives, that have the responsibility of managing this land on behalf of the State and the people; but granting it is a bureaucratic process that goes from there upwards. Therefore, the enterprise could do it directly.

The grant of these lands in usufruct to agricultural production cooperatives that manage them should also be authorized, once, in this case, it is approved in the general assembly of the cooperatives and in compliance with current legal regulations.

Eliminate the requirement for direct and stable employment on the land by usufructuaries. Currently, someone who requests land because they have resources and want to hire people to work it, if they have another business and cannot dedicate themselves to farming, even if they can finance and import the inputs, cannot do so because they are required to be physically present on the land. With this, we are eliminating this prohibition, and anyone who requests land and can hire people and import the inputs to produce more efficiently will be allowed to do so.

Evaluate the definition of “labor collectives,” a formula currently used in agriculture, where it works well in some areas but not in others. The idea is to reorganize this as a productive model and thus propose the structural transformations that this requires.

Transform the management model of cooperatives, authorizing them to directly import and market the fuels they need for their own use.

Grant cooperatives the authority to conduct foreign trade directly, enabling them to export products and import agricultural inputs and technologies without excessive bureaucratic hurdles.

Allow cooperatives to directly manage external financing for exportable production, import substitution, and investments.

Today, sometimes, financing from an international fund has to come through here, through Havana, and intermediaries are sought out until, by the time it reaches the cooperative, the place where the project is to be developed, some of the money has already been invested, and not necessarily in increased production.

Allow cooperatives to open bank accounts abroad and in Cuban banks; they can open foreign currency accounts abroad and in our banks.

Make agricultural marketing more flexible, recognizing the market’s role in price formation.

Decentralize and empower the formation of prices for agricultural products to entities within the state agricultural business system and the non-state sector, to cooperatives, and to all producers.

The contracting and price-setting of agricultural products will be agreed upon between the producer and the buyer.

Standardize the tax regime for all economic actors that produce, process, and market food; incentivize all producers with these tax regimes.

Create a National Price Information System for agricultural product markets, with reference price publications on various digital platforms.

Design incentives for all economic actors to trade agricultural inputs in both foreign currency and local currency, and to have access to the foreign exchange market.

Authorize all economic actors to engage in direct sales.

Promote the creation of input markets in foreign currency, open to domestic and foreign individuals and legal entities, with simplified processes.

Approve a special tax regime for all economic actors participating in these markets, with incentives and bonuses.

Establish banking procedures that guarantee the execution of foreign currency transactions for the sale of inputs to producers and payments to suppliers abroad, through the use of POS terminals for payments by debit card, transfers, cash payments, e-commerce, and other authorized payment methods.

Increase financing for the primary production sector by expanding and decentralizing the Agricultural Development Fund and creating a bank for Agricultural Development.

Decentralize the use of the Agricultural Development Fund to municipalities, tailored to the characteristics of each territory, upon presentation of projects that contribute to the Development Strategies related to food production.

The humanist vocation of the Cuban Revolution places human beings, their well-being, and their development at the center and as its most important objective. Therefore, in designing these proposals, we consider the following social transformations essential:

Digitizing and making transparent the management of aid through the use of the Soberanía platform for real-time updates of the registry of individuals and families in vulnerable situations. This will systematize the different forms of assistance, their traceability, and public and governmental oversight.

This will be facilitated by the recent update based on visits to individuals identified as being in situations of multidimensional vulnerability. In other words, the number of people in this situation has already been visited and identified.

Establishing that all economic actors, both public and private, national and foreign, as part of their social responsibility at the community level, in terms of financial resources, material resources, and services, participate directly in the following activities. (Currently, this is done by companies and MSMEs. We are not asking for it to be mandatory, but we need everyone to join in raising awareness so that all economic actors in the country can participate and support these social institutions.)

Which ones are we referring to? Supporting pension payments through agreements with banks. The problem—which remains unresolved—faced by elderly people who receive their pensions via debit cards but struggle to access them and purchase basic necessities. There are already initiatives in our neighborhood: a MSME, a self-employed worker, or a company is paying them in cash, and the bank deducts the amount paid to the pensioner from the taxes on this payment method.

Also, supporting the soup kitchens within the family assistance system and community food centers. If an MSME wants to manage a Family Assistance System while maintaining service to these elderly people and also sell other items for profit, we agree, provided the social purpose and care for these individuals are maintained.

Supporting homes for children without parental care.

Supporting nursing homes, maternity wards, senior centers, and other social service facilities.

Establishing differentiated pricing, discounts, even free services, or solidarity vouchers for people in vulnerable situations.

To assist individuals in situations of multidimensional vulnerability identified by local governments.

To support social and healthcare transportation.

To support public health institutions and educational centers.

To contribute to community hygiene and sanitation in critical areas.

To provide basic necessities to social institutions.

To create monthly food baskets for individuals and families in vulnerable situations.

To offer employment, training, and apprenticeship opportunities to these individuals.

To create local emergency funds with private contributions.

To enable private premises as collection and distribution points in emergency situations.

To support funeral services for families without resources.

To promote fairs and community markets in vulnerable communities.

To strengthen social work with a proactive and preventative approach by prioritizing its work in municipalities.

Providing small-scale assets for the development of non-state activities to people in situations of multidimensional vulnerability, as a way to enter the workforce and overcome this condition. So, rather than just stimulating, we should assist people in need, connecting them to society. If there’s a space available, we could say, “We offer you this space so you can sell something, generate income, and support yourself,” or if we can sell them an electric motorcycle or a tricycle so they can pick up passengers. This would allow us to incorporate that person into providing a public service and become self-sufficient.

Designing educational, training, postgraduate, cultural, and other selected services that constitute sources of income for the social sector.

Designing differentiated rates for childcare services. Currently, the fee is symbolic, and we charge the same to someone with a low income as to someone with a higher income. We would implement this for both childcare centers and semi-boarding schools, based on family income.

Design tax benefits for workshops employing people with disabilities to encourage them to increase their personal income.

Given the need to move forward with eliminating subsidies, the following transformations are proposed:

Eliminate product subsidies, transforming them into subsidies for people, and implement this gradually, starting with products that are cross-cutting across the economy and impact production and services. This requires passing on the real costs to wholesale and retail prices.

To guarantee assistance to those who need it, in addition to the social assistance budget, a social protection fund will be created as a prerequisite for these transformations. This fund will be financed by the savings generated by eliminating these product subsidies. Companies will be able to sell their products at higher prices, and the money saved from the budget will be used to create a fund to subsidize those who need it.

Another area where we propose transformations is in the labor and wage sector, and here I want to elaborate:

The most vulnerable sector is the state-funded sector, which is why this measure proposes implementing a comprehensive salary reform in the state-funded sector. However, its scope extends beyond this, and I will explain:

This measure primarily benefits a sector—the state-funded sector, I mean—that encompasses 51% of all workers in the country, including those in the social sectors, achievements of the Revolution.

That is why it has been decided to increase the minimum wage, which is currently 2,100 pesos to 3,210 pesos. While we recognize that this is still insufficient, it represents a 53% increase based on the actual resources available to cover it (Applause). This requires an investment of 42.5 billion pesos, but it is a first step that we have no doubt will have a positive impact.

Its implementation includes updating all salary scale groups; Since the minimum wage has increased from 2,100 to 3,210 pesos—an increase of over 1,000 pesos—it will affect all levels of the business sector, impacting 51% of workers.

This decision will be implemented starting in July, so workers will receive this benefit with their August paychecks.

Why did I say the impact is broader? Because although this measure covers the entire public sector, we want to clarify that it will impact and benefit the private sector. While companies have been granted the authority to define their own pay scales and salary systems, from now on they will be required to pay at least the increased minimum wage. In every company where someone currently earns the minimum wage, those salaries will increase by 53%, and this applies to all types of workers in the economy. No one in Cuba can earn less than the minimum wage. Now we must implement and review this throughout the entire public sector, and even in the private sector, to ensure that no worker is left unprotected or excluded from this decision.

As a matter of policy, we propose defining—which is an important and transformative element, and we intend to do it every year—the minimum wage for the following year, based on the country’s financial situation and inflation.

And, correspondingly, also define the amount of Social Security benefits and pensions. As these are increased, this will have a positive impact on pensions, as well as on salary increases based on inflation trends.

Regarding the Social Security pension system, establish the following:

The elimination of the limit on the contribution scale for the non-state sector. Those who wish to contribute to Social Security at levels higher than the current scales may do so, and when they receive those benefits later, they will receive more money.

That people who work in both the state and non-state sectors, including those with multiple jobs simultaneously, be able to register and contribute to the corresponding schemes for each activity and thus later benefit from those benefits.

That of the 30 minimum years of service required for the contributory scheme, up to a maximum of ten years be considered if the individuals have dedicated those years to family care.

This measure stems from the country’s complex demographic situation, where policies have been approved to encourage care for those in need. Therefore, those who contribute to this caregiving—those who dedicate themselves to caring for a family member or someone who is ill—will have their time worked and will be considered eligible for social security contributions, which will be deducted from the required 30 years of service.

The administrative approval process for holding multiple jobs will be eliminated for technicians, healthcare professionals, researchers, teachers, professors, and other public officials as determined. Due to the nature of the work performed in some sectors, specific regulations will need to be established; this will require an implementation procedure.

Incentives will be established to retain the skilled workforce, with an emphasis on young people and women, who represent a significant pool of potential employees in the country.

Establish a monthly income support payment equivalent to a minimum wage, to be repaid later when they are employed, for young people between 18 and 30 years old who are neither studying nor employed, who enroll in a training course to prepare them for employment. If the training is for employment in a government agency, the funding will be covered by the budget; if it is for employment in a private company, the company will cover the costs. One of the serious problems we face is the large number of people who are neither studying nor employed. We must continue to work towards getting all adolescents and young adults into education, and for those who are able to work, this measure will provide them with financial support to prepare themselves and enter the workforce.

To empower employers, in agreement with the union, to negotiate reduced working hours and corresponding payments for professional activities—including other non-professional activities—which will be incorporated into the collective bargaining agreement.

Life has shown us, especially in the current circumstances, that in many professions it makes no sense to have people sitting for eight hours, and that the same results can be achieved, and their function and scope fulfilled, through an agreement with management and the union without requiring such continuous presence.

To establish, for the business and public sector, that employees of the same entity can perform other professional, technical, construction maintenance, and other activities. An office worker might be an economist, but they also know about electricity and plumbing; they could perform a job or repair at their workplace and be paid in addition to their regular salary.

To allow teleworking from abroad. We have many cases, requests from people who, for various reasons, travel abroad and can, through teleworking, continue developing projects and fulfilling their employers’ missions.

Include professional development abroad for personal reasons, related to the professional profile, as a justified cause for suspending social service, of course, with the employer’s consent. That young man graduated, was placed, but reached an agreement with the employer, and has a master’s degree abroad that will allow for his professional development; this will be taken into consideration.

Directly empower the entities to determine which workers whose employment relationship ends due to economic, technological, and structural reasons, after evaluation by the governing body, in agreement with the union, and with analysis in the assembly of members and workers.

These workers who, due to a company decision, interrupt their work, those in this situation, will receive monetary protection equivalent to a minimum of three and a maximum of six times their basic salary, depending on their position, until the situation is resolved.

Establish protection equivalent to one month’s pay for workers hired by self-employed individuals, who are currently unprotected. If a self-employed worker has someone hired and tells them, “Don’t come in tomorrow,” they are left without protection. This would obligate employers to cover at least one month’s salary.

The banking and financial system requires profound modernization, especially for the effective implementation of these transformations. Therefore, we propose:

Promoting private capital participation in banking. This includes:

Expanding banking and non-banking financial institutions owned by private companies, cooperatives, and foreign investment with corporate and universal banking licenses.

Private banks will operate under the supervision of the Central Bank of Cuba, under the same regulatory conditions as state-owned banks.

The establishment of non-banking financial institutions to support the banking sector, with both domestic and foreign private capital, will be permitted for the provision of microloans.

Eliminating restrictions on foreign currency payments between businesses with foreign capital and their domestic suppliers. Currently, all foreign investment can access a domestic supplier that pays in foreign currency.

Allowing legal entities and individuals to open foreign currency accounts without prior administrative authorization. Currently, this is a cumbersome process involving various ministries; this would be eliminated.

Implement a regulatory framework for virtual assets and the use of financial technology, and expand its use for international and domestic payment and collection transactions. Create financial entities exclusively dedicated to and specializing in virtual assets.

Update the interest rate system, adjusting it to current economic conditions, including sovereign bonds.

Restoring the role of bank credit as an essential function in the economy, diversifying collateral and defining its implementation, establishing credit limit standards per client, simplifying approval processes, and creating new products, among other actions.

Issuing bonds in foreign financial markets in currencies other than the US dollar.

Introducing new platforms that complement the financial market, prioritizing the stock market and the central securities depository.

Designing new, high-quality products and services for each sector, supporting financial innovation.

Implementing the last-mile payment agent model to formalize remittance flows through a private channel.

Designing alternative avenues for bank capitalization in addition to resources from the State Budget.

Updating the strategy with a new approach to managing external debt, taking into account current complex conditions.

Accelerating the automation of banking processes and reducing the paperwork associated with the services provided, a demand from the public.

Grant Transfermóvil a license as a non-bank financial institution.

Complete the process of eliminating limits on bank transfers and withdrawals by individuals and legal entities, both domestic and foreign. Another demand is the 5,000 pesos limit. Open all of that up.

Other transformations in this banking and financial sector are directed toward the foreign exchange market. In this regard, the following is proposed:

Resize the official foreign exchange market, based on all these decisions, as well as the remittance market, with the participation of non-state economic actors, which includes granting licenses for the operation of private exchange houses.

Create a digital exchange market in real time with authorized agents.

Implement a currency auction system, something that is done in all countries and that we, all actors, can do too.

Carry out successive devaluations of the national currency to reduce exchange rate differences. Companies that do not support the devaluation will be liquidated. This measure is aimed at leaving behind the 1 by 24, which no longer makes sense. We cannot make big jumps in rates. Because? Because this has an impact on inflation, but successive devaluations will be made, that is, the rate of 1 in 24 will be changed, which will become closer to reality.

This includes incorporating segment III, which is what the Bank offers, with that rate of about 500 pesos or a little more: the diplomatic sector, state MSMEs, foreign investment that operate with non-state forms of management, guaranteeing that no arbitration occurs. What does that mean? If you are going to go to the market and you can sell dollars there for 500 pesos, it cannot be that the electricity service that they are providing to that mixed company is at 1 for 24, subsidized. Therefore, whoever agrees must also pay for their service and carry out those expenses without subsidy.

In the case of companies, which we want to put on equal terms, they will compete freely for the sale, and in a controlled manner for the purchase in the different currency markets.

Create state and private non-banking financial institutions that are dedicated to channeling financial flows, including remittances, through exchange operations.

Establish single exchange windows for all economic actors, as decided.

Expand the corporate purpose of a non-banking financial institution that offers the trust service for the administration of international cooperation funds.

The decentralization of powers and the promotion and consolidation of actors in the economy require undertaking transformations in the tax system:

To this end, it is intended to improve consumption taxation through the gradual implementation of the value added tax, known as VAT. It will begin with certain production-consumption chains and will contemplate reduced tax rates on products in the basket of goods and services.

The above will gradually solve the distortion of applying taxes to the same product throughout the production and commercial chain.

Establish electronic invoicing with incentives to promote its adoption by taxpayers.

Apply a bonus to the sales and services tax based on the level of banked sales. There is a comprehensive program to update banking practices, a necessary process, but one that hasn’t worked well, and therefore, changes are being incorporated to incentivize the use of banked sales.

Reduce the tax burden on the business sector in terms of income tax, with the goal of increasing its growth and investment capacity. Broaden the tax base by eliminating special deductions that are not economically justified and reducing the risk of tax evasion.

Establish a tax on gross income for companies that declare losses for more than two years. This practice has been growing; many MSMEs that declare losses are not paying taxes, and this needs to be stopped. A special tax should be levied, or the companies should be liquidated.

Apply a reduced corporate income tax rate to the agricultural sector, thus continuing to facilitate and stimulate production.

Simplify the calculation and payment of corporate income tax by eliminating the per capita profit component, which implies applying the tax to members of all types of cooperatives.

Design an accelerated depreciation regime for the acquisition of machinery, food production technologies, and industrial processing equipment to facilitate the recovery of these investments.

Reduce the financial burden on entities determined by the contribution of returns on state investment, which is currently conditional on its use for development and capitalization. This is the 60% of the business system that has been analyzed and criticized as being high. The measure aims to reduce this financial burden, but the retained funds will be conditional on their use for the development and capitalization of the companies themselves.

Apply tax incentives to state and non-state economic actors that finance investments in the social sector. Currently, we’re referring to those who install solar panels, etc.; but this would apply to any form of management that decides to contribute to the repair of a school or a hospital. We would give them the possibility of deducting these expenses from their taxes.

Update the personal income tax in accordance with the current inflationary scenario through the following adjustments:

Modify the progressive scale for the annual assessment and payment of the tax. Reduce the number of tax brackets to standardize the application of the tax.

Increase the minimum tax-exempt amount to the level of the country’s average salary at the end of 2025. Otherwise, salaries are not high today, yet the tax burden is. These measures will reduce the personal income tax burden.

Reinstate the simplified tax regime for less complex activities, with an automatic adjustment system based on annual gross income levels. This will allow the National Tax Administration Office to focus its efforts and oversight on larger taxpayers with higher incomes and contributions.

Increase the fixed amounts of the following taxes:

The land transportation tax, based on vehicle type, value, fuel, and other factors; the vessel tax; the tax on documents; environmental taxes; and the fee for registering commercial advertisements.

Design tariffs and incentives that promote domestic production processes and the import of raw materials, materials, technologies, and equipment for renewable energy sources. Anyone importing raw materials and technologies to increase domestic production and contribute to the country’s development should receive greater incentives.

One of the issues with the greatest impact on the population continues to be prices. Therefore, as you have seen, these proposed reforms, especially those related to economic actors and productive activity, include specific changes associated with prices.

Additionally, the power to approve prices and tariffs is being considered for decentralization to businesses and territorial and local administrations. The central government will no longer approve price ceilings.

Price formation based on the expenditure method will be eliminated, and prices will be established using the market reference price or a correlation method, thus defining their position in the value chain.

Let’s move on to the reforms in foreign investment, a sector in which incentive measures have been implemented to encourage greater integration into the economy. The following reforms are proposed as new incentives:

Encourage foreign investment in private companies, which is currently prohibited. This means that a foreign company can form a joint venture with a MSME or a private company, as well as enter into international economic association agreements or other permitted arrangements.

Extend the limit for granting surface rights to 99 years. This limit has been in place until now, and investors say: “I’m coming to invest in Cuba, but it’s complicated. How will I recoup my investment?” Well, we are now extending this limit to 99 years, as well as the right of usufruct for more than 50 years for this foreign investment.

Allow businesses with foreign capital, in any form, to open bank accounts abroad, which is currently an exclusionary procedure, without requiring authorization. In all cases, it is logical that the Central Bank of Cuba and the National Tax Administration Office must be notified so that the corresponding taxes can be paid.

Allow real estate businesses to carry out transactions involving the purchase and sale of residential units. Today, there are real estate activities in the country that are only permitted to lease or rent, not to sell, thus providing this flexibility.

Eliminating the mandatory use of employment agencies to select and hire personnel would remove the limit; a foreign company could freely hire its workers without a third party.

Allowing foreign investment to access its income in foreign currency, operate flexibly in an environment of partial dollarization of the economy, and grant it access to the foreign exchange market.

Reducing documentation and processing times, as well as decentralizing the approval of foreign investment, which includes applying the principle of tacit approval. This means streamlining all the paperwork and consultations, and if no response is received, the applicant is considered to have agreed.

This last point, tacit approval, will be applied to all permitting processes in the country related to issuing licenses for economic, financial, and commercial activities, with a direct impact on the registry process.

Allow foreign investment in Old Havana and other heritage areas that is not currently permitted.

In the area of foreign trade, a transformation of its management has been envisioned, and the following is proposed:

Promoting exports of goods and services, which, through the decentralization of export powers, differentiated incentives, and productive integration with foreign capital, will increase the total value to achieve a sustained trade surplus in goods and services. The current intermediation by state-owned importing companies has proven to be a bureaucratic and inefficient mechanism in most cases. Therefore, today all these management forms will be authorized to import directly.

Applying the principle of negative nomenclature to companies engaged in foreign trade, including foreign investment. Instead of specifying what they are requesting—”you can do this,” “you can do that”—the solution will be a list of what they cannot import; everything else is permitted.

Allowing private companies and cooperatives to directly conduct foreign trade activities, subject to prior authorization from the Ministry. This is what I just explained: that all private companies and cooperatives will be able to export and import directly.

Approve allowing scientific institutions to sell trademarks and patents on the international market.

Another issue that logically raises concerns is the partial dollarization of the economy, which remains necessary under these circumstances. Therefore, the following is required:

Expand the scope of this partial dollarization to include intercompany and commercial transactions, in accordance with the current situation.

Modify the current concept of closed foreign currency schemes, that is, self-financing schemes, toward a formula that would be a contribution scheme based on each company’s foreign currency transactions.

Furthermore, one of the sectors most impacted by the intensified blockade is tourism, which has had to halt operations in most tourist destinations. Recently, secondary sanctions have been applied, leading to the withdrawal of international hotel chains from the country. Therefore, we propose:

To the existing business models in tourism, which are joint ventures and management contracts, we propose the following for all tourism activities: leases, the granting of usufruct rights for a fee, the concession of areas with assets or under development in different regions of the country, and the sale of real estate. For the latter, the sale of real estate, approval will be required on a case-by-case basis, and all such approvals will apply to foreign investors, Cubans residing abroad, and Cubans residing in the country.

Include in the Business Opportunities Portfolio certain areas of the country designated as Economic Development Zones, where special incentive programs will be established.

Allow the application of all business models in the keys, which is currently restricted; in other heritage areas, such as Old Havana and Trinidad, as previously mentioned; and in all tourist destinations in the country where these models are beneficial to the sector and require foreign investment for their development.

Allow real estate development in all tourist areas of the country where this type of business is needed.

Establish the possibility of developing real estate businesses in areas of Havana, which is currently prohibited, and in other urban areas of the country linked to tourism, with no limitations other than those already established.

Allow joint ventures and leasing for the management of tourist marinas, which has also been subject to restrictions.

Approve tax and fiscal benefits for all economic actors involved in ecotourism projects and other specialized tourism models, with the aim of attracting foreign investment and diversifying sustainable and responsible tourism development.

Create an online corporate bank for the tourism sector with international ties that promotes virtual asset services.

Authorize car rental activity, currently exclusive to two tourism companies in the country, to other state-owned enterprises, foreign investment, and non-state management entities capable of investing in, importing, and renting vehicles.

Authorize the establishment of travel agencies for joint ventures, wholly foreign-owned companies, and non-state management entities.

This would authorize private tour guides and sales agents, subject to certification and authorization due to the high level of specialization required for this role.

Approve local destination managers capable of integrating all stakeholders and ensuring the efficient operation of the mixed governance model. There are several regions in the country: Viñales, Trinidad, and others, where there is already a lot of state-run tourism activity, and in some places it surpasses private activity, and managers are needed to integrate all of that tourism product.

It is proposed to evaluate the implementation of a special tax, which does not currently exist in the country, or a contribution from all those who travel to one of these tourist areas, to allocate the funds to sustainability, promotion, and the image of the tourist destinations.

Today, many people have invested in these areas, owning rental properties, restaurants, and so on; however, the State, specifically the Ministry of Tourism, must cover the destination’s promotion and expenses: waste collection, and the maintenance of all infrastructure. This system exists in every country; it exists in Mexico, where tourism institutions are required to contribute to the promotion and sustainability of that tourist area, that tourist destination.

Promoting Cuban brand franchises abroad as a way to generate income is also proposed. This means taking Casas Cuba, a product showcasing all of Cuba’s cultural potential, crafts, products, and so forth, outside of Cuba. The Casas del Habano, the Bodeguita del Medio, and other establishments like the Floridita and Tropicana, which already exist in other countries with tourist franchises that charge admission, are examples of this.

Another sector where we propose transformations is transportation:

To this end, we propose eliminating the restrictions on vehicle acquisition by various economic actors, as well as the established deadlines, and incentivizing photovoltaic electric mobility, including for individuals.

What does this mean? There is a limit of up to six vehicles. MSMEs have grown and need to transport goods, raw materials, and passengers, and we tell them: they cannot buy or import more vehicles. Therefore, we are promoting this, but within that framework, we are incentivizing the import of electric vehicles by removing tariffs and taxes.

Additionally, individuals who can currently ship motorcycles or even tricycles directly from abroad without an importer should also be able to purchase electric cars and ship them directly to the country. And, of course, if the car comes with a complete renewable energy system, it will be exempt from taxes and duties.

Allowing the direct commercial importation of electric vehicles—mopeds, motorcycles, and tricycles—for assembly and sale to legal entities, whether state-owned or private companies, is currently prohibited. This would be done provided the vehicles are accompanied by a charging station powered by a renewable energy source, and in such cases, taxes would be waived.

However, several economic actors, including MSMEs, have already stated: “I can bring in containers of disassembled motorcycles and tricycles to assemble them in Cuba, potentially through a state-owned enterprise. But we would also allow them to sell these vehicles to any individual, legal entity, etc.”

Let’s now turn to the transformations in commerce, gastronomy, and services, sectors that have been undergoing profound changes with the increasing participation of other forms of non-state management.

In light of the above, the following is recommended:

Modify the policy on state administrative management of commerce, gastronomy, and services, prioritizing non-state management models and foreign investment options for the promotion, development, and management of these activities.

Reorganize wholesale trade, prioritizing the creation of wholesale markets with direct access for individuals and legal entities. Do not place limits on the actors engaged in this activity.

Authorize the marketing and provision of services by foreign entities based in the country. Currently, there are joint ventures that wish to engage in wholesale and retail sales of products, but these face limitations. Therefore, branches and representative offices that request authorization should be included.

Create chains of stores, restaurants, and fast-food chains of recognized brands or other brands established here, with the aim of expanding throughout the country. Any MSME or foreign investment that wants to create a network of restaurants, cafes, hamburger joints, or any other service, will be allowed to do so in order to expand services to the population.

Similarly, we should invite foreign fast-food franchises, of which there are many worldwide, to invest in Cuba and expand their chains within the country.

We should put recreational parks, zoos, aquariums, protected areas, and lodging facilities out to tender to state-owned, foreign, private, and cooperative enterprises, establishing the conditions for their operation, including service to the public. This service must be guaranteed in Cuban pesos, even if a portion is authorized to be sold in foreign currency. However, we need to increase the number of stakeholders involved in the management of these recreational and service institutions, which are currently not in optimal condition.

We should formalize the various existing forms of street vendors in communities, thereby enabling the issuance of street vendor permits and implementing a simplified tax system. This is an existing sector that should be recognized.

We should stimulate wholesale and retail public procurement, utilizing the public procurement budget and bank loans as working capital.

Create an automated, digital, auditable, and public system for bidding on premises and assets for all economic actors. This is key. With this opening to new forms of management, it is necessary that the bidding and awarding process be transparent and fair, ensuring that the government truly benefits in order to invest in all its social programs, and that this process be auditable and transparent.

Transition from the regulated basic food basket to controlled sales without subsidies in the retail network. We are not abandoning or renouncing the regulated basic food basket, but current conditions have imposed limitations, including the well-known impact on guaranteeing monthly deliveries of products. In any case, we cannot sell subsidized products, not only those that can be acquired but also those produced in the country. However, we will at least guarantee that they are sold under controlled conditions so that all families have access to them.

Authorize individuals to make commercial imports, levying tariffs in foreign currency. This does not imply granting commercial powers. It’s a fairly widespread issue; many people come in, carrying suitcases full of certain products, and currently there’s no oversight. They don’t pay any taxes on it, and recognizing this would expand access to services for the population, providing many of these products that are in high demand.

Insurance policy also requires transformations in the current context. Therefore, we propose:

Recognizing the profitability of the financial resources mobilized in the insurance industry. Insurance generates income, it has tied-up revenue, and financial engineering can be used to leverage it.

Creating life insurance as a supplement to Social Security protections. This implies broadening the concept of this insurance, so that you can be covered not only in case of an accident, but also in retirement, so that in addition to your pension, you can receive life insurance to have peace of mind.

Boost the marketing of insurance policies in foreign currency, covering risks related to transportation, travel, and other areas. These are individuals who can purchase transportation in foreign currency, travel abroad, and have their insurance paid for in foreign currency to cover these policies.

Make civil liability insurance mandatory. Everyone who drives a vehicle must be insured to guarantee civil liability.

A crucial area, and one of the pillars of government management, is digital transformation. This includes aspects related to artificial intelligence and the knowledge economy, among which the following are proposed:

Create a national technology hub for software, hardware, and artificial intelligence.

Establish a national framework for mandatory interoperability, data governance, and a national database for artificial intelligence.

Utilize artificial intelligence in public administration, with human oversight and territorial equity.

Implement a competitive remuneration system that contributes to boosting the export of professional services in digital technologies and artificial intelligence. We have highly skilled professionals, even in state-owned enterprises, but their salaries are not in line with the average in other non-state sectors, and this needs to be addressed.

Allow foreign investment to expand the capacity of Etecsa’s data centers.

Allow the private sector to provide data center services that do not host platforms for managing the country’s critical infrastructure.

Allow the manufacture of equipment, as well as the installation of mobile and fixed networks, triple-play services, data centers, cloud services, IP telephony, and contact centers.

Establish a digital platform using artificial intelligence for the public procurement system and bidding processes, guaranteeing transparency and security, and including risk classification.

Allow mixed management of postal infrastructure and last-mile logistics.

And recognize data as the fifth factor of production, alongside land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship. This implies considering data as a non-renewable economic resource with the capacity to generate wealth.

The national statistical system requires modernization in accordance with these transformations:

We have conceived the design of a statistical system that adapts to the economic and social transformations.

Complete the change of the base year for the national accounts.

Resume the construction of the producer price index and the foreign trade index, and maintain the consumer price index linked to products derived from observed prices.

Comrades:

What has been proposed so far requires a profound transformation of the control and inspection mechanisms due to their importance and cross-cutting nature. Therefore, the following was approved:

Create a working group, led by the Central Committee of the Party and composed of representatives from the various institutions involved in these control matters, to analyze all established control mechanisms and propose transformations for their design, as well as to strengthen the structures that participate in them.

Another highly complex issue that has been considered is the creation of a working group to assess the impact of these transformations on the legal system. To this end, an evaluation was conducted of all legal norms published in the Official Gazette of the Republic since 2019, and other norms related to the topics proposed here were selected.

As a complement, artificial intelligence tools were applied, the results of which were reviewed by the leadership of the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Justice. It was determined, in principle, that the proposals made here are referenced in nine articles of the Constitution of the Republic, and it was concluded, in principle, that they do not require amendments to the Constitution.

A preliminary assessment identified that implementing these transformations involves and impacts more than 148 provisions of the Cuban legal system: fifteen norms that would need to be repealed, twenty-two norms that would need to be completely modified, seventy-nine norms that would need to be partially modified, and more than fifty supplementary norms, resolutions, etc.

Additionally, it will be necessary to draft thirty-two new higher-ranking norms: ten laws, fourteen decree-laws, and eight decrees.

This matter has been analyzed to ensure the mechanisms that will allow this process to be guided by the National Assembly, within the established framework and powers of this body, in order to move forward with the implementation of these transformations given the urgency of the moment.

Deputies:

I cannot conclude without first reiterating that the defense of the socialist homeland is the first priority. We must undertake these transformations without neglecting this premise, mindful of the lesson that those who neglect this principle do not survive the fall.

Indeed, the proposed economic and social transformations envision profound changes in accordance with the Government’s 2026 Economic and Social Program, responding to the current objective economic conditions and sociodemographic dynamics.

These proposals and the Government Program are complementary, a fact reinforced by the observation that 76% of these transformations fully align with the Program’s content, while the remainder expand its scope.

They simultaneously integrate transformations of the business sector, greater openness to domestic and foreign private capital, banking modernization, coherence among exchange rate, banking, price, and tax reforms, technical pragmatism in addressing partial dollarization, territorial decentralization, and a downsizing of the central government administration.

These transformations do not imply relinquishing the State’s social responsibility and recognize market mechanisms as instruments for the efficient allocation of resources.

The following challenges have been identified for political leadership, in harmony with the technical discipline required by the transformations: developing an operational implementation sequence and a sound timeline; institutional capacity and understanding in key areas; social protection; political and legal legitimacy; citizen participation; and mitigating the risks and impacts of the geopolitical environment.

The implementation process will present some contradictions that we have taken into account: partial dollarization and its impact on devaluation; the elimination of subsidies and its relationship to prices, which requires effective social protection; the decentralization of powers without the capacity of municipalities to assume it; and the liberalization of agricultural prices without sufficient or increased production.

As needed, previous models will be analyzed to define risks and mitigate negative impacts; in other words, this proposal is not rigid. Control will be maintained throughout the implementation process of the transformations, and corrective actions will be adopted, along with a learning system for key personnel and executives.

Proposals to address the crisis stand out, opening a transformative window that, if not implemented now, could generate irreversible consequences in the political and social order.

I want to reiterate that these transformations do not constitute a deviation from the socialist project; on the contrary, they respond to the inherent logic of its development. Cuba is in the historical period of building socialism, guided by the ideas of Fidel and Raúl.

As the Army General stated, these proposals are based on the principle that the updating of the Economic and Social Model has the essential purpose of improving the quality of life of our compatriots, where every Cuban contributes their best to building the prosperous and sustainable socialism that our people deserve.

Long live Free Cuba! (Exclamations of: “Long live!”)

Long live Fidel and Raúl! (Exclamations of: “Long live!”)

Homeland or Death!

We will overcome! (Exclamations of: “We will overcome!”)

Thank you very much (Applause).

Source: Sovereignty, information and services platform of the Cuban Government

Only a complete political reorientation can restore the initiative needed to break the impasse and avert catastrophe.

No one can presume to dictate a course to the Palestinians; only they can determine the objective, strategy and tactics of their own struggle.

But Marxists are neither spectators nor commentators regarding Palestinian struggles. The working class is international and its struggle is one. Socialists take responsibility for seeking to liberate all our class from capitalism and stand in solidarity with all the oppressed. We are not bystanders.

Today, it would be difficult to imagine a greater betrayal of the Palestinians than to remain silent as they are destroyed by Israel and by the bankruptcy of their own leaderships, or to exhort further futile and counterproductive sacrifices.

The catastrophic October 7, 2023 attack and the horrific genocide since have reduced millions of Palestinians to helpless victims on an unprecedented scale, inexorably ground down by the overwhelming military might of the Zionist state, coupled with political disorientation.

Two million are trapped in the absolute hell of daily military attacks by Israel and the ever-worsening inhuman conditions in the Gaza concentration camp, reduced to disorganized individuals and families struggling simply to survive.

In the West Bank, over three million Palestinians live under a brutal military dictatorship and are being progressively dispossessed and driven from their lands at a rate unseen in decades.

It is clear that Israel intends to make life unlivable for the more than five million Palestinians in the occupied territories in order to drive them into exile.

A Second Nakba is underway

Yet not a single Palestinian organization offers a viable perspective, program, or strategy capable of confronting this historic disaster. All they offer is the repetition of perspectives, strategies and tactics that have already failed. They are politically bankrupt.

The most alarming fact is not merely the scale of the catastrophe, but the near-total absence of Palestinian political initiative.

Following the First Intifada—initially propelled by the Palestinian masses themselves rather than any established leadership—and especially since October 7, the Palestinian masses have increasingly ceased to act as an independent political force capable of shaping events. Instead they have been reduced to reacting to the initiatives of others: the Israeli state, the settler movement, the Arab regimes, imperialist powers, international institutions, and their own bankrupt leaderships.

Some might call October 7 an initiative. If so, it has served Israel beyond measure and been a catastrophe for the Palestinians.

In both politics and war, the side that permanently loses the initiative is ultimately defeated. A people cannot liberate themselves if they are unable to influence the course of events and compel their adversaries to respond to their initiatives and actions rather than merely reacting to those of their opponents.

It is not merely a question of what they are against, what they resist, but what they are for, what they seek to achieve. That must begin with the present reality.

If the annihilation of the Palestinians is to be avoided, a complete reorientation is required.

Mere denunciations of the endless cruel crimes of the Israeli regime offer no way forward and have become a futile diversion from developing the necessary new perspective. To continue repeating failed strategies while expecting different results is a recipe for further defeats and catastrophe.

The heroism and valor of the Palestinian people are undeniable. For generations they have sacrificed beyond measure, enduring horrific brutality and slaughter at the hands of the Israeli state, and held their heads high against impossible odds. They have carried the hopes of hundreds of millions for a more just world. If their sacrifices are not to be in vain then a strategy must be developed towards realizing their desire for freedom.

If the Palestinian masses are to regain the initiative and the ability to struggle, then a complete reassessment of the movement’s strategy is required.

It begins concretely. What is the actual balance of forces? What political objective is being pursued? Can the chosen tactic or method realistically achieve that objective? Is that objective even attainable in any imaginable way? Do the objective, strategy and tactics strengthen the consciousness, organization, unity, and independent action of the working masses? Or do they substitute a military apparatus, a secretive bourgeois leadership, and desperate acts of retaliation by small numbers for the self-organization of the millions of oppressed masses?

If the Palestinians are to recover the initiative, they must first confront undeniable realities that decades of failed leaderships have refused to face.

The Indisputable Facts

First, the Palestinians cannot militarily defeat the Israeli state. Israel is a nuclear-armed, highly militarized state backed by U.S. imperialism. As Hamas has demonstrated beyond any doubt, no Palestinian armed organization has the capacity to overthrow Israel by military means.

Decades of armed struggle have not brought liberation; to the contrary, they have made it more distant. They have produced defeats, repression, isolation, and catastrophic reprisals, while inevitably strengthening the Zionist regime, year after year. They have progressively demobilized and isolated the Palestinians and made it nearly impossible to win potential allies among Israeli Jews.

It is time to discard tools that are not fit for purpose.

Second, no outside army or force will rescue the Palestinians. Not the Arab regimes, not Iran, not the United Nations, not international law or sanctions, and not BDS campaigns, nor the widespread international solidarity of millions who can help but not liberate.

The history of the Palestinian struggle has repeatedly demonstrated that the oppressed cannot outsource their liberation to the cynical promises or manipulation of bourgeois states, each of which pursues its own interests, not those of the Palestinians.

Third, the two-state solution is dead beyond any doubt. Israel never intended it, and will never voluntarily permit even bantustans, let alone a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state. The settlement regime, the annexationist drive, the fragmentation of Palestinian territory, and the political logic of Zionism itself have destroyed that road. To continue presenting it as a solution is to perpetuate an unattainable illusion and postpone a necessary political reckoning. It is a trap that weakens the Palestinian struggle.

From these facts follows the necessary conclusion:

A new political program and strategy is required.

Violence or Nonviolence?

This is not a debate about moral abstractions of violence or nonviolence.

Lenin’s discussion of guerrilla warfare after the 1905 Revolution provides useful lessons and clarity. Lenin did not elevate guerrilla warfare into a universal strategy. He treated it as a subordinate and auxiliary form of struggle, a tactic, permissible only under definite historical and political conditions: a revolutionary mass upsurge, the growth of working-class organization, and the immediate problem of insurrectionary struggle for power. Detached from those conditions, armed methods cease to be revolutionary and become adventurism, substitutionism of mass struggle by small groups, or outright corruption and ruin, as we see with Hamas.^[1]

Lenin judged methods not by their militancy but by their political efficacy and relationship to the self-organization of the masses.

That is precisely the lesson that must be applied to the Palestinian struggle.

Against the Fetish of Armed Struggle

The continued armed struggle of Hamas and similar organizations does not advance Palestinian liberation. It demobilizes the Palestinian masses by converting them into passive observers, strengthens the Israeli state, isolates the Palestinians, deepens Jewish fear which plays into the hands of the Zionists, and provides the Israeli ruling class and its imperialist backers with the pretext they need for greater repression, wars, and expulsions.

This is not because armed struggle is always wrong in every circumstance. That would be moralistic nonsense. It is because, in this concrete situation, Palestinian armed actions cannot achieve their stated aims. They do not build mass power. They do not separate Jewish workers and democratically-inclined Jews from the Israeli ruling class. They do not create organs of Palestinian democratic self-rule. They do not open a road to liberation.

They do the opposite.

Hamas does not seek to unite the Palestinian masses along class lines with Jewish working people and all those who support a democratic and secular nation for both peoples. Its entire perspective rests upon preserving and deepening national and religious divisions. Instead of a common struggle of the exploited and oppressed against their oppressors—the Israeli capitalist class and its state—it organizes politics around a bourgeois religious-national identity and an endless communal confrontation between peoples, one which the Palestinians are doomed to lose.

For that reason Hamas is not a revolutionary organization but a reactionary bourgeois Islamist movement. It substitutes a small military apparatus for mass democratic organization and strengthens the very antagonisms upon which Zionism depends.

For decades, Islamist currents were encouraged by Israel and other powers as a counterweight to secular nationalism, socialism, and the Palestinian left.^[2] This was no accident. Movements that divide the working class and oppressed are less dangerous to the ruling class and imperialist powers than movements that unite them.

The tragedy is that Hamas and the Zionist far right require one another. Each strengthens the most reactionary tendencies within the opposing population. Each thrives on fear, division, and mutual hatred. Both regard genuine Jewish-Palestinian unity as their greatest political danger.

For Hamas no less than for the Zionist far right, the prospect of Jews and Palestinians united in common political struggle is an existential threat.

For a Single Democratic and Secular Nation

In light of these realities, the only historically viable perspective is a single democratic and secular nation for all: Jews and Palestinians, with equal citizenship and rights, equal political participation, and no religious or ethnic supremacy.

That cannot be won by rockets, raids, or armed actions. It can only be won by a mass revolutionary-democratic movement of Jews and Palestinians.

Such a movement cannot be built by Palestinians alone. The Israeli state rests not only upon its military and police apparatus, but upon the political acquiescence or support of a present majority of Jewish society. No democratic transformation is conceivable without drawing significant numbers of Jewish workers, youth, intellectuals, and democrats into active opposition to the existing order. More fundamentally, a common democratic future cannot be created without common struggle. The path toward a new nation begins with the forging of common organizations and political bonds between Jews and Palestinians in the present.

The objective cannot be to win over all Jews, and certainly not the Jewish capitalists, but rather to break the political monopoly of Zionism by creating a visible alternative pole rooted in the working masses around which dissenting Jews and Palestinians can organize.

This requires the political defeat of Islamist reaction and overcoming nationalist traps among Palestinians, to forge common organizations of struggle uniting both peoples.

Such a civil rights movement must explicitly reject Zionism and antisemitism. It must fight every form of Jewish supremacy and every form of anti-Jewish hatred. Without that, no Jewish-Palestinian unity is possible.

Bourgeois Hamas substitutes its own armed apparatus for the conscious self-mobilization of the Palestinian masses. It reduces the population to a rear base, a hostage population, or a suffering civilian mass savaged by Israel. It does not build mass organizations, workers’ councils, popular committees, democratic assemblies, women’s organizations, unions, joint Jewish-Palestinian organs of struggle, or a revolutionary party of the working masses. It demobilizes the people politically while exposing them militarily.

The result is visible today in Gaza: not an organized people confidently mobilized for liberation, but a devastated and atomized population reduced to displacement, survival, grief, hunger, and passive suffering.

That is not resistance, much less a revolutionary struggle. It is a death trap.

The Revolutionary Approach

A revolutionary perspective is required, one that rejects both passive resignation and empty maximalism, neither of which lead anywhere.

A revolutionary strategy begins not with wishes, slogans, or moral outrage, but with present reality. It must develop a program, demands and initiatives that raise confidence, build organization, carefully avoid provocations that allow the Israeli state to unleash its killing machine, and lead toward effective struggles.

Only the Palestinian masses in their millions can be the protagonists of their own liberation.

Applied to Palestine, this means every tactic must be judged by one test:

Does it strengthen the consciousness, confidence, organization, unity, and fighting capacity of the Palestinian and Jewish working masses?

If it does, it advances the struggle.

If it weakens those things—if it substitutes secret military action for mass politics, communal hatred for class unity, empty exhortation and individual martyrdom for organization, and despair for strategy—then it hinders the struggle, no matter how militant it sounds.

What Must Be Discarded and What Must Be Built

Facing this reality, the practical conclusion is severe but unavoidable.

Breaking the present impasse begins with recovering the political initiative of the Palestinian masses. This requires renouncing armed struggle, discarding the ineffectual weapons, and politically disarming the bourgeois and Islamist forces that have led the Palestinians into disaster.

That is the exact opposite of surrender.

It is to unburden the Palestinian people of the dead-end illusion of armed methods as the only road to liberation.

The challenge is to open the way for the presently sidelined Palestinian masses to renew their liberation struggle through forms of organization and struggle capable of advancing it.

The issue is not sentimental pacifism. The issue is political effectiveness.

Weapons that cannot defeat Israel, cannot defend the masses, cannot build democratic organizations of struggle, and only strengthen the enemy are not instruments of liberation. They are instruments of defeat.

In their place must arise:

1. A new Palestinian-Jewish vanguard built around a revolutionary program for one democratic and secular state for all Jews and Palestinians. The ultimate objective cannot be the serpent’s egg of a “bi-national” state, but rather the gradual emergence through shared struggle of a common civic, political, and social identity capable of forging a single people. Such a state would guarantee equal rights, security, and refuge for all those suffering persecution, including Jews, while rejecting every form of ethnic or religious supremacy.

2. Joint Jewish-Palestinian mass organizations based upon full integration and equality at every level—from the political program, to the leadership and rank-and-file membership.

3. Mass Jewish and Palestinian non-violent civil-rights campaigns against Zionist apartheid, occupation, land theft, siege, military rule, and discriminatory laws. Only the growing participation of Jewish allies and comrades can begin to constrain and politically neutralize the unbridled lethal power of the Zionist state. Only together can they effectively counteract the Zionist narrative. A primary tactical objective must be to advocate for removing all barriers — physical, political, social and economic — to the integration of Palestinians and Jews. Jews should be encouraged to visit, work with, and share common experiences with Palestinians, and Palestinians likewise encouraged to participate fully in every sphere of Jewish social, cultural, and political life. Thus, they can begin to see their common interests and the seeds of a new united people and nation.

4. United organizations must advocate for the democratic rights of all, against all discrimination, using carefully-considered disciplined tactics under extreme conditions of repression. Opportunities to field integrated slates of candidates for elections should be pursued. In particular, initiatives should be taken to build solidarity between Jewish and Palestinian workers and farmers, women, students and youth, cultural activities, and more. At every turn while fighting to overcome vast inequalities, the commonality of problems and foes faced by Jewish and Palestinian workers alike should be emphasized.

5. Gaza and the West Bank. The greatest immediate challenge is how to protect the Palestinians to provide them space to debate, organize and mobilize — with active Jewish solidarity — to free themselves from the concentration camps. Key to that is to surmount the physical and military barriers between the Palestinians in the occupied territories and their potential Jewish allies. The Zionist regime correctly recognizes this as its greatest threat and for this reason has unleashed the murderous IDF, cops and reactionary gangs of settlers. Small groups of Jewish activists have repeatedly sought to interpose themselves to protect the Palestinians but this has largely been frustrated by brutal repression by the Israeli state and its gangs of paramilitary settlers. Palestinians must seek how to carefully encourage and defend such actions. A page should be taken from the tactical lessons of the American civil rights movement. Facing the violence of the Klan and Southern cops, they appealed for broader support among sympathetic whites who volunteered as Freedom Riders to in part neutralize the lethal attacks.

6. International solidarity must focus on championing the call for a democratic and secular nation for all Jews and Palestinians, celebrating every example of Jewish-Palestinian unity, while demanding governments end all military, diplomatic, and economic support for the Israeli regime. The BDS campaign of boycotting and opposing any engagements with all Israelis should be abandoned as counterproductive for the Palestinians. Antisemitism and Islamophobia must be opposed with equal determination. Rejecting the Zionist slander that all opposition to Israel is antisemitic does not lessen the obligation of international solidarity to wage an uncompromising struggle against antisemitism. Antisemitism is a gift to the Zionists and their imperialist backers, and a blow against the common struggle of Palestinians and Jews for liberation. Every solidarity action and statement must make that clear. It will be particularly useful to point to the long history of militant Jewish opposition to Zionism going back to the 19^th century.[4]

The Charge of Utopianism

This perspective will undoubtedly face criticism as utopian. It is undeniably difficult, as were the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements at the outset. Perhaps it may even fail. No one can guarantee success. However, in the absence of a change of course the inevitability of defeat is undeniable. It is right before our eyes.

The real utopia is the cruel fantasy that marginal Palestinian armed groups can militarily defeat Israel, that Israel will simply disappear, or that some outside power will rescue the Palestinians.

For many who have never considered an alternative to the decades of futile armed struggle this will initially be a bitter pill to contemplate. There will be those who denounce this necessary reorientation as a betrayal. Yet the real betrayal is to continue leading the Palestinians down roads that have repeatedly ended in disaster. Exhortation to more futile and self-defeating acts only ensures greater defeats and eventually extinction.

Those who reject this perspective must answer a simple question:

What alternative strategy exists for breaking the present impasse and preventing the Palestinians from being driven toward national catastrophe, into the abyss with the culmination of the Second Nakba?

It is one thing to call to sacrifice for something, it is something entirely different to call for sacrifice for nothing.

The burden of proof does not rest with those advocating a new course. It rests with those defending the old one.

After seventy-eight years of defeats, and after the horrors unleashed on October 7 to the present, surely no serious person believes that the current trajectory leads anywhere except toward even greater catastrophes.

The present road leads only to annihilation: the physical destruction of the Palestinian people cast into exile, and the further moral-political perdition of the Jewish people under the rule of Zionist militarism, racism, and endless wars, and a society riven by interminable hatreds, even between Jews themselves. Already the unspeakable crimes of the Israeli regime since October 7 have unleashed the greatest wave of antisemitism since the Holocaust. Jews everywhere are being endangered by the state of Israel.

There is no denying the immensity of the political challenge in Israel, a uniquely right-wing society under near totalitarian hate-filled political propaganda. This is undeniable, but it was also true to differing degrees in apartheid South Africa and the South in the United States.

It was not always as extreme in Israel. Unfortunately, the terrorist campaigns by Hamas since the Second Intifada to October 7 indiscriminately aimed at Jews helped facilitate the rise of what had been marginal forces of the ultra-right like fascist Ben Gvir.

However, a strategic reorientation and demilitarization can expect to begin to undermine the most right-wing Zionists, ameliorate the hatreds and create openings for political work. It is undeniably a hard challenge, but all the alternatives are worse. And there are already openings and initiatives within Israel today.

There are already small but important initiatives by Jews and Palestinians in Israel and internationally to unite in solidarity and common struggle for democratic rights against the undemocratic state despite severe repression. These include Standing Together, who also seek to defend the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with “Solidarity Guard” actions where Jewish and Palestinian activists jointly attempt to protect Palestinian communities.[5] These initiatives remain small, fragile, and politically limited, yet they bravely persist in the face of repression. They point toward the only conceivable political direction and social force capable of overcoming the present impasse: unity of Palestinians and Jews. Such examples should be hailed and emulated.

The tragedy of the Palestinians is not that they have resisted too much. It is that for generations they have been led down roads that could not lead to victory.

Above all, they have been deprived of the political initiative necessary to become the conscious authors of their own liberation.

Heroism by itself is not enough.

Sacrifice by itself is not enough.

Courage by itself is not enough.

The decisive question is political strategy.

The old strategy has exhausted itself.

The future of the Palestinian people depends upon recovering the initiative and becoming once again the conscious authors of their own liberation.

To build a new reality, they must adopt a new program of mutual struggles and liberation together with Jews to replace the Zionist nightmare with a new democratic and secular nation for one people, Palestinians and Jews.

Subscribe now

NOTES:

^[1] Lenin’s argument was directed not against armed struggle as such, but against its elevation into a self-sufficient strategy. His warning was that every method of struggle, including guerrilla warfare, is susceptible to degeneration when detached from the political, educational, and organizing work of a revolutionary movement rooted in the masses. Left to its own spontaneous logic, guerrilla warfare tends toward adventurism, criminalization, and political corruption. For that reason Lenin insisted that it remain subordinate to broader political objectives and to the “enlightening and organising influence of socialism.”

The subsequent history of the twentieth century lends considerable weight to Lenin’s caution. In many countries guerrilla warfare evolved from an auxiliary tactic into a strategic conception in its own right. Armed detachments increasingly came to be viewed as substitutes for the political development and self-activity of the masses, and for the vital historic task of building parties of the working class. The result was often the emergence of military organizations standing above or outside the working class and the class struggle rather than revolutionary movements of workers and peasants.

The trajectory of many armed movements after peace agreements, disarmament, or incorporation into existing political systems further revealed the limits of guerrillaism as a strategy. In numerous cases organizations that had defined themselves primarily through military struggle proved unable or unwilling to advance a program of revolutionary transformation of society once the armed phase ended, quickly becoming crass reformists. The possession of arms and engagement in armed conflict had often been mistaken for evidence of a revolutionary social program. Lenin’s warning was precisely against such confusion.

This does not invalidate every guerrilla struggle any more than Lenin’s article did. It does, however, underscore the importance of the criterion he proposed: methods must be judged not in isolation but according to their relationship to the broader development of the political organization, consciousness, and self-emancipation of the working masses.

V. I. Lenin

GUERRILLA WARFARE

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1906/gw/index.htm

Published: Proletary, No. 5, September 30, 1906. Published according to the Proletary text.

Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 11, pages 213-223.

…..

^[2] SELECTED SOURCES ON ISRAELI SUPPORT FOR HAMAS

Note on Sources: The argument presented here does not rest upon the claim that Israel “created Hamas” in any simple or conspiratorial sense. Rather, it draws upon documented statements by Israeli officials and extensive journalistic reporting showing that successive Israeli governments consciously encouraged, tolerated, financed, or politically utilized Islamist currents and Hamas as a counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism, the Palestinian left, and prospects for Palestinian statehood.

Primary Sources and Testimony

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009

Cohen, Avner. Quoted in Andrew Higgins, “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas.” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2009.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” 𝗡𝗘𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗬𝗔𝗛𝗨 said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party, first reported by Haaretz. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Netanyahu, Benjamin. Remarks at a Likud faction meeting, March 2019, discussing support for Hamas as a means of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Reported by Tal Schneider and subsequently cited in multiple publications. See:

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/31/23938474/netanyahu-benjamin-israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-war-remove-prime-minister-hostage-crisis

“Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.)”

___

“...in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Israel indirectly promoted Hamas by permitting them to erect mosques, schools, clubs, and even a library in Gaza. Yitzhak Segev, who was in governance during this period, expressed his apprehensions about Yassin’s goals but did not prevent their undertakings.”

Segev, Yitzhak. Statements concerning Israeli support for Islamist institutions in Gaza during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Discussed in:

Higgins, Andrew. “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas.” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2009.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847

Hasan, Mehdi. “Blowback: How Israel Went from Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It.” The Intercept, February 19, 2018.

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

“Buying Quiet: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas.” The New York Times, December 10, 2023.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html

Qatar financial transfers to Gaza discussed in:

“Qatar Gave Over $1.1 Billion to Gaza Strip from 2012–18, Ministers Told.” The Times of Israel, February 2019.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/qatar-gave-over-1-1-billion-to-gaza-strip-over-six-years-report/

Secondary Analyses and Commentary

Hasan, Mehdi. “Blowback: How Israel Went from Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It.” The Intercept, February 19, 2018.

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

Klein, Menachem. “A Brief History of the Netanyahu-Hamas Alliance.” Haaretz, October 20, 2023.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/a-brief-history-of-the-netanyahu-hamas-alliance/0000018b-47d9-d242-abef-57ff1be90000

Beauchamp, Zack. “Why Netanyahu Propped Up Hamas.” Vox, October 31, 2023.

https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/10/31/23938474/netanyahu-benjamin-israel-palestine-gaza-hamas-war-remove-prime-minister-hostage-crisis

Whitaker, Brian. “How Israel Helped Create Hamas.” The Washington Post, July 30, 2014.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/

Beaumont, Peter. “How and Why Israel Helped Create Hamas.” The Tribune (Pakistan), May 5, 2021.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2302309/how-and-why-israel-helped-create-hamas

“Did Israel Play a Role in the Emergence of Hamas?” Coop West Bank.

https://coopwb.in/info/how-israel-helped-to-spawn-hamas/

“The Origins of Hamas: Militant Legacy or Israeli Tool?” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, No. 3.

https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/jps/v41i3/f_0025591_20939.pdf

__________________________

ISLAMISTS AND IMPERIALISM

—A BRIEF HISTORY BY AARON RUBY

An official photo issued by the White House, taken in the Oval Office on September 23, 1953, shows President Eisenhower surrounded by right-wing Islamists. To his right is a right-wing Islamist from Indonesia, an Egyptian delegation, and Islamists from Afghanistan and elsewhere.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Dwight_D._Eisenhower_in_the_Oval_Office_with_Muslim_delegates_in_1953.jpg

Most importantly, bearded and standing second from right in the photo, is Said Ramadan, head of the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s leading Islamist organization and the source of most of the Islamist and Jihadi outfits in the world. Ramadan was already an “asset” of the CIA and Swiss and German security, among others.

Ramadan and the other Islamists were invited by the CIA for a colloquium at Princeton University on how to promote “Islam to counter Atheism and Communism in the USSR.”

Ramadan and the Muslim Brotherhood were the rotten root that gave birth to myriad reactionary jihadist movements like the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and of course, Hamas.

In 1954, a year after this White House photo, the MB carried out its first assassination attempt against Nasser in Alejandra, Egypt, as the European and U.S. imperialists howled for Nasser’s head.

________

Islamists and Islamism are not the same as simply being a Muslim. Islamists advocate for a theocratic government or a Caliphate.

Obscurantist Islamism like the jihadists were aggressively promoted and weaponized by colonialism and then imperialism, drawing on the most reactionary features of their societies.

Modern Islamism emerged as a reaction against secularization, republican and democratic government, and later socialism and Marxism. Throughout its history it defined itself against materialist and class-based ideologies, and it quickly identified with colonialism and capitalism as lesser evils and allies.

In the XVIII century England weaponized fanatical Wahhabism with the house of the brigand Ibn-Saud family mafia to attack their rivals the Ottomans, and to protect their coaling stations en route to India.

Then the Germans and Japanese promoted their own jihadists to try to use against their imperialist rivals.

In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II cynically declared in Damascus he was the “Protector of All Mohammedians” in a bid to use Muslims against their British and French rivals.

“Let me assure His Majesty the Sultan and the 300 millions of Muslims who, in whatever corner of the globe they may live, revere in him their khalif, that the German Emperor will ever be their friend.”

In July 1914, the eve of the First World War, the Kaiser wrote in the marginalia of a diplomatic report:

“Our consuls in Turkey and India ...must inflame the whole Mohammedan world to wild revolt ...for if we are to be bled to death, at least England shall lose India.”

Japan’s ambitions for a “Greater Asia” under its domination led it to promote Islamists. Through the Ajia Gikai (Asian Congress) established in 1909 and then the Greater Japan Muslim League, established in 1930, Japan sponsored Islamic studies and propaganda aimed at winning the allegiance of Central Asian and Indonesian Muslims, publishing the “Islamic Studies Book” and over 100 other publications on Islam. In 1938 the Japanese built a mosque in Tokyo as part of their attempt to woo Central Asian and Indonesian Islamists as they prepared to seize the colony from the Dutch competition. In response the Dutch colonialists cultivated cooperative religious leaders and government-approved mullahs to legitimize colonial rule and prevent anti-colonial uprisings.

The Nazis established Muslim units of the Waffen SS, and declared the Muslims in their service as honorary “Aryans,” to use them against the USSR and Britain and France.

In the 1950-70s, the Swiss, French, English and Germans employed the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadists in their espionage services and to assassinate independence fighters in Morocco and Algeria, where French colonialism printed Qurans and established Sufi Islamist death squads.

The West German security forces (top to bottom run by former Nazis) established a Mosque in Munich for the Muslim Brotherhood to coordinate their espionage and promote Islamism as a counterweight to secular organizations among immigrants from Muslim countries.

The U.S. used the Muslim Brotherhood as assassins to carry out hundreds of terrorist attacks on the secular and nationalist government of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950-1960s, and later MB affiliates killed Egyptian dictator Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat, at their own initiative.

Islamists supported the reactionary monarchies from Saudi Arabia to Morocco, against nationalist, secular and Marxist movements.

The U.S. promoted Islamist death squads in Indonesia that participated in the 1965 U.S. coup and slaughter of more than 500,000 Indonesians suspected of supporting the Communist Party.

The U.S. put infamous Islamist butchers like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan on the CIA payroll in the early 1970s and gave him guns to assassinate leftist students at the University of Kabul. And starting in 1979 Jimmy Carter began the massive secret funding and arming of the Islamist “Mujahedeen” terrorists in Afghanistan.

Likewise the U.S. encouraged the virulent Islamization of Pakistan in the 1970-1990s, created by British imperialism in 1947 as the first Islamist state in the world, and a tool of imperialism. Pakistan, pushed by the UK and U.S., became the de facto military enforcers for the Saudi monarchy, helping to suppress several democratic, secular and socialist rebellions against the reactionary Islamist monarchies in Oman and Yemen in the 1950s and 1970s, with terrible consequences of reinforcing Islamism.

From the 1970s onwards, Israel followed the lead of its U.S. boss and helped promote the Gaza Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, and in the 1987 creation of Hamas. Like the U.S. government Israel understood that the Islamists could always be counted on to sabotage liberation struggles. And boy did Israel’s investment in Hamas pay off, even to the present. Hamas handed Israel the opportunity to carry out the worst slaughter of the Palestinians in history.

From the beginning Islamism and jihadism were tools and mercenaries instrumentalized by imperialism. They were used to kill trade unionists, nationalists, feminists and socialists who opposed the reactionary and obscurantist monarchical puppet regimes that serve imperialism.

As intended by the imperialists, the Islamists retarded social and political development throughout the Muslim world.

…..

Ultimately, however, when the USSR fell apart, the fundamental anticommunist cause that motivated the alliance between the jihadists and imperialism ceased to exist. The imperialists threw their unneeded Islamist and Jihadi assassins to the gutter, and the hitherto loyal attack dogs of imperialism turned and bit the hand of their former masters.

But the Islamist poison so assiduously promoted and spread around the world by the United States and European imperialists for two centuries, continued to spread like a plague.

____________

Cold War, Holy Warrior

—Ike was president. Washington was desperate for Arab allies. Enter an Islamist ideologue with an invitation to the White House and a plan for global jihad.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006 ISSUE

ROBERT DREYFUSS

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/01/cold-war-holy-warrior/

“...CIA and State Department officials who served in the Middle East between World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, they would repeat, almost like a catechism, that Islam was seen as a barrier both to Soviet expansion and to the spread of Marxist ideology among the masses. “We thought of Islam as a counterweight to communism,” says Talcott Seelye, an American diplomat who, while serving in Jordan in the early 1950s, paid a visit to Said Ramadan. “We saw it as a moderate force, and a positive one.” Indeed, adds Hermann Eilts, another veteran U.S. diplomat who was stationed in Saudi Arabia in the late ’40s, American officials in Cairo had “regular meetings” with Ramadan’s then-boss, Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Banna, “and found him perfectly empathetic.”

____________

Israel: Rabbis help West Bank olive harvest

Tania Krämer West Bank

11/19/2021November 19, 2021

Almost every year, during olive harvest season, Palestinian farmers are at risk from settler-related violence. Israeli human rights organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights help with their presence.

https://www.dw.com/en/west-bank-harvesting-olives-under-rabbis-protection/a-59875291

____________

The Israeli activists helping protect the Palestinian olive harvest

October 7, 2018

https://www.972mag.com/the-israeli-activists-helping-protect-the-palestinian-olive-harvest/

____________

Israel deports 32 activists aiding Palestinian olive farmers amid attacks

Israeli army and settlers have carried out 158 attacks against olive pickers since the start of the current season

22 Oct 2025

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/22/israel-deports-32-activists-aiding-palestinian-olive-farmers-amid-attacks

____________

[3] ‘Solidarity over hatred’: the small band of Israelis stopping settlers obstructing aid trucks

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/31/solidarity-over-hatred-the-small-band-of-israelis-stopping-settlers-obstructing-aid-trucks

[4] THE FIRST ANTI-ZIONISTS WERE JEWS

THE PITTSBURGH PLATFORM (1885): More than a decade before Herzl’s Zionist congress, American Reform Jewish leaders gathered to define their movement. Led by figures like Isaac Mayer Wise, they issued the Pittsburgh Platform.

It explicitly stated:

“We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine... nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.”

The prominent Austrian-Jewish writer and satirist published a stinging polemic titled Eine Krone für Zion (”A Crown for Zion”) in 1898. He accused Herzl of aiding anti-Semites by validating the premise that Jews did not belong in their native European countries.

But it was the General Jewish Labor Bund, which were among the first to not only reject but actively campaign against Zionism in the Jewish communities.

Founded in 1897, the Bund was a secular, socialist, and fiercely anti-Zionist organization that operated primarily in the Russian Empire.

The Bund actively opposed Zionism, arguing that emigration to Palestine was a form of bourgeois utopian escapism. Instead of viewing anti-Semitism as an immutable part of the gentile world, their core ideology—known as doykeit (or hereness)—posited that the Jewish diaspora was their home, and that Jews should stay and fight for equal rights and cultural autonomy alongside their oppressed neighbors.

The Bund did collaborate, and sometimes differed, from the Bolsheviks at different times, since Lenin and the Bolsheviks led a fight to the death against antisemitism and the pogroms.

The Bund fought shoulder to shoulder with the Bolsheviks in the Red Army against the White counterrevolutionary armies that slaughtered thousands of Jews. Needless to say, it was the British, French and US that armed the White armies to slaughter the Jews. The majority of the Bund, the Kombund joined the Bolshevik party in 1920-1921.

The historic Congress of the Peoples of the East took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from September 1 to September 8, 1920. Forty-one Jewish delegates attended the congress out of nearly 2,000 majority Muslim participants. Many of these individuals were local Mountain Jews from the Caucasus or Bukharan Jews, alongside European Jewish communists. There, members of the Bund held debates with Mountain Jews and others against Zionism.

Zionism in fact was opposed by the vast majority of Jews from many different perspectives. Most Orthodox Jews opposed it as heresy, and the overwhelming majority of assimilated Jews in the UK and elsewhere in Europe were anti-Zionist.

In reality it was only after the Holocaust and the abuse of Jewish survivors by the European and US victors that the majority of Jews saw no alternative to forced migration. It was the “allies” who really fulfilled Hitler’s “Final Solution” to largely expel most Jews from Europe.

[5] Standing Together statement, “This Moment & The Struggle Ahead”

https://www.standing-together.org/en/2023war

Unexpectedly, the door rang two stories below. But Alejandra did have a habit of forgetting her key. So I buzzed the door open. I heard her coming up the stairs to our apartment on the third floor.

—Hola, I warmly called out from the kitchen.

—Hola, hesitantly replied the voice of a..... man!?

I ran to the head of the stairs, weighing the need to grab a knife from the kitchen, to see some guy coming up, looking rather perplexed, and even more surprised to see me in my chef’s apron.

—Is…this...a...hotel?— he hesitantly asked in Spanish, obviously sure it wasn’t, but wanting confirmation that he wasn’t nuts.

—No, I smiled. It’s a private home. I’ll explain it to you.

Subscribe now

Oddly, it wasn’t the first time a total stranger had rung our door asking for lodgings. But it was only a few months earlier that I had finally cracked the mystery of why people rang our apartment asking for a hotel or inn.

The first time was years before, when we were just settling in after the move from Houston to San Francisco in 2006. I thought they were nuts, told them no, and they left. Crazy stuff that just happens, I figured. And then every few months strangers would ring asking for lodging. And so on. A mystery of the universe. The truth was that our location in San Francisco near the beach and Golden Gate Bridge was more than touristy. Who knows? Maybe desperate people in San Francisco just ring random apartments in the hope of a hidden hotel?

But one afternoon a jerk and a liar would finally solve the mystery.

From my window I told him like everyone else —no!— but...instead of just walking away like normal people, he got angry and kept buzzing. I walked three stories down to the door and told him no again, but then he told me he was going to file a complaint with the manager!

By now I was good and pissed off. I told him that I’m the damn manager and there is no such hotel.

Then the cheeky bastard told me that he has a reservation! And demanded his room!

It was like some boffo Marx Brothers’ or Three Stooges spoof, to conclude with me punching him in the nose.

I reiterated that it was a private home, and that he was wrong. At the same time I noticed a very ‘pretty’ woman passenger waiting in the car. I figured the idiot probably forgot to make a reservation and is bluffing, and now his idyllic weekend with the girlfriend is screwed, because Jesus himself couldn’t get a room at the last minute on a weekend in San Francisco in high season.

Then the schmuck insisted on inspecting my house! Thoroughly pissed off, I was about to threaten to call the cops on him, if not plant the well-deserved punch.

At which point the desperate jerk whined to the woman, “Look, I made the reservation at that place,” and pointed at the GPS in his car. That caught my attention so I asked to see it. Incredibly, right there on the GPS screen was displayed “Hotel,” with our address, an international phone number, and a name that looked familiar to me.

Ahha! Finally I understood.

The owner of the house previously lived in the Virgin Islands and had a hotel and bed & breakfast rental business (before Airbnb). When she returned to the US she forwarded her mail to what was now our address, her parents’ house. In fact we regularly got mail from hotel catalogs and such with the same name as on the map. So our apartment was included in the GPS Garmin app as a hotel.

Mystery solved, I told the jerk to get lost.

So, I explained all this to the dumbfounded stranger in my apartment, who happened to be Peruvian, both of us naturally speaking in Spanish from the moment we said “hola.”

I also told him the bad news of the unlikelihood of finding a hotel room in the city. I invited him into our living room to look at my collection of hotel brochures, from previous visitors, while I attended to the food and my daughter.

I mulled over the incredible circumstances and my past. What were the possibilities of two strangers meeting like this, and both speaking Spanish? He had told me that his wife and son, a little older than our daughter, were waiting in their car. I recalled all my wanderings and travels around the world, and all those generous Latin American families who opened their homes to me, a total stranger —a man!— during my journey through Latin America. My instinct told me I could trust him.

Suddenly my mind was made up. I would invite them to stay with us. And without even consulting with Alejandra.

I put on the most reasonable face I could muster given the circumstances, to propose this to Coco, that was the Peruvian man’s name (”Like Coco Peredo,” I told him, regarding the great revolutionary, but he had no idea who I was talking about).

Naturally, he looked at me like I was absolutely crazy or dangerous when I extended the invitation. Then I explained my reasons and experiences as a traveler. I told him that we have a sofa bed in the living room where they could fit. He had already seen my daughter. I also told him that at that hour on a Friday it would be virtually impossible to find a room, and it would be expensive. And to top it off I told him there was more than enough food for everyone for dinner. (I cook like for an army)

After listening to my arguments in favor of the invitation, he looked at me in amazement and told me that it was the most generous thing he had ever heard. I told him that it wouldn’t be long before my wife arrives, and that in any case he should check with his.

Coco went back down the stairs to go talk to his wife waiting in the car with their son, and I was pretty sure that’s the last of him, and I’m never going to see him again.

Still, I was very excited just at the thought. I loved the possibility of having an adventure without even leaving the house. For the first time I would host some unknown travelers! I was paying a personal debt and one to humanity.

I ran over to my music collection to whip out some Peruvian music CDs I had bought in Lima some years previously. I put on Eva Ayllón, Queen of Peruvian Festejo music, to liven things up.

Then Alejandra arrived home (with her key). Stunned, she listened to me tell her about the invitation, but she trusted my judgment in principle.

After about twenty minutes, I was certain they’d left. But then the doorbell rang and standing on the doorstep was the whole family with their suitcases. Whatever doubts for us just melted away.

They came upstairs and were even more surprised to hear Eva Ayllón, and that Alejandra is a Colombian neighbor, and that Spanish is spoken in the family. Mirtha, Coco’s wife, later told me that the Eva Ayllón music cinched it for her. Their son immediately started playing with our daughter. Within minutes we were like old friends catching up. Dinner was a joy.

Mirtha and Coco stayed the weekend with us and we took them around town as their guides. Then they left for a week to attend the conference they came for, and returned the next weekend to again stay with us.

Mirtha kindly made us delicious Peruvian meals with Peruvian ingredients we picked up in the immigrant Mission District. As the cook of the house, of course I asked her for all the recipes.

It was such a wonderful experience. To live with open arms. To see the world like that. It wasn’t merely a kindness to others but it enriched our own lives. To break a little with all the inhuman barriers that separate us.

We maintained the friendship, and about a year later they came back to San Francisco to stay with us again. This time it was shortly after the sudden and shocking death of our son, Alí. Their friendship helped us through the terrible grief of the unthinkable loss.

One of the fondest memories of that visit was of drawing a tub of hot bubble-bath water for the two happy children. Their laughter and shouts of joy from the two were the best balm imaginable. At one point Mirtha and Coco’s son shouted, “Now this is living!” It made me cry, first for Alí, but also for feeling the joy of life, and the confidence to go on. I wiped my tears in the foam of baby bubbles, and laughed together with the two beautiful children, who saved me from the abyss.

Thank you Coco and Mirtha! Thank you for your trust and support.

© Aaron Ruby, February 2022

__________________________

Los huéspedes imprevistos

Una tarde en el apartamento en San Francisco estaba cuidando a mi hija de unos tres años y alistando la comida para la cena. Faltaba poco para la llegada del trabajo de mi compañera, como las cinco y media de la tarde.

Inesperadamente sonó la puerta de entrada dos pisos abajo. Pero no era tan raro que Alejandra hubiese olvidado la llave y sin reparo actué desde arriba el destranque remoto de la puerta, la escuché subir las escaleras hacia nuestro apartamento en el tercer piso.

—Hola— le dije dulcemente de bienvenida desde la cocina.

—Hola— respondió dubitativa una voz de... ¡un hombre!

Corrí hacia la cabeza de las escaleras sopesando la necesidad de coger un cuchillo de la cocina, para encontrarme con un hombre subiendo, que se veía bastante desconfiado y aún más sorprendido al verme con mí delantal de cocinero.

—Es, éste...un…¿hotel?— titubeó, obviamente seguro que no, pero queriendo la confirmación de que no era él el loco de la película.

—No—, le sonreí, —es una casa particular. Ya te lo explico.—

…...

No fue la primera vez que un extraño nos tocara la puerta pidiendo albergue. Pero apenas hace unos meses antes había logrado finalmente descifrar el misterio del porqué venía gente a tocarnos la puerta de nuestro apartamento preguntando por un hotel o posada.

La primera vez fue años atrás cuando apenas estábamos instalados después de la mudanza de Houston a San Francisco en 2006. Les dije que no y se fueron. Cosas raras de la vida, decía yo. Y luego cada cuantos meses tocaban extraños preguntando por alojamiento. Y así. Un misterio del universo. La verdad era que nuestra ubicación cerca de la playa y el puente de Golden Gate Bridge era más que turístico. ¿Quizás la gente desesperada en San Francisco llama a apartamentos al azar con la esperanza de encontrar un hotel escondido? ¿Quién sabe?

Pero una tarde tocó un tipo grosero y mentiroso que iba a resolver el misterio.

Desde mi ventana (estábamos en el tercer piso) le dije como a todos los demás que no, pero...en lugar de pirarse así nomás como las otras personas normales, el güevón se puso bravo y volvió a tocar agresivamente. Bajé a la puerta y le volví a decir que no, ¡Pero me dice todo árido que va a interponer una queja con el gerente!

Ya con eso me había enfadado y le dije que yo soy el gerente y no hay un tal puto hotel.

¡¡Luego el muy cabrón y mentiroso me dice que tiene una reserva!! ¡Y que exige su habitación! ¡Qué descarado!

Ya era plena obra bufa al estilo de los hermanos Marx o los Tres Chiflados, y estaba pensando meterle un puñetazo. Le reiteré que era una casa particular y que estaba equivocado. (A la vez que observo que hay una mujer “bonita” de pasajero, y supongo que problemente al idiota se le olvidó hacer una reserva, y ahora su idilo con la novia está jodido porque ni Dios va a conseguir una habitación a última hora, un fin de semana en San Francisco en temporada alta.)

¡Luego el descarado insiste en inspeccionar mi casa! De ninguna manera le expliqué bastante enfadado, a punto de amenazar con llamar a la policía, sino darle un buen puñetazo merecido.

El tipo ya desesperado le dice a la mujer con tono árido pero a la vez suplicante que —Mire hice la reserva en ese lugar— y señaló la pantalla de su GPS del carro. Con eso me interesa y pido verlo. Por cierto, en la pantalla del programa de mapas sale un “Hotel” precisamente con mi dirección y un nombre que me resulta familiar. Y tiene un teléfono internacional.

¡Caching! Ya con eso se me cayó el veinte. Entendí todo.

La dueña de la casa antes vivía en las Islas Vírgenes y tenía un negocio de hotel y alquiler de casas (antes del tal Airbnb). Cuando ella volvió a Estados Unidos hizo un traslado de correo a esta dirección, la casa de sus papás, ahora arrendado por nosotros. De hecho nosotros recibimos correo de negocio de hoteles a cada rato con el mismo nombre que sale en el mapa. Entonces por algún error nuestro apartamento fue incluído en el programa de GPS como hotel.

¡Tantán! Misterio resuelto y le mando el necio al carajo.

……..

Entonces expliqué toda esa historia al hombre boquiabierto en mi apartamento, que resulta ser peruano, los dos hablando en castellano de lo más natural a partir de “hola”, y también le cuento las malas noticias de no poder conseguir fácilmente una habitación en toda la ciudad. Le invito a pasar a mirar los materiales que tengo sobre hoteles, por otras visitas que habíamos tenido, mientras atiendo a la comida y mi hija.

Voy pensando en las circunstancias y mi pasado. ¿Qué posibilidades había de que dos desconocidos se encontraran así y ambos hablaran español? Él me había comentado que su pareja y un hijo un poco mayor que nuestra hija estaban esperando en su vehículo. Me puse a recordar todas mi andanzas y viajes por el mundo, y todas esas familias latinoamericanas tan generosas que me dieron posada, a un hombre joven y desconocido, durante mi periplo por América Latina.

En un momento ya estaba decidido. Les voy a invitar a quedarse con nosotros. Y sin siquiera consultar con Alejandra.

Me pongo la cara más razonable para proponer eso a Coco, que así se llama el hombre peruano (”como Coco Peredo“ le dije, pero no tenía idea de quién le hablaba).

Me miró incrédulo y como un posible loco cuando le hago la invitación y mientras le explico mis motivos y experiencias como viajero. Le dije que tenemos sofá cama en la sala donde caben bien. Él ya había visto a mi hija. Además le dije que a esa hora sería muy difícil encontrar una habitación, y sería carísima. Y que había más que suficiente comida para cenar todos. (Cocino como si fuera para un batallón completo.)

Después de escuchar mis argumentos en favor de la invitación me quedó mirando maravillado y me dijo que es la oferta más generosa que jamás había escuchado. Le digo que no tarda en llegar mi esposa, y que él debería consultar con la suya en todo caso.

Coco bajó la escalera para ir a hablar con su esposa esperando en el vehículo con su hijo. Estaba casi seguro que no lo volvería a ver nunca.

Pero la verdad es que me emocionó mucho sólo la idea. Me encantó la posibilidad de tener una aventura sin siquiera salir de la casa. ¡Por primera vez yo iba a ser el anfitrión de unos viajeros! Era pagar una deuda personal y también ante la humanidad.

Corrí para mí colección de música a sacar unos discos de música peruana que compré en Lima. Puse un disco de Eva Ayllón, la Reina del Festejo de Perú, para amenizar.

En eso llegó Alejandra, y quedó estupefacta mientras me escuchaba explicar la invitación, pero le parece bien.

Después de unos veinte minutos, estaba seguro que ya se habían ido. Pero tocaron a la puerta y ahí frente a mis ojos estaba toda la familia con las maletas. Cualquier duda que tuviéramos se disipó.

Subieron y se quedaron más sorprendidos al oír las notas de Eva Ayllón, y que mi esposa es colombiana, y se habla español en familia. Mirtha, la mujer de Coco, me dijo más tarde que la música de Eva Ayllón le había convencido. Su hijo se puso a jugar con la nuestra en cinco segundos. Felices ellos y nosotros. La cena es una alegría.

Pues Mirtha y Coco se quedaron el fin de semana con nosotros y los paseamos por la ciudad como sus guías. Luego se fueron por una semana para asistir a la conferencia por la cual vinieron, y regresaron el próximo fin de semana para quedar de nuevo con nosotros.

Mirtha luego nos hizo una deliciosa comida peruana con ingredientes que obtuvimos en el barrio latino. Cómo cocinero de la casa le pedí todas las recetas.

Fue una muy grata memoria. Qué bueno ser así. Ver el mundo así. No sólo es ser bondadoso con otros sino que enriquece la vida de uno mismo. Romper un poco con los esquemas y los baluartes que tanto nos dividen.

Mantuvimos la amistad, y como un año más tarde volvieron a San Francisco a quedarse nuevamente con nosotros. Esa vez fue poco después de la muerte repentina de nuestro hijo, Alí. Su amistad nos ayudó a sobrellevar la terrible congoja de la pérdida impensable de nuestro hijo.

Una de las memorias más lindas de esa visita fue de hacer una tina de agua caliente con burbujas para los dos niños felices. Las risas y gritos de alegría de los dos eran el mejor bálsamo imaginable. En un momento el hijo de Mirtha y Coco gritó, “¡Esto sí que es vida!” Me hizo llorar, primero por Alí, pero también por sentir la alegría de la vida, y la confianza de seguir adelante. Me sequé las lágrimas con la espuma de las burbujas de jabón y me reí junto a esos dos preciosos niños que me salvaron del abismo.

¡Gracias Coco y Mirtha! Gracias por su confianza y apoyo.

© Aarón Ruby. Febrero de 2022

Subscribe now

We began our holiday trip to Peru in December 2001. In particular to see the ruins of Machu Picchu.

On the flight from Lima to Cusco, we were told that the famous train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes left in the afternoon, which is the only way to get to the outskirts of Machu Picchu, except on foot. But that turned out not to be the case. The train only departed in the morning and we were already too late to catch it when we arrived.

But at the hotel they told us that if we hurried we could take a bus that went from Cusco to Pisac, and from there a minibus to Ollantaytambo, where the blessed train did stop and one could board it to continue the last stretch to the town of Aguas Calientes, a few kilometers from Machu Picchu. We managed to just catch the intercity bus to Pisac, which was one of those Bluebird brand school buses that one finds all over Latin America.

We found seats towards the back. We were the only foreigners there, all of them Peruvians and indigenous, and like so often in my life... well, I was the only white guy, and just loving it. Soon Alejandra fell asleep from altitude sickness, exhaustion and the rocking of the bus.

I was thrilled as I strained to hear my first conversations in Quechua around me. It was a historic privilege to be able to hear one of the most famous indigenous languages of the Americas for the first time.

Looking beside the road, I noticed that almost all the houses had glass bottles with liquids on their gabled roofs and, most striking, two clay bulls. They were obviously some kind of offering, I thought.

The Brotherhood

The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, a woman got on and began receiving warm greetings from the passengers. They were all speaking in Quechua.

After greeting each of the travelers very warmly, she walked to the back. I felt as if I was witnessing a family reunion or some famous person greeting her admirers. Finally she reached where we were sitting. I was burning with curiosity.

So I asked the woman if she spoke Spanish and if I could trouble her with a question. She nodded. “What are the bottles and the little clay bulls?” I asked her.

She told me that they were called “Toritos de Pucará “ (literally, “little bulls from Pucará”), after the name of the town where they were made. She said that the bulls represented a team of oxen, which symbolized the collective strength of the community that had helped build the house. She explained that the houses were not the work of construction companies but had been built by the community itself. It was a kind of monument to pre-capitalist collectivism, to honor the spirit of houses built by the community to help their neighbors.

I was very impressed, and frankly it choked me up to think that such community support still existed. It is something very foreign to the individualistic life in capitalism where everything is bought and sold, mediated by the market. You get what you can pay for. In most of the Americas pre-Columbian culture and institutions have been destroyed long ago. These community-built homes were something beautiful and noble in the world that has partly survived capitalist barbarism. I told her my opinion.

Then I dared to ask her how she knew all the people on the bus, and also why they obviously held her in such high regard? She told me that she had been a teacher in the community, and that she was visiting for the first time in about two years.

“Ahh,” I responded, asking her where she currently lived, assuming it was in Lima. She then replied that she was working in the Dominican Republic with Haitian sugar cane cutters to build unions.

I almost fell out of my seat. That simply blew my mind! The implications were frankly inconceivable. It would have been easier to comprehend if she had told me that she lived on the moon and had just arrived by parachute! An Incan indigenous woman in her fifties living in the Caribbean, organizing unions of Haitian immigrant laborers, the most discriminated workers in all of Latin America, almost slaves?! It was obvious to me that she had to be a socialist activist and revolutionary cadre, but she did not fit into any imaginable category.

On a hunch from my political experience and having eliminated any other imaginable possibility, I asked her directly if she was part of the Peruvian peasant revolutionary movement, “Tierra o Muerte” (Land or Death), led by Hugo Blanco.

Now it was her turn to be left mouth agape by a gringo who knew about the Peruvian revolutionary movement of the 1960s and 1970s.

Her eyes widened and she nodded slowly, clearly doing her own calculations. Then she asked me just as directly, “And you, comrade? Are you a member of the SWP?” and with that it was my turn to go wide-eyed and mouth agape once again.

I nodded mutely (although I was no longer a member). She warmly smiled at me and we embraced.

My head was buzzing with the thousands of questions that would entail hours and hours of conversation. But just then the driver shouted something in Quechua, and she regretfully touched my hand and said: “This is my stop, I have to get off now.” And she left, like an enchanted apparition or fairy from a storybook, she vanished from my sight. There was no time to exchange addresses, I never learned her name, there was no time to introduce ourselves. I never saw her again and I have never forgotten her. I still feel like jumping off the bus to find her.

In an instant we were two intimate friends who, without ever having met before, understood each other’s worlds, each other’s values. Our constellations had been identified, all that was missing were the concrete details, the galactic dust. The failed meeting was quite heartbreaking. A tragic disappointment for me. How much I would give to have one more hour. I have always cherished that moment as a magnificent example of the brotherhood of revolutionaries across the world, who with three or four questions can identify ourselves and open the doors to the universe and time. Unlike most others, a revolutionary internationalist travels the world not as a stranger but among family.

I have thought of her so many times. I tried to imagine her work among Haitian braceros, learning to speak Haitian Kreyòl, the brutal racist discrimination cruelly imposed by Dominican capitalists to drive a wedge between Dominican and Haitian workers. What was her project? And the organization? I had no idea. Given the wretched state of the so-called “Left” I couldn’t imagine any party or movement I was familiar with organizing such an incredible initiative. Was she alone? That didn’t seem possible.

She was not caught looking backwards in time, a frozen indigenous fossil or mummy trying to resuscitate bygone past “glories.” I had no difficulty imagining her leading a revolutionary government, flying to the moon, or fighting on a battlefield for all humanity. An Incan revolutionary woman fighting for the future, not to hide in delusions of reliving the past. An Incan woman communist perfectly comfortable as a leader of the Haitian working class in the Dominican Republic! She embodied what I had dedicated my life to. I would have loved for my Salvadoran revolutionary trade unionist — my comrade, friend and mentor, Miriam — to have met her. Oh, what a conversation that could have been!

I wanted to blurt out everything to Alejandra who had slept through the entire conversation, but I let her continue resting.

…..

We finally arrived at Ollantaytambo, and spent an otherworldly afternoon in that ancient town, continuously inhabited since the time of the Incas.

From there we boarded the train to Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Pichu, now renamed after the ruins, where I ate my first grilled cuy or guinea pig seasoned with plenty of garlic and lemon.

We had to get up at five in the morning because the road to Machu Picchu was cut off by one of the endless landslides in the mountains. There would be no comfortable ride to the park entrance but instead a brutal hours-long hike up the mountains.

After clambering over the landslide, we had to walk to the base of the mountain and then climb up the trails to the ruins. We arrived completely drenched in sweat at nine in the morning. No tourist comfort.

Then, by chance, I noticed some people climbing the famous sugar-loaf rock hill in the background, Huayna Picchu, and we asked if it was possible to go up there. They told us that climbing was only allowed until 1pm (to give the rescuers time to recover the bodies of the fallen — seriously!).

We did not hesitate to venture up and it was the steepest climb of my life. It was worth it to have an unimaginable overview of Machu Picchu, which only from above can be seen in the shape of a condor, as can be seen from the “throne” that the Incas had carved out of stone.

The city of Ollantaytambo was built in the shape of an ear of corn, and the city of Cusco was made in the shape of a jaguar. It was frankly unimaginable to see that “primitive” genius like the lines of the Nazca plains. It was a privilege that moves me to this day.

After clambering down from Huayna Picchu without breaking our necks, we went to line up for a bus to the landslide. In the line I made friends with three Peruvian women from Lima. It was a very fortuitous meeting. They were the best friends and hosts imaginable in Cusco and Lima.

New Year’s Eve in Cusco

Just a few days later, having returned from Machu Picchu, we were in Cusco looking for what to do to celebrate the night of the 31st and the arrival of the New Year.

We passed by a very modest café, which was blasting a bustling and festive atmosphere out into the street. We were accompanied by the three Peruvian women with whom we had made friends while we waited for the last bus back from Machu Picchu.

The festive sounds were coming from an Afro-Peruvian dance group, made up of a huge, dark-skinned Argentinean with very curly hair, two Venezuelan twin sisters, who did pyrotechnic tricks and played drums in the middle of traffic to raise funds for their trips around the continent, other Swiss members and the group’s director, a Black Peruvian musician and dancer, who was back in Peru after 13 years of forced absence fleeing the death squads. This Peruvian musician had concocted a collection of odd people to create a “Festejo” group dedicated to Afro-Peruvian music and dance, with only one Peruvian member: him.

“Festejo” — a white pharmacy employee in Lima had told me the week before, when I asked him about the wonderful music that was emanating from nearly every speaker in the city that Christmas season. “No puede haber fiesta sin festejo” (There can be no party without Festejo), he solemnly informed me as if it were a law of nature or the penal code, referring to Peru’s Afro music. I was very attracted to this black music and awed by its seemingly wide acceptance in Peruvian society.

Drinking beers with the band members in Cusco, I ended up talking to the band’s Peruvian director. Intrigued by my Spanish, he almost jumped out of his chair when I told him I had lived in Nicaragua for five years during the Sandinista Revolution.

He and I had already begun a kind of political tango, a dangerous dance of exploration and tentative questioning between two cadres or unidentified members of a brotherhood, like the woman on the bus, setting out ideological landmarks, leaving bread crumbs as clues and paths to identify ourselves. A wrong move could mean jail or death in some circumstances. Both of us had lived through dictatorships, and the twisted circumspect language required to survive. It was normal under dictatorships and repression to have to use language full of euphemisms and innuendo. In Peru there were still death squads and rivers of blood from tens of thousands of dead killed only years before by the government. It was not a conversation in Paris or New York. Obviously, it was the first time he had encountered an American communist, something impossible to conceive for many. He was very intrigued, but he was careful.

It was the time of the great popular mobilizations in Argentina that brought down five governments one after another in a matter of months, starting with the resignation and flight of Fernando de la Rúa on December 20, 2001 only days before. I still remember a week later the cheer going up among the everyday passengers on a train from Cusco to Puno in Peru when the conductor announced over the loudspeaker the fall of yet another hated government in neighboring Argentina. Such were the feelings across Latin America.

Then, I made a comment about imperialist domination in Latin America, adding that there was only one sovereign country left. Hint. Hint. With that, his eyes widened and he asked me with a smile, “A country? Is it an island?” And with that we burst out laughing and continued our conversation but without euphemisms.

He had been a Maoist and a Shining Path member when he was young, and had to flee from the death squads unleashed by the social democrat Alan Garcia and then Fujimori. A decade before, a Stalinist such as him would have demanded my death, just as the counterrevolutionary Maoists attacked the Sandinistas and Cubans. He had spent thirteen years in exile and learning. The good thing was that he had renounced the reactionary Maoist politics of the Shining Path terrorists. He supported Cuba and was eager to find out what had happened in Nicaragua. His folklore group was a way of reinserting himself in the country, of testing the political waters.

The two of us remained in a marathon session of political debate and analysis, from the afternoon until the early morning on New Year’s Day.

At seven in the morning, Alejandra and our three friends returned to the bar to drag me on a tour of the Sacred Valley of Pisac, Ollantaytambo and Chinchorro. It was the last thing I wanted to do given my exhaustion. But fortunately I did not give in to the fatigue.

It was January 1, 2002, and there were special activities and celebrations in almost every community. Not for tourists, but by and for the communities themselves. All the “tourists” were Peruvian. We were lucky to bump into the celebrations, and we outsiders were welcomed into their family party.

First we went to Pisac and the Sacred Valley. There we came across an indigenous ceremony with coca leaves. Everyone was dressed in their best poncho away (hand made) and the classic warm wool hats, chullos. They simply ignored the tourists.

Girls singing in Quechua, to us near Pisac.

Ollantaytambo

Like all the main cities of the Incas, Ollantaytambo has a layout that can only be perceived from the air; in this case it is shaped like an ear of corn. The architectural and engineering skills of the Incas were impressive.

When we arrived in Ollantaytambo we happened across a game and a celebration. In the square they were giving out a delicious chicha colorá, which is a beer made from fermented corn or choclo. In Nicaragua it is known as chicha bruja (a witch’s brew). It was so familiar to me to once again taste its sour and fizzy flavor and buzz (all the stronger at altitude).

On the street they had put up a set of indigenous ‘bowling pins.’ The pins were made of solid wood, hand-carved, just like the imperfect carved wooden ball. They were tall, thin and decorated with flowers.

The wooden ball was thrown underhand while everyone drank chicha, made bets, laughed and danced huaynu in the middle of the street. I never really understood the game, beyond the fact that the objective was to knock them down by any means necessary.

The poncho away, or handmade poncho from Ollantaytambo is unique. It has a burnt orange to reddish color. The entire town was wearing their best ponchos that day. I bought a used poncho that day and decades later it still smells of campfire smoke. That smell of smoke that has accompanied me for much of my life, like all humanity.

The houses in Ollantaytambo are the same ones built by the Incas more than 500 years ago, made of bare, solid stone. That day I felt like I was in a magical place, in the middle of a fairy tale.

Chinchorros

The last stop was in the town of Chinchorros. In the town’s court there was a band playing the popular indigenous music, huaynu, and the villagers were dancing with unbridled happiness powered by all the chicha they had already consumed. Our friends from Lima did not hesitate to join in the dance and taught us the shuffling back-skip step to dance the huaynu (similar to the Australian Running Man Melbourne shuffle step of today!). At one point an indigenous man asked Alejandra to dance, thinking she was just another chola (indigenous woman from the Andes).

And I, having consumed enough chicha to free me from my shyness, also joined in the dancing. Without boasting, but as a very sober declaration, I affirm that I have no doubt that I was the only gringo in the world who was dancing huaynu and drinking chicha in a dirt field in the Andes on that January 1, 2002, hugging my Inca companions. What joy! To be able to share the celebrations with that part of great humanity, one of the most silenced parts. To share a sacred moment in the Sacred Valley.

I was cross-eyed from sleep, hoarse, dizzy from the chicha and short of breath from the altitude when the bus honked to take us back to Cusco. But the band and the townspeople implored us to stay until the evening to eat cuy and sleep over in their humble homes. We hesitated at the very tempting offer… but unfortunately we had to say goodbye with lots of hugs.

After a well-deserved siesta in Cusco, we went out again at night to accompany our party-going friends from the group to a concert and a dance. Unforgettable.

Still have to have party hats even in the Incan Empire!

Yawar Fiesta

In Bogotá, before leaving for Peru, we visited the modern art museum. There, I saw a massive semi-abstract oil painting by the Colombian painter Alejandro Obregón that covered an entire wall, entitled “Yawar Fiesta“ or “Festival of Blood.” (similar to the less impressive painting by Obregón at the beginning of this post).

It moved and intrigued me deeply. It depicts the fantastical violent scene of birds attacking a bull.

Reading the brief footnote to the Dantesque painting gave me chills because it represented not some crazy imagined scene plucked from the painter’s mind but something real. I had the same reaction each time it was explained to me in greater detail in Peru. Rarely in life do history and the rage of millions come together and unite in such a powerful symbol.

In some villages in the area of Puquio, in the Ayacucho area or Coyllurqui, in Apurímac, they organize an annual ceremony called in Quechua Yawar Punchay. It is held as a counter-celebration to the official Peruvian independence day from Spain each July 28. For the enslaved indigenous peoples there was no real difference between the cruel native Criollo exploiters and Spanish colonial rule. “Independence” came and nothing changed for them. In a novel of the same name Yawar Fiesta, by the Peruvian author, José María Arguedas, published in 1941, some variants of this cult are described.

It begins when a group of men climb to the top of the Andes Mountains to dig a hole far from any town. They carry stakes usually on an old donkey or a mule at the end of a hard life but still sure-footed. They climb into the hole and cover it with the wooden stakes and slaughter the animal, opening the carcass up on the stakes, with the men crouching underneath, hidden in silence. They spend perhaps days like this eating their charquí (the Quechua origin word for “jerky” or dried meat), waiting for a condor to approach, attracted by the smell of rotten meat, although very distrustful. Finally, the largest flying bird in the world comes down to eat the carrion. At that moment the men grab the condor by its legs, enduring the pecks and the enormous claws until they manage to tie it up.

They take the condor to the village, where they tie it to the back of a bull. In this way, the condor begins to sink its claws and beak into the back of the enraged bull, until it spills its blood onto the ground, onto the Pachamama, or mother earth. A sacrifice, today without deaths.

This is done every July 28, the supposed Independence Day of Peru, the day that freedom was won for the Creole elites, but not for the Cholos, not the Incas nor the Aymara, not for working people.

I always get a lump in my throat when I think of the Yawar Punchay. The condor symbolizes the indigenous people, the land of the Inca, Tahuantinsuyo. The bull symbolizes the genocidal Spaniards. Every year the blood of the symbol of the Spanish empire and genocide is spilled again in anger at the never-ending holocaust of the indigenous people.

No mad poet could have concocted, in their most febrile or cruel imagination, something so beautiful and horrible, that would evoke the barbarity, the emotions and the intertwined blood of millions of beings.

In Cusco, we met a clay artisan who made sculptures of Yawar Punchay.

He lovingly touched Alejandra’s cheek with his palm and said, “A chola, like us.”

My children still have his sculpture, which is also part of their inheritance, my beautiful cholos.

It is certainly a macabre barbarity with no future, because it eternally looks backwards in anger and regret but can’t offer a way forward. At the same time it is more poetic than any verse. It is like burning a verse into the skin with a hot iron, a cry of pain caused by colonial shackles and present-day racist oppression.

In response to the hypocritical moans of middle-class animal rights finger-waggers, I have this to say: How can one demand the abolition of the Yawar Fiesta as cruel without having first demanded the abolishment of the cause of such cruelty visited daily upon millions and millions of indigenous peoples in the Andes and around the world? How can one demand an end to the hecatomb of bulls without having abolished the indigenous hecatomb?

Incredibly, these very comfortable middle-class ‘animal rights’ activists do not mourn the suffering of millions of indigenous people but limit their outrage to feigned concern for animals, as if the oppressed humans somehow deserve their horrible fate. Like those who whine about animals in slaughterhouses but haven’t a kind word to say about the countless brutalized, injured and killed meatpacking workers. Human beings. I was a meatpacking worker. I know of which I speak. I carry the injuries.

Among my experiences in the presence of indigenous peoples in the Americas that struck me most—because of the sheer brutality implied—was the whisper of their hushed voices when they speak their languages in public.

It was something very familiar to me. As a child in the Acequia Madre Elementary School in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1970-1973, the children and adults still told of school policy some years before where indigenous and Chicano children caught speaking their native languages were beaten, tied up and had dirty rags stuffed in their mouths, and then locked in a dark broom closet, just down the hallway from my classroom. Since I was a child I can recall the hushed tones used by the oppressed Native Americans to speak their languages in public.

I remember listening to a radio interview with Robert Caro, the famous biographer of the vile President Lyndon Johnson. Caro glowingly asserted how “supportive” LBJ was of his segregated Chicano students in 1928 Texas. Caro used as an example of the affection of LBJ towards the Chicano students that he hit when they spoke Spanish, so that they would be forced to learn English and not use the language of maids. It was horrifying to think of such racist torture, but then to have a liberal icon praise his brutal treatment of his students as an example of enlightenment! Words do not suffice.

But all across the Americas they still speak despite the brutality. It is the cautious but defiant whisper of the unconquered, of the victims of a five-hundred-year holocaust under an iron yoke. Unable to express the essence of their existence: their language. But one day they will cry out. One day the cry of their blood will be heard, and if it is not pretty, so be it.

……

According to what I have read and heard from witnesses, sometimes those present at the Yawar Punchay are completely drunk and enraged, shouting at the bull with hatred, as if the conquest had only happened yesterday. It is neither elegant nor dignified. How could it be? How can one demand elegance from the enslaved?

José María Arguedas’ novel and other sources from decades past tells that on some occasions they even dynamited the bulls, or the enraged crowd killed them with knives.

But again, those who dare to criticize animal suffering fail to notice the savage brutality that shaped another, leaving scars and calluses on the rough hands of enslaved Indians. How can we commemorate animals while ignoring the lives of millions of indigenous people? Only with the end of exploitation and oppression can the rage dissipate, and all be uplifted, including the animals.

The historical memory of the people still persists in silence and darkness, far from what is written and respectable.

When I visited Guatemala years before I visited a village on the shores of the beautiful Lake Atitlan. My mother had taught me to always be curious about cemeteries, as historic and social records. I have visited so many around the world because of her.

At the entrance was a tomb with a large inscription that left me absolutely thunderstruck for all the implications in a country that was the epicenter of the Catholic inquisition, and holocaust against the Mayans, and then the genocide under evangelical military dictatorships.

I will never forget the words on that tombstone:

Instead of a whisper, it was a howl of defiance and dignity against the indigenous holocaust. Under the dictatorships it would have meant death.

All of that is preserved and kept, the noble and beautiful, the twisted and terrible, dignity and solidarity, the resentments and the rage, formed under the saber and the lash of the masters’ whips over the centuries, until one day it is unleashed with a cry and an offering of blood to drown the anger:

And then having spilled the blood of the conquistadores, freed, the condor returns to the firmament.

© Aaron Ruby 2023

REFERENCES

Bulls of Pucará

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torito_de_Pucar%C3%A1

https://www.incamachupicchutours.com/peruvian-customs-traditions/toritos-pucara/

Yawar Fiesta/ Yawar Punchay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yawar_Fiesta

https://peregrinefund.org/projects/yawar-fiesta

____

Those killed by Alan Garcia

May 13, 2019

https://www.servindi.org/actualidad-noticias/13/05/2019/alan-garcia-asesino

Truth Commission for Peru

Saturday, May 26, 2001

“U.S.-based Human Rights Watch on Friday criticized Peruvian presidential candidate Alan Garcia for 1,600 cases of forced disappearances during his term in office between 1985 and 1990.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/news/newsid_1352000/1352727.stm

The capitalist media is tut-tutting and condemning massive celebrations and riots by working-class youth across France following the victory of the French team, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), in some football tournament. A regular orgy of fear and loathing of the working class by the bourgeoisie.

Subscribe now

Personally, I have absolutely no interest in the business of any the repugnant and and often reactionary capitalist “sports” charades, but this is a moment that reveals hidden truths about the class struggle and politics, and growing social tensions.

There were many political elements involved in these football celebrations, protests and riots. Naturally the bourgeois media don’t want us to understand the background, only in fearmongering about the unwashed masses and the reported 780 arrests and 219 injuries nationwide.

Hundreds of thousands of working class youth proclaimed that for a moment the streets of the City of Lights were theirs, if even for a night. Any excuse will do.

And the bourgeoisie responded: How dare they! How uncouth.

Those who could never afford tickets to the football matches, spilled out of their suburban ghettos and reservations into the gilded Paris champs of the rich to celebrate and to give the finger to the elites and cops.

In France, working class youth are suffering mass unemployment — 21.1%!

In the suburban high-immigrant neighborhoods districts, known as Quartiers de la politique de la ville (QPVs) or banlieues, youth unemployment is estimated to be 35% to 40% (the racist French government refuses to report any social statistics for nonwhites to better hide the discrimination).

That is in addition to the dilapidated and unlivable conditions in the public housing banlieue ghettos, where the French rulers have herded immigrants and French citizens of color for generations to provide a source of cheap labor. Street cleaners for the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

There is widespread inchoate rage at the rulers, and their cops and government. This rage can find unexpected channels, and without working class leadership these are usually unproductive dead ends. But let us not point fingers at them but at the causes of their rightful rage.

For many simply a moment of joy outside a dreary existence without any visit to Riviera, for some there were elements of rebellion, and for others an unfocused anger and hooliganism wanting to give the finger to the establishment, or just break something.

Why are only the bourgeoisie and their armed gun thugs allowed to break things or break countries? No moral outrage against imperialism rioting and breaking the lives of billions across the world?

The working class youth have no political parties that speak for them, there are no actions for them to join. They have no avenues to productively direct their anger and desire to rebel against the ever-worsening social and economic conditions under capitalism. A dangerous vacuum.

It was clear that as usual the racist anti-working class French police indiscriminately and violently attacked the celebrations with batons and tear gas, to intentionally provoke greater anger and riots. Which is precisely what happened, as is usually the case.

Also there were political elements as many of the PSG Collectif Ultras Paris (CUP) fans are leftists and supporters of the Palestinians, many were waving Palestinian flags, as is their tradition.

So the right-wing cops had it in for them.

The Collectif Ultras Paris (CUP) supports leftist causes and the Palestinians due to three core factors:

Most members come from working-class Paris suburbs (banlieues) with large North African and Muslim populations, where Palestinian solidarity is naturally widespread, as is the case among the left.

Anti-Right History: The CUP’s lineage originates from the Virage Auteuil stand, which was explicitly formed in 1991 to counter white supremacist, far-right groups in PSG’s rival stand.

As part of global ultra culture, the CUP often speaks out against corporate and state authority, leading them to naturally side with populations and causes they view as oppressed.

As the Communist Manifesto stated in 1848 in its opening passage:

“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight…”

The class struggle just manifested itself once again, even refracted through apparently meaningless football and fan celebrations, even through unfocused riots, an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight of the plebeian masses.

So let the sniveling French bourgeoisie and the lapdog media of the capitalist rulers, so outraged at these youth, direct their condemnation against the genocidal Israeli regime and its bloody violence, assisted by France. Let them condemn the war against Iran. Let them condemn the starvation blockade against the Cuban people.

We, on the other hand must focus on building new organizations of the working class capable of harnessing the growing rage of all those youth and hundreds of millions more across the world to fight against their real enemy: capitalism.

Let us score more than paltry goals against the bourgeoisie.

Let’s win the final championship.

I wrote this essay back in January — a story of tyranny and racism and our fights against them, woven through my family and personal history. I hesitated to share as it contains perilous confessions and proclamations, but they must be said if I am to meet the present moment, for myself and my children, and all the exploited and oppressed.

Subscribe now

A few years after the Bicentennial, in 1980, my grandfather, JW, bizarrely had sought to utilize Hughes’s lineage to seek to find some bond with his anti-racist grandson.

JW was a southern bricklayer, a Baptist, a 32nd-degree Mason, and —according to whispered family lore—a member of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan during its 1920s zenith, and later of the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. Were he alive today, he would undoubtedly be an enthusiastic foot soldier for Donald Trump.

I only recall meeting him three times. The first was in 1972 in New Mexico when he abandoned my little sister and me in an empty and cold midwinter house while my mother was in the hospital with a broken hip. He drove us from the hospital spewing a barrage of racist invective about the many Latinos and Native Americans in New Mexico, his face twisted in hate. I cursed him from the back seat, even though I was only a twelve-year-old boy. For my impudence he left us and went to the airport. My crippled mother and her children be damned.

Since my earliest memories I have always despised racism. Both my parents actively supported the civil rights movement — and having grown up among black Sudanese friends in Wadi Halfa, Sudan, from when I was three to four in 1964 — racism was simply incomprehensible to me from my first moments.

My closest friend in first grade at Whittier Elementary School in Berkeley, California in 1966 was Black, and I landed my first blow in anger against a first-grade classmate for a racist joke in the boys’ bathroom. An incident I still recall with preternatural clarity and pride. It would not be my last blow.

I last saw my grandfather for an obligatory visit demanded by my father to their retirement home in Florida when I was eighteen in 1979.

He took me to a whites-only private golf club to try to teach me a game I reviled, and again spewed his racist bile.

And I again cursed him up and down, but now with the full rich vocabulary of a grown young man with a Black girlfriend and mostly Black friends, with my own adopted southern drawl picked up from the Philadelphia Black community, many with origins in North Carolina.

Now it was my turn to leave early to the airport back to Philadelphia.

His final attempt to reach out to me was to send me that unsolicited SAR certificate in 1980, just before I left the United States to hitchhike across Latin America, and fortuitously end up joining the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua.

I never saw or spoke to him again, and frankly desired his death sooner rather than later.

The SAR is the lesser-known fraternal organization of the notorious Daughters of the American Revolution.

The DAR was an elitist and racist patriotic organization. Despite an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 African Americans, both free and enslaved fighting in the Revolutionary War, the SAR and DAR denied membership to Blacks, or to the descendants of the thousands of Latin American and Spanish soldiers and sailors who contributed to the Patriot cause between 1779 and 1783.

The DAR was particularly infamous because in 1939 it refused to allow the famous Black opera singer, Marian Anderson to perform at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., due to her race. This act of despicable segregation prompted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to publicly resign from the DAR, resulting in a historic Easter Sunday concert by Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial for 75,000 people.

Fully aware of that history, and viewing it as a symbol of the very exclusion and bloodline ideology that JW championed, I nearly ripped up the SAR certificate, but thought better of it, laughingly imagining it might be amusing at some point to whip it out to shock people. I put it away and completely forgot about it.

For nearly five decades, until a few years ago, that certificate sat forgotten like a serpent’s egg in a box in my mother’s garage—a repugnant relic of a man I despised.

When I discovered that unremembered piece of paper, again I found it strange and amusing to hold it in my hands, chuckling at the thought of my brown children now having the right to join once white-only organizations. But I considered that trivia at best, and again put it aside without much thought.

Then, a few days ago, the past collided violently with the present.

I read an opinion column by David French analyzing Trump’s authoritarian dynamics. French cited Aziz Huq’s Atlantic essay, "America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State," which detailed the work of Nazi-era Jewish labor lawyer Ernst Fraenkel. I had been ruminating about the meaning of the Trump administration, so this caught my eye. Fraenkel theorized that the transition from a bourgeois democracy to fascism creates a "dual state": a Normative State where regular law still applies to the chosen few, and a parallel Prerogative State governed by lawless violence.^{[1] [2]}

Huq described,

“On May 9, 1933—only a few months after the Reichstag burned—Fraenkel and other Jewish lawyers received an official notice prohibiting them from appearing in German courts. But Nazi law made an exception for Jewish lawyers who had served in World War I.” [emphasis mine]

And so Fraenkel survived — even as countless Jews were banned, beaten, imprisoned and killed — shielded by his military service papers, and managing to escape Nazi Germany in 1938, just one year before World War II began and the fascist jaws snapped shut on six million Jews.

I was aware of such apparently odd patriotic and other exceptions to Nazi antisemitic legislation and murder, and noted this particular case in my mind, but went about my business.

…..

Today there was a large and I would say historic demonstration braving Arctic weather in Minneapolis —a city virtually under siege for weeks— in defense of immigrants and democratic rights from the green-shirted ICE and Border Patrol gun thugs rounding up children, and beating and killing protesters with utter impunity, encouraged by the Trump administration.

Seeing the videos and photos of tens of thousands in the streets facing down not only freezing temperatures but mortal threats with enthusiasm was incredibly inspiring. I was exhilarated from afar at the prospect of growing non-violent disciplined mass resistance to the attacks on democratic and social rights by Trump, inexorably pushing towards an authoritarian regime.

Exhausted by days of chronic insomnia and the emotional drain of purging and packing my belongings for a momentous trip, including the SAR certificate now sitting by happenstance on my bedside table, I attempted to rest.

As I drifted off to sleep, my head was buzzing with thoughts about the protest and the meaning and implications of the attacks under Trump.

…..

As if hearing a gunshot, an electric shock ran through my body and I sat bolt upright in the darkness panting and my heart furiously beating.

I was overcome by so many epiphanies and the sudden crystallizing of apparently disparate facts that my mind was exploding.

Like an electric arc I had suddenly realized the implications of the fact that the Jewish lawyer had been saved because he had retained his military service papers. An epiphany both political and personal.

My mind raced to my two beloved brown children and the unimaginable rapidity with which Trump has transformed our reality in just one year. The obvious became immediate and intimate.

Images came to my mind of the ICE Green Shirts under a regime making foul, deformed claims of patriotism and racial purity and calls for blood laws.

I immediately grabbed the papers and held them to my chest. Trump’s threats were no longer broad abstractions but a personal menace against my beloveds.

In a flash of terrifying clarity, my once detested SAR certificate was transfigured into a possible shield. That dusty, barely legible piece of paper was no longer a symbol of white exclusion. In a rapidly deteriorating dual state, it could perhaps become a bullet-proof shibboleth—a key to elude roadblocks and prison, a passport when none are available, or the razor-thin margin between life and unimaginable horrors under a regime spewing foul Nazi narratives of Blut und Boden — blood and soil. While a scrap of paper is powerless against steel and lead, it may yet serve a virtuous purpose completely counter to my grandfather's ignoble intentions: protecting my children.

Perhaps that paper might be a ticket to flee or to continue to fight.

A changed reality imbued an odd, heretofore personally-repugnant relic and symbol of exclusion, with vital new meanings and possibilities of representing something useful.

It was a personal epiphany but also a further registration of the gravity of the building political confrontation, for we seem to be heading towards the threshold of the dual state Fraenkel described, with paramilitary forces already rampaging virtually unimpeded on the margins of law. It still seems distant, but no doubt those in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s thought the same.

My world and history are now clearly being left behind. My children may inhabit that reality on the other side of the threshold. They will likely face the wolf already sniffing at the door.

While I have no doubt my children will be fighters for good, I also know the terrible consequences of standing up against evil, for I have lived them. I have heard the screams and seen and smelled the blood. They come to me to this very day in my nightmares.

And I knew I had to write this. I immediately began furiously pounding out this essay in a single sitting possessed by almost an unimaginable sense of history and urgency coursing through my mind and fingers.

Real Americans

My beloved brown children belong to a far nobler American tradition than Donald J. Trump ever will.

Trump wraps himself in the flag while drawing upon the darkest currents in American history: exclusion, racial hierarchy, xenophobia, and obedience to power. My children belong to another tradition entirely—the long line of Americans who resisted kings, slaveholders, segregationists, dictators, and demagogues.

Trump’s lineage is rooted in wealth, privilege, and the violent politics of racism. His father, Fred Trump, was a proven racist whose real-estate empire was found by the federal government to have discriminated against Black tenants. He was arrested amid a Ku Klux Klan riot in Queens in 1927^[3], a moment that stands as a stain and symbol of the political traditions from which Trump emerged. Decades later, Donald Trump would befriend and be politically shaped by Roy Cohn, one of the most notorious reactionaries in modern American political life.

My own family history is hardly free of such stains. My paternal grandfather, who sent me the SAR certificate, was himself a racist and a likely member of the Klan. But that is precisely why this story matters.

We do not choose our ancestors.

But we do choose which of their legacies we embrace.

I too descend from German-Americans. My great-grandfather was an immigrant fleeing repression rather than seeking wealth or power — a blacksmith on the Nez Perce Native American reservation in Idaho well over a century ago. He was not a landlord, speculator, or man of wealth, but a working man covered in calluses, bruises, and blood—his own.

My grandparents carried forward that tradition of decency. During the Second World War, despite suspicion directed at German-Americans, they opposed the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps by President Roosevelt. My mother as a girl cried for her Japanese classmates who suddenly vanished from her elementary school in Marin County, California.

My children’s inheritance is not bloodline or pedigree. It is a tradition of struggle.

They inherit John Hughes, an Irish immigrant who fought the British Crown in a revolutionary militia. They inherit the example of Crispus Attucks, a Black man who was the first martyr of the American Revolution.^[4] They inherit generations of workers, immigrants, abolitionists, unionists, civil-rights fighters, and ordinary people who stood against oppression rather than profited from it.

For years I rejected that SAR certificate because I saw it through my grandfather’s eyes—as a symbol of exclusion, privilege, and racial mythology. But now I understand that he did not own its meaning.

The certificate does not belong to him.

It belongs to John Hughes.

It belongs to a poor immigrant who risked his life fighting a king.

And now it belongs to my children.

This epiphany allowed me to finally reclaim my revolutionary ancestor. I had freed him—and myself—from my grandfather's malign vision and his deformed claim to be a "true American." Now we can clasp our hands in solidarity across a historic epoch joined in the same noble cause.

Hughes was a simple man, a lowly despised immigrant from Ireland, but he belonged to a brave vanguard. He risked his life to fight for freedom against the most powerful bloodthirsty monster in the world at that time — the British Empire — upon which “the sun never sets,” and against which no one and no cause were supposed to ever prevail, let alone some country rabble organized into a revolutionary militia.

The Fourth Regiment was joined by the militia of farmers, laborers, and tradesmen, who fought to suppress loyalists at the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge and to hold off the British from the coast.1 Often called the “Lexington and Concord of the South,” this victory effectively crushed Loyalist momentum in the region, saved North Carolina from a British invasion, and directly inspired the colony to become the first to officially vote for independence via the Halifax Resolves. My ancestor helped win that victory. It is part of my children's inheritance.

Such scrappy militia fighters and their unequal struggles changed world history for the better, despite the many historical contradictions —above all slavery — opening great battles around the world to eventually bring down feudal monarchies and colonialism, and finally slavery itself.

No doubt John, born in enchained Ireland, was all the more pleased to have defeated the British. And his cause was joined by Irish deserters from the British army in support of the American fight against their hated oppressors.

I could now respectfully embrace my revolutionary ancestor—Irish-born but made American through battle for freedom—and salute him as an equal and a comrade across the centuries, because I too once served in a revolutionary people’s militia against an imperial oppressor.

I too was a proud member of the lowly rabble.

I was a school teacher and a volunteer in the Sandinista People’s Militia in Nicaragua from 1981 to 1986, which like my ancestors’ forces was largely composed of workers, peasants, and farm hands, once again standing against a world superpower.

I have little doubt that John Hughes would have felt at home among us diminutive Davids fighting another monstrous Goliath. The free against the tyrants.

I belonged to battalions 30-13 in Estelí, and then 30-17 in San Juan del Río Coco, from 1982 to 1986, fighting to save my students, my friends and the cause of freedom from the U.S. government and its CIA terrorists: the tyrants. I proudly served about the same amount of time as my Irish ancestor had fought the British. Four years.

Like my American ancestor, I carried a rifle and pack into the mountains, endured hunger and thirst, aided the wounded and buried dead comrades, and faced the CIA bullets without flinching, made brave by the cause of freedom and outrage at tyranny, like John.

And we too prevailed, this time against the purportedly unbeatable Contra monsters of US imperialism. Although our cause and the promise of liberation was ultimately betrayed by those we followed, that is another story, and does not detract from our noble goal and accomplishments.

…..

Incredibly, the 250th anniversary of the American revolution now looms before us along with Trump’s malign intentions.

We can all smell the acrid smoke of the approaching forest fires of authoritarianism and wars. Great and unimaginable conflicts are on the horizon, as are great moments of personal decision and conscience.

Now, in the face of the looming beasts of the capitalist Har Megiddo or the Armageddon of humanity, let us renew the vows of John Hughes and all freedom fighters back to the rebellion in Deir el-Medina against the cruel Pharaohs three thousand years ago, and Spartacus against Rome. The free against tyranny.

May all the John Hughes in America today stand firm for freedom and dignity. Stand in solidarity as the shields and hands of working people to again sound the clarion call to rally for democracy against tyranny, for the exploited and oppressed against the tyrants. Stand as the people in Minneapolis stood for their sisters and brothers against the braying ICE beasts, far more terrible than any Arctic storm, joining their coworkers and neighbors to stand for little children against the Green Shirted hordes.

A Father’s Prayer for His Children and Humanity

My children, and many millions more, may face terrible challenges and decisions in the coming years. Horrors that no father could ever desire.

Should that come, may they have the strength of John Hughes’ spirit and hands to do what is right. For they too can defeat the monsters in unequal struggles for human freedom joining with millions more.

I raise up my ancestor’s banner of rebellion against British oppression and bring it into the present struggles against tyranny.

My children are the descendants of a revolutionary American sergeant who fought the British, and a revolutionary father who stood in the mud of Nicaragua against the American tyrants. May they be inspired by him and their father, and so many more. May we grant them strength.

May John Hughes and all freedom fighters look over my children when I am gone. May he make them strong and true, and keep them safe, so that they may make a better world, as John and I fought for.

May we all find the strength within our hearts, and find the shields in our minds and bodies to stand tall for ourselves and others, and face the coming storm.

Our ancestors were those who stood firm against Rome and the slave masters, the cruel empires of old, and the fascist hordes—the same lowly rabble that has always been the frontline of freedom.

Reach out and join hands with all our ancestors, all the rabble of the world in noble freedom struggles over thousands of years, and with John Hughes.

I am proud to share him with you. May he also lend you strength.

—Aaron Ruby

January 23, 2026

^[1] “An Old Theory Helps Explain What Happened to Renee Good,” by David French. Jan. 18, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/renee-good-ice-immunity.html

^[2] “America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State,” by Aziz Huq

March 23, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-executive-order-lawlessness-constitutional-crisis/

^[3] “That Time Donald Trump’s Father Was Arrested At A KKK Rally In Queens”

https://forward.com/fast-forward/380177/that-time-donald-trumps-father-was-arrested-at-a-kkk-rally-in-queens/

^[4] Crispus Attucks (c. 1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent who is traditionally regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, and as a result the first American killed in the American Revolution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crispus_Attucks

A tribute to an American Cesar.

It is an American Nuremberg Rally. All hail the wannabe American Führer. Not yet enthroned but already organizing his march to seize the crown.

Tens of thousands of rightist thugs, special forces troops, bloodthirsty Pentagon generals — faithful killers of Iranian schoolgirls and Caribbean fishermen, dirty cops, racist militia members and motorcycle gangs, ICE goons, Proud Boys, vigilantes, and Trump’s coterie of pardoned wife beaters and rapists, drug dealers, fraudsters and sworn enemies of democracy — all the constituent elements of all fascist movements down through history will gather in Trump’s colosseum to cry for blood — ours.

Do not laugh it off. It is not merely crass personal vanity to be mocked or dismissed. It is a calculated political spectacle designed to cultivate loyalty around an authoritarian strongman image — to forge a weapon aimed against us.

The White House Caesar is turning his thumb down on democratic norms and up for war, nationalism, and executive power. The purpose of the spectacle is political and dangerous.

It is a siren call for the culture of violence necessary for the political aims of Trumpism, which ultimately lie outside of the law and democracy: fascism in the streets and around the world. While it would be premature to define Trump and his authoritarian thrust as “fascist” at present, there is no mistaking the stench and direction of his dynamic.

Not for nothing since the time of slavery have cruel despots organized public spectacles of death and torture of slaves, serfs, and workers forced to kill each other or be subjected to horrors for the jeering crowd, from gladiators in the Roman Colosseum, to Medieval torture, and public hangings, to celebrate power, glorify violence, and accustom the plebian masses to domination.

These Hunger Games by the ruling classes were meant to instill fear, dehumanize the audience, and reduce our dignity and solidarity. So it is today.

They were part of brutalizing soldiers for the cruelty of bloody wars, conquest, rape and pillage against the “others,” the rivals of the rulers.

It promotes a mindset of indifferent cruelty. This is the violent corollary to the rightist campaign against “toxic empathy.”

“Just step over the homeless person, kick the hungry kids down. Stomp on that country. Who cares if we nuked them? Let’s bet on how many will die.”

Trump's blood-sport pageantry is part of that tradition — where workers beat each other to a pulp for the entertainment of the jeering mob of cigar-smoking wealthy rulers, swilling whiskey and placing bets, while grabbing women.

A war rally gathered beneath patriotic banners to the nationalist death cry of: USA! USA! USA! to whip up the crazed hordes and prepare them to spew from their cages to rampage and kill working people in the streets of America and the world.

Trump orders:

Go forth and conquer! Kill the Iranian schoolgirls, teach those women their place, make those Blacks bend the knee, rip the immigrant child from her mother’s breast, kill fisherman in the Caribbean, beat down strikers for Wall Street bosses! Seize the oil and gold!

This is a right-wing political spectacle by an increasingly authoritarian regime that wants to unleash its thugs on us and the world on behalf of Wall Street robber barons and their profits.

A tribute to an American Cesar who comes not to praise democracy but to bury it.

Subscribe now

There are many reasons behind their hatred of the Cuban Revolution, but perhaps above all it is because of Cuba’s dangerous love of humanity and its unparalleled example of solidarity. Cuba represents the threat of a better world. It shows us what we too could really do.

2014 Ebola epidemic

Looking at recent headlines about another Ebola outbreak, I immediately recalled Cuba’s historic response to the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic that sickened 30,000 and killed over 10,000.

It was little Cuba that sent the largest contingent of medical volunteers to the other side of the world to West Africa, when most governments trembled and did nothing, closing their borders to the African peoples, like Trump just did.

Even in the midst of great difficulties within Cuba due to decades of U.S. embargo, sanctions and threats, President Raúl Castro responded to the 2013 outbreak and appeals for assistance for those countries already devastated by colonialism and imperialist pillage and virtually without health systems, confronted by a deadly epidemic. That’s among the real reasons why the Trump administration indicted Raúl Castro. To the rulers of the United States human solidarity is terrorism.

The fact that Cuba has one of the highest doctor-to-patient ratios in the world, means they have enough trained medical personnel that they can extend solidarity globally.

Raúl Castro called on the heroic Cuban medical professionals to volunteer to help their African sisters and brothers, and thousands responded despite the widespread terror of Ebola. No Cuban personnel are ordered abroad. It is an act of conscience.

Cuban medical worker José Benito García told the press that it was Cuba’s duty to come to West Africa and stop the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

“It’s our tradition in Cuba that we stand in solidarity with places that don’t have resources to handle crisis like this. Sierra Leone is one of those places.”[i]

Cuba offered to send 465 medical professionals (including doctors, nurses, and epidemiologists) to Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea, but due to lack of support by wealthier countries, sent 265.[ii]

Even so this was recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the largest single-country contingent of hands-on healthcare professionals sent to the front lines.

In the specific West African treatment centers where the Cuban teams took over operations alongside local staff, the patient case fatality rate plummeted from an initial 80%–90% down to roughly 24%.[iv]

Two Cuban volunteers tragically died of malaria during their deployment in West Africa. One Cuban physician, Dr. Félix Báez Sarría, contracted Ebola while serving in Sierra Leone. He fully recovered, and after returning home to Cuba, he voluntarily returned to West Africa to resume fighting the epidemic!

That is the moral fiber of the Cuban Revolution so feared and loathed by Washington and Wall Street.

The U.S. sent almost no doctors or nurses although some went on their own initiative, but Washington did send 3,000 military personnel and a pittance in financial aid (mostly to buy U.S. medical products to boost their profits). However, even the government of the United States was shamed into having to acknowledge the outstanding Cuban contribution.[v]

In May 2017 the World Health Organization awarded the Dr LEE Jong-wook Memorial Prize for Public Health to Brigade. Yohan Ihn, President of the Korea Foundation for International Healthcare, said that “the Henry Reeve Brigade has disseminated a message of hope to the whole world.”[vi]

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Cuba accomplished astounding feats in the fight against Covid. It was the only non-imperialist country together with India to develop its own indigenous vaccine, not one but THREE! Abdala, Soberana 02, and Soberana Plus—achieved over 90% efficacy in clinical trials and real-world rollouts.

Washington’s sanctions do not merely hurt the Cuban people. The United States used sanctions and its cynical “State Sponsor of Terrorism” list against Cuba seeking to prevent it from acquiring the necessary medical supplies and Covid vaccine precursors, narrowing vaccine access for the Cuban people and the Global South. By obstructing Cuban biotechnology’s access to supplies, banking, production equipment, and WHO-compliance upgrades, the U.S. helped keep Cuban vaccines outside the imperialist-dominated channels through which many low-income countries—especially in Africa—could procure and deploy them. The result was not just cruelty to the people of Cuba. It meant fewer vaccine options for millions of people during a global pandemic.[vii]

Because of this many low-income nations could not legally or logistically adopt the vaccines, in particular this cut off Africa from accessing the vaccines. Just to hurt Cuba the U.S. government denied vaccines to millions of Africans.

Despite this, Cuba shipped tens of millions of their vaccines across Latin American and Asia, and licensed them to six countries.

While the United States, Europe hoarded their vaccines, limiting shipments to Africa, Latin American and Asia, Cuba put humanity first. The U.S. and the EU engaged in despicable “Vaccine nationalism” while Cuba acted on the basis of its internationalist principles of solidarity with humanity.

COVID-19: Cuban Solidarity with the Italian People

In March 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic led to the collapse of the Italian medical system, it was Cuba who dispatched two separate brigades totaling over 90 doctors and nurses to the heavily impacted regions of Lombardy and Piedmont. They established field hospitals and worked alongside Italian clinicians for several months.

Italy has the fourth largest economy in Europe and eighth in the world. Yet little impoverished Cuba was able to help the Italian people.

CUBAN MEDICAL SOLIDARITY

Cuban clinicians are among the most experienced in the world at fighting diseases on the front lines.

Cuba’s most powerful army is its people. The most feared of all by the enemies of humanity is its, Ejército de Batas Blancas, its army of white coated doctors and nurses who bring love and health to the world.[viii]

In 2005 Cuba established the “Henry Reeve International Contingent” (naming it after an American who fought in Cuba’s First War of Independence![ix]) precisely to provide solidarity to other peoples. While there are organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), there are no other equivalents by any other government in the world no matter how wealthy and powerful.

Cuba has trained thousands of doctors from developing nations for free at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) and has consistently provided medical relief to disaster-stricken nations regardless of their ideological alignment.

Those are but a few of thousands of examples of the myriad forms of solidarity that Cuba has provided the peoples of the world since 1959.

Just imagine what the world would be like if we had more governments like Cuba.

That’s what Cuba represents for humanity!

And that is precisely why Wall Street and Washington have feared and hated Cuba for 66 years.

They fear Cuba’s good example might infect us with their optimism and humanity. And for that reason humanity must defend Cuba today. For them and for us.

LIFT THE STARVATION BLOCKADE ON CUBA!

HANDS OFF CUBA!

Subscribe now

Cuban Doctors Fight Ebola on Front Line in Sierra Leone

November 19, 2014

https://www.voanews.com/a/cuban-doctors-fight-ebola-on-front-line-in-sierra-leone/2526580.html

FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE —

A Cuban doctor working in Sierra Leone has contracted Ebola and is being flown to Geneva for treatment. The doctor is one of 165 medical personnel Cuba sent to Sierra Leone to help fight the Ebola epidemic. The infection occurred despite intensive training the Cubans after arriving in Freetown.

The training for the Cuban medical staff in Freetown was organized through the World Health Organization (WHO). One goal was to reduce the dangers to the medical workers.

A WHO spokesperson in Freetown, Winnie Romeril, said there will be a thorough investigation of how the doctor contracted the deadly virus.

“Accidental exposures happen in every country in the world. They are particularly hazardous when dealing with a pathogen like Ebola,” said Romeril. “We’re going to look into what happened here, and if it’s a systemic problem, we’ll look to change that. If there’s something we can do at the front end to better prepare, we’ll do that as well, but right now we don’t know what happened with this individual.”

Rigorous training

Cuban medical workers training with Ebola survivor Mohamed Turay, in Waterloo district, Sierra Leone, Nov. 17, 2014 (Nina deVries/VOA)

Cuban medical workers training with Ebola survivor Mohamed Turay, in Waterloo district, Sierra Leone, Nov. 17, 2014 (Nina deVries/VOA)

The training the Cubans receive in Sierra Leone is twofold. They practice the proper use of personal protective equipment, or PPE. And to simulate experiences the medical staff may face, Ebola survivors reenact scenes of what they actually went through as Ebola patients.

Benon Tumwebeze, a trainer for the Cuban teams in Sierra Leone, said, “We want health workers to get insight, that if you get a patient -- how do you handle them? So we present cases Ebola patients normally go through like vomiting, diarrhea, some of them are confused. So we have such cases and each case has a learning point.”

Some of the Cubans are working in Kerry Town, just outside Freetown, where an Ebola treatment center was built. Others are still in training.

Cuban medical worker Jose Benito Garcia said it is Cuba’s duty to come to West Africa and stop the worst Ebola outbreak in history.

“It’s our tradition in Cuba,” said Garcia, “that we stand in solidarity with places that don’t have resources to handle crisis like this. Sierra Leone is one of those places.”

Garcia added that the additional training on site through the WHO is helpful because it is hard to know what to expect from Ebola patients.

Yoel Bernal Ferrera has a similar view of the training. “From a professional point of view, it’s important for me because it is a new experience -- but the most important is that we can help people who need our help.”

Ebola survivor Mohamed Turay is glad to help in the training by playing the role of an Ebola patient.

“It is important, because I don’t want any [more] members of my family or country to lose their life, so this is important that they [medical workers] are able to manage these cases, they are difficult cases,” said Turay.

Exacting requirements

The medical staff also had training in the use of personal protection equipment back in Cuba.

The most challenging aspect is putting on and taking off the gear, and dealing with the heat while wearing PPE, said Cuban nurse Julio Ramirez, who just started work at the Kerry Town treatment center. The slightest slip could result in an Ebola infection.

“It’s very hot, the PPE’s, to be inside the ward, no more than maybe 40-45 minutes,” said Ramirez.

There are three Cuban teams in Sierra Leone, and a total of 256 medical professionals from Cuba in West Africa to help stop the spread of Ebola.

More than 5,000 people have died during this outbreak among more than 14,400 confirmed cases worldwide.

WHO welcomes Cuban doctors for Ebola response in west Africa

12 September 2014

https://www.who.int/news/item/12-09-2014-who-welcomes-cuban-doctors-for-ebola-response-in-west-africa

WHO welcomes the commitment from the Government of Cuba to provide 165 health professionals to support Ebola care in west Africa. The newly announced support includes physicians, nurses, epidemiologists, specialists in infection control, intensive care specialists and social mobilization officers, and will be concentrated in Sierra Leone.

“If we are going to go to war with Ebola, we need the resources to fight,” says Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization. “I am extremely grateful for the generosity of the Cuban government and these health professionals for doing their part to help us contain the worst Ebola outbreak ever known. This will make a significant difference in Sierra Leone.”

The WHO Ebola response roadmap, released on 28 August, highlights the need for a massively scaled response to support affected countries. The commitment from the Cuban government exemplifies the kind of international effort required to intensify response activities and strengthen national capacities.

“Cuba is world-famous for its ability to train outstanding doctors and nurses and for its generosity in helping fellow countries on the route to progress,” says Dr Chan.

The health professionals will deploy to Sierra Leone the first week in October and stay for 6 months. They have all worked previously in Africa.

[i] Cuban Doctors Fight Ebola on Front Line in Sierra Leone

https://www.voanews.com/a/cuban-doctors-fight-ebola-on-front-line-in-sierra-leone/2526580.html

[ii] The Cuban Response to the Ebola Epidemic in West Africa: Lessons in Solidarity

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27956578/

[iii] WHO welcomes Cuban doctors for Ebola response in west Africa

12 September 2014

https://www.who.int/news/item/12-09-2014-who-welcomes-cuban-doctors-for-ebola-response-in-west-africa

[iv] Cuban Strategy and Medical Cooperation to Combat Ebola, 2014–2016

https://www.scielosp.org/article/medicc/2019.v21n4/53-58/

[v] Cuban Doctors Fight Ebola on Front Line in Sierra Leone

https://www.voanews.com/a/cuban-doctors-fight-ebola-on-front-line-in-sierra-leone/2526580.html

[vi] https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/nobel-peace-prize/background/

[vii] US Sanctions on Cuba Further Imperil Global Vaccine Equity

https://mediccreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/MRJuly-Oct-2021-Editorial.pdf

[viii] An Army of White Coats: Exploring the Implications of Cuban Medical Diplomacy

https://hir.harvard.edu/exploring-the-implications-of-cuban-medical-diplomacy/

[ix] In 1869, at just 19 years old, Henry Mike Reeve Carroll traveled to Cuba to join the native patriots fighting against Spanish colonial rule in the Ten Years’ War (Cuba’s first war of independence). He was known affectionately to his comrades as “El Inglesito“ (The Little Englishman) Reeve rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the Cuban Liberator Army. He fought in many engagements, and was wounded a number of times. He died in combat in 1876 at the age of 26. Today, he remains an enduring Cuban symbol of international solidarity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Reeve_(soldier)

https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/nobel-peace-prize/background/

[x] https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/nobel-peace-prize/background/

[xi] ¿Cómo se traducen los dos meses de Bolivia sin los médicos cubanos?

https://www.granma.cu/mundo/2020-01-24/como-se-traducen-los-dos-meses-de-bolivia-sin-los-medicos-cubanos-24-01-2020-00-01-27

[xii] Cuban medical internationalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism

[xiii] Robert Huish and John M. Kirk (2007), “Cuban Medical Internationalism and the Development of the Latin American School of Medicine”, Latin American Perspectives, 34; 77

The United States government —the greatest terrorist in the world that has killed millions, and is currently trying to starve the dignified Cuban people into submission— has the temerity to accuse one of its victims for refusing to surrender and obey!

On the same day of the indictment by the Trump administration, the Pentagon menaced with a military attack against the Cuban people, sailing in the Caribbean the USS Nimitz Aircraft Carrier Strike Group (CSG-11) bristling with warplanes, the guided-missile destroyer USS Gridley (DDG 101), in addition to the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Erie (CG-70) and the littoral combat ship USS Billings (LCS-15), and amphibious assault ships USS Iwo Jima and USS Fort Lauderdale (LPD-28), carrying the embarked 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit. This is a massive amount of firepower and a mortal threat to the Cuban people.

In the past months, as it did with Venezuela, the U.S. has established a constant surveillance siege of Cuba with MQ-4C Triton drones; at least three of these high-altitude, long-endurance drones were detected operating near the island. At least five P-8A Poseidon aircraft are also participating in patrols, alongside Rivet Joint (RC-135) planes used for electronic eavesdropping to intercept communications and radar signals from Cuban defenses.

Cuba must take these threats seriously, and the despite the already brutal conditions imposed by the U.S. naval blockade the Cuban people are mobilizing to defend their revolution and sovereignty, their lives, their children, their elderly parents, the sick and pregnant from Trump’s killers of schoolgirls, those who bomb hospitals and universities. The real terrorists.

Today thousands of Cuban patriots and revolutionaries, many carrying photos of former Cuban president Raul Castro, 94, indicted by a US court, rallied in Havana at the José Martí Anti-Imperialist Plaza outside the U.S. Embassy in Havana, in defiance of the U.S. indictment and threats, chanting, "Homeland or death, we will vanquish!"

Cuba defends itself, but it defends all humanity just as it has done since 1959.

Subscribe now

The Cuban people are inspired to resist these imperialist threats by their many great heroes, like Raúl Castro, who have stood with all those fighting for justice and freedom for seven decades.

As a young man Raúl fought to free the Cuban people from the U.S. terrorist Batista dictatorship, and has dedicated his life to human dignity and freedom.

Raúl Castro served as Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, during which time Cuba defended Angola from invasions by the South Africa apartheid regime, defeating and bringing down the South African army in 1988 at the great Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, while the United States supported the Apartheid terrorists.

In 1991, Nelson Mandela traveled to Cuba to thank Fidel Castro and the Cuban people for supporting the fight against apartheid and colonialism in southern Africa.

“The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces [in Angola] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor,” Mandela said. “The defeat of the apartheid army served as an inspiration to the struggling people of South Africa.”

U.S. TERRORISM AGAINST CUBA

The shooting down of the cynically named, “Brothers to the Rescue” aircraft in 1996, run by a veteran CIA terrorist, José Basulto, after more than a dozen warnings by Cuba, and the refusal of the U.S. government to rein in its terrorist provocateurs, was an act of self-defense to protect the Cuban people. The Cuban government could not allow this terrorist outfit to continue to threaten the Cuban people.

BASULTO: “I WAS TRAINED AS A TERRORIST BY THE UNITED STATES”

Trained by the CIA in intelligence, explosives, and sabotage, Basulto was infiltrated into Cuba ahead of the defeated 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, to carry out terrorist attacks.

In August 1962, Basulto steered a boat equipped with a 20mm cannon into Havana harbor. He fired on the Hornedo de Rosita hotel with the intent of killing Fidel Castro. Basulto later acknowledged these actions in court in 2001, infamously bragging in a documentary interview, “I was trained as a terrorist by the United States”.^[2]

CIA TERRORISTS BLOW UP CIVILIAN AIRLINER

Basulto worked with the CIA terrorists, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who using their CIA training, on October 6, 1976 blew up a bomb on the civilian airliner, Cubana de Aviación Flight 455.

The terrorist attack killed 73 civilians off the coast of Barbados. Both the bombers, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, and their networks, were protected by the U.S. government, and allowed to live unmolested in Florida.