Nova Scotia Cuba Association

 The World Needs Cuba...

Enrique Ubieta: 

"Cuba's strength, its extreme danger to the empire, is its example"

February 2026

In this interview, the prominent Cuban intellectual observes: "Trump's latest measures and statements regarding Cuba, and his alleged oil blockade, have laid bare before the world who our historical enemy is and what he intends, uniting Cubans more."

By Geraldina Colotti / Resumen Latinoamericano

While the U.S. administration tightens the siege on Cuba by rescuing the rhetoric of the "unusual and extraordinary threat" – the same legal formula Barack Obama used to initiate his siege against Bolivarian Venezuela – the battle moves to the terrain of subjectivity and culture. It is not only an economic and financial blockade but a hybrid war that seeks to pulverize the soul of the Revolution, attempting to artificially instigate "color revolutions" in Cuba between the cracks of the material difficulties imposed by Washington.

In this trench of ideas, the voice of Enrique Ubieta Gómez is an essential compass. A sharp intellectual, essayist and director of the historic magazine Revolución y Cultura, Ubieta embodies the figure of the militant intellectual who never separates aesthetic analysis from political commitment. In this interview, Ubieta dwells on the internal crisis that US society is experiencing, reveals the impact of the events of January 3 in Cuba and traces the routes of international solidarity that must become an active shield against the blackmail of the dollar. With the lucidity of someone who lives the siege from the heart of Havana, Ubieta reminds us that culture is not an ornament, but the oxygen of the Cuban people, a people who has decided never again to be anyone's "backyard."

1.    Enrique, recently the Trump administration has tightened the siege against Cuba using the same rhetoric of Obama's decree against Venezuela: describing the nation as an "unusual and extraordinary threat." What structural threads link these decisions of presidents of supposedly opposite signs and what does this tell us about the continuity of the imperialist doctrine towards the region?

It is inevitable that I begin by saying some obvious things: imperialism has global interests and behaviors that both parties, and their power groups, apply indistinctly, and yet it is not monolithic; there are more or less powerful sectors, whose interests do not necessarily coincide with party structures and are expressed in groups inside and outside them.

Now, the presence of economic instruments of pressure in international relations is not new, as evidenced by the existence of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba dating back to 1962. An extraterritorial blockade that prohibits, among other things, the use of the U.S. dollar, the acquisition of machinery and equipment containing Cuban nickel by companies with total or shared US capital, the purchase by Cuba from third parties of products with 10 percent US parts or components, and even delays ships which  have called at Cuban ports to enter the US during the following 180 days. Furthermore, the blockade has incorporated new variants like the so-called "collateral sanctions" and "smart sanctions".

According to economist Yazmín Vázquez, the first (collateral sanctions) are designed to curb the support of third countries to those previously punished (for example, imposing higher tariffs); the second (smart sanctions) are aimed at a product or economic activity that occupies a central place in the life of a country, which alone can de-structure the entire functioning of the country. This is what they intend to apply with a recently signed executive order, as they did previously applied to Venezuela.

American society is facing an acute crisis that can fracture it: during the last decades, conservative thought, even reactionary and fascist, has permeated sectors affected by this crisis, willing to blame their hardships on migrants and atheists. That thought, currently in government, seems to be in the majority, because it expresses itself openly and dictates laws, outlines behaviors, represses its adversaries: it is anti-immigrant, supremacist, misogynist, racist, opposes abortion, censors books, fights the LGBT+ community. Every liberal attitude, in the traditional American sense, is described as communist. As a result, spontaneous communicating vessels are established between those affected that can lead to unitary fronts.

Politicians who call themselves liberals, traditionally representatives of the establishment in the United States, are beginning to claim previously unthinkable concepts, such as socialism. A Muslim candidate who declares himself a democratic socialist is elected mayor of New York by a significant majority of voters. The historical stage we live in has broken the drowsiness, the systemic correctness, the immobility of the American left, still leaderless and without shared horizons, forced to react to a right which does not hide its objectives and feelings and has broken with the rules of bourgeois democracy. The reaction is still timid, slow, somewhat belated, but it can lead to civil war. In the face of rupture of bourgeois democracy, there is still demand for its preservation. It is, at the moment, a behavior based on legitimate defense.

Barack Obama used the two classic tools of imperial politics: the carrot and the stick. While he tried to cajole Cubans with a poisoned coexistence, a challenge accepted, he promoted the coup d'état in Honduras, declared Venezuela an "unusual and extraordinary threat" and intervened in Libya. An op-ed published by the New York Times in 2016 was titled "Obama's Unexpected Legacy: Eight Years of Ongoing War," despite having received the Nobel Peace Prize.

The fury of self-centered Trump is understandable, he also aspired to receive a Nobel but he was  denied. The difference between the two presidents – and it may seem insignificant, but it is not – is that the tendency Trump represents, aware of the plummeting U.S. power, has set out to recover it at all costs, without time or desire to mask his actions. The bully from the neighborhood does not make excuses, or at least does not hide that they are, because he wants everyone to know that from now on he will act according to his imperial desire. Although he still needed to manufacture a fake drug cartel to prosecute Maduro, whom he defined as a narco-terrorist, Trump made it clear that his target was Venezuelan oil. The current administration has openly broken with all the international rules of coexistence and with the institutions that represent them.

Cuba does not possess significant oil reserves, nor particularly coveted natural resources, but it is the bearer of an unacceptable asset: a small insubordinate country ninety miles from US shores that has resisted siege, aggression and a cruel blockade for 67 years and 13 presidents, including the current one. Cuba's strength, its extreme danger to the empire, is its example. Cuba is a symbol. It does not export or support terrorism, it has suffered from it for six decades; it exports its example, even without intending to, with its silent resistance, with its medical collaboration in more than sixty countries, with its principled foreign policy.

2.    After this decree and the intensification of the blockade, what is the real scenario on the island? In the face of Washington's attempts to instigate a "color revolution" by instrumentalizing economic shortages, how is the intellectual vanguard and the organized people responding?

The Cuban people are experiencing two simultaneous aggressions: that of the blockade, which is now reaching unprecedented levels of extraterritoriality in its criminal purpose of economic asphyxiation, with its most visible consequence, blackouts of twelve and more hours a day, and that of the media and social networks, which try to manipulate the country's public opinion, inducing the belief that this situation is the result of bad government. In such circumstances, the lackeys, the mercenaries, or the "prematurely born" as Martí described them in his time, always appear ready to give away the Homeland to preserve or access a dubious personal well-being. We Cubans do not silence our doubts and disagreements, but when the Mambi cornet sounds calling for combat, we surprise the external observer with a massive response.

Paradoxically, Trump's latest measures and statements regarding Cuba, and his alleged oil blockade, have laid bare to the world who our historical enemy is and what he intends, and has united Cubans more. Our intelligentsia is aware of the danger that this attempt at recolonization entails for the national culture, for the very existence of the nation, and it expresses it in statements, poems, songs, audiovisuals, plastic works, in its willingness to exchange its creative weapons for the rifle that will defend the Homeland. José Martí, Cuba's greatest writer, announced: "Don't put me in the dark to die like a traitor." And he gave his life, gun in hand, facing the sun.

3.    January 3 marked a breaking point with the kidnapping of President Maduro and Cilia Flores. You in Cuba have received the Cuban soldiers and collaborators who survived that aggression. In the face of international dirty propaganda, what do these testimonies tell us about the magnitude of the conspiracy plan that was attempted to be executed that day?

Although the aggressions and the siege precede it, January 3 marks the beginning of the greatest crusade of force of imperialism against the peoples of Our America. The relative success of the kidnapping operation, in a bombed city, has emboldened the little emperor, and his threats are getting louder. The death in combat of the 32 Cubans who defended President Maduro, with enemy casualties not yet recognized, shows another reality: the most sophisticated military technology is insufficient when there is a decision to win or die. Paradoxically, that decision is the only guarantee of victory.

The arrival on national soil of those martyrs of internationalism, of the Venezuelan, Cuban and Latin American Revolution, shocked the people, who for hours, under heavy rain, waited to pay their posthumous tribute. The attitude of these compatriots achieved something that Trump should consider: it rekindled the flame of revolutionary mystique. The details of what happened that morning are not yet public, but what we know is enough. That mystique is the driving force behind revolutions.

4.    As editor of Revolution and Culture magazine, you know that culture is the lifeblood of resistance. How is the battle of ideas articulated today in the face of a siege that is not only financial, but also communicational and symbolic? What role does the magazine play in the defense of revolutionary subjectivity in the face of the neoliberal offensive?

Since ancient times, the conquerors have known that it is not enough to occupy foreign territories; it is necessary to occupy the minds of its inhabitants. In the age of the Internet, the culture war takes on a greater intensity. Revolutions restore the self-esteem of their citizens, rescue the history of their peoples and confront their enemies, external and internal, with courage and success. It is the first and essential step to break the chains of mental dependence: to feel proud of who we are and what we have achieved.

Neo-colonization acts in the opposite direction: it wants us to believe that we are inferior, that we will not be able to defeat imperialism, that we must imitate it and abide by it. Every socio-political project has its pantheon of heroes, because it needs, demands, a past that sustains it. The culture of having turn millionaires into "heroes" to be imitated, measures success in personal possessions. Our heroes are others, and they try to build a society in which its citizens are judged by their contributions to the common good. José Martí wrote that to be a Christian was to be like Christ, our children repeat in school "we will be like Che". It is not a question of dying on the Cross, or in La Higuera, it is a matter of following in the wake of humanism that both figures embody in their own way.

Cuban culture was forged in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles. While Cuba was finishing its formation as a nation, U.S. imperialism was defined 90 miles from its coasts, and the first imperialist war of humanity, according to the Leninist definition of that stage of capitalist development, took place in Cuba, in 1898. A tour of the work of the main Cuban thinkers of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries will show that the main concern of our culture lies in that asymmetrical relationship that was taking over our riches until their total liberation in 1959. The oil blockade not only affects the functioning of hospitals, schools, factories, our daily homes, it also affects culture. We have had to suspend this year the International Book Fair, the most massive cultural event in the country, just days before its inauguration.

But, there will be no cultural blackout. We will transfer the activities to the communities, we will create new spaces for creation. As our Minister of Culture has said, we will do more with less. The contribution of the magazine Revolución y Cultura, founded in 1961, and which I am honored to direct today, is modest. It aspires to link these terms in the national and international activity of our artists and intellectuals, to reinforce the paths of identity reaffirmation. After six years without being in print, we have recovered the sequence with the support of international solidarity.

5.    The Cuba-Venezuela exchange is the favorite target of imperial blackmail. In practice, how do you manage to maintain the flow of medical, scientific and cultural solidarity under the current state of siege? How are both nations shielding themselves from the blackmail of sanctions?

Cuba does not abandon you. Internationalism is in the constitutive DNA of the Cuban nationality: "I come from everywhere and I go everywhere," says a verse by José Martí, who imagined like Bolívar the unity of Our America. Imperialism in other times conditioned the relaxation of the blockade on our withdrawal from Angola, or on the suspension of aid to Sandinista Nicaragua in the first years. None of that happened. The answer was always the same: we leave when the legitimate authority asks us to; the attacked, not the aggressor. We do not negotiate principles.

The solidarity relationship of complementarity that Cuba and Venezuela (Fidel and Chávez) promoted is an example of what relations between all the countries of the world will one day be. As our President has said, there have been relations of complementarity, exemplary for Third World countries, which expanded with the ALBA-TCP, the Miracle Mission, PetroCaribe, the Cuban literacy programs "Yes I can," with the reception at the Latin American School of Medicine of thousands of young Latin Americans, Africans and even poor Americans. Cuba was the only country that sent medical brigades to West Africa in 2014-2015, to combat the Ebola epidemic, when the modes of spread of this deadly virus were not yet fully known, and in 2020 it extended its solidarity presence to 42 countries around the world, including some highly developed such as Italy.

I have said on other occasions that in human history there are two types of peoples: conquering peoples and liberators. The latter not only fight for their own freedom, they also contribute to that of others, because they see themselves in them. Bolívar was called the Liberator, and he did not allow anybody to exchange that tint of glory for the spurious title of emperor. The Venezuelans liberated half of the continental territory. José Martí created a party to achieve the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico and fought to prevent imperialism from falling on our lands in America. Cubans in the twentieth century contributed decisively to the independence of Africa. We receive nothing in return. The culture of solidarity defines us.

We applaud the doctor who "leaves us" to assist the needy on any continent, even in the so-called First World. We admire the fighter who risks his life for a just cause in some "dark" corner of the planet. Chávez and Fidel formed the unbeatable duo of solidarity. Solidarity is the essence of a Revolution.

6. What allies and what scenarios do you foresee for Cuba in the short term? How do you assess the role of BRICS+ and powers such as China and Russia in breaking the hegemony of the dollar and guaranteeing the survival of sovereign projects in the Caribbean?

Internally, the scenario will necessarily be that of creative resistance, and that of combative preparation. As our President Díaz-Canel has said, we must transform this criminal aggression into an opportunity for the creation of mechanisms for energy self-sufficiency, through the refining of our oil and the growing network of renewable energy sources. In the 1980s, even before the collapse of the so-called socialist camp, Cuba knew that it had to depend on its own forces, that the security of its borders, of its project of social justice, depended solely on the unity and determination of its people. The "war of the whole people" was a concept implemented in the face of an enemy militarily, but not morally, stronger.

I can say that we have received practical testimonies of support from powers such as China and Russia, their statements have been followed by actions. It is not necessary to list them as they can be verified in practice. International solidarity is growing, that of the peoples and that of dignified governments. Cuba is not an oil asset, it is a moral asset, which imperialism hates, but the peoples of the world need. And not only the peoples of the world also their governments.

The strength of the BRICS does not lie in the isolated potential of each of its members, no matter how high, but in their ability to act as a bloc. Once upon a time the European Union could have been just that: a supranational state, with a strong currency, that would counterbalance U.S. imperial hegemony. But imperialism subverted that unity by offering military security in the sources of supply of raw materials and by stoking the old aspirations for greatness and the interests of some over others. In reality, the imperialism that we usually identify as American, because its directing, military, economic and symbolic center lies in the United States, is a supranational phenomenon and needs a subordinate Europe.

Some authors call it "Western imperialism," a geopolitical, not geographical, definition. That imperialism is in decline, reason why its claws today are more violent, as it tries at all costs to maintain its former global hegemony. The curious thing is that their actions also contribute to weakening it, to fracturing it. The strength of the BRICS can only grow outside that ecosystem; to be an ally of the United States means to accept its hegemony, the primacy of its interests.

In this context, the left, stunned by the failure of so-called real socialism for too long, has been discreet, politically correct, sometimes ambiguous; it has tried to set itself up as the defender of a bourgeois democracy that the bourgeoisie is abandoning.

It is not possible to be left-wing "inside", and not be "outside" (and vice versa), what they do to a neighbor today, as Bertold Bretch would say, they will do to you tomorrow. There have been large demonstrations of support for Cuba and Venezuela in front of the embassies of the empire in many capitals of the world.

7.    At the international level, what actions do you consider urgent to move from rhetorical solidarity to active defense? How do you see the continental scenario: are we facing a new judicial and media Plan Condor or do you think that the resistance of Caracas and Havana is creating a new awakening in the Global South?

We should not expect much from the current Latin American governments. I am expressing a personal opinion. Except for Mexico, whose president has defended the historical brotherhood of our countries, with an extraordinary mettle to resist the pressures of imperialism and those of an internal right, corrupt and dependent on trade with the United States. And, some of the dignified small states of the insular Caribbean, always brave and supportive. The arrival in government of open or underhanded fascists, ridiculous Trump imitators, traitors, creates an adverse scenario (in the rest).  The grey, stuttering left, although it seems preferable, has nothing to offer. This reality brings with it a lesson: women and men, honest leftist parties and movements, either assume an anti-systemic condition, or will perish in nothingness.

Fascism is the child of imperialism, of capitalism in its most decadent phase; either we fight at their roots, or we get lost in the restoration of colonial and neocolonial "normality".   We do not intend to immolate ourselves nor do we call for immolation, but the fall in combat of the 32 Cuban heroes in Caracas is a warning. Cuba will fight until the end.

8.    Enrique, we are on the verge of a date of enormous symbolic weight: the centenary of Fidel Castro's birth in August 2026. How is Cuba preparing, from thought and creation, to celebrate this century of Fidel's legacy? In a context of intensified siege such as the current one, how can it be ensured that these celebrations are not only an act of memory, but a tool of living political struggle, and in what way could the current economic situation try to tarnish or condition this global tribute to the Comandante?

In some strange way, the great Latin American heroes always return when they are most needed. José Martí did so in 1953, on the centenary of his birth and in 1995, on the centenary of his fall in combat, in the face of the disappearance of the socialist ecosystem. Fidel does it too, this year it is the celebration of his first centenary of life. To remember him is not to evoke him, to bring him flowers, to offer laudatory speeches; it is to follow his example of firmness in principles, of trust in the people, in victory, his flexibility in the tactics of struggle, his being always with the humble and for the humble in any corner of the world. "I am Fidel" was the slogan that the people repeated during his funeral in 2016. It does not mean that we are exactly like him, something impossible, it means that we will preserve and multiply his legacy.

There is a broad plan of activities to be carried out during the year, which will now be adapted to the conditions of war imposed by Trump, but the real tribute will be only one: to resist and win.

Translation N.F.  NSCUBA(Nova Scotia)