Washington’s Barbaric Blockade of Cuba Brings Solidarity from Small Global South Nations |
CounterPunch Exclusives
CounterPunch Exclusives
Washington’s Barbaric Blockade of Cuba Brings Solidarity from Small Global South Nations
Photograph Source: Michael Oswald – Public Domain
Donald Trump’s barbaric blockade of Cuba began on January 29, and already China, Vietnam, Mexico and Russia have stepped up to help. Especially note Mexico, whose courageous president, Claudia Sheinbaum came under such great U.S. pressure that it looked like she might fold on sending oil to Cuba after Trump’s threats. She didn’t. The world recognizes this siege for the disgusting, unleashed gangsterism it is. Russia is preparing an oil lifeline to Cuba; indeed, “the Russian Embassy confirmed to Izvestia that…it is planning to send oil and petroleum products to Cuba in the near future as humanitarian aid.”
China is currently delivering 5000 sets of 2-kilowatt photovoltaic power generation equipment to Cuba as part of a bigger collaboration that saw it build 55 solar parks in 2025 and aiming to build 37 more in the next two years. Chinese/Cuban contracts include approximately 2.2 million solar panels, with over 43,000 panels usually used per park. How’s that for energy independence? Trump may have strangled shipments of Venezuelan oil to the island, but the Cuba/China team aims for 37 percent renewable energy island-wide by decade’s end. In 2023, only 1-2 percent of energy generation was solar.
As for Vietnam, whose socialist government recently revealed that it expects to be attacked militarily by the U.S. Empire and soon, it helps Cuba with wind and solar power and is the largest Asian investor in Cuba, cooperating in biotechnology, producing vaccines and pharmaceuticals, shipping rice, rice seeds, monetary donations, clothing, cosmetics, shoes, electronics, steel, cement and household products. The solidarity of small Global South nations like Vietnam and Mexico with blockaded Cuby is breathtaking, and it proves that the notion that the world will bend to the U.S. Empire’s will is arrant nonsense.
Meanwhile, on February 12, Drop Site News reported on a flotilla – much like the ones that have sailed to........