Rev. Frederick Morris, Popular Resistance.
On January 1, 1959, I was in Kankakee, Illinois, spending New Year’s Day with my brother and his family. I was home for the Christmas holidays from Drew University, where I would graduate in June and continue my career as a Methodist preacher. We had planned to watch a football game, but what came over the airwaves were black-and-white TV views of Fidel Castro, Che Guevarra and their band of guerrillas riding victoriously into Havana. This was the first time a Revolution had actually been shown on TV, and the people of the United States were thrilled. Since the New York Times had sent a reporter up into the Sierra Madre in Cuba to interview Fidel, he had near-universal support throughout the US. The reporting portrayed the Batista regime as a horrendous and murderous bunch and Fidel was seen as a modern Robin Hood with his Merry Men, so there was great enthusiasm throughout the US on New Year’s Day as we saw them coming into Havana as the victors in the Cuban Revolution.
That enthusiasm continued for more than a year, until the CIA ramped up its propaganda aimed at undermining the Revolution. Stories about the execution of the men who had been torturing people in virtually every village on the Island were published and, bit by bit, the propaganda machinery turned the tide of support for the Revolution. When the Revolution was declared to be “communist,” that pretty much did away with the huge support the Cuban revolutionaries had initially enjoyed in the US.
In 1961, the new president of the US inherited an Eisenhower-Nixon plot to prepare and send former Batista troops, (who had fled to Florida with Batista in 1959), and other so-called “patriots,” to invade Cuba and overthrow the government. President Kennedy was assured by the CIA that within a couple of weeks the Communists would be overthrown and a retreaded Batista gang put into their rightful place again. But the Bay of Pigs invasion turned out to be a total fiasco, and it became apparent that the people of Cuba were not anxious to overthrow Fidel and his companions.
Kennedy was embarrassed by the debacle and took out his anger by putting harsh sanctions in place against the people of Cuba.
According to International Law, sanctions are collective punishment and thus, in addition to being an Act of War, are clearly a War Crime. And yet, every US president since JFK has increased the weight of the Sanctions against the Cuban People, all of them sharing in the immorality of this War Crime.
The hard-heartedness of the US leaders was most clearly revealed during the Clinton administration, when his Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was informed that Clinton’s incredibly harsh sanctions against the people of Iraq had caused the deaths of more than 500,000 children. When asked if they were “worth it’, Albright replied that they thought they were!
Well, the Cuban people have suffered under US sanctions for 65 years and each US president has seemed to feel that they are “worth it.” They ensure that the “refugees” from Cuba (gusanos) in Florida, continue to vote for mean-spirited presidents who increase the penalties of collective punishment against their relatives on the island.
President Trump has been emboldened by his “victory” over Venezuela on January 3, 2026. That day his 82nd Airborne troops murdered the 32 Cuban soldiers who were protecting President Maduro and his wife (as well as more than 150 citizens of Venezuela) in order to kidnap both of them and take them to Brooklyn, where they are awaiting trial for a series of Trumped Up charges that any judge with a minimal sense of dignity will dismiss.
And now, in the shameful aftermath of losing his “Regime Change” war against the people of Iran, Trump is looking to punish the Cubans even more, cutting off their access to oil, in order to eliminate the use of electricity to the entire nation. And he has increased the other sanctions, already causing the needless deaths to hundreds of children due to lack of medicines. Added to this suffering is the unbearable psychological torment of the constant threat of invasion by the US military.
It is well past time for the people of the US to recognize the horror of 65 years of sanctions against a people who are simply asking to be left alone.
Sanctions are murder and the people of the United States continue to murder children in dozens of countries as its government finds it “worth it” to continue to murder.
It is time for the people of the United States to say to its lawless government: Basta!! Enough!! No More Murder in our name. Join the 190 nations of the United Nations General Assembly and remove all Sanctions and stop murdering children.
A Methodist minister for seven decades, Rev. Frederick Morris is a lifelong activist dedicated to addressing human rights, racism, homophobia, “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.” In 1970, Rev. Morris was assigned as a missionary to Recife, Brazil, where he befriended Archbishop Dom Hélder Câmara, one of the chief proponents of liberation theology. In 1974, Rev. Morris was abducted and tortured by the Brazilian military. In the 1980s, he edited the magazine Mesoamérica and led more than 40 study delegations to Sandinista Nicaragua. Rev. Morris is now retired and lives in Nicaragua with his wife Argentina Molina.
