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The US economic strangulation of Cuba has created unbearable hardships for the population. Medea Benjamin describes what she saw on a recent solidarity delegation and how we can break the blockade.
Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the antiwar organization CODEPINK, speaks with Chris Hedges about her recent visit to Cuba as part of one of the many humanitarian delegations that have visited the island in response to the severe economic blockade imposed by the Trump administration. Benjamin describes the current situation as “dire”, the worst she has experienced in her 50 years of solidarity work with Cuba, referring to the escalation of the blockade as a “medieval siege.”
The fuel shortages have had deadly impacts, imposing nationwide power outages. Sanctions and the blockade have created shortages of food, medicine and other necessities. Benjamin recounts, “People can’t go to work because the buses aren’t working or if they got to work, there’s no electricity or no materials.” She says that doctors and teachers are leaving the country because their salaries are too low to survive.
The U.S. media blame the hardships in Cuba on its communist government, but Benjamin shares the advancements that have been made since the Revolution, despite enduring more than sixty years of U.S.-imposed sanctions. A poor country of ten million, Cuba created a once-enviable universal healthcare system and an excellent education system that is free to residents. Now, many of those gains, such as reductions in infant mortality and improvements in life expectancy, are deteriorating under the boot of American imperialism.
Delegations have traveled to Cuba from all over the world this year to bring solar panels, medicines and other necessities. Palestinians participated in the delegation that Benjamin helped to organize, and they witnessed many similarities between Cuba and Gaza. In addition to the shortages, another similarity is the growing power of the Cuban-American lobby that supports the blockade, which is modeled on the Israeli-American lobby, AIPAC.
Despite this, the situation in Cuba is so severe that even many members of Congress can no longer deny the cruelty of the situation. There are two new pieces of legislation in Congress that CODEPINK and other Cuba solidarity organizations support. Benjamin urges people to take action in any way that they can because she believes Cubans will not be able to endure the hardships of the blockade for much longer.
Host
Chris Hedges
Executive Producer:
Max Jones
Intro:
Margaret Flowers
Transcript:
Margaret Flowers
Crew:
Sofia Menemenlis and Thomas Hedges
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Chris Hedges: The Trump administration, after targeting Venezuela and Iran, seems intent on overthrowing the Cuban government. It has orchestrated a siege of the island, cutting off vital Venezuelan oil shipments three months ago. This has left Cuba’s economy without imported oil, as well as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, and liquefied petroleum gas. Cuba relies on those shipments for about 60 % of its energy.
Cuba is now enduring massive power outages, including two island-wide blackouts in recent days. Trump’s executive order of January 29th, 2026, states, “The policies, practices and actions of the government of Cuba constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to U.S. national security and foreign policy.” The order charges that the Cuban government blatantly allows Russia and China, which reportedly has four listening posts on the island, to base sophisticated military and intelligence capabilities there that threaten US national security. It notes that Cuba hosts Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility, which tries to steal sensitive national security information of the United States. The Trump White House has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which empowers the US to impose tariffs on foreign countries that “directly or indirectly supply oil to the Cuban government”.
This has resulted in transportation shortages, reduced working hours, flight cancellations, along with shortages, not only of fuel, but of food, medicine, and vital equipment, including medical equipment. The Justice Department has indicted several Cuban officials and entities for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking, a tactic that is also being used to target Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro. “Cuba is going to fall pretty soon,” Trump announced. “They want to make a deal. And so, I’m going to put Marco over there and we’ll see how that works out. We’re really focused on this one right now, [he meant Iran]. We’ve got plenty of time, but Cuba’s ready after 50 years. I’ve been watching it for 50 years and it’s fallen right into my lap because of me, it’s fallen, but it’s nevertheless fallen right into the lap and we’re doing very well.”
The goal is the reassertion of US imperialism over the island, which the Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro vanquished in 1959. If Trump fails to achieve his objectives in Iran, which increasingly seems likely, he appears ready to shift his focus to Cuba. With the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has few allies that can come to its aid, although a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil appears headed to Cuba.
Joining me to discuss the war on Cuba is Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the anti-war group CODEPINK, who just returned from a trip to Cuba where she and other solidarity groups delivered humanitarian aid and supplies, including medicine, solar panels, bicycles, and food. So, Medea, you were slammed in the Washington Post. Although I think this says a lot more about the Washington Post than it does about you. The title says: “Useful idiots visit Cuba right on time.” I’m just going to read a couple sentences and let you respond:
“Communism has impoverished the island. American Leftists only care now because they can blame Trump. Leftists from around the world descended on Cuba over the weekend for a ‘humanitarian trip’ [in their quotes] aimed at protesting the United States’ oil blockade and they played the role of useful idiots perfectly. Nothing says solidarity like going to an impoverished country and staying at a five-star hotel.” Further down: “The best way to help the Cuban people, of course, would be to free them from a dictatorship that has failed to meet their needs for more than half a century. Yet the roster of attendees was more interested in bashing America. And then, while the socialist tourists might blame American sanctions for the island’s decline, Cubans overwhelmingly believe the people who have run their economy since 1959 are at fault.” And the last line, “The truth is that these activists only care about Cubans now that they have an excuse to rail against America. The shtick might have been more convincing without the parties.” I’m sure you were partying night and day in Cuba. But let’s just, I just couldn’t believe it. It sounds like something out of the National Review, or maybe the Onion, I don’t know.
Medea Benjamin: Or the New York Post.
Chris Hedges: Yeah.
Medea Benjamin: So, you want me to react to that, Chris?
Chris Hedges: Well, yeah, I mean, it’s such a slam and it’s such a distortion of history. I mean, we’ve been strangling Cuba since its inception.
Medea Benjamin: Well, absolutely. And you know, it was interesting that it was such a multi-generational group. We had 170 people in our charter plane that we took with all of these medicines. And some of them were young Cubans, “Cuban Americans for Cuba”, they’re called. Some of them had never been to Cuba before. And many of us older folks have been doing work around Cuba for many decades. So, to say we just came at this to bash Trump is kind of funny because I’ve been going to Cuba since 1979 and trying to change US policy since then. So, that’s one thing.
The other is this issue of putting all the blame on the communist government. You know, there’s such an easy answer for that, Chris, which is, well, lift the sanctions and then you can blame everything on the communist government. We’ve been saying that for years after years after years, but they don’t want to do that because they want the Cuban economy to be in tatters so they can say communism doesn’t work, people rise up, let’s put U.S. golf courses and Trump Towers all over the island. And in terms of us staying in fancy hotels, I find that one pretty funny too because there is a list that we could scroll, it would go on and on and on of hotels that the US government says we are not allowed to stay in because they say they’re somehow connected to the Cuban military. So, there’s only five hotels that we are allowed to stay in. They are all “luxury hotels”, and they are all owned by foreign companies.
We stayed in the one that was called Iberostar. It’s a Spanish-owned company. And we also stayed there for, well, two other reasons. One, they gave us a very good price, and two, it was centrally located because the others are farther away and we didn’t want to use buses. We didn’t want to be consuming much fuel. So, we only used buses to get from the airport to the hotel and back to the airport. And for most of the time, we walked and walked and walked in the hot sun. And it was very good for people to do that because this is something the Cubans do every day. When we had breakfast in the hotel and we would ask the workers, “How did they get there in the morning?” They’d say, “I walked three miles. I walked four miles.” So, we tried to have a gentle footprint, but I guess that didn’t impress the Washington Post.
Chris Hedges: Let’s talk about where Cuba is. I mean, Cuba has been beset, of course, by sanctions for decades. And, just quickly, all sorts of attempts by the CIA to overthrow the Castro government, the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, which was foiled by Cuba during the Kennedy administration. I think there were seven concerted assassination attempts against Castro himself. I mean all sorts of weird stuff like exploding cigars, if I remember, and, I don’t know, poison pieces of coral or something. I don’t remember what it all was. But this war on Cuba has never abated, although in many ways what’s happening now, and I’ll let you comment on that, is perhaps the most severe.
Medea Benjamin: Yes, I mean it did abate a little bit during Obama when there were some openings and some of the sanctions were lifted and we saw a flowering of private enterprise and of tourists coming and the economy really picked up and it was good for US people and it was good for Cuban people, but unfortunately, the Trump administration rolled that back, and the Biden administration didn’t do anything to improve relations, and then we’re stuck with Trump again. Now, when you say it’s worse than ever, yes, that’s absolutely true because of this bragging by Trump that not a drop of oil has reached the island in over three months. The U.S. Venezuela not to send oil, it forced Mexico not to send oil. We’re going to see what happens with this Russian tanker, and that should be interesting. But, as you said Chris, this is not new.
And I just want to point out some of the ways that the U.S. has sabotaged the Cuban economy for so long. One is, this is a Caribbean island, and in small countries like in Central America and the Caribbean, one of the main sources of income is remittances, what people from those countries move to richer countries like the United States or to Spain and send back to their relatives. The U.S. has made it very difficult to even send money to your family on the island.
Then there’s the issue of tourism. Also, a mainstay of Caribbean countries. The U.S. has made it so hard for tourism to thrive on the island. You can’t go as a tourist to lie on the beaches. You have to fit into one of the categories to be able to go. That’s not very hard. People think it’s harder than it is, and that’s why so many people don’t go. But, our European friends, they can’t get the same US visa if they’ve been to Cuba. And since COVID, tourism has really taken a dive. And now, with Donald Trump, the conditions are even difficult for tourists if you can’t get around, if the buses aren’t functioning, that kind of thing. So, tourism has really been impacted.
And then there’s one source of income that I always thought was brilliant for Cuba and the world. And that was the medical professionals that they were sending around the world. These Cuban doctors and nurses that went to both poor countries that was often paid for by UN agencies, and went to wealthier countries, like Italy during COVID, that was paid for by the countries themselves. That became a major source of income for Cuba. And the US government went in there and systematically threatened countries to not accept Cuban doctors, to expel Cuban doctors that were there, even telling countries not to send their students to study for free in the medical school in Cuba.
So, these are just some of the ways that the U.S. has been sabotaging. And of course, being on the State Sponsor of Terrorism List means that you can’t use the international financial system, the SWIFT system, which means you can’t trade in the international arena. So, this is not new, but not getting fuel is a whole new level. And nobody can say right now that there’s not a blockade on Cuba. Everybody can see it now, and it’s devastating.
Chris Hedges: The island has only 10 million people. Why throughout its history has Cuba been seen by the United States as such a threat?
Medea Benjamin: Well, I think at one point it was a threat of a good example, a threat because it did have a thriving health care system that led Cuba to have a lower infant mortality rate than most places in the United States, a higher life expectancy rate, a family doctor system that was the envy of people around the world. I mean, imagine, Chris, having your doctor in your neighborhood. It was one doctor to like 125 families. They would actually know you. They would know what your health condition was. They would visit you in your home. I mean, it was a beautiful system. It’s so frayed right now because the poor doctors are earning a miserable salary and many are leaving the profession and they don’t have materials to work with. But it still remains a totally free system. And that’s a threat to all the people in the U.S. that profit from making our health care for-profit lousy system.
The other thing is that in the beginning the educational, the literacy program was really a major, major breakthrough in taking a poor society with a high literacy rate, turning it into an educated population where you could get free education up into a PhD.
It was also seen as a threat because of the relationship with Russia, which even after the Cuba Missile Crisis, U.S. maintained relations with what was the Soviet Union until the time that it broke up in 1991.
And then, there are all the Cuban Americans, and I shouldn’t say all because it’s actually a small group of Cuban Americans, that left the island after the revolution and have been outraged ever since that they lost some of their properties and have been constantly pushing the US government to overthrow the Cuban government so that they could get their properties back. And then they’re finally, I want to say that this Cuban-American group has become very powerful. They have modeled themselves after the pro-Israel lobby group called AIPAC, and they are a very, very powerful foreign lobby group for such a small population. They get millions of our tax dollars. They get them year after year to spread propaganda against the Cuban government. They have elected Cuban-Americans to office like Maria Elvira Salazar, Carlos Gimenez, Díaz-Balart, whose entire careers are built on this anti-Cuban government policy. And so those are some of the reasons.
And then finally, let me say that there has been a contest for Florida between the Democrats and Republicans, and the Democrats have thought that they could win back some seats in Florida if they took this hardline position. It hasn’t worked out for them, but they continue to think that it’s in their favor to be not only bashing the Cuban government, but hurting the Cuban people.
Chris Hedges: So, the response of the Cuban government has been to offer concessions. I think they’ve even said they would negotiate with Cuban exiles over reparations for their property. They’ve talked about loosening restrictions on foreign investment. Can you speak a little bit about how the Cuban government is responding?
Medea Benjamin: Well, the Cuban government has always been open to talks and actually having talks with the US about migration issues and about drugs. And the Cuban government has been very helpful in combating drugs in the Caribbean. But these issues now about investment, Cuba has opened to private enterprise, not in a big way, but in a very significant way. You can have private companies. You can hire up to 100 people. I would say most of the Cubans now are working in some form or another in the private sector because the government sector has collapsed in many ways. And the Cuban Americans are allowed to support enterprises in Cuba. And in fact, every small store that you see as you walk along in the streets, not only in Havana, but other cities, are mostly there thanks to investments from their relatives in the United States.
But what the Trump administration wants is big stuff. It wants to own land. It wants to be able to build whatever it wants and have U.S. companies come in and take over things that have been nationalized.
So, those are things, actually, that the Cuban government is willing to talk to. And as you said, they recently said that they’re willing to talk about compensation. Now when the Cuban government started to nationalize foreign properties in the early 1960s, all of the other countries negotiated and worked out a deal with the Cuban government. The U.S. was the only country that refused to work out a deal. But the Cubans are saying right now, let’s work it out. Let’s have normal trade relations with the United States.
Chris Hedges: What are the consequences if this siege continues, which I assume it will, what are going to be the consequences within Cuba?
Medea Benjamin: You know, Chris, I can’t even imagine this siege continuing because it is really breaking down the ability to have a normal life. People can’t go to work because the buses aren’t working or if they got to work, there’s no electricity or no materials. So, what are you supposed to do? The children are having a hard time getting to school. Many of the teachers have left because their salaries are so bad. The hospitals are barely functioning. The doctors there are heroes, still holding on, still trying to attend to their patients with the little that they have. But when you don’t even have access to hot water in the hospital, much less analgesics and all kinds of things like sutures, basic things needed for operations, the government has said there are 60,000 people waiting to get operated on and 11,000 of them are children.
The infant mortality rate is rising. The cancer patients can’t get their treatment. Diabetes patients can’t get their treatments. So, this is causing severe misery in Cuba right now. You see the garbage piled up in the streets because they don’t have the gasoline for the trucks. In the hotter months, that led to an outbreak of three different mosquito-borne diseases that affected one-third of the population. How long can this last? I don’t know. I don’t know. I can’t see this going on for another six months, for example, because people are just desperate.
And I’m hoping that there are talks between the US and Cuba. And we hear that there are, but I don’t know what they are. But I hope that there are, because something has to give. And I’m also hoping that more and more people are starting to realize how dire the situation is in Cuba, how medieval this siege is on the Cuban people, how hypocritical is to say that you care about human rights in Cuba and yet you’re denying the people the basics of life. So, I’m hoping more people are becoming educated and active.
We just came back from our trip to Cuba and I ran into Congress today to be with a group of 10 people that were going around asking them to support a War Powers Act saying that Trump does not have the right to invade Cuba, but also an act called the US-Cuba Trade Act to lift these restrictions. And as we went to the offices, we started out with the Democrats, and they were extremely sympathetic because they had heard about the conditions on the island. So, I think people are waking up to what is happening, and I’m hoping that we can apply some significant pressure on our government.
Chris Hedges: Although every attempt by the Cuban government to reach out is rebuffed by Marco Rubio.
Medea Benjamin: Well, certainly that has been the case, but you know, like we’re seeing in Iran and we saw in Venezuela, there’s not always a 100 % agreement between Marco Rubio and Trump when it comes to policies. I’m sure Marco Rubio wanted to overthrow the entire government in Venezuela, but Trump was content to kidnap Maduro and his wife and to keep the rest of the government in place as long as he could get greater access, because there was already Chevron working in Venezuela, but greater access for US companies.
The same might be true in the case of Cuba, where Marco Rubio definitely wants to have the historic opportunity to overthrow the Cuban government, but maybe Trump is content with some lesser kind of agreement in Cuba where there would be a greater openness to investments. So, we shall see. I don’t think we should think that Marco Rubio has the absolute word on what will happen with Cuba.
Chris Hedges: How likely do you see the possibility of an actual ground invasion?
Medea Benjamin: The U.S. keeps saying they are not contemplating a ground invasion in Cuba, yet we can’t take our government’s word for anything. I can’t imagine a ground invasion, but I couldn’t imagine the U.S. invading and starting this war with Iran either. I think the Cuban military would be very hard pressed to defeat a military attack by the U.S. But a ground invasion would be a different story. And I don’t think Cuban Americans really want to see their relatives bombed, although many of them seemed okay with seeing them starved. So, I don’t know what the likelihood of a military invasion would be.
Chris Hedges: When you were in Cuba, what surprised you the most?
Medea Benjamin: What surprised me was the level of resignation that many people had. That even though they hated the idea of Trump saying he was going to take over the country and do whatever he wanted, many people I talked to on the street said, “Whatever, just get us out of this misery. We can’t keep going like this.”
And so that is something I haven’t seen. And I want to say, Chris, that I’ve been going to Cuba for many years. This is not the Cuba that I knew. There are so many people begging in the streets. I never saw beggars when I first went to Cuba. There are people, not a lot of homeless, but there are. I didn’t see that before. And the level of inequality is so great because the salaries are $20 a month, $25 a month, and the prices are so high for local people. And so, it’s a similar situation that we see in a place like Gaza, where you see food in the marketplace, but people don’t have the money to buy it.
On the other hand, those people who have relatives overseas are in a much better position, and there now are very wealthy Cubans. And one of the things that our speakers talked to us about was the increase in racial disparities because those with relatives overseas that have money to send back tend to be white Cubans. And so, the ones who tend to have the businesses inside Cuba are white Cubans. And it’s the black Cubans who tend to bear the brunt of this economic strangulation.
Chris Hedges: When you talk about the buses aren’t running, how severely impacted is transportation? Are the streets empty?
Medea Benjamin: The streets are unbelievably sparsely, cars, there are some cars. There are some electric vehicles. There are some vehicles that have managed to get gasoline on the black market, which was very, very expensive. And what they’re coming up with is some very innovative electric vehicles. There are something called the Tricicletas, three-wheelers, electric and they can fit six people in the back and they’re used for transporting goods as well as people. There are electric motorcycles that people have, And the few cars that are in the road, people are hitchhiking and the people with cars are very sympathetic and are constantly stopping to pick people up. We asked our guides, “How do you get here?” And one of them said,” I hitchhike back and forth every day.” She sometimes has to wait quite a while for a car to pick her up.
But there is this solidarity economy where people really help each other. So even though in a country where there is not that sense of collectivism, you would see a lot more hunger, a lot more misery, and Cuba, they’re managing to get by because of this kind of solidarity. I’ve been to the eastern part of the island recently. There was even less traffic there. But what I found in Holguín, for example, was a revival of the use of the horse and buggy. And the carts were taking people around. The carts were also picking up garbage on the street. And that made it much cleaner than in Havana. But I asked about horses in Havana. And I’m sure there are some restrictions, but people told me there’s not even enough food to keep the horses healthy enough to provide that kind of transportation.
Chris Hedges: And this effort was multinational. There was a flotilla that left from Mexico, but there were all sorts of nationalities that participated in this attempt to bring, it ends up being symbolic, but attempt to bring in humanitarian aid and protest the siege, is that correct?
Medea Benjamin: You know, our presence really boosted the spirit of Cubans. We couldn’t walk around the street without people coming up to us and saying, “Thank you for your solidarity. I saw you on television. Thank you.” So, we were coming from all over Europe. There were delegations from Italy, from Spain. There were people from Colombia, Brazil, a lot of people from Mexico and there were a lot of us from the United States. There were 170 in our group, but there were also groups coming with different organizations, the People’s Forum, Global Exchange. There were people there from the National Network on Cuba, this group of Cuban Americans that I mentioned, the Cuban Americans for Cuba. So, we were hundreds of people and it was wonderful going around town and seeing people and lots of high fives and solidarities and it really was a boost. And the boats we had a problem with, because the insurance companies did not want to insure boats to go to Cuba. And they were also afraid of the threats from Trump. So, we did manage to get one boat that carried about 30 people and then a couple of sailboats. And the bigger boat just arrived in Cuba today to a really wonderful welcome. And there were people on that boat coming from all over.
And one of the real connections that was made was the solidarity movement around Gaza and Palestine and in Cuba. On our delegation, we had Palestinian professionals, we had Palestinian writers, we had Palestinian health workers, Doctors Against Genocide, and they met up in Cuba with the Palestinians who had been studying at medical school and some who had already graduated. And that was a beautiful coming together.
And also on the boat, we have a lot of people, and also in our delegation, who are part of the Global Sumud Flotilla and will be part of the upcoming Global Sumud Flotilla that will be happening in April. So, there were a lot of connections between people who have been advocating for the Palestinian people and now many of them newly aware of the problems in Cuba and many similarities that the Cubans and the Palestinians face.
Chris Hedges: When you meet with lawmakers, if they are sympathetic, what are you asking for?
Medea Benjamin: So, there’s this War Powers Act in the Senate and in the House starting today, and that is a bill that says that Trump without going to Congress cannot invade Cuba. It’s very important, even symbolically, to have that kind of vote. And of course, we’re pushing all of the Democrats and trying to get some Republicans to be on board as well. Things are so partisan in Congress, and the Republicans are so afraid of going against Trump.
But we hope we will get some of them on this as well, because many of them are not happy with what’s happening in Iran. And this would be a chance for them to show that they don’t support the US sticking its nose in all these other countries. So that’s one.
And then there is another bill that was introduced recently by Jim McGovern. It’s House Resolution 1721, the US-Cuba Trade Act, which would lift the embargo and would allow U.S. companies to trade with Cuba. So, this is what we’re asking for.
And I must say that today we got a lot of sympathy. I managed to speak directly to some members of Congress and they say, “Oh, I’m just so, so upset about what is happening in Cuba and glad there’s finally some bill that they can show their support for.” Of course, these people could have introduced their own bill a long time ago and didn’t. But I think we will get quite a good support in Congress.
Chris Hedges: Is there anything else you want to add, Medea, before we go?
Medea Benjamin: Yes. We also are trying to have trips to Cuba on a regular basis, going and going and going, because we found that people who couldn’t get on this trip, they really want to go. So, you can check the CODEPINK website for the next trips. And the other thing is to do your own fundraisers for Cuba. It’s a great way to bring people together, to talk about what’s happening, to raise some money, to give it to one of the many organizations that is raising money for solar panels or for medicines to Cuba. So those are other things that people can do.
Chris Hedges: Great. Thank you, Medea. And I want to thank Sophia, Thomas, and Max, who produced the show. You can find me at chrisedges.substack.com
