Editorial by Lisímaco Velasco, published on Labor Today International, April 17, 2026
The President of the United States, who claims to possess the best and most advanced weapons in the world, who boasts of carrying out highly sophisticated military missions like the one on January 3rd in Venezuela, who says that no one is capable of doing what he and his army do, who is not afraid of Russia, China, or NATO, declared that Cuba is an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” that the threat to the great power is a small island off its coast.
The imperialist power, which has nearly 10 billion square kilometers, feels threatened by an island of approximately 110,000 square kilometers—more than 90,000 times larger. Visually, it can be seen as: 110,000 and 10,000,000,000. The power, with over 348 million inhabitants, feels threatened by a country of 10 million inhabitants.
To understand this, one possibility is that the leader of the United States has lost his mind, living in a reality different from that of this planet. But there is also the possibility that this individual is right.
Let’s begin by remembering that the imperialist power formalized the economic, commercial, and financial blockade on February 7, 1962, with the clear objective of striking at and ending Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government and the Cuban Revolution. Sixty-four years of the blockade have passed, and they have not achieved their goal. Clearly, this is an unusual threat, an extraordinary threat. No one other than Cuba has been able to withstand this. It is clearly a bad example for the world, and they have it right under their noses.
They have threatened the world to join in this criminal act of war, because it is not a political action; it is the intention to murder an entire population by preventing access to food, medicine, and even production itself, without regard for children, pregnant women, or the elderly.
These are crimes against humanity. Crimes against humanity are atrocious acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population. Defined by the Rome Statute, these crimes are inalienable, imprescriptible, and can occur in both times of peace and war, often perpetrated under state policy. This is not an occasional attack; it is a state policy, because it has been carried out by every US administration, widespread and systematic for 64 years, in full view of the world, and against the entire civilian population.
The representative of the irrationality of humankind says he wants to counteract the “malign influence” of Cuba, because it is common knowledge that Cuba cannot give anyone oil, weapons, bombs, missiles, or weapons of mass destruction, as the US government does to puppet governments like that of Israel. Cuba can only offer doctors. And an example, and this constitutes a malignant influence because it exposes the intentions, policies, and actions of those who seek to control the planet and who already control all global organizations, from the United Nations to the World Health Organization.
It is an unusual threat because Cuba has been able to withstand what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the well-known and repudiated NATO, has not. Cuba has withstood more than six decades of war and constant aggression; no other people could have withstood it. It is true that they serve as a bad example for imperialist intentions to subjugate and dominate the world.
We need to deploy all possible solidarity, within our limited means, solely as labor or political organizations, because the greatest opportunities for solidarity arise when we are in government in our respective countries. Let us be in solidarity, but let us also learn from this bad example.
Lisímaco Velasco
Public Relations Secretary
National Federation of Pensioners and Retirees
Confederation of Workers of Ecuador
(CTE) 14/4/2026
*Featured Image: A woman selling avocados waits for customers in Havana, Cuba, July 9, 2022 (AP photo by Ramon Espinosa).