On April 17 it will be 65 years since the US tried to overthrow the new Cuban revolutionary government. An invasion force of 1,500 CIA-trained mercenaries, displaced acolytes of the former Batista dictatorship, landed at the Bay of Pigs. A few days earlier, US B-26 planes had bombed Cuban airfields to prepare the ground for the invasion.
The incursion failed miserably, routed by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces personally led by Fidel Castro. The invaders and their US backers had expected the invasion to trigger a mass uprising against Castro’s government, which had ousted the repressive regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, but they had miscalculated badly.
The revolution mobilised Cuba’s workers and peasants into a formidable fighting force determined to prevent any return to dictatorship. Batista’s regime had been characterised by corruption and rapacity, with the US mafia controlling Havana’s hotels, gambling, drugs and sex trade. As revolutionary forces closed in, Batista fled with $300m ($4.9bn in today’s money).
The comparison with what’s happening now is plain. US President Donald Trump’s efforts to throttle Cuba by blocking imports of oil from Venezuela and ramping up the decades-long economic blockade of the country aim to turn the people against the socialist government and pave the way for restoring Cuba as a comprador puppet of the US.
“Cuba’s next,” Trump boasts, while lauding the “successes” of US military aggression against Venezuela and Iran and the ferocity of the attack on Iran in collusion with Israel, as in Lebanon. But his hubris is precarious. Despite desperate hardship caused by the oil blockade and effects on food and medical security, there are few signs the Cuban people are about to turn on their government.
This latest cycle of US aggression against Cuba has prompted a surge of international solidarity from many governments opposed to US imperial mania but also, crucially, from across global civil society, including activists and organisations at the forefront of efforts to break the genocidal siege of Gaza and the West Bank in occupied Palestine. Responding to Cuba’s call for assistance, governments and activists are sending medical supplies, food and solar equipment.
The US has long obstructed Cuba’s efforts to build an economy and society on a different, socialist path from the one embraced by the US, which had resulted in the depravities of the Batista regime. One reason for the Bay of Pigs attack was that the revolutionary government had nationalised US-owned sugar plantations, utilities and oil refineries in 1960 as a response to US-instigated campaigns of violence and sabotage.
The popular movement that Castro, his younger brother Raul, Che Guevara and other revolutionaries mustered as guerrilla fighters before taking power evolved logically towards a socialist dispensation. Nationalisation, land reform and the great strides of a countrywide literacy campaign unavoidably confronted the class power of the landlords and the comprador middle class with the dismantling of the imperialist economic structure.
The Bay of Pigs laid bare the necessity of this confrontation. Speaking at the funeral of the victims of the US bombings the day before the Bay of Pigs assault, Castro referred to the “socialist character of the revolution”. The next month Cuba was declared a socialist state. It confirmed the understanding that in the imperialist epoch, national liberation and socialist transformation are dynamically inseparable.
The revolutionary government was anathema to the US, which did everything to sabotage it. Matters came to a head in October 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis. The US had already deployed nuclear missiles in Turkey, aimed at the USSR. Cuba, seeking security against US invasion, agreed to allow the Soviets to station reciprocal missiles on the island.
Illegal blockade
US President John F Kennedy responded with a naval blockade to prevent further Soviet deployments. For nearly two weeks the standoff threatened to turn apocalyptic. Diplomacy ultimately prevailed: the USSR withdrew its missiles from Cuba, the US withdrew its from Turkey, and Washington was compelled to pledge it would not invade Cuba.
The US responded to the revolution with escalating economic sanctions, formalised by Kennedy in February 1962 into a full trade blockade. This tightened progressively, intensifying sharply after the Soviet Union’s collapse removed Cuba’s key trading partner. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 enshrined the embargo permanently in US law.
The blockade is a constant violation of international law, reflected by the annual vote on lifting the embargo at the UN General Assembly. Only the US and Israel vote against. Relaxed somewhat under former US president Barack Obama, reimposed under Trump 1.0 and in practice maintained by former US president Joe Biden, the blockade has not only been a pressure on the economy but has had direct effects on the health sector. Now, under Trump 2.0, it is at its fiercest.
Resilience and internationalism
Remarkably, and despite every turn of the US imperial screw, Cuba has flourished in many respects, creating a world-class primary health care and education system. Over the decades it has been a critical source of solidarity with countries struggling for national liberation or, later, fighting health pandemics such as Ebola.
The liberation of Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde owe an immeasurable debt to Cuba’s solidarity. The decisive theatre was Angola. After independence in 1975 the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola government faced the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) — backed by South Africa and the CIA — and a full-scale apartheid South African military invasion. Cuban forces intervened directly, halting the advance. In all, more than 2,000 Cubans lost their lives defending Angola.
The pivotal engagement came at Cuito Cuanavale (1987–1988), where Cuban, Angolan and South West African People’s Organisation forces repelled the South African Defence Force and then advanced to the Namibian border. The ANC’s uMkhonto weSizwe held the line against Unita in other regions and assisted with intelligence work. The battle accelerated Namibian independence in 1990 and shattered the apartheid regime’s aura of military invincibility, a factor former president Nelson Mandela acknowledged as helping create the conditions for the negotiations to end apartheid rule.
Cuba’s solidarity with South Africa has persisted post-apartheid. It has provided training for South African medical students and supported the development of primary health care, particularly in rural areas. There are 152 Cuban doctors and medical personnel in South Africa, under a collaboration that started 30 years ago.
Globally, Cuba’s medical internationalism has been especially remarkable. Cuban health brigades have served in disaster zones and impoverished communities across Latin America, Africa and Asia. All of this has been sustained by a country of 11-million people under permanent economic siege.
Now is the time for countries, civil society and people worldwide to take united action in solidarity with Cuba. The April 17 Bay of Pigs anniversary is the time to intensify pressure to break the blockade and confront US warmongering everywhere. Anti-imperialist struggles of Africa, Asia and Latin America are a formidable force of unity. In South Africa, political parties, trade unions, civil society organisations and ordinary folk will protest at US diplomatic missions in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and elsewhere.
Cuba’s government displays sobriety in seeking a peaceful diplomatic solution. Trump, capricious and drunk with power, needs reminding of the US’s history of defeats. Cuba’s people are a determined, united force and will fight to defend their country. Their battle cry, Patria o Muerte — Venceremos (Homeland or Death — we will overcome), is no empty phrase.
Cuba needs our practical support and unwavering solidarity.
Kasrils, a struggle veteran, is a former cabinet minister. Waller is a Pretoria-based freelance journalist.
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