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The day that will be remembered as one of the darkest days of the long and troubled US-Cuban relationship is 29 January. That was the day that Donald Trump declared Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security, introduced a full-scale fuel blockade around the island, and turned off the lights for their home, schools and hospitals.
For Cubans Americans like me, the consequences of Trump’s declaration are not abstract. They are immediate, and devastating. Our families are running out of food. Our friends are unable to access medicine. While Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, speaks in the name of our “freedom”, he actively starves our communities of their most basic needs.
In our community, this kind of doublespeak is nothing new. For decades, the United States has enforced a brutal embargo against the island, forcing its exclusion from the international systems of trade, finance, and tourism under the banner of “democracy promotion”. Washington insists that its approach pressures the government. In reality, everyday people have always borne the weight.
The logic of that collective punishment is written in black and white. In an infamous 1960 cable, the US secretary of state made the case for policy to “economic dissatisfaction and hardship” on the island. The plan was explicit: inflict deprivation on ordinary Cubans so they turn against their government. In other words, the goal of the US embargo has always been regime change, pursued with full knowledge that the suffering would fall hardest on everyday people.
And yet – throughout my childhood – the dominant narrative in places like Miami insisted that the embargo either did not exist or had no real effect. Every shortage, every blackout, every empty shelf was blamed exclusively on the Cuban state. Politicians like Rubio carried this myth into Congress and sold it to the broader American public.
Now, Rubio’s myth has been exposed by Trump himself in his escalating campaign for a “takeover” of the island. “There’s an embargo. There’s no oil, there’s no money, there’s no anything,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One last month.
Some Cuban Americans still cling to the belief that stronger forms of collective punishment will somehow unlock positive change on the island. Many of them argue that suffering is necessary. Others go further, using the opportunity created by Trump’s executive order to purchase weapons and advance their own plots for violent counter-revolution.
Just last week, Cuban authorities reported intercepting a Florida-registered speedboat off the northern coast of Cuba loaded with assault rifles, handguns, Molotov cocktails, night-vision gear and camouflage. The incident is a stark reminder that when pressure intensifies, some in the exile community feel emboldened to pursue violence against their own people rather than dialogue across our community.
Yet there is also a growing shift within that community. Cuban Americans, especially younger generations, are beginning to speak out against the criminality and cruelty of a Cuba policy that claims to represent our community’s interests. Whether in Miami or in New Jersey, we are today seeing a wave of Cuban Americans who are mobilizing to demand engagement, rather than escalation.
We have already seen how powerful a movement like this can be. Over the few years, young American Jews have radically reshaped the dominant narrative about US-Israel policy. They, too, took to the streets and to the Capitol to make their voices heard, refusing to let their identity become a weapon in the hands of the US government against their community.
Cuban Americans are today organizing to do the same. Just as Jewish Americans clashed with institutions like Aipac, Cuban Americans are challenging the organized Cuban-American lobby that has long pushed a policy of aggression in the name of our community.
This growing movement spans across ideological divides. For so many Cuban Americans, the devastation wrought by the fuel blockade requires us to put aside differences of opinion to stand up for our community’s most fundamental rights – to food, to school, to medicine. This humanitarian crisis does not discriminate between old and young, left or right. It devours everyone.
The crisis that we are inflicting in Cuba should thus be a call to conscience for the entire United States – not just our small diasporic community. No country that claims to stand for human rights can allow policies that deepen hunger and desperation. No citizen who believes in basic dignity can accept this suffering as collateral damage.
Cuba is our nextdoor neighbor: just 90 miles away from the Florida coast. Its people are our relatives, our friends, our coworkers and our fellow students. And right now, they need us to act with compassion.
The 29 January will be remembered for its darkness. But we have a real opportunity today to turn back on the light. It was just a decade ago that Barack Obama took the brave decision to reestablish diplomatic relations with our neighbor – and opened the door for a new chapter of friendship and shared prosperity. Recovering that memory may be the first step on the path to enduring peace between our nations.
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Danny Valdes is an activist from Miami and co-founder of Cuban Americans for Cuba
