As the genocidal US blockade continues to strangle the island’s economy, and the US deploys warships into the Florida Straits, the Cuban people are answering with revolutionary vigilance. They are organising to protect their socialist revolution.
Since the January 2026 US raid that abducted Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, US President Donald Trump has set his sights on Havana, threatening that Cuba is ‘ready to fall’ and cutting off access to Venezuelan oil – the most recent tightening of a blockade that is desperately trying to force Cuba into submission. This has cost the Cuban economy over $170bn since 1962 and is condemned nearly unanimously at the UN every year.
Led by the Communist Party of Cuba, the island has responded with militant mobilisation. The Party’s political vanguard has been built into the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) since 1963, and Cuban sovereignty rests on a doctrine the imperialists cannot break, the ‘Guerra de Todo el Pueblo’ (war of all the people). The doctrine was developed in the early 1980s after US exploited the Mariel exodus to try and sabotage Cuba’s revolution. That May millions marched through Havana in defence of their government. The Territorial Troop Militia was founded soon after and now stands behind the FAR with over a million volunteers, trained to protect socialist Cuba the minute US imperialism dares to land. Add the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in every neighbourhood and the Federation of Cuban Women – the verdict of the Cuban people is clear – no occupation, and no surrender!
President Díaz Canel personally oversaw tank units in the last Bastion exercises, the seventh nationwide mobilisation since 1980. In August, FRFI heard it directly from the Cuban working class again and again – they are willing to go to the frontline to defend their revolution.
Sixty-five years after the Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs) invasion by US-backed mercenaries was defeated, the lesson still stands. Cuba is not only armed. Cuba is the working class in arms.
