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THERE was more than a hint of trepidation when Donald Trump declared last week that he would not attend his firstborn son’s wedding because he was too caught up in matters of state, including the paused assault against Iran. It wouldn’t be out of character, claimed an American wit, for Trump to invade Cuba as an excuse for avoiding the matrimonial festivities.
There was also speculation that the latest Gulf war might resume — which indeed partially occurred on Monday, albeit with no Iranian response until the time of writing, and despite the flurry of diplomatic activity. Nothing new happened on the Cuban front either, but Cuba’s status as the next target for trumped-up imperialism remains intact. Last week’s revelation of a facetious indictment against Raúl Castro over Cuba’s defensive action against the invasion of its airspace by a CIA-sponsored entity suggested that the Trump regime might be planning to re-establish its hegemony over the island by kidnapping its former president in an operation akin to the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
It’s more than likely that Fidel Castro would have been the primary target, had he not died 10 years ago. His birth centenary will be celebrated in August. Raúl turns 95 next week. It wouldn’t be surprising if he has no intention of being captured alive by the North American monster Cuba has been confronted with since long before its transformative 1959 revolution. In the early years of the revolution, Raúl and his comrade-in-arms Ernesto Guevara came across as more inclined towards communism than Fidel, whose youthful past lay in the student wing of a bourgeois-democratic party. The latter was briefly seen as someone the US could do business with. Once the revolutionary government shut down US-owned casinos and bordellos, and nationalised properties belonging to US MNCs, the mood changed.
By the time the likes of Nikita Khrushchev, Jawaharlal Nehru and Malcolm X were embracing Fidel at his Harlem hotel in New York in September 1960, US agencies were already planning his murder. Fidel’s 4.5-hour speech at the UN — still a record — did not endear him to either the official or the criminal stalwarts of the host nation. The mafia that had lost its lucrative operations in Havana was involved. None of the 600-plus assassination plots succeeded.
Cuba’s status as the next target remains intact.
Fidel gave the reins of government to his younger brother in 2006. Raúl was seen as less orthodox. He introduced himself to Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in 2013, and three years later Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Cuba. Fidel, by then the maximum leader emeritus, was less than enthusiastic. It’s hard to fault his foresight, given the thaw didn’t last. It was back to square one with the advent of Trump, whose short-lived national security aide wrote up a plan for overrunning Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, the three thorns in America’s rear flank.
Nicaragua’s 1979 Sandinista revolution overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. Washington responded with the brutal Contra rebels, whom Ronald Reagan compared to his nation’s founding fathers. The Sandinistas were overthrown via electoral means, but by the time Daniel Ortega returned to power in 2007, he had evolved from a revolutionary into a reactionary. Unlike Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who survived a US-backed coup attempt in 2002 but eventually succumbed to cancer. He made the mistake of ordaining Maduro as his successor. Despite the errors of the latter’s ways, evidence of his predecessor’s influence can still be found in the favelas of Caracas and beyond. Who can say how Delcy Rodríguez or her sponsors will choose to crush it.
The Trump regime’s rampage through Latin America includes plots against Mexico and Colombia, which are still ruled by left-leaning parties. Unsurprisingly, the Honduras-gate leaks implicate Israel in the plot to obliterate progressive tendencies across Latin America. Time will tell, but so far there is no guarantee that the ‘hege-moron’s’ mischief in America’s ‘backyard’ and beyond will cease in 2028, given that the Democratic alternative has been equally repulsive.
Over the decades, the Cuban revolution has had its ups and downs. Its health and education initiatives remain unmatched. Its eagerness to share its achievements with the rest of the world, not least through deploying doctors where they are most needed, is unique. As a Cuban surgeon recently commented while acknowledging his nation’s shortcomings, “Cuba is not a failed state waiting to be rescued. Cuba is a people — brilliant, stubborn, generous and vibrant — who have refused for 65 years to become someone else’s market.” More than 65 years of US sanctions may yet succeed in strangling the remains of the revolution, but there remains a small chance the revolution will survive Marco Rubio’s worst intentions.
Published in Dawn, May 27th, 2026
