Let Cuba Live: End the U.S. Strangulation of Cuba Now

I am writing to urge you to take immediate action to stop the Trump administration’s escalating assault on Cuba. The reported oil blockade and broader economic strangulation of Cuba are inflicting a humanitarian crisis on ordinary people. Congress must intervene now to end this cruelty. People’s World warns that this policy is creating a “cruel humanitarian crisis,” and the call to Congress is explicit: stop the oil blockade and support legislation to end restrictions on trade, exchange, telecommunications, and travel with Cuba. What is happening to Cuba cannot be separated from the broader regional agenda now being openly advanced by this administration. In Democracy Now’s March 6 interview, Jake Johnston described the administration’s hemispheric strategy as part of a “bipartisan and decadeslong strategy” to undermine left governments in Latin America and consolidate a pro-U.S. right-wing bloc. He warned that this effort is about eroding institutions, sovereignty, and international law, and he specifically identified Cuba as one of the countries in the crosshairs. This is not about democracy or human rights. It is about domination. The White House itself has framed its new regional initiative as reinforcing a so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth openly praised the Monroe Doctrine as the model for current policy in the hemisphere. At the same time, Democracy Now reported that Trump has hinted that regime change in Cuba could be a next target after attacks elsewhere in the region. Congress must reject this revived doctrine of intervention, coercion, and punishment. The blockade of Cuba is endangering the lives of ordinary people and is designed to threaten Cuba’s sovereign right to determine its own future. That is why I urge you to co-sponsor and support H.R. 7521, S. 136, and H.Res. 1056 to end restrictions on trade, exchange, telecommunications, and travel with Cuba and to support a New Good Neighbor policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean. For more than sixty years, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been rooted in punishment, siege, and regime-change obsession. It has inflicted suffering and solved nothing. Now, as regional leaders are pressured to prove their fidelity to Washington by cutting cooperation with Cuba, Congress must choose whether it will be complicit in this cruelty or act to stop it. Let Cuba live. End the blockade. End the aggression.