“Cuba en la encrucijada de un multilateralismo hipócrita,” by Josué Veloz Serrade, appeared on La Tizza on 17 March 2026. What follows is the English translation of an expanded and revised version of the original Spanish text for publication on Communis.

“Faced with the terrible internal crisis and the highly unfavorable global balance of power in which Cuba finds itself today, the objection from liberals—and sometimes even from certain non-revolutionary leftists—is more than predictable: Why must Cuba appeal to others for its own survival? Shouldn’t Cuba be able to fend for itself? That question deserves to be subjected to rigorous dismantling, because it operates as a rhetorical trap that normalizes the violence of the blockade and blames the victim.”

“The solidarity of all progressive forces of the world towards the people of Vietnam today is similar to the bitter irony of the plebeians coaxing on the gladiators in the Roman arena. It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing their fate; one must accompany them to their death or to victory.

“When we analyze the lonely situation of the Vietnamese people, we are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.

“U.S. imperialism is guilty of aggression—its crimes are enormous and cover the whole world. We already know all that, gentlemen! But this guilt also applies to those who, when the time came for a definition, hesitated to make Vietnam an inviolable part of the socialist world; running, of course, the risks of a war on a global scale—but also forcing a decision upon imperialism. And the guilt also applies to those who maintain a war of abuse and snares—started quite some time ago by the representatives of the two greatest powers of the socialist camp.

“We must ask ourselves, seeking an honest answer: is Vietnam isolated, or is it not? Is it not maintaining a dangerous equilibrium between the two quarrelling powers?”

Ernesto Che Guevara, “Message to the Tricontinental,” 1966.

The current energy crisis Cuba is facing is neither an act of nature nor a mere failure of infrastructure. It is the culmination of a geopolitical siege conceived with surgical precision over the course of nearly seven decades. What Cuba is experiencing today is the lethal convergence of a long-standing economic war—the decades-long blockade imposed on it by the U.S.—and a new international context in which the actors who should be balancing the scales have opted for what we might call a policy of minimal engagement.

Cuba faces not only the hostility of the Empire, but also the silent abandonment of those who, in theory, should be the most interested in opposing the unipolar order.

But before analyzing the geopolitical coordinates of the current situation, it is necessary to examine the psychological map underlying it. Because what is happening around Cuba is not merely a question of balance of power; it is also a problem of desire, of political phantoms, of what Freud called Verneinung0—or denial as a covert form of recognition. Those who today are abandoning Cuba indeed deny Cuba, but by denying it they validate it, and above all they validate what they deny to themselves. The blockade exists because Cuba still challenges the world, and because it remains an uncomfortable symptom within the global capitalist system. If Cuba posed no real threat, it would suffice to ignore it. The fact that it must be destroyed demonstrates that its mere existence remains intolerable for the Master’s order.