The criminalisation of Cuba and the hypocrisy of empire

The history between the United States and Cuba runs deep and painful. To now witness the US regime led by none other than Donald Trump indict former Cuban president and a veteran of the Revolution Raúl Castro is staggering when viewed against historical record. It reveals the profound contradictions of global power and the selective morality that defines international politics.

The US regime is certainly no saint and, by any objective standard, is hardly in a position to indict any other government when judged against its own actions both within the United States and across the world. Few, if any, governments can match the scale of human rights violations, war crimes, massacres, crimes against humanity, coups, illegal sanctions, detentions, and torture associated with US foreign and domestic policy. Yet this same Washington regime now seeks to indict Raúl Castro. The irony and hypocrisy are staggering.

Fidel and Raúl Castro were not leaders who enriched themselves through corruption, greed, or personal excess, unlike Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and their circle. Whatever criticisms one may have of the Cuban system, the Cuban Revolution was fundamentally rooted in sovereignty, anti-imperialism, social justice, and resistance to foreign domination. The Castros never enriched themselves at the expense of their people.

Cuba has never overthrown a foreign government, assassinated a leader, created or sponsored terror groups, trafficked drugs, or destabilized a single nation. Yet these are actions repeatedly committed by successive US administrations across decades.

From Latin America to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, the United States has a long-documented history of regime change operations, military invasions, covert assassinations, destabilisation campaigns, support for dictatorships, torture programs, and violations of international law. The record includes the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), and elsewhere, support for apartheid and authoritarian regimes, illegal wars, drone assassinations, and the use of nuclear and chemical weapons against unarmed civilian populations such as in Vietnam.

While Washington oppresses, exploits, and ravages humanity, Cuba has worked to heal and save it. Cuba fought for the liberation of the Global South, especially in Africa. Africa especially cannot honestly tell the history of liberation without acknowledging Cuba. Cuban support was pivotal in the struggles against colonialism and apartheid in Angola, Namibia, and southern Africa generally. Nelson Mandela himself openly recognized Cuba’s immense contribution to African freedom. While powerful Western nations led by the US sought domination, Cuba offered solidarity.

Despite its limited resources and decades of Western-imposed isolation, Cuba sent teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, and liberation fighters across the Global South to help foreign peoples become self-sufficient and free. If Cuba is a dictatorship, it was never born of a desire by Fidel or Raúl to oppress. It was forged by US oppression through decades of assault, exploitation, and division that created the very conditions Washington now calls “autocratic.”

The tragedy of Cuba cannot be understood outside the relentless hostility of the United States. When Cuba won independence in 1902, the US immediately hijacked its sovereignty, turning the island into a playground for American oligarchs. Washington installed and then undermined puppet regimes just to serve US political and business interests. In violation of international law, the US seized Guantánamo Bay, turning it into a military dagger pointed at Cuba’s heart.

When Fidel Castro and the revolutionary movement overthrew Gen. Batista, a U.S. puppet, and expelled his American collaborators in 1959, the US responded not with diplomacy but with a total economic blockade and military threats, in direct defiance of international law and repeated UN General Assembly resolutions. Since 1962, Cuba has been cut off from the world while the US launched countless assassination attempts and regime-change invasions, including the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Yet even then, the country survived while continuing to prioritie social welfare and international solidarity.

Under those extraordinary siege conditions, Fidel and Raúl built one of the most advanced, just, and equal socioeconomic systems in the world. Cuba built free hospitals, free schools, and free social services for its people, while standing for peace and justice globally. Healthcare and education became universal rights. Social equality advanced in significant ways despite enormous constraints.

Few nations under such sustained pressure could have endured as Cuba did. Meanwhile, the US and its Western allies have done everything to destabilise Cuba, making democracy and human rights nearly impossible to build and sustain. If there is dictatorship in Cuba, it is the making of Washington.

As an African, a direct victim of Western slavery, colonialism, and ongoing US-led imperialism, I would be irresponsible and ungrateful to parrot any US narrative about any country. It is painfully obvious that when the West and the US invoke democracy, human rights, and international law, they do so not to protect those values, but to undermine them while advancing their own selfish interests.

Democracy and human rights have failed across the world not because autocrats exist, but because the U.S., more than anyone, kills democracy, engineers autocracies, and empowers spineless tyrants. As a citizen of the Global South, of Africa, of the Gambia, I have lived this reality. I have seen the incessant hypocrisy and double standards of the US When Washington cries out for “democracy,” it is always a guise for hegemony and the destruction of another nation’s sovereignty.

What is most painful today is witnessing individuals and institutions with deeply troubling records on war, corruption, racism, exploitation, and disregard for international law posture as global arbiters of morality and justice. Those responsible for immense suffering around the world now present themselves as guardians of democracy and human rights while criminalising leaders and nations that resisted imperial domination.

The world indeed feels upside down when power alone determines who is called criminal and who claims the authority to judge humanity. To think that sex offenders, convicted criminals, drunkards, and thieves, guised as political leaders sitting in the White House and Congress, now pose as the world’s moral rulers is the greatest tragedy confronting and destroying the world.

History will ultimately judge all nations and leaders in full context, not through the lens of propaganda or geopolitical power. Cuba’s story is not perfect, but neither should it be erased, distorted, or reduced to caricature. It is also a story of resistance, dignity, sacrifice, and solidarity under extraordinary pressure from the US and its western allies.

Down with imperialism.

Down with American hegemony.

Down with Western barbarism and arrogance!