What will happen in the vote on October 29, 2026? There are real serious doubts about the empire's capacity to impose itself in order to defeat the resolution, with the obvious objective of isolating Cuba.

The blockade, or economic war, as historic Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz defined it in 1994, constitutes the most permanent, cruel and bipartisan policy conceived by the power in the Federative Desrepublic of the United States (DFE), the U.S., since the revolution triumphed, even before, much before.

History shows that the first action to blockade Cubans occurred on the eve of the nascent imperialism's intervention against its southern neighbor, back in 1898, when the US Navy established a tight naval blockade, explaining that it was to prevent the Spanish metropolis from sending supplies to its troops stationed in Cuba.

False: the colonialist soldiers managed, and what it really did was wreak havoc among the local population, causing no fewer than 200,000 Cubans to die from hunger and other calamities, which were added to those already generated by the reconcentration of the criminal Valeriano Weyler, the Spanish governor until 1897.

The constant threat of invading the country, through the Platt Amendment, and later, the way in which Cuba's relationship with the "DFE" was "organized," supports the view that this policy of blockading was maintained to guarantee Cuba's subjugation. So it is a continuity of an old practice: the signing by John F. Kennedy of Proclamation 3447, on February 3, 1962, giving formal start to the blockade, which took effect from 12 noon (Eastern Time), four days after it was signed.

The rest of the story is well known. In the 1960s, when this kind of nightmare began, the impact of the blockade generated losses to the Cuban economy of some 200 million USD on average, gradually rising to 400 million in the 1970s, 800 million in the 1980s, and by the 1990s it exceeded 2.5 billion USD on average, standing from March 2025 to February 2026 at the extraordinary figure of 8.083 billion in a single year, 7% more than the previous one.

What could Cuba not have done if those almost 180 billion USD accumulated over these 64 years and 9 months had been available for the development of its society, beyond an economic policy with successes and errors, but evidently vilified, a discourse that is part of that siege. Yes, because despite such a drain, enormous for a small country, the Revolution proudly shows extraordinary social achievements, some comparable to those of the aggressor country and others of the so-called first world. In case of doubt, one should ask the millions of beneficiaries of the Cuban vaccine program, just one "punctual" example.

There is an aspect of the economic war that, although usually mentioned, such as the extraterritorial nature of the blockade, deserves a particular look and, in perspective, another interesting approach, in light of the latest events referring to the ultra-perversity of the imperial aggression against Cuba.

Naturally, the impact on international trade of the aggression against Cubans has also been the subject of timely denunciation. Historically, U.S. authorities have lied, stating that they exercise their "right" to decide whether to trade with another country. It is enough to review the so-called Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws, or the inclusion of Cuba on the spurious list of a country that promotes or tolerates terrorism, a story dating back to the Reagan administration. In short, U.S. legislation itself openly admits that its measures affect third countries.

For the aggressors, extraterritoriality makes a lot of sense. The blockade was relatively neutralized during the 30 years that Cuba's multilateral relationship with the so-called socialist camp lasted; incidentally, it did not consist of those countries giving everything to Cubans, but of fair commercial exchange between countries of unequal development. But that disappeared, and both the scoundrel Torricelli and Helms and the aforementioned Burton made sure to make the eventual isolation in which Cuba was left more "profitable" for the aggression.

In these days, characterized by a special ruthlessness of the empire, at the hand of Marco Antonio Rubio García, extraterritoriality has revealed another characteristic, another purpose, as if one wanted to return to those times of 1898. It has already been said: they let Cuba, for example its private sector, trade with the U.S., but only with them, no one else has the opportunity, and this, it has also been denounced, includes foreign investment in Cuba.

It is frankly one absurdity on top of another. They are going from Cuba not being able to buy or sell anything to its northern neighbor, to it doing so only with them; that which Cubans are sovereign, did it become a dead letter? And if their independence is effective, as is obvious and everyone recognizes, starting with the inhabitants of Cuba themselves, when was the right to choose with whom to establish commercial ties proscribed?

See the exclusivity that Cuba has, in the worst sense; it is probably one of the few countries that is strictly prohibited from establishing economic relations with another nation, except the U.S. To insist, it is the intention of a neocolonial transformation of the Island of Dignity.

And apropos of the imperial discourse, the change in it regarding the economic war against Cubans is also significant. One can take the case of the head of the State Department, the aforementioned Rubio García. Since at least 2011 the wretch has been talking about the matter, always in a denialist pose, that Cuba suffers a blockade; he repeated it in reports and official documents, according to a brief informational survey, at least 15 times from then until now.

In September, Rubio García unexpectedly modified his message; pressured by the yoke of the midterm elections, when an anti-Republican storm is seen on the horizon, and much, tremendous disappointment with the guy, even in southern Florida, then, the best he can come up with is to go against all the rhetoric that he meticulously accumulated all this time. He says, verbatim: "we have imposed the strongest sanctions in the history of our relationship with Cuba." (RCN/NTN24). Well, given the circumstances, the truth sprouted from him, or did it escape him? How to know.

It is worth recalling the summarized interpretation of a famous poem by the German writer Bertolt Brecht, its name: "To Those Born Later" (An die Nachgeborenen), where, in his own words, he asks what times are being lived (in the years when fascism was emerging in his country), where one has to explain the obvious. Perhaps, only perhaps, Rubio García read Brecht, although it is unlikely, because he must be on his list of "radical leftist terrorists" or any of the nonsense he uses to discredit those who think differently from Trump and company.

Hence another more sarcastic look: the executioners who implement the blockade, do they admit it too? boasting of their cruelty. And not only that, in order to follow the demands of some powerful businessmen, "explorers of new opportunities," as good capitalists, they also authorize trade between both countries to prosper. Blockaders against the blockade? Total madness, whose victims are millions of Cuban men and women.

There is also another "surprising" problem that, although The Washington Post exposed it in a "distant" 2024, it must have worsened in the context of the current Trump administration: the Treasury Department's inability to fulfill its role of regulating/controlling the application of sanctions, that is, doing the dirty work, especially the aforementioned extraterritorial effect.

The Post says that in that year of 2024, the U.S. sanctioned at once no less than 60% of the so-called low-income countries, without counting the higher-income ones, it is not clear why. It adds that the so-called "pace of enforcement" is tending to accelerate, constituting at that moment "one of the main tools" Washington has to impose its policies, imperial ones one might add.

Where does so much aggressiveness in this peculiar field lead? Simple: in that 2024, it is good to insist, the Treasury Secretary admits to the Post that such an avalanche of penalties has overwhelmed them; that is, the sanctioning bureaucracy cannot manage so much trouble, designed by Washington. And the newspaper concludes that, things being so, they can neither control this universally hostile policy and, worse, countries, also as a trend, seek ways to evade such aggressiveness. In short, they neither efficiently administer the punitive mechanism, and in perspective it will lose its usefulness, with the consequences this entails, among others for the dominance of the dollar and a long etcetera.

With Trump there is no concrete information on the Machiavellian reasoning of the "strategists" who accompany him on how to solve the problem published by the Post. However, evidently if the current leader of the "DFE" is good for anything, it is for threatening left and right, and in the current troubled and semi-chaotic world, where the logic of "every man for himself" seems to prevail, that pose, always arrogant and hostile, certainly generates much fear, much cowardice, to use only qualifiers that do not entail the language of adults, provoking a scenario of capitulation to Washington in many operators of trade with Cuba.

That is the concrete situation of Cuba, which is not just any "low-income country" in the words of The Washington Post, because it is especially observed under a magnifying glass by the State Department and attacked with treachery.

In this context, as will be recalled, Cuba always counted on overwhelming support from practically all the governments represented at the UN regarding the votes on the resolution referring to the need to end the blockade, duly presented by the UN secretary-general since 1992. But in 2025, the number of votes in favor fell to 165, the lowest in the last 25 years, although extraordinarily high, representing 86% of all participating countries.

What will happen in the vote on October 29, 2026? There are real serious doubts about the empire's capacity to impose itself in order to defeat the resolution, with the obvious objective of isolating Cuba. Proof of the above is the scurrying of Foreign Minister Rubio García, pressuring every ruler who picks up his phone, some self-proclaimed as submissive to the empire, to ensure that the vote in favor of the Cuban people is sabotaged.

It is a demeaning spectacle, unworthy of an empire with a superiority complex, challenged by reality. And it goes to the extreme of setting up a petit gathering to denigrate Cuba, an event duly denounced by Ernesto Soberón, Cuba's ambassador to the organization, who stresses that UN spaces cannot be used, with double standards and for almost secret activities (press access prohibited), to attack a member country, which for this meeting is even denied any participation.

The activity is organized by the head of the U.S. mission to the UN; invited to speak: "informal" employees of the State Department, some of them with shady businesses and labeled as swindlers, or in keeping with the times being lived in the DFE, fearful of being deported, something that is not certain will not happen either; after all, traitors are used and then discarded.

But returning to the debate on the resolution. Some people usually wonder what the importance of this vote is, they even question, with some logic, how useful a resolution that is not even binding can be in "practical" terms.

One must understand something: this resolution is one of the few that are approved indisputably at the UN, and whose text clearly denounces a U.S. policy, sold until the other day as a bilateral matter. But it also has high value for Cubans who, facing with nobility and surprising capacity for resistance the economic war of so long, demand that at least they have the inalienable right to condemn it and count on the support of the concert of nations. Cuba wins and will win!

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff