January 1966. Havana. Delegations from Asia, Africa, and Latin America—many of them engaged in armed struggle against colonialism—gathered for the Tricontinental Conference. These were not mere diplomats, nor was it a conventional summit.It was, in the words of some ofthe participants themselves, an attempt to coordinate the revolution of the oppressed on a global scale.
The Tricontinental did not emerge out of nothing; rather, it was rooted in a long tradition of Third World internationalism, spanning from the Baku Congressof the Peoples of the East of 1920to the 1955 Bandung Conferenceand the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961.Two major historical currents converged in Havana in 1966: on the one hand, the socialist revolutions; on the other, the national liberation struggles of the so-called Third World.
Fidel Castro addresses delegates attending the Havana Conference, January 1966 I Image courtesy: Granma International.
Some 782 participants from 82 countries gathered in the city, including government representatives, guerrilla movements, political parties, trade unions, and social organisations. They were not merely state representatives in the classical sense but, in many cases, active participants in a struggle.
Discussions went beyond international politics; a vision for the world was discussed. “Create two, three… many Vietnams,” Che Guevara urged in his famous message to the Conference. Figures ranging from Chile’s Salvador Allende to India’s Aruna Asaf Ali, and from Mozambique’s Josina Machel to Guatemala’s Augusto Turcios Lima, converged there.
The delegates shared a common diagnosis: colonialism had not ended but had instead transformed into neo-colonial forms of economic, political, and military dependence imposed on formally independent nations. And that system had a clear centre: U.S. imperialism.
Yet the significance of the Tricontinental went beyond mere denunciation. It advocated for active solidarity among peoples, not confined to legitimate national interests but grounded in the conviction that the liberation of some depended on the liberation of all. Discussions encompassed economic cooperation, military support, shared strategies, agrarian reform, economic sovereignty, and breaking free from the structural dependencies of the global market.
Guided by the principle of “unity without uniformity,” the Conference acknowledged the diversity of realities and paths toward liberation. Ultimately, the Tricontinental’s anti-imperialism envisioned a global reorganisation: the construction of a world where relations among countries of the Global South were not mediated by subordination to centres of power, but by principles of cooperation, reciprocity, and shared development. A world in which no country advanced at the expense of another.
Thus, the Tricontinental was conceived as the beginning of an internationalist political architecture which would crystallise in the creation of the Organisation of Solidarity for the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL), headquartered in Havana, and its magazine, Tricontinental, which was published in Spanish, English, French, Italian, and, for a time, also in Arabic.
Mehdi ben Barka giving a press conference in Casablanca in January 1959 I Image courtesy: EPA
As Mehdi Ben Barka—a key figure in organising the conference who was assassinated shortly before it took place—noted, two major currents of the world revolution converged there: the socialist and the anti-colonial. It is no coincidence that some contemporaries described the gathering as a veritable “declaration of war” against the imperial order. Nor is it surprising that internal U.S. government documents characterised it as “the most powerful gathering of pro-communist and anti-American forces in the history of the Western Hemisphere.”
Today, following István Mészáros, we might interpret this as a commitment to an alternative “social metabolism” (which we have also referred to as a “sovereign social metabolism”). For Mészáros, capital is not merely an economic system but a system of metabolic social control that subordinates all dimensions of life, health, education, labour, time, and even human affections, to the logic of value accumulation. In that metabolism, everything becomes a commodity destined for market exchange, to the detriment of the satisfaction of human needs. In contrast, the Tricontinental and its model of internationalist solidarity sought to outline, however embryonically, an alternative social metabolism: one in which production, distribution, and cooperation would be organised, in a sovereign manner, around use-value and the expanded reproduction of life, rather than the reproduction of capital.
From the Tricontinental to Cuban Internationalism
What makes the Cuban case unique is that this project of internationalist solidarity did not remain merely at the level of rhetoric; instead, it became a central practice of the revolutionary process, one that Cuba sustained for decades. Indeed, Fidel Castro famously remarked, “To be an internationalist is to repay our own debt to humanity.”
Let us begin with the military sphere. Cuban support for national liberation struggles was not an isolated episode but rather a systematic policy of active internationalism. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, Cuba sent military missions to various African and Latin American countries, always at the request of legitimate insurgent movements and progressive governments, without demanding military bases, natural resources, or geopolitical advantages in return. Examples include Algeria in 1963 (support against imperialism during the Sand War); Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (military assistance to Amílcar Cabral’s PAIGC starting in 1965); Ethiopia in 1977 (in response to the Somali invasion of the Ogaden); and Nicaragua following the Sandinista victory (training the people’s army).
Cuba Provided Military Aid to African Independence Movements I Image courtesy: AFP
However, the largest and possibly most decisive deployment took place in Angola beginning in 1975. There, for over a decade, tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers fought alongside the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) against the South African invasion and U.S.-funded destabilisation efforts. That intervention played a decisive role in the defeat of the South African army at Cuito Cuanavale (1987-1988), a turning point in the Angolan war that also accelerated Namibia’s independence and dealt a lethal blow to the apartheid regime. As Nelson Mandela would later acknowledge,
The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa… it destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor.
However, Cuban internationalism has not been limited to instances of military support. In the realm of education, for example, Cuba has promoted the “Yes, I Can” (Yo, sí puedo) literacy method through which more than ten million people across various countries have learned to read and write. Meanwhile, the medical sector stands as a prime example of the tricontinental conviction that the liberation of some depends on the liberation of all. Since 1963, Cuba has dispatched over 600,000 health professionals on missions to dozens of countries.
This has not been a matter of occasional assistance, but rather a structural policy sustained for more than half a century. At the same time, Cuba has deployed doctors to emergency situations via the Henry Reeve Brigade, whose personnel have worked in more than 20 countries in response to earthquakes, epidemics, and hurricanes—ranging from Pakistan (2005) to Haiti, and from West Africa during the Ebola outbreak (2014) to Italy at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Likewise, the ophthalmological program known as Operation Miracle (Operación Milagro), launched in 2004, enabled more than three million people to regain their sight within a decade through free medical procedures, primarily in Latin America and the Caribbean. Among the beneficiaries was Mario Terán, the Bolivian soldier who executed Che Guevara.
However, the major achievements of the Cuban effort in the fields of healthcare and social reproduction do not end there. One of the most notable examples in this regard is in the area of medical education: the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), founded in 1999, has graduated more than 31,000 doctors from over 120 countries, many hailing from impoverished communities, providing them with a completely free education.
Added to this is the development of Cuba’s own capabilities in bio-medicine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cuba produced its own vaccines –Abdala(from the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology) and Soberana(from the Finlay Institute), under the pressing conditions of the blockade. Meanwhile, the Centre of Molecular Immunology (CIM) has been the source of other unique developments: the therapeutic vaccines CIMAvax-EGF and Vaxira for lung cancer, as well as the drug NeuralCIM (NeuroEPO) for Alzheimer’s, a treatment that even draws U.S. citizens to Cuba, attracted by its health benefits and the economic savings it offers.
If one looks at this body of efforts as a whole, a clear pattern emerges. The objective is not to exploit and export services in order to generate profits. Rather, it is to redistribute capacities, to provide resources that meet human needs regardless of cost. It is a policy guided by the principle of sharing “what we have, not what we have left over”: a sustained and coordinated effort to organise production, whether of knowledge, healthcare, and education, based on social needs rather than profitability.This represents the productive capacity of a society operating independently of capital accumulation and private economic gain. Ultimately, it is a sustained and tireless effort to build a sovereign social metabolism that stands as an alternative to that of capital.
What Is the Blockade Meant to Block?
And so the question arises: if a small Caribbean island has been capable of all this… what exactly has been the target of the blockade for over 60 years?
According to the prevailing historical narrative, the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba began in 1960 and wasformally establishedin 1962 in response to the nationalisations that followed the Revolution. However, limiting it to that context would be an oversimplification of its full implications, as the blockade is not merely a trade sanction. It is a complex system of financial, technological, and commercial restrictions, with both domestic and extraterritorial effects, designed to economically isolate the island and hinder its development in order to manoeuvre a political change.
The document explicitly acknowledged that the majority of the population supported the revolutionary government and that the only way to weaken it was to generate discontentby causing living conditions to deteriorate. From the outset, the design of the blockade included a social dimension aimed at directly affecting the population in order to produce political effects.
According to estimates presented to the UN, the cumulative costs of the blockade exceed $170.6 billion at current prices, a figure that rises to over $2.1 trillion when adjusted for changes in the value of the dollar and calculated in terms of the constant value of gold. In the most recent year analysed (March 2024-February 2025), losses reached $7.556 billion, equivalent to more than $20 million per day or $862,000 every hour. For a small economy, this is not merely a statistic; it is a structural condition that chronically hampers any possibility of normal development. Furthermore, the blockade prevents access to standard international financing: banks refuse to operate, transfers are blocked, and credit is impossible to obtain.
This forces Cuba to operate under a permanent extra burden, as though it were running a marathon with added weight at every step. Yet, beyond the macroeconomic figures, what is truly revealing are the concrete effects of the blockade on the country’s daily life.
In the healthcare sector, the impact of the blockade can be measured, for instance, in treatments that fail to arrive on time. Cuba cannot directly purchase numerous medicines, medical equipment, or technologies containing U.S. components, even when these are standard in the international market. This necessitates the use of intermediaries, which drives up costs and causes critical delays. During the last year assessed, multiple health programs were affected by shortages of essential supplies, ranging from reagents for clinical testing to cancer medications and specific antibiotics. To grasp the scale:16 days of the blockade equate to the funding required to cover the country’s needs for its essential medicines list for an entire year (approximately $339 million).
This is not an isolated issue; it is structural. And it has measurable consequences: according to an analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the tightening of sanctions starting in 2019 has been linked to a significant rise in infant mortality—around 148% during certain periods, driven by shortages of medical supplies, food, and essential material resources. Maternal mortality also rose, from 38.7 to 44.1 per 100,000 inhabitants. More than 32,880 pregnant women face additional risks as a direct result of the energy blockade, and 61,830 infants under the age of one require special care that cannot be guaranteed due to a lack of necessary resources.
As of October 2025, 94,729 people were awaiting surgery, including 9,913 children. It is estimated that 19 minutes of the blockade are equivalent to the cost of providing the wheelchairs needed for all of the country’s special education schools. In other words, the blockade operates directly on Cuban bodies themselves.
In the energy sector, sanctions not only prohibit direct trade but also penalise shipping companies, transporters, insurers, and reinsurers involved in supplying fuel to Cuba. The result is a chronic fuel shortage, exacerbated by the deliberate targeting of anyone attempting to trade with the island. This has led to reduced fuel supplies and a drastic increase in procurement costs. The consequences are visible: blackouts, limitations on public transport, and disruptions in industrial production.
Energy is a fundamental infrastructure; when it fails, everything else fails—hospitals, cold-storage chains, irrigation systems, and food distribution networks. It is estimated that two months of the blockade are equivalent to the cost of fuel needed to meet the country’s normal electricity demand ($1.6 billion), while 12 days equate to the annual funding needed for the maintenance of the national electric power system ($250 million).
Added to all this is the rising cost of basic daily necessities. Forced to purchase from distant markets and rely on intermediaries due to the inability to trade with the U.S. market or companies linked to it, Cuba incurs additional logistical costs that translate into inflation and shortages. It is estimated that four months of the blockade are equivalent to the financing needed to acquire the buses required for the country’s public transport system ($2.850 billion); two months equate to the funding needed to guarantee the delivery of the subsidised basic food basket to the population for a year ($1.6 billion). Each restriction becomes an added cost; each added cost, a shortage; each shortage, a source of daily uncertainty. The blockade is not merely an international policy; it manifests as a daily lived experience.
And, of course, it is not a phenomenon of the past born of propaganda. In recent years, under the Donald Trump administration, more than 200 additional measures were implemented to tighten sanctions. Many of these were maintained by the Joe Biden administration, reflecting the blockade’s structural, imperialist nature as state policy. These measures included energy restrictions that hinder the island’s access to fuel. Meanwhile, the international community has repeatedly condemned the blockade for more than thirty consecutive years, with the United Nations General Assembly passing near-unanimous resolutions calling for its end, yet without practical effect.
Blockade and Social Metabolism
Centred on internationalist solidarity, Cuba has concentrated a sustained and consistent effort to obstruct, in István Mészáros’s terms, the social metabolism of capital. But this has been a constructive effort: to obstruct it by setting in motion an alternative social metabolism.For the issue is not merely Cuba itself.The issue is the lesson that Cuba presents to the world: the possibility that other countries, especially in the Global South, might imagine alternative paths of development that do not reproduce the structural dependency of the global capitalist system and that, through their very practice, challenge it.
Thus, the blockade goes beyond merely causing economic hardship. It is an all-encompassing mechanism designed to prevent the consolidation of a model that, for all its limitations, advances a vision rooted in the combative yet constructive spirit of the Tricontinental movement. This model is exemplified by a healthcare system not organised according to market forces; education conceived as a universal common good; a foreign policy guided by cooperation and national sovereignty, as opposed to competition, domination, and dependency; and scientific and cultural capabilities dedicated to serving human needs rather than profitability and accumulation. Because this speaks not only to what Cuba has withstood, but to what it has built over more than six decades under conditions of siege and amidst a growing structural scarcity artificially created by imperialism.
Porque esa es la pregunta que nos quieren bloquear: ¿qué sería posible si ese modelo —un metabolismo social centrado en el valor de uso, en la emancipación colectiva, en los cuidados y el conocimiento, en la reproducción social de la vida— no estuviera sometido al asedio? Quizá ahí, más que en el pasado, está la verdadera actualidad de la Tricontinental; no como memoria, sino como horizonte.
For that is the question they want to block us from asking: what would be possible if such a model—a social metabolism centred on use-value, collective emancipation, care and knowledge, and the social reproduction of life—were not under siege? Perhaps that is where the true contemporary relevance of the Tricontinental lies: not as a memory of the past, but as a horizon for the future.
(This article is presented as a written adaptation of the lecture “The Tricontinental and the Current Situation in Cuba,” delivered by the author on April 29, 2026, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the Autonomous University of Madrid. Translation from the original in Spanish has been done by The Left Views with the permission of the author)