Monthly Archives: October 2025

Drawing lessons from the Cuban Revolution: organization, unity, and internationalism

Spread the love

This article by republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

On February 16, 1959, Cuba established the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the executive body of their defense force, and its first Army General, Raúl Castro Ruz. Photo: Miguel Díaz-Canel/X

A recent webinar by Pan Africanism Today and the International Peoples’ Assembly looked at global struggles, from Africa to Latin America, showing how Cuba’s enduring resistance offers vital lessons in organization, unity, and internationalism for today’s movements fighting oppression and war.

The world is in an era marked by relentless wars and overlapping crises, from the devastating civil war in Sudan and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo to the unfolding genocide in Palestine. The demand to end all wars has never carried greater urgency. And in the midst of all these visible battlegrounds persists a more enduring and insidious conflict; the hybrid war and economic blockade waged against the Cuban people and their revolution.

This was the central focus of a recent global webinar convened under the banner of Pan-African and internationalist solidarity, bringing together progressive voices to draw lessons from Cuba’s anti-imperialist struggle. The session, held on October 15, was facilitated by Mbali Gwenda from Pan Africanism Today, who situated the discussion within a broader historical and moral framework, invoking the revolutionary spirits of Thomas Sankara, martyred on the same date in 1987, and Assata Shakur who recently passed, and whose life consistently symbolized uncompromising resistance to oppression.

“We are dealing with the question of the hybrid war and blockade against the Cuban Revolution and her people,” Gwenda said. “A revolution that has been a source of inspiration for all oppressed peoples throughout the world till this day.”

The keynote address was delivered by Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of The People’s Forum and a researcher at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, who framed Cuba’s defiance not as a miracle, but as the outcome of a centuries-long process of people’s struggle, organization, and consciousness.

The long arc of revolution

De Los Santos began by looking at Cuba’s revolution more than an event confined to the years 1953–1959, when Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and others led the guerrilla war against the Batista dictatorship. Revolutions, he reminded the audience, are not events but processes, collective journeys of resistance that unfold across generations.

Cuba’s revolution, he argued, has roots reaching back to centuries of anti-colonial and anti-slavery resistance, when the island was still a colony of the Spanish Empire. Unlike many independence movements in Latin America, Cuban revolutionaries understood that genuine freedom required addressing three interlinked questions:

  1. Could Cuba truly be independent if it remained a slaveholding society?
  2. Could it be free if it continued under the exploitative system of capitalism?
  3. Could it claim sovereignty while dominated by imperial powers, first Spain and later the United States?

These questions shaped the consciousness of generations of Cuban patriots, culminating in the 1959 triumph of the socialist revolution. But as he explained, the revolution’s endurance has rested on three essential pillars: organization, unity, and internationalism.

Organization: the bedrock of resistance

Organization, De Los Santos emphasized, has been the Cuban people’s greatest weapon against imperial aggression. From the early independence wars to the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro, Cubans have understood that only a disciplined, organized people can confront an empire with infinite resources.

This organizational spirit persisted after 1959, with the creation of mass democratic structures that unite workers, women, peasants, students, and youth. The Federation of Cuban Women, for example, mobilizes millions in defense of gender equality and revolutionary ideals, while student and peasant organizations remain vital spaces for political education and collective problem-solving.

Even under today’s extreme shortages such as the lack of fuel to power garbage collection, Cuban communities respond not with despair but with collective initiative, a reflection of their revolutionary organization and social consciousness.

Unity, he continued, has been the second indispensable lesson from Cuba. Every time the people were divided, the empire gained the upper hand; every time they stood together, they won. This unity has transcended class, race, and regional divisions, dismantling the legacies of slavery and racism that imperialism imposed.

The Cuban Revolution’s unity was forged not just through ideology but through practice, through collective participation in building a new society. It remains, as Manolo put it, “the most important defense the Cuban people have.”

Internationalism is the soul of the revolution

If organization is the body and unity the shield, then internationalism is the soul of the Cuban Revolution.

Quoting Fidel Castro, the New York-based researcher reminded participants that “a people who are not willing to fight for the freedom of others will never be able to fully fight for their own freedom.”

This principle drove Cuba to send tens of thousands of its sons and daughters to fight alongside liberation movements in Angola, Namibia, and South Africa, contributing directly to the defeat of apartheid. As he noted, “Cuba doesn’t need gold or minerals from Africa, it knows that its freedom is tied to the freedom of the peoples of the African continent.”

Even today, with over 24,000 Cuban doctors working abroad, many across Africa, Cuba continues this legacy of solidarity. The US, in its campaign of distortion, now accuses Cuba of “human trafficking” for this very act of humanitarianism.

Read more: Cuba’s medical brigades in Africa embody a long tradition of solidarity

The anatomy of a hybrid war

The United States’ war against Cuba has been fought through unconventional means. It is a hybrid war, a combination of economic blockade, financial strangulation, media disinformation, and covert sabotage.

For more than 65 years, the blockade has inflicted immense human and economic damage. In 2024 alone, it cost Cuba USD 7.5 billion, money that could have been used to buy food, medicine, or oil for its 11 million citizens.

The US uses its control of global financial systems to punish any country or institution that trades with Cuba. Banks in Africa or Latin America face sanctions simply for handling Cuban transactions. The blockade’s reach extends into every corner of global trade, designed to isolate Cuba and make daily life unbearable for its people.

Read More: Tens of thousands of Cubans march in support of Venezuela’s sovereignty amid US aggression

The war is also fought in the terrain of ideas. US-funded media campaigns spread false narratives about repression and poverty in Cuba while erasing the country’s achievements in health, education, and solidarity.

Socialism and survival

When asked on how Cuba has managed to survive more than six decades of blockade, Manolo’s answer was clear: because Cuba made a socialist revolution.

Socialism, he said, allowed Cuba to create a system where the needs of the people come before profit. In capitalist societies, when crises hit, the rich survive and the poor starve. In Cuba, food, healthcare, and education are distributed equitably, even in times of scarcity. This social organization transforms a siege economy into a community of resilience.

This difference, he explained, is what makes Cuba unique among nations facing US aggression. It’s also what inspires global movements seeking alternatives to neoliberalism and imperial domination.

Cuba, Sankara, and the spirit of resistance

The session also honored Thomas Sankara linking a symbolic bridge between the African and Latin American revolutionary traditions. Both embodied a commitment to self-reliance, dignity, and international solidarity.

Sankara’s vision of a self-determined Africa resonated deeply with the Cuban experience. His assassination on October 15, 1987 marked a turning point in African politics, yet his ideas continue to inspire movements across the continent, just as Cuba continues to stand as living proof that another world is possible.

Read More: Thomas Sankara’s legacy lives on in Burkina Faso 38 years after his death

A call for global solidarity

In closing, Manolo issued a clear call; the Cuban people will overcome the blockade, but they cannot and should not do it alone. Their survival depends on the solidarity of all who believe in justice, sovereignty, and equality.

Cuba’s endurance is not simply a Cuban story; it is a lesson for all peoples resisting imperial domination. As the world faces renewed militarization and economic warfare, the spirit of organization, unity, and internationalism must also be crucial as ever.

“When they stand with the Palestinians, when they stand with the Congolese, when they stand with the peoples of the African continent,” Manolo concluded, “they are breaking the blockade too.”

This article by republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingDrawing lessons from the Cuban Revolution: organization, unity, and internationalism

Civilians in El Fasher, Sudan face “slow, deliberate death under the RSF siege”

Spread the love

Original article by Pavan Kulkarni republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Destruction in El Fasher, Sudan. Photo: Resistance Committees

After running out of animal fodder, people are now consuming cow skin as a last resort against starvation in North Darfur state’s besieged capital, cut off from all food supply by a 57-km wall the paramilitary has built around the city.

Walled in by war-torn Sudan’s paramilitary, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), over two hundred thousand civilians in North Darfur state’s besieged capital El Fasher “have nothing left but resistance and a collective death,” warned the city’s Resistance Committees (RC)*.

Traders report having completely run out of food supplies as famine closes in on the malnourished population, cut off from food aid since the RSF laid siege on the city in April 2024 to oust the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) from its last foothold in the Darfur region.

There were “only some secret points to enter and exit the city”, through which small quantities of food supplies were being smuggled through the siege, reportedly with the collaboration of some RSF troops, said Saleh Osman, President of the Darfur Bar Association.

However, severe shortages and hoarding meant that grains were sold at prices multiple times higher than before the war started in April 2023. Unable to afford, most people were surviving on small portions of porridge made from kora ambaz – a type of animal fodder left behind after extracting oil from peanuts.

Unsafe for long-term human consumption, it had nevertheless become a staple of last resort for the survival of El Fasher’s residents. Now, however, the “ambaz is gone too”, the RC said in a statement on October 14.

Total siege

The earthen wall that the RSF started building around the city this May to totalize its siege is reportedly complete, 57 km long, leaving little or no opening for food or any other essentials to be smuggled in.

“El Fasher is now effectively under siege from all directions,” Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said in a briefing on Wednesday, October 15. With the “earthen barriers around the city… preventing movement of both people and supplies”, the city’s markets, which have been repeatedly bombed by the RSF, “are largely empty”.

The little amount of grain left in the city is priced beyond reach. “A kilo of rice costs 450,000 Sudanese pounds” – over USD 748 – said Adam Rojal, spokesperson of the General Coordination of Darfur Displaced People and Refugees. Early this month, even the cost of a 50-kilo sack of ambaz had reached 2 million Sudanese pounds, over USD 3,300.

The last of the community kitchens, which Dujarric described as the “last line of support”, closed down on October 11. “People are now eating cow skin to survive”, the RC said, posting a video of a resident roasting the animal hide over an open fire. “This is not just hunger. It’s a slow, deliberate death under the RSF siege.”

Famine – which first broke out in August 2024 in displaced people’s camps on the outskirts of El Fasher – is fast closing in on the city where about 260,000 residents, including 130,000 children, remain trapped, awaiting death by starvation, if they are not killed by the RSF first.

The smell of death now fills the streets

Composed of the Janjaweed militias organized by the SAF to commit mass atrocities during the civil war in Darfur in the 2000s, the RSF has ethnically cleansed several areas in the other four states of Darfur that it has taken over.

In over 250 attacks on El Fasher, the RSF has already killed hundreds in shelling. “The shells pour down like rain, not distinguishing between a sleeping child or a mother pleading to the heavens to protect her children,” the RC said after the intense bombardment of the city on October 3.

“The smell of death now fills the streets, blood washes over the pavements, homes are destroyed on top of their inhabitants, markets have been reduced to ashes, and bodies are being pulled from beneath the rubble – without names, without faces, only numbers in a long record of massacres.” Hundreds of bodies remain in the rubble of residential neighborhoods struck by drones.

Chemical weapons used?

The following day, on October 4, RSF drones dropped projectiles emitting a “strange and strong” smelling gas, after inhaling which several were rushed to hospitals, vomiting, convulsing, and hallucinating. “All signs point to the use of internationally banned gases or chemical agents,” the RC said.

Later on the night of October 7, RSF shelled the hospital multiple times, killing at least 13 and wounding sixteen others, including medics. The shelling destroyed several wards in one of the last remaining hospitals in El Fasher.

“No aid planes, no humanitarian bridge, no genuine international action”

“After over 500 days of unremitting siege by the RSF and incessant fighting, El Fasher is on the precipice of an even greater catastrophe if urgent measures are not taken to loosen the armed vice upon the city and to protect civilians,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned earlier this month.

“The international community – led by the United Nations – continues to speak in the language of proposals without action. The UN proposal to deliver humanitarian aid by air to Al-Fasher has been awaited far too long, at a time when waiting is no longer an option – because people are dying of hunger now,” the RC complained.

“No aid planes, no humanitarian bridge, no genuine international action, no ground movement to lift the siege,” it lamented. “We cry for help and no one answers… We see our city being erased and we die resisting, because we have nothing left but resistance and a collective death in the silence of the world.”

*Organized in localities across Sudan’s cities, the Resistance Committees comprise a decentralized network of youth activists. It spearheaded the mass pro-democracy protests against the military junta before its components – the SAF and the RSF – turned on each other, hurling Sudan into a civil war in April 2023. Since the war, the Committees have been at the forefront of coordinating and organizing relief, rescue and defense of stranded civilians.

Original article by Pavan Kulkarni republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingCivilians in El Fasher, Sudan face “slow, deliberate death under the RSF siege”

Ecuadorian government increases repression of Indigenous-led national strike

Spread the love

Original article by Peoples Dispatch republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Protester in Quito on October 12, 2025. Photo: Alexander Crespo / Centro Nuestroamericano

CONAIE reports that at least two people have been killed so far and more than a hundred have been injured. The government defends the actions of the security forces and promises to end the national strike in a few days.

The government of Daniel Noboa has opted to reinforce the security forces to definitively suppress the national strike called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which has now been going on for 26 days. The protests, which have been concentrated in the province of Imbabura (although they have also taken place in dozens of other locations), demand the repeal of a presidential decree that eliminates the subsidy on diesel fuel, which is used especially by transporters, farmers, and rural workers. However, little by little, the demonstrations have taken on an anti-government tone that is evident in the mobilizations.

On October 12, various protests were organized across the country in support of the demonstrations. In the capital, Quito, the police and army cracked down hard on demonstrators, who were unable to gather in one place as they were dispersed with tear gas. Subsequently, several media outlets reported on the repression of several demonstrators who were beaten, shot with rubber bullets, and tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed.

Humanitarian convoy or vanguard of repression?

A few hours later, the Executive announced that it would send a second humanitarian convoy to Imbabura to, as it claimed, assist families affected by the protests. However, the so-called humanitarian convoy quickly became an advance group that attempted, using force and tear gas, to open the roads closed by Indigenous groups.

In this regard, Interior Minister John Reimberg announced on October 13 that the national strike “is ending now.” “We are going to use the police to completely open the roads, because this is ending now… We are going to arrive, we are going to dialogue, and if there is no dialogue and they want to become violent, the police are there to act,” said the minister.

In effect, the government ordered law enforcement to act more harshly against protesters who refused to end their protest measures. Several media outlets showed how the police and army acted forcefully against protesters, which has been denounced by various human rights organizations and opposition politicians. Videos depicted how soldiers and police officers beat detained protesters in groups, or how soldiers attempted to enter people’s homes to arrest protesters.

Alleged raids on hospitals and an increase in deaths

However, what has caused the most controversy has been the allegations made by several civil society groups, such as the Regional Foundation for Human Rights Advisory Services (Inredh), which warned of alleged raids by the military on hospitals to arrest injured protesters. Inredh has also reported that several doctors have been asked not to assist the wounded.

The clashes between police and protesters have left more than just the wounded. Several days ago, a video showed the death of Efraín Fuérez. However, following the latest incursions by the military and police, CONAIE has reported that another Indigenous man, José Guamán, died because of was hit by projectiles.

“We sadly report the death of our brother José Guamán, shot in the chest by the armed forces in the massacre ordered by the National Government in Otavalo… CONAIE expresses its deep solidarity and condolences to the family and community of Chachimbiro for this cruel murder. We join in the grief of his loved ones and demand truth and justice for José and for all the social activists who have been detained and killed in defense of the rights of our people,” CONAIE wrote in a statement.

In addition, it was reported that a woman died from suffocation caused by tear gas, bringing the death toll to three. According to the Alliance of Human Rights Organizations, there have been 310 alleged human rights violations, 144 injuries, and 103 arrests.

While road closures and law enforcement actions continue, talks to reach an agreement between various Indigenous leaders and government representatives are still going on in Otavalo, Imbabura, said the city’s mayor, Anabel Hermosa.

A long struggle against neoliberalism

According to sociologist Soledad Stoessel, the strike is part of a prolonged state crisis that began when Lenin Moreno (2017-2021), followed by Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), and now Daniel Noboa (2023-present) initiated a transformation of the state to benefit the economic elites through a neoliberal economic program: “The current Ecuadorian state crisis has its roots in a process of institutional dismantling that began during the government of Lenín Moreno (2017-2021). Under the discourse and with the aim of ‘de-Correa-izing’ the state, Moreno reversed the social gains of the progressive cycle and restored the power of the economic elites. The 2018 referendum and the Productive Development Law paved the way for the cancellation of corporate debts, the subordination of the state to local economic elites and international financial capital, and the political proscription of Correísmo as a political force.”

The strike has revived memories of the recent waves of national and cross-sectoral mobilization against the neoliberal governments of Lenín Moreno (2019) and Guillermo Lasso (2022). Those mobilizations were waged against similar policies to the ones Noboa seeks to implement by force today, yet importantly had great adhesion from across the left movements and political parties.

For now, the government is under pressure to put an end to the protests, which have shown extraordinary resistance to the enormous deployment of police and military forces. In less than a month, there will be a referendum that will decide, among other things, whether to draft a new constitution that will almost certainly structure the neoliberal transformation of the state.

On the other hand, CONAIE has once again proven to be the only social and political organization in Ecuador capable of standing up to the neoliberal project promoted by the economic elites and sponsored by international powers such as the IMF and the United States, one of the most important allies of the Noboa government, who, incidentally, belongs to the richest family in the country.

Original article by Peoples Dispatch republished from peoples dispatch under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingEcuadorian government increases repression of Indigenous-led national strike