Mexico City, Jan 5 (Prensa Latina) Members of the Cuban Embassy in Mexico paid tribute today to the 32 Cuban fighters who lost their lives on January 3 during the United States military attack against Venezuela.
“The staff of the @EmbaCuMex paid tribute to the combatants who fell heroically in the sister land of Venezuela, facing the cowardly imperialist aggression that reinforces threats to Our America,” the diplomatic mission stated on its social media account.
During the ceremony, the island’s ambassador to this capital, Eugenio Martínez, stated that the greatest tribute would be to honor their example of loyalty and redouble the work, dedication and sacrifice “to live up to the standards that internationalist heroes, the people of Cuba and their Revolution deserve.”
The meeting concluded with a minute of silence in honor of the comrades and with the reaffirmation of firm support for the legacy of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro; Army General Raúl Castro; President Miguel Díaz-Canel; the Communist Party of Cuba and the Revolution.
The government of the Caribbean nation reported yesterday that 32 Cuban citizens died during the military attack perpetrated by the United States against Venezuela.
The combatants were carrying out missions on behalf of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior, at the request of their counterparts in the South American country. Authorities in the Caribbean nation stated that the Cubans “fell in direct combat against the attackers or as a result of the bombing of the facilities,” after offering “fierce resistance.”
In honor of the fallen combatants, President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared national mourning.
Hours after the news broke of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s abduction by U.S. special forces in Caracas, thousands of Cubans gathered in front of the U.S. embassy in Havana in protest.
Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández was on the ground covering the demonstration. Watch what Cubans told her in our new video.
It’s all about the oil
Although the U.S. government has invoked drug trafficking as the justification for its military escalation in the Caribbean and abduction of Maduro, Trump made clear in his Saturday press conference that the primary motivation was oil.
“We’re going to take back the oil that frankly we should have taken back a long time ago,” Trump said. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken oil infrastructure and start making money for the country.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS News on Sunday that the U.S. “quarantine” on sanctioned oil tankers will remain in place as leverage until the Venezuelan government opens the doors to U.S. oil companies.
Delcy Rodríguez, Venezuela’s new interim president, struck a defiant tone on Saturday.
“We are ready to defend our natural resources,” Rodríguez said in her first public statement after Maduro’s ouster. “We’re never going to be a colony of any empire.”
But both Trump and Rubio have expressed confidence that Rodríguez would accede to U.S. demands.
“We’ve spoken to her numerous times, and she understands, she understands,” Trump told the New York Post.
For now, that confidence rests less on persuasion than on gunboat diplomacy.
“If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” Trump toldThe Atlantic this morning.
Meanwhile, Trump snubbed Nobel Peace Prize winner María Corina Machado to the apparent consternation of Rubio’s hardliner friends in Miami.
“I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader,” Trump said. “She doesn’t have the support or the respect within the country.”
Beyond Venezuela, the brazen kidnapping of an elected head of state signals the administration’s willingness to impose power in the region by force — a stark reassertion of U.S. imperialism that is in line with what Trump has framed as a return to the Monroe Doctrine (or as he now calls it, the “Don-roe Doctrine“).
“The message is clear to any progressive forces in Latin America,” Miguel Tinker Salas, emeritus professor of history at Pomona College and author of “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know,” told Democracy Now!. “The message is clear to Brazil. The message is clear to Mexico and Claudia Sheinbaum. The message is clear to Cuba, that it will be in the crosshairs next. This is about reimposing U.S. military and economic dominance in Latin America, starting in the Caribbean, starting with Venezuela.”
What does this mean for Cuba?
Cuba and Venezuela have been close allies since former President Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. Venezuela became one of Cuba’s main sources of oil, and tens of thousands of Cubans, mainly doctors and nurses, have served on medical and educational missions to Venezuela.
For more on this relationship, watch Episode 2 of our award-winning documentary series The War on Cuba.
Venezuelan oil shipments have sharply reduced in recent years as the U.S. has pounded both countries with sanctions, including measures aimed at blocking the flow of petroleum to the island.
In 2025, Venezuela was shipping around 30,000 barrels a day to the island, about 70% less than what it was sending a decade earlier. This fuel lifeline has been further cut in recent weeks as the Trump administration ordered “a total and complete blockade” of sanctioned oil tankers. U.S. forces have already seized two tankers after they left Venezuela.
Since the U.S. began its “maximum pressure” campaign against Cuba and Venezuela in 2019, Cuba has been ravaged by a fuel crisis that has resulted in daily blackouts. This policy, which has remained in place throughout the Biden administration and into Trump’s second term, is designed to cause so much hardship and suffering in Cuba that the government will collapse or be overthrown from within.
This strategy apparently remains unchanged — 65 years after it was created under the Eisenhower administration (see former Vice President Richard Nixon articulate the U.S. government’s regime change plans in 1960 in the documentary we produced for Al Jazeera, Health Under Sanction).
United Nations, Jan 5 (Prensa Latina) Cuba today rejected unfounded accusations made by the United States delegation during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Venezuela.
Cuba’s permanent representative to the UN, Ernesto Soberón, said that his delegation was forced to speak a second time to respond to those accusations.
“It is outrageous,” he emphasized, “that those who have perpetrated unilateral aggressions and systematic violations of International Law seek to act as judges of other sovereign states, which is an absolutely immoral, disrespectful, and irresponsible attitude.”
“We categorically reject the slanderous claims that Cuba has an intelligence presence in Venezuela. Such accusations lack any factual basis and constitute a clear attempt to divert attention from the aggressive and criminal conduct of the United States in the region,” the diplomat added.
Cuba strictly respects the sovereignty, independence and inalienable right of the Venezuelan people to decide their own destiny, as established by the Charter of the United Nations, he said.
Soberón recalled that cooperation between Cuba and Venezuela in multiple spheres, including the military, has legitimate bases and is supported by bilateral agreements signed sovereignly by both parties.
The diplomat reiterated that, as declared by the Revolutionary Government, the 32 fallen combatants, victims of a criminal act of aggression and state terrorism perpetrated by the United States, were carrying out missions representing the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior at the request of Venezuelan counterpart bodies.
“These patriots, through their heroic actions, embodied the solidarity of millions of Cubans,” Soberón emphasized, adding that “this delegation (from the United States) is disrespectfully attempting to label Cuba as an interventionist in Venezuela, which we categorically reject,” the Permanent Representative to the UN concluded.
Havana, Jan 3 (Prensa Latina) Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel today urged the international community to condemn the United States’ bombing of Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores.
In a massive show of support for the attacked South American nation, held in Havana, the Cuban head of state affirmed that the mobilization, articulation and coordination of the world is urgently needed against what he described as a brutal and treacherous attack against a sovereign country, as well as a vulgar kidnapping of its president.
He stated that the alleged fight against drug trafficking is a fallacy with which Washington tries to hide the true purpose of its actions: to seize Venezuela’s natural resources.
The objective is also to extinguish that bastion of resistance against imperialism and of national independence that is the Bolivarian revolution.
In his speech, Díaz-Canel expressed his conviction that the Venezuelan people will take to the streets to demand their rights and the return of the president, as they did previously with the revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez.
He stated that “the United States has no moral, legal, or any other kind of authority to forcibly remove the Venezuelan president from his country, but it is responsible to the world for Maduro’s physical integrity.”
He recalled that US federal agencies, analysts, and researchers offered opinions and information that dismiss the false narrative of narco-terrorism and refute these accusations against Venezuela and its president.
It is outrageous that Trump and his cronies don’t care about the truth; they are the ones who should be condemned by an international anti-fascist tribunal, the Cuban president pointed out.
He stressed that the attack against Venezuela is an assault against Latin America, declared a Zone of Peace since 2014, and a violation of International Law.
We do not accept the Monroe Doctrine, Bolívar’s land is sacred, and an attack on his sons is an attack against the worthy sons of this region, he pointed out.
These are not times for half measures, these are times for defining ones and taking a stand against fascism and imperial barbarism, Díaz-Canel said, and called on Latin Americans to close ranks against the neocolonialist and fascist practices of the United States.
It’s been a rough year for Cuba. Rather, a rough few years. And with Donald Trump in the White House and Marco Rubio calling the shots on U.S. foreign policy, there’s little reason to believe things will improve anytime soon.
“Maximum pressure” sanctions imposed during the first Trump administration have resulted in an all-encompassing crisis. Medicine is scarce, rolling blackouts and long lines at gas stations are the norm and inflation has put basic necessities out of the reach of many Cubans.
But even in the face of all this, Cuba remains home to extraordinary people who persist in building a future for themselves, their loved ones and their country as a whole.
We’ve reported on this resilience throughout 2025.
When Hurricane Melissa destroyed parts of eastern Cuba, neighbors rallied around each other in its aftermath and solidarity initiatives poured in from across the island.
Cuban doctors and scientists continue to do all they can to save lives, farmers find innovative ways to feed their communities, entrepreneurs strive to grow their businesses and activists band together to protect stray animals. We’ve witnessed Cubans time and time again face overwhelming challenges with a deep sense of humanity — and that humanity is at the heart of our work.
So what are Cubans hoping for in 2026?
Watch our latest video in which Belly of the Beast journalist Liz Oliva Fernández asks Cubans how they’re feeling about the year ahead.
Mexico City, Dec 30 (Prensa Latina) Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum today reiterated her rejection of any intervention in Venezuela and called on the UN to play a more prominent role in the face of US threats to the South American nation.
“What we have to say is that we do not agree with interventions, especially military ones. That is the Constitution in our country and that is what we will continue to defend,” the president said in response to a question about US pressure against Caracas.
When asked whether there should be a call in the region to support Venezuela, the head of the Executive Branch considered that “the United Nations has to take a much more leading role in these cases.”
The combination of attacks on vessels allegedly linked to drug trafficking and the hijacking of oil tankers near the Venezuelan coast has intensified Washington’s campaign in its undeclared war against that South American nation.
Added to this is the massive military presence in the area of the Southern Command, where the northern country deployed warships, marines, fighter jets and spy planes, in a show of power.
Caracas has denounced that Trump assumed on his social media that Venezuelan oil and other resources are his property, and reaffirmed sovereignty over all natural wealth, as well as the right to free navigation and free trade.
This year we produced Health Under Sanction, a 25-minute documentary for Al Jazeeraabout the impact of U.S. sanctions on Cuba’s public healthcare. With exclusive access to Cuban hospitals, the film follows the patients feeling the brunt of the U.S. government’s economic war on Cuba — and the doctors fighting to keep them alive.
Also, we released a video report this month looking at how a mosquito-borne epidemic has strained Cuba’s once vaunted healthcare system in part due to the impact of U.S. sanctions.
Cuban flags, people, and historic buildings in Old Havana. Photo by kmiragaya via Adobe Stock
Farm-Level Takeaway:Cuba remains a small but dependable, cash-only outlet for U.S. grain and food products.
NASHVILLE, TENN. (RFD-TV) — U.S. agricultural and food exports to Cuba continue to grow under long-standing trade law, reaching a cumulative milestone of more than $8 billion since shipments resumed in late 2001. Recent data show that trade is accelerating modestly, even without changes to U.S. sanctions or financing rules.
Exports of U.S. ag and food products to Cuba totaled nearly $34 million in September 2025, up almost 9 percent from a year earlier. For the first nine months of 2025, shipments reached about $359 million, roughly 18 percent higher year over year, placing Cuba among the top 50 U.S. ag export destinations worldwide.
Trade is governed primarily by the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, which allows direct commercial exports of food and agricultural commodities on a cash-only basis. That structure limits volume growth while making Cuba a reliable buyer with minimal credit risk. Historically, products have included poultry, feed grains, wheat, rice, soy products, and processed foods, with shipments to Cuba’s re-emerging private sector.
Despite political constraints, proximity to U.S. ports and consistent food demand continue to support steady trade.
Farm-Level Takeaway: Cuba remains a small but dependable, cash-only outlet for U.S. grain and food products.
Caracas, Dec 27 (Prensa Latina) President Nicolás Maduro affirmed that the people of Cuba and Venezuela are the most solid foundation for the reunification of all of Latin America and the Caribbean, it was learned here today.
In a solemn ceremony last night at Miraflores Palace, the seat of government, the head of state decorated the Cuba-Venezuela International Brigade, which for several weeks helped to repair the damage in the island’s provinces that were hit at the end of October by Hurricane Melissa.
Venezuelan men and women specialists in the electrical, transportation and public works sectors received the Antonio José de Sucre Order of Merit for Builders of the Homeland.
Maduro said the brigade did a “very inspiring” job and praised the brotherhood between Caracas and Havana, saying it “is beyond question,” the Presidency published.
He also emphasized that both countries are driven by the power of solidarity, and in the Cuban case, it is the “world champion of solidarity” because “for more than 60 years, Cuba has gone to Africa, Asia, all of Latin America and the Caribbean, to demonstrate that mutual support is the future of humanity.”
The dignitary emphasized that both nations have the task of demonstrating that the future of our hemisphere and the continent “cannot be war, military threats, colonialism, or slavery.”
The brotherhood between Cuba and Venezuela is a brotherhood that can withstand any test, capable of overcoming all adversities so that victory always prevails, he asserted.
Maduro praised the Venezuelan people for also forging themselves in the spirit of solidarity and recognized as significant that a group of “our boys” went to express their solidarity with the island.
“Long live Cuba and Venezuela! Ever onward to victory!” the ruler declared.
The deep ties of cooperation and brotherhood between Havana and Caracas are based on the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement signed in 2000 by Commanders Fidel Castro (1926-2016) and Hugo Chávez (1954-2013), which promoted a strategic alliance never before seen in the world.
Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the signing of that Agreement on October 25, Maduro stated that “this living testimony of brotherhood reflects our decision to be free, rebelliously sovereign, above any obstacle, threat or imperialist aggression.”
The leader declared that while others promote war and division, Cuba and Venezuela “reaffirmed that it is possible to move forward together, putting human dignity at the center, bringing health, education and development to our people.”
He emphasized that the signing of the agreements of the Convention took the fundamental step to “advance in the process of deep union, spiritual union and cultural union” of the Cuban and Venezuelan people.
Havana, Dec 25 (Prensa Latina) The Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Korea donated 24,600 tons of rice to Cuba, delivered through the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations System in Cuba reported.
The rest of the shipment will arrive through Havana, with the purpose of doubling deliveries to the prioritized population of the other provinces, in a bimonthly distribution modality that will extend for a year.
“This international collaboration strengthens food security and ensures national coverage for the most vulnerable sectors,” the WFP noted.
The agency also stated that the assistance will allow for an expanded emergency response and support for the recovery of communities affected by recent weather events, such as Hurricane Melissa.
