Union Campaign to Raise Funds to Send Oil – Also Educational and Medical Supplies – to the Island Besieged by Imperialism

Mexican Workers: Break the
U.S. Oil Blockade Against Cuba!

The following article is translated from an April 2026 supplement to Revolución Permanente, the newspaper of the Grupo Interenacionalista, Mexican section of the League for the Fourth International.

The United States is imposing an economic stranglehold on Cuba in order to destroy the workers state that emerged from the 1959 Cuban Revolution and reimpose imperialist domination. Despite its bureaucratic deformations, Cuba’s collectivized and planned economy has achieved enormous advances in the fields of education and health care, serving as a beacon for workers around the world.

Today, these achievements are in danger. The energy blockade imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to tighten the screws until the island is suffocated by a lack of fuel. Since January 3, no oil has arrived in Cuba from Venezuela, and on January 8, the last oil shipment from Mexico arrived.

Sister and brother workers: The education, health care and energy unions must stand up for Cuba. Given President Claudia Sheinbaum’s capitulation to Trump’s imperialist dictates, it is above all up to the labor movement to mobilize its strength to break the criminal blockade—including by raising funds to purchase and organize the shipment of oil to Cuba!

This campaign is not about collecting charity donations, but about mobilizing class solidarity with the Cuban Revolution. This is why we must break with the capitalists, their politicians, and their parties, including the National Regeneration Movement (MORENA, the party of Sheinbaum and her predecessor as president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador), the PRI, the PAN, the PT, the PVEM, etc.¹

President Sheinbaum has resorted to sleight of hand to present her capitulation to Trump as a “sovereign” decision. She then attempted to use the sending of three military ships loaded with humanitarian aid –3,125 tons of rice, beans, powdered milk, etc. – as a fig leaf. But Cuba needs oil, including to distribute the “humanitarian aid.” In fact, the Mexican government is complicit in the counterrevolutionary barrage launched by Trump and the Cuban “gusanos” in Miami.

Many workers in Mexico understand this. In mid-January, in response to the U.S. attack on Venezuela, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) sponsored the formation of the Mexican Anti-Imperialist Front (FAM), a coalition of unions and organizations from rural and urban areas that includes members of Morena. This class-collaborationist coalition has done nothing to mobilize the strength of the working class, instead diverting workers desire to support Cuba into pleading with the government that canceled oil shipments to the island.

More recently, the Independent Union of Workers of the Autonomous Metropolitan University (SITUAM) called on February 5 for the formation of the Workers Popular Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Fascist Front (FPTAA), which includes both the SME and the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE), the dissident teachers movement. The purpose of this new “anti-imperialist front” was clearly summarized in the SME’s statement:

“President Claudia Sheinbaum: We demand that you exercise the legitimacy granted to you by the popular vote and immediately resume the humanitarian delivery of oil to the Cuban people and the sale of that fuel to the island under the terms that have been in place during your administration.”

Calling on Mexico’s semi-colonial government to break with its imperial master is whistling in the wind. We workers can rely only on our own class strength.

On February 20, the General Council of Representatives of the IEMS Workers’ Union (SUTIEMS) approved the following motion:

Whereas:

1) Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, U.S. imperialism has sought to subjugate the brave Cuban people both through murderous terrorism and the criminal blockade;

2) That the expropriation of the capitalists 145 km from the U.S. was a victory for workers and the oppressed throughout the world;

3) That the enormous achievements in education and health on the besieged island are an example for education workers in Mexico and the world, as SUTIEMS has itself recognized in word and deed

4) That since the racist Donald Trump administration’s onslaught against Venezuela, it has been clear that the ultimate goal was to starve Cuba into submission by cutting off all international oil supplies

5) That the union leaders who have spoken out in favor of Cuba are proposing nothing more than to politely beg the pro-business government to restore its meager oil shipments.

Therefore, we resolve:

To launch a union-led campaign to raise funds to send oil to Cuba as soon as possible. This campaign must form a union committee to mobilize genuine solidarity among workers in defense of the Cuban Revolution through class-based actions. Raising funds to purchase oil is an urgent task, as is the immediate shipment of school supplies, which our union must begin collecting. ■