By Raúl Antonio Capote on February 2, 2026
Washington’s strategy to recolonize America
The question seems easy to answer, and it is. However, the power of the mainstream media and the US propaganda machine does its job non stop: twisting the arm of truth until it achieves the paradox of turning victims into culprits.
Faced with the crisis of its hegemony and the global architecture created after World War II, Washington seeks to reconfigure the world order using coercion and force.
Codified at the end of 2025 in the US National Security Strategy (NSS), this policy deepens conflicts and establishes a framework for destabilizing governments considered obstacles to its interests.
In this way, the NSS prioritized the Western Hemisphere, which translated into a kind of declaration of ownership over its natural resources, justifying their appropriation by force. In line with this policy, the White House has increased control over the supply chains of critical minerals, especially lithium.
Thus, the application of coercive regulations, interference under the doctrine of the so-called “Trump Corollary,” and the use of military force, as occurred on January 3 in Venezuela, have become a daily reality for Latin Americans.
Threatened militarily since 2025 by the presence of the US Navy deployed in the Caribbean—under the pretext of combating drug trafficking—the region has suffered lethal operations against civilian vessels, which constitute an act of state terrorism.
Meanwhile, the current administration continues to pursue a policy of criminalization, persecution, imprisonment, and expulsion of Latin American immigrants within the US, maintaining detention centers whose conditions have been denounced by humanitarian organizations as cruel and inhumane.
In addition, Washington openly supports its right-wing and far-right allies, brazenly interferes in electoral processes, frees drug traffickers, bombs, invades, kidnaps presidents, and threatens to destroy Cuba.
In short, the new NSS explicitly revives the Monroe Doctrine, adding a “Trump Corollary” that seeks to restore US preeminence in the hemisphere and deny China and Russia control of any strategic assets.
Cuba, an unusual and extraordinary threat?
On January 29, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order entitled “Addressing Threats to the United States from the Government of Cuba” which, among other things, states: “I consider that the policies, practices, and actions of the Government of Cuba directly threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
A superficial reading of the text could seem absurd to anyone who is not forewarned. No one in their right mind believes that this is possible. Is a small island country, blockaded for more than 60 years, which is not a military power, an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the world’s leading military and economic power?
Only a very depraved mind could conceive of such a thing. The document claims that Havana supports countries hostile to the US, a contradiction given that these are nations with which Washington itself maintains relations.
The Executive Order, a direct descendant of Lester Mallory’s memorandum, accuses the Greater Antilles of supporting transnational terrorist groups and “malignant actors.” For this reason, the White House has decided to impose an additional tariff on imports from any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba.
This measure recalls the cruelty of those who, in the 19th century, sought to starve the inhabitants of the archipelago into submission. The barbarity of that concentration promoted by Valeriano Weyler, Captain General of Cuba, in early 1896, pales in comparison to what the current US administration is proposing.
On terrorism, a little history
Let us recall how in May 2002, then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton delivered the speech Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Libya, Syria, and Cuba were added to the so-called “axis of evil”—composed, according to them, of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
This served the George W. Bush administration, and subsequent ones, to falsely fabricate a symbolic relationship between terrorism and Cuba, which was the basis for including it on the list of countries sponsoring that scourge.
For decades, U.S. agencies financed, trained, and supported anti-Cuban groups that committed violent acts against the island, including attacks, sabotage, and assassinations. The arsenal of aggression includes a hundred different forms of terrorism, from attacks on civilian aircraft to biological warfare and economic blockade.
The largest and most dangerous terrorist networks in the world were created in the United States. Among them was Omega 7, founded on September 11, 1974, an organization responsible for dozens of terrorist attacks against Cuban facilities.
Over more than six decades, 3,478 fatalities and 2,099 disabled people put a face to the statistics of this undeclared war.
Recently, between March 2023 and February 2024 alone, the damage to the energy and mining sectors totaled some $388 million, mainly due to the persecution of shipping companies, insurance companies, and banks that prevent oil from reaching the island.
The subversive scheme designed by the U.S. government, after countless failures in its goal of ending the Revolution, now seeks to completely suffocate the people, deprive the country of the energy to run its factories, paralyze transportation, and shut down homes.
They intend to bring Cubans to such a state of despair that their spirit of resistance will be broken. They know the damage they can cause and act without caring about death because that is what they are pursuing: genocide.
With Trump’s order, it is estimated that Cuba would have a window of survival of three to six months before a humanitarian crisis of incalculable proportions.
foto: Bill Hackwell
The goal is to force the government to accept emergency negotiations in exchange for a temporary lifting of sanctions, a kind of “Pacto del Zanjón” that would turn Cuba into a neocolony, under conditions even more abysmal than those imposed in 1902.
Nothing has changed. The acts of terrorism unleashed by the U.S. government were designed to break the soul of the nation, so that, moved by discouragement, we would give up our dreams of freedom and justice.
They forget that the history of Cuba is, in essence, that of a nation that has fought for more than a century to defend its sovereignty. The battle continues, and the will of the Cuban people to defend their country’s project remains unyielding.
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English