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'We Are Sailing to Cuba': Humanitarian Coalition Announces Flotilla to Break US Blockade
"Together, we can break the siege, save lives, and stand up for the cause of Cuban self-determination," said the mission's organizers.
Feb 12, 2026
As the Trump administration tightens an already devastating economic embargo of Cuba by targeting the island's fuel imports in a bid to topple the country's socialist government, a coalition of progressive groups on Thursday announced plans for a flotilla to deliver food, medicine, and other essential supplies to the besieged Cuban people.
Members of Progressive International, CodePink, and other direct action and advocacy groups plan to set sail for Cuba next month in the Nuestra América—or Our America—Flotilla, which they said is inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla missions to break Israel's illegal blockade of Gaza amid the ongoing genocide in the Palestinian exclave.
"We are sailing to Cuba, bringing critical humanitarian aid for its people," the flotilla organizers said on their website. "The Trump administration is strangling the island, cutting off fuel, flights, and critical supplies for survival. The consequences are lethal, for newborns and parents, for the elderly and the sick."
"That is why we are launching the Nuestra América Flotilla, setting sail from across the Caribbean Sea in solidarity with the Cuban people," the organizers continued. "And we are asking for your support, to help us prepare the mission and purchase the food and medicine that we will bring to the Cuban people."
"Together, we can break the siege, save lives, and stand up for the cause of Cuban self-determination," they added.
The announcement of the flotilla came as the Trump administration ratchets up pressure on Cuba's socialist government by further suffocating the island's economy via an oil embargo similar to the one imposed on Venezuela before last month's US invasion and abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
At the time, President Donald Trump threatened the leaders of Colombia, Cuba, and Mexico that they could be next.
Trump reversed former President Joe Biden's eleventh-hour move in January 2025 to remove Cuba from the US state sponsors of terrorism list, a designation utterly divorced from reality. Trump officials have cited Cuba's baseless inclusion on the list as justification for measures taken against the country's government and people.
The US embargo on Cuba dates to the early 1960s when the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations responded to the successful revolution that overthrew a brutal US-backed dictatorship with a blockade accompanied by a decadeslong campaign of state-sponsored terrorism against the Cuban people that left thousands dead and more than $1 trillion in economic damages, according to the Cuban government.
Every year since 1992—with the exception of the Covid-19 pandemic year of 2020—the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly to condemn and call for an end to the US blockade of Cuba.
Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler told El País' Veronica Garrido Thursday, "The US government is drowning the Cuban people, who are running out of light, have no food, no medicine, no energy."
"I do not exaggerate when I say that we are seeing in Cuba the same playbook that Israel applied to the people of Gaza: an encirclement, an act of collective punishment that violates every aspect of international law,” he continued.
"We hope that [the flotilla] will be a mechanism of popular pressure to the governments of the world that have the responsibility, before international law, to protect the fundamental rights of the Cuban people and export the energy required by the island,” Adler said.
“There is nothing illegal about what we are doing," he added. "We are coming to a sovereign country and delivering humanitarian aid. We are ready to take risks in the name of humanity and the fundamental right of the Cuban people."
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China Reaffirms Vow to Aid Cuba Amid Trump's 'Inhumane' Economic Strangulation
"China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding national sovereignty and security and opposing external interference," a Beijing spokesperson said.
Feb 11, 2026
As the Trump administration weaponizes its economic privation of the Cuban people in hopes of ousting their socialist government, China on Tuesday reaffirmed its pledge to help alleviate the island's worsening oil shortage.
Emboldened by his recent abduction of socialist Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on legally dubious "narco-terrorism" charges, President Donald Trump is ratcheting up pressure on a people already ravaged by 64 years of what many critics call Washington's "economic terrorism" and decades of actual terrorism committed by US-based right-wing Cuban exiles.
Cut off from the Venezuelan petroleum that provided around 75% of Cuba's imported oil just a few years ago, the island is suffering a worsening energy emergency. The Cuban government has responded by strictly rationing fuel and seeking alternate sources of oil such as Mexico and, to a lesser extent, Russia.
"I would like to stress again that China firmly supports Cuba in safeguarding national sovereignty and security and opposing external interference," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said during a press conference.
"China stands firmly against the inhumane actions that deprive the Cuban people of their right to subsistence and development," he added. "China will, as always, do our best to provide support and assistance to Cuba."
As is usually the case when Washington tightens the screws on Cuba, everyday Cubans are suffering the most.
“You can’t imagine how it touches every part of our lives,” Marta Jiménez, a hairdresser in Cuba’s eastern city of Holguín, told CodePink co-founder and frequent Common Dreams opinion contributor Medea Benjamin, who traveled to Cuba last week with a group to deliver 2,500 pounds of lentils.
“It’s a vicious, all-encompassing spiral downward," Jiménez continued. "With no gasoline, buses don’t run, so we can’t get to work. We have electricity only three to six hours a day. There’s no gas for cooking, so we’re burning wood and charcoal in our apartments. It’s like going back 100 years."
"The blockade is suffocating us—especially single mothers,” she added, “and no one is stopping these demons, Trump and [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio.”
The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly every year but once since 1992 to condemn the US blockade on Cuba. Last October, the UNGA voted 165-7 against the embargo, with 12 abstentions.
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'Thug' Marco Rubio Tells Senate How US Plans to Keep Stealing Venezuelan Oil
"Rubio's dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged," one watchdog leader said of the US secretary of state.
Jan 28, 2026
In addition to asserting that "there is no war against Venezuela," despite US forces killing scores of people there while abducting its president earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday laid out for a Senate panel how the Trump administration intends to continue controlling the South American nation's oil and related profits.
Legal experts have argued that US President Donald Trump's blockade of Venezuela's oil, abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores—who have both pleaded not guilty to federal narco-terrorism charges—and bombings of boats allegedly smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean all violate international law.
"The ongoing military actions in the Caribbean and South America, including the abduction of Venezuela's president, are wrong, illegal under US and international law, and unconstitutional," Robert Weissman, co-president of the group Public Citizen, said before the Senate hearing. "Congressional Republicans have blocked war powers resolutions that would end the US aggression in Venezuela, an extremely dangerous abdication of congressional responsibility to check presidential unlawfulness."
"Marco Rubio's central role in the planning and execution of the scheme to violate the sovereignty of Venezuela and steal the country's oil merits a deep investigation by Congress, and potentially the removal of Rubio as secretary of state," Weissman continued. "Rubio's dangerously expansive vision to transform the United States into a colonizing power in the Americas must be challenged."
Testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—on which he previously served—Rubio said that "Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, not a legal head of state," described his abduction as "an operation to aid law enforcement," and declared that "the United States is prepared to help oversee Venezuela's transition from a criminal state to a responsible partner."
Rubio, the acting national security adviser, insisted that Trump wasn't planning for any more military action in Venezuela—but also would not rule out such action, potentially without congressional authorization, in "self-defense" against an "imminent" threat.
Trump has repeatedly made clear through public statements that his Venezuela policy is focused on its petroleum reserves, seemingly to enrich the fossil fuel leaders who helped him return to power. American forces have seized several tankers in the Caribbean Sea linked to the country—which critics have condemned as "piracy"—and the first US sale of Venezuelan oil went to the company of a trader who donated millions to the president's 2024 campaign, which Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) last week called "yet another example of his unchecked corruption."
Describing US control of Venezuela's nationalized petroleum industry, Rubio told the committee:
Objective number one was stability... And one of the tools that's available to us is the fact that we have sanctions on oil. There is oil that is sanctioned that cannot move from Venezuela because of our quarantine. And so what we did is we entered into an arrangement with them, and the arrangement is this: On the oil that is sanctioned and quarantined, we will allow you to move it to market. We will allow you to move it to market at market prices—not at the discount China was getting. In return, the funds from that will be deposited into an account that we will have oversight over, and you will spend that money for the benefit of the Venezuelan people...
This is not going to be the permanent mechanism, but this is a short-term mechanism in which the needs of the Venezuelan people can be met through a process that we've created, where they will submit every month a budget of this is what we need funded. We will provide for them at the front end what that money cannot be used for. And they have been very cooperative in this regard. In fact, they have pledged to use a substantial amount of those funds to purchase medicine and equipment directly from the United States.
In an exchange with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Rubio said that an "audit process" has not yet been set up but will be, adding that "we've only made one payment" and it "retrospectively will be audited, but it was important we made that payment because they had to meet payroll. They had to keep sanitation workers, police officers, government workers on staff."
Shaheen noted that the oil reportedly sold for $500 million, but only $300 million went to Venezuela's government, now led by Maduro's former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, and asked Rubio about the remaining $200 million. The secretary said that the rest of the money was in a temporary account in Qatar that will ultimately become a US Treasury blocked account.
Summarizing the Trump administration's plans, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said: "I think the scope of the project that you are undertaking in Venezuela is without precedent. You are taking their oil at gunpoint; you are holding and selling that oil; putting, for now, the receipts in an offshore Middle Eastern account; you're deciding how and for what purposes that money is gonna be used in a country of 30 million people. I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure."
Highlighting that "a month later, we have no information on a timetable for a democratic transition, Maduro's people are still in charge, most of the political prisoners are in jail—and by the way, those that have been let out have a gag order on them from the government—the opposition leader is still in exile," Murphy added, "this looks, already, like it is a failure."
At one point during the nearly three-hour hearing, Leonardo Flores, a Venezuelan-American with the anti-war group CodePink, shouted, "Marco Rubio, you and Trump are thugs!"
US Capitol Police removed Flores from the hearing. As he was being led away, the protester said that "sanctions are a form of collective punishment of Venezuelan citizens. That's a war crime. Hands off Venezuela! Hands off Cuba!"
Asked by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday, "Will you make a public commitment today to rule out US regime change in Cuba," Rubio—the son of Cuban immigrants—replied: "Regime change? Oh no, I think we would like to see the regime there change. That doesn't mean that we're gonna to make a change, but we would love to see a change. There's no doubt about the fact that it would be of great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime."
Since the abduction operation, there have been "free Maduro" protests in both Venezuela and Cuba, which lost 32 citizens in the Trump administration's attack on Caracas. Speaking to thousands of people gathered outside the US Embassy in Havana earlier this month, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said that "the current US administration has opened the door to an era of barbarism, plunder, and neo-fascism."
"No one here surrenders," he continued, taking aim at not only Trump but also Rubio. "The current emperor of the White House and his infamous secretary of state haven't stopped threatening me."
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