With Cuba’s electric grid collapsing this week, the inhumane results of the Trump administration’s oil blockade continue to pile up and strangle Cuba and its people. In this urgent episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with American activist and co-founder of CODEPINK Medea Benjamin about her latest trip to Cuba, the extent of the devastation caused by the US-imposed blockade, and the twisted motivations behind it.
Medea Benjamin will be sailing to bring humanitarian aid to Cuba with the Nuestra América Flotilla on March 21, 2026**.
Guests:
Additional links/info:
Credits:
- Producer: Rosette Sewali
- Studio Production: David Hebden
- Audio Post-Production: Stephen Frank
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here in The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us. Cuba is under attack from the United States. Relations between our countries have been intense since the revolution of 1960, when they overthrew that fascist government of Batista. Under the right-wing nationalist government of Trump, tensions have risen with Trump promising to overthrow the Cuban government, impose trade sanctions, and threaten the very survival of the Cuban people. These economic and political crises have spurred on rest and migration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, the Islands tourism sector cratered, prompting mass exivists, as many as too million people left, which is more than 10% of its entire population. Now, I’ve been to Cuba numerous times since 1967. And our guest today, Medea Benjamin, has been active as an anti-war activist and one of the co-founders of Code Pink, Women for Peace.
She spent decades finding the American military complex, organizing protests against the invasion of Iraq in the early 2000s, and interrupting the speeches of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump. She’s a co-author with David Swanson of NATO, which you need to know and has returned from Cuba recently. And welcome, Adirt, to see you again and welcome to the show.
Medea Benjamin:
Thank you. Good to be with you, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
So when was the last trip you made to Cuba?
Medea Benjamin:
I’ve been there quite a lot. I was there just a month ago, and in the last two years, I’ve been going every couple of months. We’ve been taking powdered milk to all of the children’s hospitals in the different provinces. And we’ve also been taking food products. So I’ve been traveling all over the country and just seeing the effects of this economic squeeze.
Marc Steiner:
So I want to take a step back for a minute and just get your commentary and analysis on what is happening and why. I mean, throughout all the decades, United States is opposed Cuba, sanctions and more, but this is more of an all- out onslaught and warfare against Cuban its people. What do you think the dynamic of the moment is?
Medea Benjamin:
I think there are a couple of different things going on. One is that we have Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, who is Cuban American, who grew up in Southern Florida, surrounded by people who hate the Cuban government, feel that they’ve lost their properties, their businesses, their connection to the island because of the revolution. And they are also an important voting block in a swing state. And they’re an important lobby group. They have taken their lessons from the Israel lobby AIPAC and become a very powerful force in our government. So it’s not just Marco Rubio. There are other Cuban Americans in Congress now like María Elvira Salazar, like Carlos Jimenez, Díaz-Balart. They’re all part of that group that has really made their career out of opposing the government in Cuba. And then you look at the national strategy document that the US put out recently, and you see that the focus is Latin America.
It’s to say openly without disguise that the Monroe doctrine, which was originally in 1832, designed to say to Europe, “Hey, don’t you interfere here?” This is our hemisphere has now morphed into something, partly saying to China, “Watch out for your influence,” but it’s kind of too late for that since China is a major trading partner of a lot of the countries in Latin America. But to say that the US should have a Gemini over Latin America. We saw the threats to Panama around the Panama Canal. We see the blowing up of the boats that are supposedly narco traffickers, but these tiny little boats that even if they are taking drugs, there is no right to just blow them up with any kind of due process. But the US says that we can do that. There was just a meeting of the right wing Latin American heads of states in Miami as part of a new grouping that Trump is putting together, separate from the organizations of Latin America states that already exist, including the OAS, to say that we’re all going to work together against drugs, but in general, really to say that we’re going to try to get rid of leftist governments throughout the hemisphere.
And so we’re seeing that, whether it’s the strong relationship that Trump has with the President Milei of Argentina or the head of El Salvador, we know that we’ve been using El Salvador to send immigrants to the terrible detention centers there, to the interference of the US in elections that are happening these days in various Latin American countries. So this is part of a broader policy to bring all of Latin America under the hegemony of the United States and Cuba is the key. They feel that invading Venezuela, capturing the head of state there and his wife, imposing US will in terms of the policies around oil and gold, that’s part of the strategy as well. So this is happening region wise, but Cuba is really where all eyes are focused now.
Marc Steiner:
So I do want to focus on Cuba, but one of the things I thought about as you were describing politically what’s happening at the moment is that what’s happening in our hemisphere in Latin America reminds me of the early 20th century United States of America, reminds me of Teddy Roosevelt, reminds me of the 1920s and 30s where the US was imposing its will across Latin America and fueling dictators to cease power and control the economics of Latin America for the US. It really does feel like it’s a throwback to the era, but even more dangerous because of the era that we live in.
Medea Benjamin:
Well, yes, it’s good you bring that up. And then we could go further to go into the 1950s, the overthrow of the Hakoboarban’s government in Guatemala in 1954. You could look at 1973, the overthrow of Salvador Allende and Chile. So you’re right, this is nothing new in terms of the US wanting to impose its will on what it calls its backyard, but now it’s with more ferocity, more intentionality and really with a grouping of heads of state in Latin America in the ’90s there was what was called the pink tide and there was a wave of progressive governments coming to power. You had Ubo Chavez in Venezuela, who was really a charismatic figure and had a vision, the Bolivarian vision of United Latin America and Caribbean. You had Evo Morales and Bolivia, an indigenous leader who really had a very socialist kind of view. You had Raphael Correa in Ecuador who closed down the US bases in that country.
So you had a grouping of very strong leaders. And of course, there was Fidel Castro and Cuba, we can’t forget him. No. And so this created a very tight grouping in Latin America, and then several countries in the Caribbean as well, who were posing an alternative to the voracious capitalist model. And for quite a while, the US was so consumed with what was happening in the Middle East and the wars in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Israel, that it really left Latin America to the side. And that was a good thing in the sense that these countries could develop themselves, have freer ability to try out different models, but now the US is so focused on Latin America, it is indeed a different era.
Marc Steiner:
What you’re describing is something that poses a real danger for the future of independent countries, especially progressive or left countries, and what this portends. And what it portends for Cuba could be even greater danger. I mean, because Cuba’s … Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Medea Benjamin:
I was going to say before we get into that, to look at this gathering of 17 heads of state that Trump had in Florida recently, sounds like a lot, and indeed it is a lot, but missing were the most important countries in the region, which is Mexico not invited and wouldn’t have come, Brazil as well, and Colombia. We don’t know with the elections coming up in Columbia, there is hope that a progressive will win those elections, but those are three major countries that didn’t participate. And Brazil has been with a progressive government for quite a long time. Lula, the head of that is not as outspoken a leftist as he was when he came into power. And those countries, including Mexico, have been fearful of the retaliation from the United States. And so they’ve had to modify some of their policies, especially with all the threats of tariffs, even though it’s illegal.
And also Trump has been threatening to send the US military in to deal with the drug cartels in places like Mexico, Columbia. They just had a joint action with Ecuador. So yes, the US involvement is under the pretext now of the narco trafficking, but we see it in the much larger context. And there is still a bloc of countries in the region that are not going along with Trump, and those are important countries.
Marc Steiner:
So in terms of Cuba and what’s going on there now, I mean, a country has been devastated economically, as you’ve pointed out in some of your writing. And I just want to talk about what the state is in Cuba now, given all the times you’ve gone and how it’s deteriorated because of the embargo, because of the attacks by the United States, and what you think the future is.
Medea Benjamin:
It’s a very dire situation in Cuba right now. We hear the threats from Marco Rubio, from Trump. It’s about to fall, and that is because on top of the sanctions that have existed since 1960, stronger, certainly under Trump, and with a bit of a reprieve like under Obama when there was an opening and diplomatic relations reestablished, and you saw flowering. It’s quite ironic because the reason the US says that it’s against Cuba is that it has a state run economy and that’s communist and that’s so terrible. But you saw under Obama how there was a flowering of private enterprise and that there was a lot of excitement and improvement in the economic situations, but Trump has just torn that all up. He’s made every aspect of life in Cuba much more difficult. If you look at the different ways that the Cuban government has been bringing in foreign currency, the US has systematically attacked every single one of them.
You know, Mark, that in the countries of the global South, many of them live on or have a great portion of their foreign revenue is coming from what we call remittances, money sent back from their citizens that are living in other countries, living in richer countries and sending back money to their families. The US has now made it extremely hard for Cuban Americans to even send money back to their families. If you look at tourism, the US government has put restrictions. You can still go to Cuba and we’ll get into that, Mark, right? But has said, “You can’t stay in these hotels. You can’t go as a tourist and go to the beaches.” And said to our friends in Europe, “If you go to Cuba, you can’t automatically get the visa to the United States that you would’ve gotten otherwise.” They are making it very difficult for tourism to flourish in Cuba.
Another area that really pains me tremendously is the one of medical missions that the Cubans were sending overseas, which is such a win-win situation because they help people all over the world, whether it’s poor countries in Africa where I first met many Cubans or helping richer countries like Italy during the pandemic and continuing today, the US has attacked those. They’ve strong armed countries and said to them, “Don’t let the Cuban missions continue. Send them back home. We won’t give you any aid if you continue to use Cuban doctors.” They’ve even said, “You can’t send your medical students to Cuba to study medicine for free,” which Cuba has been providing this service. For
Marc Steiner:
Decades.
Medea Benjamin:
Decades and decades. But here you have a poor country that found out that it could train after a great literacy program so that everybody knew how to read and write and was educated, train doctors and send them around the world. And it became an important source of income. The US has gone after every single mission that it can, calling these doctors saying that they’re modern day slaves, because the Cuban government takes a portion of the salaries to put back into the free Cuban healthcare system. They’re saying that this is modern day slavery. Anyway, it’s an example of how they go after everything they can to stop Cuba from getting revenue. And then on top of that, this issue about the oil, they were getting the oil from Venezuela. US said to Venezuela, “You can’t send any shipments to Cuba.” And they were getting oil from Mexico, and the US said, “Can’t send it from Mexico.” So Trump in January said, “Not one drop of oil to the “island.”
Marc Steiner:
The animosity that our government has had towards Cuba is intensified under Trump as you’ve been describing. And I think that there’s a political question that’s important to explore is why this government, why, especially the right wing part of this country, now in power in Washington DC, sees Cuba as such a threat, why they want to destroy it. I mean, this tiny island that was key to many revolutions around the world killed illiteracy, fed all its people, built the country. Why do you think it’s such a threat, A and B, what is the organizing you can do around it to confront that threat?
Medea Benjamin:
The US or under Trump has put Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which is absolutely ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. Yeah, Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism on the contrary, but I don’t think that there is anything about a threat. It used to be in the heyday of Cuba, the threat of a good example, and the international networks that Cuba had developed over the years that were not just with these progressive countries in Latin America, but also Africa, Asia, all over the place, but that doesn’t exist to a large extent anymore. And so really it would be the crown jewel in Marco Rubio’s career if he were able to overthrow this government, let the capitalist Cuban Americans in Miami flow back into Cuba, take over property they had 60 years ago and buy up all the rest of the property, wonderful quote, beachfront territory, as Jared Kushner would say.
And really just it’s vendetta for what happened 60 years ago, over 60 years ago. And really there’s nothing that you could say anymore that represents a threat, even a threat of a good example because what was the good example, the education program, the literacy campaigns, the healthcare system have been decimated by this constant squeezing. The levels of the squeezing are so layered. I tried to send $200 to a friend yesterday who was printing up t-shirts for us that said, “You can’t blockade the sun and had Cuba in there.” And I wrote in the memo, Cuba T-shirts, the bank wouldn’t let it go through. Wow. I mean, that’s just one tiny example, but you can’t send … It’s everything like that. So the international banking system will not let you send anything that is destined for anything related to Cuba, even a T-shirt. I was
Marc Steiner:
Going to say it’s unbelievable, but at this point, it’s not unbelievable at all. I wonder if you could describe for us in a time we have left in your latest trips to Cuba, what’s it like for the Cuban people at this moment, what they’re facing, what their deadly lives are like? I mean, everything … I ask that because we know with the times I’ve been there, food was flowing, people had access to anything they needed and wanted, nobody was homeless. So what has been the effect of this on the Cuban people?
Medea Benjamin:
There are scarcities of everything. Just to give you some examples, there’s garbage piled up in the streets, which you didn’t see before. Never. Very clean country. Garbage piled up in the streets because they don’t have the fuel for the garbage trucks, which means that mosquitoes proliferate, which means during the hot summer months, there were three different mosquito-borne diseases that affected a lot of the population, and then they didn’t have the medicines for that. Just imagine if you only have electricity for three to six hours a day. Just imagine if you don’t have gasoline to fuel your car, your motorbike, if you don’t have electricity so that your refrigerator isn’t working. You don’t have the power you need to pump the water into your apartment building. You don’t have the transportation, the buses to get you to work in the morning. And if you got to work, you wouldn’t have the electricity to be able to function.
Every single aspect of people’s daily lives is affected by this. It’s hard to even explain. Even the healthcare system where the energy that they have is dedicated to the hospitals, you still don’t have basic things like syringes. There are shortages of all kinds of medicines. You go into the pharmacy, you cannot find the medicine that you want. Even something like aspirin is hard to find. So it’s hard to describe, Marc, but you can just even imagine on the one level not having the electricity and all the things in our lives that then flow from that.
Marc Steiner:
So I know we’re running out of time, so there’s something I really want to get your thoughts after all you said. You’ve been in this struggle in this country for a long, long time to build a just society and fight against war. And I wonder where you think we are at this moment, the dangers that we face here and how what our policies towards Cuba reflect that in a deepening way that should give us a warning about what we face in the future.
Medea Benjamin:
Well, on the hopeful side, I think that we are in a period of tremendous overreach of this empire, and that is really manifested right now in this disastrous invasion of Iran that we don’t know where it’s going, but we certainly know it’s affecting the entire region, the price of oil. We know that we have overreach in terms of a war economy where we’re spending now over a trillion dollars on war and now Congress is going to be asked for another 50 billion just for this unprovoked illegal invasion of in Iran. You’re getting more and more people hating the United States around the world. I mean, I am hoping that this imperial overreach will mean at some point, I don’t know if it’s in our lifetimes, Mark, but we will see a collapse of this empire. Empires throughout history have come and gone, and that it would be a good thing for the people in the United States if indeed we were not trying to act like we were the hegemons of the entire world if we had a relationship with China that was a cooperative one that worked together on issues like the climate crisis and poverty and all kinds of things.
So I think we just have to keep building an anti-war movement, building a social justice movement, connecting all these issues of ICE terrorism here at home and the terrorism that the US is inflicting, whether it’s overt wars like in Gaza or in Iran, or its economic warfare like we are doing in Cuba and other places with our sanctions, that we will be able to turn around our government. I don’t think these next elections are going to be good for the Republican Party. I don’t put all of my eggs in the electoral arena, but-
Marc Steiner:
Really?
Medea Benjamin:
We have to see some major changes in that as well. And then if we can get Democrats back in, we have to show them that we don’t want them to be even more hawkish than the Republicans are, because sometimes they are, that we are people who are sick and tired of these wars, of the interference with countries around the world. Let’s solve our problems here at home.
Marc Steiner:
Well, Madea Benjamin, it’s always a pleasure to talk with you. I look forward to many more conversations and I want to thank you here for the work you do and always being out in front, in many ways, fearlessly out in front. So thank you and it’s a pleasure to see you again and thanks for the conversation and we’ll stay in touch.
Medea Benjamin:
Great. Wonderful talking to you, Mark.
Marc Steiner:
Always. Once again, let me thank Midia Benjamin for joining us today and for the work that she does. We’ll be linking to her work. You can Google www.codepink.org to see just what they do and the work they do across the globe. And thanks to David Hedman for running our program today. Audio editor Steven Frank for working his magic, Rosette Sowali on producing the Mark Steiner Show and the Tylers Keller Rivera for making it all work behind the scenes and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. So please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll write you right back. Once again, thank you to Mindia Benjamin for joining us today and for doing the work she does in the face of all that power.
So for the crew here at the Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening and take care.
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President Donald Trump's talk of "taking Cuba" harkens back to the most aggressively imperialist period in US history.
Extra context added because this headline is wildly misleading.