In a recent interview, Marco Rubio said: “The fundamental problem with Cuba is that it has no economy, and its economic model is one that has … never worked anywhere in the world.”

It is truly rich for the imperialist perpetrators of a criminal blockade to declare that the Cuban economy “doesn’t work” after systematically cutting off the island from the rest of the world for generations.

This is the equivalent of a hangman saying his victim’s respiratory system “doesn’t work,” while tightening the noose around the poor soul’s neck.

The Cuban Revolution has held on for nearly seventy years, right under the nose of the most powerful imperialist country on earth—which has tried every possible means to overthrow it. This is a testament to the resilience and revolutionary spirit of the Cuban masses, who want to defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution.

Freedom from imperialist domination

The revolution freed the country from the shackles of imperialist domination. After the US seized Cuba from Spain in 1898, the island was reduced to semi-colonial status. American companies like United Fruit controlled huge swathes of the arable land. Half of all sugar mills were directly controlled by US companies, while Cuban-owned plants depended on American banks for loans and investment.

Under US domination, Cuba was one of the most unequal countries in the world. The poorest 80% of peasants owned just 15% of the land. 20% of the population was chronically unemployed. Not only did American capitalists exploit Cuba’s people and natural resources for their profit, they also converted the island into their personal brothel and a playground for American mobsters. In 1958, Cuba had more prostitutes than mineworkers. Only 15% of the urban population had indoor plumbing, yet Havana had more cadillacs than any other city in the world.

Under threat of annexation, the US forced the inclusion of the Platt Amendment into the Cuban constitution in 1903. Drafted by the US War Department, it enshrined the presence of the US military on the island to protect US interests, including the base at Guantánamo Bay, effectively making Cuba a “US protectorate.”

The 1959 Cuban Revolution, led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara put an end to this colonial humiliation. It expelled imperialism, and subsequently abolished the property relations on which it stood.

Social gains

The gains extended far beyond national sovereignty and dignity. The planned economy brought about huge improvements in the standards of living of the masses.

In the field of health, Cuba totally socialized healthcare. Its pharmaceutical industry was world-class prior to the latest escalation. Healthcare is still free at the point of access, and despite lacking access to tools and medical machinery due to the embargo, Cuban healthcare has excellent outcomes. For example, Cuba’s infant mortality rate in 2019 was 4.0 deaths per 1,000 live births, while in the US, it was 5.9.

In 1959, the average life expectancy in Cuba was 62 years. In 2025, it was 79.5 years. That is slightly higher than the life expectancy in the US in 2025—79.2 years—and much higher than the life expectancy of neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic (74.5 years) and Haiti (65.5 years).

Cuba also has the highest proportion of medical doctors to the general population of any country in the world: 9.5 per 1,000. The US, on the other hand, has just 3.7 per 1,000. Before the latest siege, Cubans might have had other things to worry about, but they didn’t have to live with the constant stress of choosing between life-saving treatment or a lifetime of medical debt!

In education, the revolution also made enormous strides. In 1958, 25% of the population was illiterate, and there were fewer children in school than in the 1920s. After the revolution, education was massively expanded and made free and public for all. In the early ‘60s, the government launched a campaign to eradicate illiteracy. Tens of thousands of schools, ranging from primary to higher education, were built. Today, Cuba has a 99.8% literacy rate—compare this to the USA’s 79%. The picture is even more dire when you consider that 54% of US adults can’t read above a sixth-grade level.

Another gain was the “Urban Reform,” which expropriated the big landlords’ property and transferred ownership of households to tenants. This was a huge relief for renters, who no longer had to worry about coughing up a huge portion of their monthly income to their parasitic landlords.

In 2025, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral election in NYC with a program to “Freeze the Rent,” tapping into widespread frustration at skyrocketing rent prices. Imagine how many workers would be willing to fight for an American “Urban Reform” that would relieve them from the burden of rent!

You can’t build socialism in one island

The Cuban economy has a lot of limitations. Socialism can only be built on the basis of the most advanced productive forces, on a worldwide scale. The 1959 revolution managed to abolish capitalism on a small Caribbean island. As inspiring as this was, without spreading the revolution, its isolation was bound to lead to sharpening economic and social deformations, a creeping restoration of capitalism, and the slow gnawing away at the conquests of the Cuban masses.

Capitalist restoration would not mean that Cuba would become the free-market utopia that the gusanos dream about. It would mean the total destruction of all of the gains of the revolution, and a return to semi-colonial domination. Capitalist Cuba would eventually resemble the imperialist barbarism imposed on countries like Haiti.

Despite the many problems and contradictions the country faces—now highly exacerbated by Trump’s vicious oil blockade—the Cuban Revolution remains a beacon of hope and inspiration for millions. As communists in the belly of the beast, it is our duty to defend the Cuban Revolution, and to tell the real story of the Cuban masses’ struggle to seize control of their destiny.

Hands Off Cuba!

For a socialist federation of the Americas!