Open Letter on the United Nations General Assembly Resolution by Cuba

2026 October 20
Honourable Kamla Persad-Bissessar
Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago
Office of the Prime Minister
St. Clair, Port of Spain 

Open Letter on the United Nations General Assembly Resolution by Cuba, entitled: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United  States of America against Cuba” 

We Demand That 

Trinidad and Tobago Stands with Cuba 

Dear Prime Minister, 

As you are aware, Cuba has tabled a Resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic,  commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”for consideration by the United Nations General Assembly on October 27/28, 2026.  

This Resolution has been tabled by Cuba at the UNGA every year beginning in 1992. For the last thirty-three (33) years, Trinidad and Tobago has voted in support of Cuba’s Resolution. Indeed,  CARICOM has consistently issued Communiques following Heads of Government Meetings calling on the United States to end the Embargo against Cuba and to also remove Cuba from the so-called list of countries that are engaged in state sponsorship of terrorism, as there is absolutely no evidence to support such a designation.  

In furtherance of CARICOM’s principled position, several Heads of Government have used the opportunity of addressing the General Assembly at its annual Opening Session and speaking directly to this issue. We noted that you, as the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, made no such call.  

Honourable Prime Minister, regrettably it has become imperative for this Open Letter to be sent to you because the established policy of Trinidad and Tobago to support, unconditionally, the call for the end of the Blockade has been disregarded, repudiated even, by your Government. 

As is well known, four Caribbean states – Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago - established diplomatic relations with Cuba in December 1972. It was a bold and brave decision by these four small and newly independent nations, given not only the isolation that Cuba was facing, but also that this was at the height of the “Cold War” and, moreover, the fact that the US  was our major trading partner. However, the Heads of Government of these four Caribbean states took the principled position that Cuba is a Caribbean nation with which we share a common history and that our foreign policy should not be shaped and determined by the national interests of others, including that of large states/powers. 

As a result of our establishing relations with Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago has benefitted immensely. Cuba has provided university scholarships for our young people and thus contributed to the development of our human capacity and enabled young people who would not have had the financial means to access tertiary education. Cuba has provided health care professionals under its Medical Brigade agreements, and these professionals have been crucial to the sustaining of quality health care to our citizens. Cuba has given us sports coaches to assist our high-performing athletes. And there have been invaluable exchanges in culture and in academia. At no time has Cuba sought to extract anything in return.  

Something changed with your Government in 2025. It seems as if you began to calculate this country’s foreign policy, not on long-established principles, but on what the US defines as its  “national security interests”. Let us be clear. The US national security interest is explicitly stated in the 2025 National Security Strategy. It is to “restore American pre-eminence in the Western  Hemisphere... We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere”. This strategy is to achieve the objective of ensuring US dominance and the continuation of economic and political power predicated on the colonial and imperial model of extraction, which enabled what some call “western civilisation”. 

In the words of US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, at the Munich Security Conference, “For  the United States and Europe, we belong together…. We are part of one civilization – Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged  by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the  sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen  heir.. which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution.”

That analysis denies the genocide of indigenous people; it does not recognise that the development of Europe and the US was built on the backs of enslaved Africans; and that Britain exploited those who laboured under indentureship; it fails to consider the wealth extracted by colonial and imperial conquest; and it seeks to start world history with European enlightenment when there were advanced civilisations in Asia, Africa and the Americas centuries before.  Rubio’s statement is fundamentally racist and Eurocentric, and it rejects any other faith but  Christianity, when we in Trinidad and Tobago explicitly recognise our multi-cultural and multi-religious composition.  

However, this ahistorical treatise cannot be dismissed as it was the basis for the US State  Department’s document “Capital of 21st Century Communism Report”. Among other things, Nancy Pelosi's stories falsely claimed that Cuba is a national security threat to the US. This is then used to continue the crime of collective punishment of the Cuban people by the six-decade-long blockade and other actions, including the blockade of fuel.

Prime Minister, it must be restated that the blockade was always intended to punish the Cuban people in order to achieve a political outcome of regime change that the US desired. As the  April, 1960 Official Memorandum of then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs of the United States Department of State, Lester Mallory stated: The only  foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection  based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship… every possible means should be undertaken  promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba… a line of action which, while as adroit and  inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to  decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of  government.” 

It is therefore unconscionable for your Government to give support or succour to the US strategy of creating hunger and a humanitarian crisis. Successive Governments of Trinidad and Tobago,  including your own between 2010-2015, have always recognised and respected that every nation has the right to decide its own economic and political system and that people have the right to self-determination. It was therefore inappropriate for you to denounce the Cuban system at a major regional forum. That occurred at the February Heads of Government Summit when none other than Rubio was present.  

This has been followed up by other decisions that demonstrate that Trinidad and Tobago is  turning its back on Cuba. 

The decision not to agree with the Statement on Cuba issued by the CARICOM Council  on Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) at its May meeting, which statement  called for the ending of the Blockade by the US and the removal of Cuba from the list of  countries that engage in the state sponsorship of terrorism; 

The decision by Trinidad and Tobago to abstain on the vote at the UNGA at its meeting  of July 7th, 2026 on the Resolution tabled by Cuba calling on the US to end the Embargo;  

Prime Minister, in the event that you are unaware, we refer you to the findings of the Report by  the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Special Rapporteur on Cuba, which Report is  accessible on the website of the UNHRC –https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country reports/ahrc6329add1-visit-cuba-report-special-rapporteur-negative-impact 

One Report on that website, dated September 9th, 2026, stated: 

“UN human rights experts today condemned recent measures by the United States against Cuba, denouncing them as an attempt to alter the constitutional order of a sovereign State through threats and coercion. They urged the international community and civil society to act swiftly to prevent a “silent Gaza” from unfolding on the island... The humanitarian consequences are already unfolding into a full-blown crisis, threatening the rights to health, to life, to food and to development. Food must never be used as an instrument of political pressure. Measures that knowingly deprive a population of the means to survive strike at the most basic guarantees of the rights to life and diminish the core of human dignity,

The US’s unlawful unilateral coercive measures against Cuba contravene Article 2 of the UN  Charter, and form part of a broader regime-change strategy encompassing the decades-long embargo on Cuba. 

The US Government must cease all threats and hostile acts against Cuba's sovereignty and revoke all measures it has imposed on the country that stand contrary to international law…The  Security Council and General Assembly should urgently address these threats as a matter of  international peace and security” 

These are the indisputable facts. It is also significant that the US voted against the re-appointment of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights at the July meeting of the UNGA.  It is also seeking to destroy the International Criminal Court (ICC) and has condemned the award of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to ICC Judge Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, who is South African of Asian descent and who defended Nelson Mandela. She was the United Nations High  Commissioner for Human Rights and, until recently, she chaired the UN Independent  International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Any international  institution critical of US foreign policy is not tolerated by Washington. We must always remember that the ICC was brought into existence through the tireless and courageous advocacy by the person whom you have publicly acknowledged as your political mentor - Trinidad and  Tobago’s former Prime Minister and President, ANR Robinson.  

The US actions against Cuba are unilateral, illegitimate and illegal. They amount to collective punishment, which is an international crime. In fact, what the US is doing is tantamount to genocide. There can be absolutely no good reason for your Government to abstain from  supporting Cuba’s Resolution or from being absent when the vote is taken at the UNGA. Indeed,  in recognition of the UN Charter, and having a moral responsibility to humanity, Trinidad and  Tobago MUST VOTE in support of the Resolution tabled by Cuba.  

Yours truly,

All Mansions of Rastafari
Amalgamated Workers’ Union
Banking Insurance and General Workers’ Union
Black Agenda Project
Organisation and the Nation of Islam Emancipation Support Committee
Caribbean Freedom Project
Communication Workers’ Union
Concerned Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago
Contractors and General Workers’ Union
Farmers’ Union of Trinidad and Tobago
Industrial and General Sanitation Workers’ Union
Movement for Social Justice
National Trade Union Centre 
Network of NGOs for the Advancement of Women Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union
Postal Workers’ Union of Trinidad and Tobago
Steel Workers’ Union of Trinidad and Tobago
Transport and Industrial Workers’ Union
Trinbago for Palestine
Trinidad and Tobago Friends of Cuba
Trinidad and Tobago National Nurses Association
Warao Community of San Fernando
Women Working for Social Progress