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A report published<\/span> this week by the State Department is the latest weapon employed by the Trump administration in its campaign for aggressive intervention in Cuba, according to members of Congress and experts on the beleaguered Caribbean island nation.<\/p>\n Despite Cuba being severely hobbled by in the throes of a humanitarian crisis engineered by U.S. sanctions and fuel blockades<\/a>, the new report paints the country as a major threat.<\/p>\n The report appears to be the brainchild of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a first-generation Cuban American who\u00a0has made the overthrow of the Cuban government a top priority under the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n Published Monday without a listed author, the report<\/a> says Cuba is the \u201ccapital of 21st century communism,\u201d ideologically immovable, and a permanent enemy committed to the destruction not just of the U.S. but also of \u201cWestern civilization\u201d through the spread of \u201cThird Worldism.\u201d<\/p>\n If that sounds like a throwback to the long-settled Cold War, that\u2019s because it is \u2014 something critics of the report in Congress seized upon.<\/p>\n Whatever truths the report contains, they\u2019re largely overshadowed by a feverish paranoia about the alleged reach of Cuban intelligence into American civil society, according to Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., days after returning from a fact-finding trip to Cuba<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt may be the stupidest, most fantastical, most biased thing I\u2019ve ever read from a governmental agency,\u201d Pocan said<\/a> in a statement Tuesday. \u201cThis report focuses on the 1960s & 70s with no clear connection to today. Yet somehow, the State Department uses this report to say that this impoverished nation is responsible for everything from Black Lives Matter to Antifa, the anti-ICE protests and more.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., who went on the fact-finding mission with Pocan, said the report was aimed at manufacturing consent for an invasion of the island \u2014 and to crack down on dissent at home.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile criticizing the regime in Cuba, it instead attacks Americans\u2019 constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cThis report was intentionally designed to instill fear of the Cuban people and to justify a military attack on Cuba,\u201d Ramirez told The Intercept. \u201cIt\u2019s hypocrisy at its finest, because while criticizing the regime in Cuba, it instead attacks Americans\u2019 constitutional rights to free speech and free assembly.\u201d<\/p>\n In sketching a broad, anti-American conspiracy in nearly dozens of left-wing social movements, organizations, and educational institutions, the report also functions as a broadside on civil society in the U.S \u2014 and hardly for the first time.<\/p>\n \u201cCuba is not a new cudgel,\u201d said Miriam Pensack, a historian at Princeton University specializing in Latin America and the Caribbean. \u201cThe Cuban revolution was a galvanizing event for the way that the United States thought about its national security, really until the end of the Cold War. And it still has an ideological utility, even as the country is limping along.\u201d<\/p>\n Running 100 pages, the report lays out what its authors describe as a decadeslong effort by Cuba to foment revolutionary movements throughout the world and to build a latter-day \u201caxis of evil\u201d by allying with other governments opposed to U.S. interests, including the current-day governments of Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea.<\/p>\n \u201cEven as it expands and revitalizes its network within the next generation of American left-wing activists, it has also forged new partnerships \u2014 or deepened and repurposed old ones \u2014 with other foreign governments and movements around the world,\u201d the report warns. \u201cThe regime continues to act as a force multiplier for a much broader anti-American coalition, positioning itself as a staging ground for a wide range of foreign adversaries to conduct operations against the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuba, the authors allege, is \u201cless a nation-state than an all-encompassing intelligence and subversion operation, focused around its existential revolution against the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n The report goes on to list a slew of left-wing groups and individuals as accomplices, both witting and unwitting, of this intelligence operation, including the Democratic Socialists of America, Code Pink, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and leftwing streamer Hasan Piker.<\/p>\n In a section stretching nearly five full pages on the National Lawyers Guild, a long-standing right-wing bugaboo<\/a>, the report\u2019s authors describe the venerable progressive law association as \u201cone of the most persistently relevant \u2014 and insidious \u2014 organizations in Cuba\u2019s U.S. network.\u201d<\/p>\n Posting to X for the first time since March, the organization quipped<\/a>, \u201cWe have been called much worse, by much better.\u201d<\/p>\n The report took aim at universities in the U.S. for maintaining exchange programs and partnerships with Cuban universities, implying that such programs functioned as a feeding ground for Cuban agents looking to recruit spies and fellow travelers.<\/p>\n The report singled out Harvard University, pointing to trips by faculty to Cuba as recently as 2017.<\/p>\n The Cuban government \u201cwould probably argue that it was U.S. universities that were trying to penetrate Cuban institutions and to foment subversion there!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n If anything, however, the Cuban government has been wary of exchange programs with American schools, according to Alejandro de la Fuente, a professor of Latin American history and economics at Harvard who chairs the university\u2019s Cuba Studies Program and took part in a trip to Cuba in 2017 that is mentioned in the report.<\/p>\n \u201cThey did their best to delimit those exchanges as much as possible because they understood that knowledge production requires freedom and a plurality of viewpoints \u2014 precisely what they do not allow,\u201d de la Fuente told The Intercept in an email Wednesday. \u201cIndeed, they would probably argue that it was U.S. universities that were trying to penetrate Cuban institutions and to foment subversion there!\u201d<\/p>\n Born in Cuba, De la Fuente is hardly an apologist for the Cuban government, at whose feet he laid the blame for the country\u2019s collapse. He acknowledged that Cuban intelligence may have targeted American students and academics in the past, but scoffed at the underlying thesis of the report that Cuba continues to pose a grave threat to the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ineptitude and corruption of the regime have destroyed the country\u2019s economy and society, to the point that the very existence of the nation is in danger,\u201d de la Fuente said. \u201cCan a country like this pose a threat to the national security of the United States today? The answer, any reasonable observer would agree, is emphatically no.\u201d<\/p>\n Cuba has made no secret<\/a> of its support for revolutionary movements throughout the 20th century. And it was a vital partner<\/a> to left-wing governments in Latin America in the 21st century.<\/p>\n With Cuba today crippled by sanctions and fuel shortages, however, Ramirez, the member of Congress, said the report\u2019s notion of the country as a central node in some threatening conspiracy was a \u201cfiction.\u201d<\/p>\n Accusations about Cuba\u2019s extensive reach into protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, antifascist organizing, and Black Lives Matter don\u2019t square with the reality of the severe crisis that has gripped Cuba. In early January, the Trump administration tightened its embargo of the country into a virtual blockade on all fuel arriving in Cuba.<\/p>\n\n
Center of Global Conspiracy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Academic Freedom at Home<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\u201cWar on the Cuban People\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n