March 2026 International U.S.- Cuba Normalization Conference Action Plan

2026 was ushered in on January 3 with the military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of both the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the First Lady Cilia Flores. Aside from its critical impact on Venezuela itself, this attack was also designed to ensure that no Venezuelan oil will reach Cuba.

Less than 4 weeks later, on January 29 President Trump published an executive order which claimed that Cuba is an existential threat to the United States and vowed to impose major additional tariffs on the goods entering the U.S. from any country that supplies Cuba with petroleum. This action has dramatically tightened the economic blockade of Cuba by potentially depriving the island of all its sources of gasoline and most of its source of fuel oil for electricity generation.

At the same time the harassment of Cuba’s international medical brigades has intensified, and several countries have agreed to end their contracting for Cuban health personnel.  The inability of Cuba to provide fuel for air travel has led many airlines to cease their flights to Cuba. This has particularly impacted travel from Canada which has been Cuba’s principal source of tourists.  Cuba’s two main sources of foreign exchange are being further squeezed.

Trump and Secretary of State Rubio believe that the overthrow of the Cuban revolution is nigh. This solidarity conference therefore takes place at a time of critical importance for the future of the Cuban revolution.  The objective imperative for us to step up our solidarity work, both quantitatively and qualitatively, has never been greater. Of greatest importance is mounting a political defense of Cuba as it faces the onslaught, while doing everything we can to lessen the dire economic situation by the sending of humanitarian aid.

This action plan was unanimously passed on Sunday March 15 on the second day of the 2026 International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference held at the People’s Forum in New York City, by those attending both in-person and online.

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The role of the 2026 International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference is to help chart a course for combating this all-out war, which goes beyond strengthening our existing work against the blockade to discussing new strategies and tactics for the unfolding new situation we find ourselves in. To this end we resolve to:-

1. Raise our voices in protest as loudly and in as large a number as possible. Street protests and public visibility need to remain at the center of our work against the blockade. We should particularly look for opportunities to mount nationally coordinated local actions, and to connect defense of Cuba with broader protests against ICE including the No Kings demonstrations. In doing so we can expect to face a continuing generalized climate of repression from State or quasi-fascist groupings so our actions need to be legal, peaceful, disciplined, and self-marshalled. The annual UN vote to condemn the blockade in October or November is another obvious opportunity. We will once again organize a 24-hour virtual picket on the day of the UN vote.

2. Support the efforts by the Democratic Socialists of America, National Network on Cuba, ACERE, Latin America Working Group, Code Pink and others to raise opposition within Congress. We should mobilize Congressional support for the positive legislation to end the legal basis of the blockade that has been introduced in both houses – namely Senator Wyden’s S.136 and Congressman McGovern’s newly introduced HR 7521. We also support all efforts to oppose HR 450 (often referred to as the Force Act) and any accompanying Senate resolution, which seek to prohibit Cuba’s removal from the SSOT except under circumstances of complete surrender.

3. Develop expanded and more effective media work giving particular emphasis to the use of alternative media and social media outlets. The corporate media oligopolies will never be friends of Cuba and we can expect the situation to worsen through restrictions on progressive content in social media outlets such as Facebook and X (Twitter). Black media, ethnic media and some local media do offer outlets for our campaigns and messages.

4. Welcome and promote all forms of sending material aid to Cuba. The current dire economic situation in Cuba is sure to continue and worsen. We cannot solve Cuba’s humanitarian crisis through aid but we can lessen it. Our movement needs to prioritize aid campaigns linking political education against the blockade and SSOT, such as the work of the Saving Lives Campaign/Global Health Partners, the Peoples Forum, Project Hatuey and IFCO/Pastors for Peace. At the conference a new medical aid and advocacy initiative was launched by the Saving Lives Campaign to promote neonatal and maternal health in Cuba and thereby reduce the growing number of infant deaths.

In addition, purely humanitarian endeavors, or the individual actions of tens of thousands of U.S. visitors taking aid in their suitcases, are both important and we should support the work of organizations like Not Just Tourists and Puentes de Amor.

5. Give priority support to the April 2026 International humanitarian Flotilla to Cuba departing from Mexico. This flotilla will provide humanitarian aid, generate much publicity and highlight the role that Mexico can play in supporting Cuba. It will also help draw connections between the attempted genocides in Cuba and Gaza.

6. Maximize the amount of travel to Cuba from the U.S. and Canada for whatever reason. Family visits, individual travel including tourist travel, and best of all, solidarity brigades and delegations, all offer very important economic support to the Cuban people, and a crucial way to break the information blockade and allow people to see the Cuban reality. This conference has particularly promoted several brigades that are going to Cuba for May Day 2026 and in August 2026 to celebrate Fidel Castro’s centenary.

All measures by the Trump administration to restrict travel to Cuba must be opposed. This includes the Biden/Trump use of the ESTA program to bar Europeans who have visited Cuba from entering the U.S. Travelers to Cuba, especially on solidarity brigades and delegations, need to be informed of their legal rights and be prepared to handle any harassment that may take place on their return through US customs and immigration. Should Trump stop all flights to Cuba and all licensed travel, we must be prepared to defend our constitutional right to travel including the right to travel to Cuba as tourists, and to promote unlicensed travel from the U.S. through third countries.

7. Involve Cuba travelers in activity against the blockade on their return. Recent brigades have brought a new generation of activists into our movement through the framework of the Action for Cuba Committees, but many more are needed. In our partially virtual world this activity can take many forms but rebuilding a strong and vibrant network of local Cuba centered coalitions must be a crucial part of this. Our national movement requires strong local bases, working within the framework of united national and cross-border movements and increased hemispheric and international collaboration

8. Step up the political and organizational work we do to reach out to the more than 2.4 million Cubans who live in the United States. While the mass media presents them as a united block of reaction and hatred for their government, the truth is that as many as 40 percent of them, regardless of their position on the Cuban revolution and its government, have told pollsters that they oppose Washington’s embargo because it makes it more difficult for them to help their families in Cuba.

Because bipartisan Washington claims its economic and political war against Cuba is carried out in response to this Cuban community, differences and actions that emerge as the Trump administration creates even greater hardship on the island and cracks down further on remittances and travel to the island will offer important opportunities for us to expose this lie and amplify the political power of actions and lobbying against the blockade. This has especial relevance for our work in South Florida, but also in Texas, New Jersey, and many other places where there are Cuban Americans in the U.S.

9. We should especially interact with the upsurge of struggles against ICE and Trump’s agenda for the mass deportation of immigrants, which is involving deportations of Latin Americans including Cubans and Venezuelans. Without losing our Cuba focus we need to develop ways to relate to these struggles from a perspective of opposing ALL deportations. We can justifiably assert that the mass migration from Cuba and many other countries is a direct response to the economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. We will work with Sanctions Kill/Americas Without Sanctions to show the links between sanctions and migration, to unify our struggle with those defending the rights of migrants and in defense of the whole region.

This work should include opposition to Trump’s plan to trample over Cuban sovereignty by turning Guantanamo Bay into a mass prison camp for Latin American migrants to the U.S., regardless of whether the deportees include Cubans. The return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba has always been a demand of the Cuban people.

10. 10. Draw connections between Cuba’s achievements and the blockade, and all the forms of progressive struggle that have and will emerge against Trump – such as for abortion rights, gender rights, Queer rights, combating climate change, for better healthcare, etc. These campaigns have much to learn from Cuba, but Cuba needs their support in combating the blockade. We need to be involved in protests, talking with people, with literature about Cuba’s achievements. We particularly need to reach out to the struggles of African American and Indigenous communities.

11. Particularly emphasize building connections between the Cuban workers movement and workers/union struggles in the U.S. We will work to share the lessons learned in California, Chicago, and Seattle as to how to secure approval by trade unions for resolutions against the blockade/SSOT at local, county, state, and national levels. Taking militant workers to Cuba is a travel priority so that they can feed back what they have learnt to their co-workers in ways that oppose the blockade but also strengthen union organizing.

12. Continue to build upon the success of the last nine years in getting more than 120 anti-blockade or anti-SSOT resolutions passed, including in many of the largest cities in the U.S. Biden’s pathetic and cynical removal of Cuba from the SSOT list for 5 days does at least remove any serious argument by Democrats for keeping Cuba on the SSOT. We need to make more creative use of these resolutions in our political advocacy work.

13. Publicize the incredible work done worldwide by the Cuban international medical brigades and strongly oppose the outrageous attempts by the Trump administration to label them as international slavery and force recipient countries to send them home. We will strongly support the work of IFCO/Pastors for Peace in developing a Cuban trained medical cohort in the U.S. via the recruitment of U.S. students from humble backgrounds to train to be doctors on full scholarships at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana.

14. Support the campaign of the National Lawyers Guild and others, to point out the unconstitutionality of the Helms-Burton legislation which underscores, as the “legal basis” for the entire U.S. Anti-Cuba policy, and which also violates the legal rights of U.S. citizens to travel, send mail etc. to Cuba.

15. Support all efforts to build solidarity collaborations with cultural workers including where possible the bringing of Cuban cultural workers on tours of the U.S. and Canada.

16. Our work should interconnect with and give support to struggles for sovereignty across the Americas and the Caribbean. Trump’s siege of Cuba and attack on Venezuela are explicitly part of a wider attempt to reassert U.S. dominance over the whole of the Americas through a newly revived “Donroe Doctrine”. The progressive governments that remain, in Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia and Brazil will particularly be in the line of fire.