For 13 minutes on the most-watched stage in American culture, Bad Bunny made the United States feel expansive, uncontained, Caribbean rhythm-centered, and alive with a sense of belonging that crossed borders without asking permission. As a Venezuelan-American, I felt chills from the very first second to the last. I was a child again, asleep across two chairs pushed together at a family party that refused to end, the music still playing, adults laughing loudly in the background, grandparents locked into a serious game of dominoes as if nothing outside that table mattered. I could feel the dancing in the living room, smell the food that took all day to make, remember that deep sense of togetherness you can’t explain or translate—you simply grow up inside it.

And then came Bad Bunny’s ending—loud, defiant, and unmistakably intentional. When he said, “God bless America,” naming Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, las Antillas, the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, it felt like calling family members into the room, reminding everyone that America has always been bigger than the version that those in power are comfortable with, and that it has always belonged to more people than it is willing to treat with dignity.

At that very same moment, offstage, untelevised, and unacknowledged, the US government was tightening the screws on Cuba. Under Donald Trump, US policy toward the island has moved from long-standing hostility into something closer to an open siege. Sanctions have been escalated, fuel deliberately cut off, and third countries threatened with tariffs and sanctions for daring to trade with Cuba. The consequences are immediate and devastating: rolling blackouts shutting down hospitals, universities forced to suspend classes, factories and farms unable to operate, and entire transportation systems paralyzed. The US fuel blockade has grounded flights, stopped buses from running, and forced ambulances to be rationed.

The US embargo on Cuba itself is illegal under international law and is condemned year after year by the overwhelming majority of the world’s nations. Yet the United States continues to enforce it unilaterally, using its navy, its financial system, and its political power to prevent oil shipments from reaching Cuba, to intimidate shipping companies, and to punish any country that dares to trade. US pressure doesn’t stop at its own borders; it extends outward, telling the rest of the world who they are allowed to sell fuel to, who they are allowed to insure, and which economies must be starved into compliance. When ships are blocked, oil is cut off, and a civilian population is plunged into darkness, this is a blockade. And under international law, that is an act of war.

If those 13 minutes meant anything, they must move us toward demanding a foreign policy that treats our neighbors as equals.

Washington then claims humanitarian concern, offering small, tightly controlled aid packages while maintaining the very sanctions that created the emergency. The crisis is manufactured first, then........

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