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This is the first article in a two-part series on US interventions in island nations across the Caribbean Sea.

Half a million Cubans gathered in Havana joining five million nationwide who rallied to commemorate International Workers’ Day on May 1. Defiant in the face of intensified US blockade after POTUS Trump’s January takeover of Venezuela, half the population of the island nation hit the streets along with President Miguel Diaz-Canel, ex-President Raul Castro, and other leaders. Fearlessly embodying Cuban Independence Movement leader Jose Marti’s notion of “Nuestra America” (“Our America”) as these Cubans may be, the US picked the historic occasion to hit the Cuban government and citizens alike with another wave of sanctions.

Trump’s new Executive Order extends sanctions from previously mainly applying to the Cuban government and affiliates to now including anybody who has worked in energy, defence, mining, financial services or security sectors. Even if “Cuban officials judged to have engaged in “serious human rights abuses” or “corruption” are also thrown in there among those sanctioned, the US government can no longer pretend human rights or democracy have anything to do with the kind of imperialist adventure that the sitting POTUS thinks can be carried out in one afternoon by docking the aircraft carrier SS Gerald Ford in Havana on its way back from being chased out of the Strait of Hormuz.

Nuestra America (Our America)

Certainly due to President Trump’s mad king proclamations about preparing for military action against Cuba, but the island nation has also been under the spotlight in US media in the past few weeks as delegations of the Nuestra America Convoy to Cuba from over a dozen countries around the world delivered 20,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid including “food, medicines, medical equipment, renewable energy systems, and essential household goods to support hospitals, clinics, and families across the island as fuel shortages and restrictions on imports strain everyday life and critical infrastructure”.

Sadly US papers of record led this coverage with sensationalism and smears, keen on pointing........

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