The Trinidad and Tobago government is being urged to vote in support of a resolution being tabled by Cuba on Thursday at the United Nations calling for an end to the trade and economic embargo imposed by the United States.
In a five-page open letter to Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, 23 Trinidad and Tobago based organisations said that 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 in 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,’ said the groups that included the National Trade Union Centre (NATUC), the Network of NGOs for the Advancement of Women, the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union (OWTU) Postal Workers’ Union of Trinidad and Tobago, the Steel Workers’ Union of Trinidad and Tobago, the Banking Insurance and General Workers’ Union as well as Trinidad and Tobago Friends of Cuba and the Movement for Social Justice.
In their October 20, 2026, letter, the groups say they ‘Demand That Trinidad and Tobago Stands with Cuba,’ noting that the resolution to be tabled on Thursday at the United Nations General Assembly has been done by Cuba ‘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 (Caribbean Community) 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.’
The groups said that in furtherance of CARICOM’s ‘principled position’ several regional leaders have used the opportunity of addressing the UN General Assembly to speak directly on the embargo.
‘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.’
The group recalls that it was Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago that first established diplomatic relations with Cuba in December 1972, adding ‘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 be not shaped and determined by the national interests of others, including that of large states/powers.’
They said as a result of establishing relations with Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago has benefitted immensely with Havana providing 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.’
But the groups noted that ‘something changed with your Government in 2025,’ adding ‘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’.
The groups said that ‘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’.
They quoted US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, at the Munich Security Conference indicating that ‘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…which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution.’
The groups said that this 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.
They said it also 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 21 st Century Communism Report’. Among other Nanci stories that Report 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 decades long blockade and other actions including the blockade of fuel.’
The groups told Persad-Bissessar that ‘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.’
They said that 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,’ they said, adding that ‘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 7 th , 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’.
The group quoted one report on that website, dated September 9 th , 2026 which states ”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…’
It said 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 and ‘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’
The groups said that ‘these are the undisputable facts’ adding ‘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 groups wrote in the letter.