Even as Cuba’s foreign minister rose to speak Saturday in the United Nations General Assembly, CBS News reported that the U.S. Army Reserve is considering how it can support the military’s Southern Command in coming months.
James LaPorta of CBS News reported that the reserve is looking at providing support units, including police forces and medical personnel, to the Southern Command, which covers Latin America south of Mexico, the waters around Central and South America, and the Caribbean, including Cuba.
The memo reviewed by CBS doesn’t say for what operation the troops would be needed “in 90 to 120 days,” but LaPorta reported that “multiple U.S. officials” said the planning is for a potential operation aimed at Cuba.
“Lies!” Image: Trump speaks at UN as Cuban delegation walks out. By Avilarte in Juventud Rebelde, Sept. 27, 2026.
Days earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump told the General Assembly that Cuba was a “failed state” and that he was seeking a “fundamental change” on the island, declaring that “freedom will be coming to Cuba.”
The speech Saturday by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla was partly a rebuke to Trump, but he also called for the United Nations to be preserved and strengthened while becoming “more democratic and effective” and closer to the peoples it serves.
“We are convinced that the current course of international relations, of disrespect for international law, contempt of the United Nations, and the imposition of the unilateral will of the most powerful on other countries, through intimidation and coercion, is dangerous and unsustainable. The law of the jungle cannot be the future of humanity,” he said.
Rodríguez repeated that Cuba remains willing to engage in dialogue with the United States to seek resolution of bilateral differences, but without “interference or pre-conditions.
Actions you can take:
Before October 11: if you are in Canada and have not done so already, please sign this House of Commons petition. It will be presented in the House by opposition Members of Parliament on October 12.
Common Frontiers and its allies have revamped their Take Action so that you can press the Canadian government to support Cuba in a UN General Assembly vote on October 27 or 28 to end the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Canada must also increase humanitarian aid to Cuba.
If you are in any other country, please write to your representatives and/or foreign minister to press for support to the Cuba resolution in the UN General Assembly and to increase aid to Cuba. The 2026 annual threat assessment from combined U.S. intelligence agencies largely portrays Cuba as an “enabling environment” for “larger geopolitical competitors” like Russia, China and Iran, rather than as an independent strategic threat.
U.S. military lays groundwork for potential action around Cuba[Section adapted from the CBS report cited above.]
Earlier this year, U.S. forces conducted reconnaissance operations on the seafloor and maritime approaches that surround Cuba, multiple U.S. military personnel told CBS News. Separately, U.S. airpower components were placed on heightened readiness and directed to pre-stage personnel for potential deployment. Those plans, however, did not come to fruition.
CBS News reported in May that U.S. intelligence officials were assessing how Cuba would respond to possible U.S. military action.
In July, CBS News reported that U.S. military planners had examined a range of options for possible action against Cuba, including an Army-led air assault involving thousands of U.S. soldiers to be carried out by the 101st Airborne Division, the only unit trained for such a task.
U.S. officials who spoke to CBS News in July stressed that the briefings were not an indication that the president or the Pentagon had decided to go forward with an operation.
“Siege warfare:” unilateral coercive measures
Meanwhile, the Trump regime has continuously upgraded its sanctions on Cuban government entities and officials.
For an excellent description of how the Trump administration is using “starvation and misery” to achieve regime change in Cuba, please read Joy Gordon’s long analysis in Lawfare. She concludes: “what the U.S. is doing to Cuba is illegal, it is indefensible, and it is indecent.”
During a visit last week to Mexico City, Colombia’s former president Gustavo Petro declared he would work with others to prevent “hyper-fascism” and “techno-fascism” from taking control of all Latin America.
He met with President Claudia Sheinbaum in the National Palace (above); spoke with students at Mexico’s National Autonomous University on economic policy in the climate crisis; met with Colombians living in Mexico; and sat down for an interview with Miguel Ángel Velázquez of La Jornada daily newspaper.
In that interview, Petro spoke of his complicated relationship with the administration of Donald Trump. The two have differed sharply over Israel’s treatment of Palestine, climate justice, relations with Venezuela and Cuba, and the U.S. “war” on drugs.
Petro’s four-year presidential term ended on Aug. 7 when his hard-right successor, Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in. Petro had been Colombia’s first president from a party of the left. He had tried (unsuccessfully) to bring about “total peace” in a country torn for decades by civil war and violence tied to drug-trafficking. It was Jan. 3, when the United States kidnapped Petro’s Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, that fear set in.
“After the crucial day, when they bombed Caracas, Trump said: ‘Watch your back, because now I’m coming for Petro.’ That day I thought: ‘A missile is coming for me.’”
After talks among diplomats and with Republicans in the U.S. congress, Petro and Trump met in the White House on Feb. 3. Trump called the conversation “terrific.” Petro said it was “constructive.” (In the La Jornada interview, Petro added that others behind Trump “worse than him” are driving the key decisions.)
Their rapprochement did not last. In Colombia’s presidential election, Trump and his officials backed de la Espriella, calling the other candidate, human rights defender Iván Cepeda, a “radical left Marxist.” This was one more instance of U.S. interference in Latin American elections (after a presidential vote in Honduras and mid-term contests in Argentina).
Now, countries from Argentina and Chile to El Salvador and Trinidad and Tobago have governments of the hard-right that are solidly attached to Trump’s agenda. The next election to watch is in Brazil next month, where progressive President Luiz Inácio (Lula) da Silva faces Flávio Bolsonaro, son of disgraced former president Jair Bolsonaro.
In his interview with La Jornada, Petro spoke of his vision of the political moment:
“We live in a planetary shell; it’s the matrix of lies. We act like in The Matrix, like in the movie. Suddenly you find a bot farm. It’s not made up of human beings, but rather profiles that automatically react to any Latin American leader because they want to degrade political discourse and reduce it to insults. That’s why I call it the matrix of lies. In this shell of falsehood, some parts escape because they are strong, like states, but the intention of this matrix is to enslave human beings, and it’s not just a physical chain, but a mental one, to enslave human beings to allow the exploitation of non-renewable natural resources, for example.”
Petro explained the counterattack: “Mathematics is required, because it’s a mathematical, algorithmic attack, both in the bots used to manipulate human beings and in the elections themselves and their final results.”
“Petro’s contribution to the political debate serves as a wake-up call to increase vigilance regarding foreign agents who exploit communication tools such as social media to promote neo-fascist rhetoric, spread misinformation, incite hatred, and manipulate electorates to benefit their external and internal sponsors – namely, the White House and a sector of big business resistant to democracy.
“Alongside the bleak picture he paints, there is a message of hope. In his country in 2022, the people elected the first progressive government in history, and this experience cannot be seen as a failure. Societies are not defenseless against technofascism, he says, because they can protect themselves with strong minds and with the same resources used by oppressors: mathematics. Education is fundamental to the resistance that he joins and invites others to join.”
Yes. And, to me, hope is in revival of the networks of social movements that gave rise to the “pink wave” of progressive governments a quarter-century ago.
A postscript: In a Labour Day essay, Canadian politician and activist Charlie Angus offered a similarly sharp warning about the power of the big-tech corporations in the Trump White House. He recalled that in his farewell address, Joe Biden warned that the Silicon Valley elite were capable of destroying democracy and damaging the future.
More than 42 years after my first visit to Haiti, I can’t disagree with that assessment. It was offered June 16 by UN secretary general António Guterres near the end of his one-day visit to Port-au-Prince.
The visit came 40 years after the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship; 36 years after the election of a liberation-theology-inspired priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide; 35 years after the first coup against him; 22 years after the second coup; 16 years after the earthquake killed at least 220,000 people; five years after the assassination of Haiti’s last elected president; and after a decade of still-surging gang violence in the capital city and beyond.
A week after the visit by Guterres, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand announced $35 million in new funding Tuesday for projects aimed at shoring up security and curbing violence in the Caribbean. Just $7.5 million was to support the Haitian National Police service’s fight against gang violence.
Now two-and-a-half months have passed since Guterres denounced indifference and Anand offered money. But by any measure, everything has gotten worse.
Two events caught my attention over in recent days.
Gang coalition attacks Kenscoff
First was a vicious gang attack in Kenscoff, a farming community high in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. At least 47 people were killed, including five children. Fifty others were abducted, though six children and seven women in the group were later released. Many of those killed had sought refuge in a church compound at L’église de l’Arche de la Nouvelle Alliance.
Days later, Pope Leo XIV called for release of all remaining hostages. Bishop Pierre André Dumas of the diocese of Anse-à-Veau et Miragoâne called for more action from Haiti’s government to protect the population and to end impunity:
“Haiti cannot become an immense cemetery where we come now and then to leave flowers, recite our condolences and publish statements.”
Gang violence has displaced about 1.5 million people in Haiti, where at least 3,050 people were reported killed from January to June, according to U.N. statistics released Aug. 25.
My first visit to Kenscoff came during my first visit to Haiti in March 1984. In Kenscoff, the repression was blatant. Duvalier was still in power, and we watched as his militia, the infamous Tontons Macoutes, extorted payments from vendors in a market. In subsequent years, I passed through Kenscoff during visits to a Methodist congregation in nearby Furcy and to a school in Duplan rebuilt after the 2010 earthquake. (Photo: Jim Hodgson)
The Trump regime’s assault on Haitians in the U.S.
The second matter that grabbed my attention is that the United States has abruptly ended the “temporary protected status” that had kept Haitian asylum-seekers in years since the earthquake from being deported. On Aug. 27, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media: “Haiti TPS has been TERMINATED. Those with TPS are in our nation illegally. They have two options: LEAVE IMMEDIATELY or be DEPORTED.” Attached was a video of chained Black men and women being moved through the rain toward a waiting plane.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote: “Officials at DHS chose to publish a video of Black people in chains that evoked the slave coffles of the Old South.”
That news came at around the time that Eleazar S. Fernandez, a theologian from the Philippines currently teaching in Minnesota, wrote an excellent appreciation of Haitians and their rebellion that ended slavery in 1804. When he posted the text on Facebook, however, it was met with vile, bot-driven racist attacks that recalled phrases used by Trump, Vance and others in the current U.S. regime to malign Haitians.
UN Security Council speeches reveal the failure of the international community
The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting about Haiti on Friday, Aug. 28. Like conversations about Gaza, Sudan or Somalia, the meeting only revealed failures.
“Three years after authorization of an international mission intended to support the Haitian National Police action against the gangs, results remain largely insufficient when measured against announced objectives.”
After one failed effort (known as the Multinational Mission to Support Security, MMAS), the UN created the Gang Suppression Force (FRG).
The intent was to deploy a force of 5,500 international members but, as Dominican foreign affairs minister Roberto Álvarez Gil told a UNSC meeting in July, barely 1,000 were on the ground. On the surface, the problem was logistical – insufficient aircraft to bring police from countries that had promised them (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire and others) – but it shows the deeper problem of UN member-state arrears. As you might guess, the United States under Trump is the largest and most reluctant debtor. And the United States seems to have plenty of aircraft that it uses for deportations all over the planet.
At the Aug. 28 meeting, UNSC members called for rapid deployment of the FRG forces, renewal of the FRG mandate in September, and for tighter enforcement of an arms embargo.
Two other problems. As noted in the Drop Site report above, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Meanwhile, Haiti’s illegitimate interim government, headed now only by Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé after U.S.-led manoeuvres in January that removed the previous Transitional Presidential Council, is trying to hold general elections for the first time in more than a decade on Dec. 13. It has been registering voters in Port-au-Prince and beyond.
But, given the history of U.S. interference (and worse) in Haiti over more than a century, my expectation is that such an election will have a low voter turnout and produce a new president who is favourable to U.S. security and business plans, much like those of Michel Martelly (2011-16) and Jovenel Moïse (2017 until his assassination on July 7, 2021). Again, the parties, popular organisations and social movements with different visions for Haiti will be shoved aside.
