Havana, March 24 (Prensa Latina) The Granma 2 ship arrived in Cuba today with 14 tons of solidarity aid from Mexico, as part of the Our America Convoy.
This vessel is the first to arrive as part of the Solidarity Convoy, with aid collected by civil organizations, and brought mostly food, medical supplies, medicines and renewable energy equipment, such as solar panels.
The solidarity vessel, with 32 passengers of various nationalities, is named Maguro, but was renamed Granma 2 by the activists.
Thiago de Ávila, leading the crew, stressed that they will not yield to pressure from the United States, and will defend the right to peace and self-determination of the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Palestine, Iran, Yemen and all those who are attacked in any way by Washington.
The people of Cuba have the right to live in peace, and for all these reasons and out of solidarity, we are mobilizing, the activist and influencer said.
At the Havana Bay Cruise Terminal, they were greeted by local authorities and members of the Our America Convoy who had arrived earlier by air.
It is also expected that other ships with solidarity aid linked to the Convoy will continue to arrive.
Colombia’s decision comes amid a worsening energy crisis in Cuba, due to the economic blockade imposed by the United States for more than six decades. Photo: @CancilleriaCol.
The proposal presented to Rodríguez by Villavicencio also included strengthening bilateral cooperation in areas such as trade, health, education, and energy.
March 21, 2026 — teleSUR
Colombia announced its willingness to provide humanitarian aid to Cuba amid the island’s energy crisis, exacerbated by the decades-long US embargo. The decision was communicated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs , based in Bogotá.
The announcement was made this Friday during the High-Level Forum between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and Africa , where Foreign Minister Rosa Villavicencio held a dialogue with her Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodríguez .
According to the Ministry’s official profile on social network X, ” Colombia reiterated its willingness to provide humanitarian assistance to Cuba, in coordination with national entities, and to advance in concrete cooperation mechanisms .”
The proposal presented to Rodríguez also included strengthening bilateral cooperation in areas such as trade, health, education and energy , with the aim of opening new avenues of collaboration between the two countries.
Colombia’s decision comes in a context marked by the worsening energy crisis in Cuba , due to the economic blockade imposed by the United States for more than six decades , a policy that has also urged Latin American governments to reduce diplomatic ties with the Caribbean nation.
During the fourth day of the 10th CELAC Summit of Heads of State and Government, Colombia will hand over the pro tempore presidency of the organization to Uruguay. The summit has convened more than thirty regional leaders, although so far only the presidents of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; Uruguay, Yamandú Orsi; and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , all identified with a progressive ideology, have confirmed their attendance.
Furthermore, the meeting aims to adopt the Bogotá Declaration , a document in which member states will recognize the progress achieved under the Colombian presidency and define CELAC’s strategic priorities for the next period.
Author: teleSUR – ems – JGN
Source: Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Agencies
About 140 people gathered 6,300 pounds of medical supplies and non-perishable food are headed to Havana on Friday for a humanitarian trip, and the people behind the move say it’s not just about getting much-needed supplies to the people of Cuba, but to also push back against policies that they believe are creating an economic crisis on the island.
It took hours to load up and check all the supplies at Miami International Airport before it’s brought on a flight to Havana on Friday. Organizers told CBS News Miami that there’s about $433,000 worth of supplies on the aircraft.
“People are suffering. And one of the things U.S. citizens can do is to travel to Cuba and to support the Cuban people,” Leonardo Flores said.
“People in the United States don’t agree with a policy that’s designed to create tremendous hardships in Cuba,” said Medea Benjamin.
Benjamin helped put the mission together. She said the Cuban people are in need of aid, but isn’t sure how long the supplies will last.
“We’ve been taking food and medicines now for the past year because the situation is so dire, but in the last three months it’s become unbearable,” Benjamin said
Jim Carles went to the airport to protest the trip because he said he’s worried the supplies won’t make it to those in need.
“The aid that they’re gonna give is gonna go right to the regime,” he said. “They’re not gonna give it to the people that suffering.”
CBS News Miami asked Benjamin if she’s concerned the Cuban government will take the supplies once it lands in Havana.
“The hospitals are run by the Cuban government. So, it’s important to make sure those hospitals are functioning,” Benjamin said.
In the meantime, U.S. and Cuban officials are in talks, but Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel has said an agreement is far off. Carles said he doesn’t agree with the Trump administration‘s policies, but feels the U.S. oil blockade is being used as leverage.
“The Trump regime is using it to make it as a negotiating table so that he can just take over Cuba,” Carles said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned of a mass exodus of Cubans coming to Florida through the Florida Keys. But he said he is working on plans to protect Florida coastlines.
Mexico City, March 16 (Prensa Latina) Havana’s ambassador to Mexico, Eugenio Martínez, asserted today that the United States representative here offends Cuba by denying his government’s responsibility in the criminal blockade against the Caribbean nation.
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“Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace,” Benito Juárez taught us. Today, as we celebrate his birth in Our America, the US representative offends Cuba by denying his government’s responsibility for the criminal siege against my people,” he said on X.
Yesterday, Washington’s ambassador to this capital, Ronald Johnson, stated on the same social network that, “to paraphrase @SecRubio (Secretary of State Marco Rubio), the best way to help the Cuban people is by empowering them, not the regime that has oppressed them for decades.”
However, the United States has imposed an economic, commercial and financial blockade on the island for more than 60 years, reinforced in January through an executive order signed by the US president, Donald Trump.
In that context and following various displays of solidarity in Mexico, the newspaper La Jornada called on Tuesday for support for Cuba and published a bank account aimed at collecting financial contributions from those who wish to cooperate in acquiring products destined for the largest of the Antilles.
On Saturday, former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador invited Mexicans to join the call.
“I am retired, but it hurts me that they seek to exterminate the brotherly people of Cuba for their ideals of freedom and defense of sovereignty,” said X, who was the president of this country between 2018 and 2024, through the social network.
The former dignitary reminded “those who think this is someone else’s fight” of what “General (Lázaro) Cárdenas said during the Bay of Pigs invasion: ‘It is not right to advocate indifference to their heroic struggle, because their fate is ours.’”
President Claudia Sheinbaum stated this Monday that she will make a personal contribution to the initiative in support of Cuba and reaffirmed the continuity of support for the island provided by Mexico, from where several ships with material aid have departed.
Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel confirmed today in a televised address that talks are taking place between Cuban and U.S. officials a day after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying the Cuban government would soon release 51 prisoners.
The statement said that the prisoner release was “in the spirit of goodwill, close and fluid relations between the Cuban state and the Vatican.”
The Vatican has a history of mediating negotiations between the two governments.
The Catholic Church helped facilitate the secret negotiations that led to the historic opening with Cuba under the Obama administration.
Trump later reversed that deal, returning the United States to a Cold War–era policy of hostility.
In the final days of the Biden administration, the Catholic Church again helped broker the release of prisoners in Cuba ahead of Washington’s decision to ease its economic war on the island.
Biden’s olive branch was short-lived. Trump reversed the move on his first day back in office.
According to Díaz-Canel, the recent discussions have been led by Raúl Castro and involve international actors as well.
Numerous reports in recent weeks indicated that the two governments were in talks. Trump has said repeatedly that a deal was in the works.
“They want to make a deal, and so I am going to put Marco [Rubio] over there and we’ll see how that works out,” Trump told CNN last week.
However, Trump also said his administration’s focus right now is Iran.
If “you do them all too fast, bad things happen,” said Trump. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
The Cuban government had previously denied substantive negotiations between the two countries were taking place, though it had recently been silent on the issue.
Díaz-Canel said today an agreement is still distant and that talks were “in the initial stages.”
No Fuel for Three Months
Díaz-Canel also spoke about the electricity crisis directly caused by the Trump administration’s oil blockade. He said no fuel has entered the country for the last three months, and that the country is now producing all of its thermoelectric power with domestically produced crude oil.
He said deeper blackouts are coming.
“Would a failed state be able to confront such a situation?” he asked rhetorically.
He thanked the “titans” who keep the country’s aging power grid running, emphasizing that the government and its people would continue to “act with creative resistance.”
Most of Cuba was in the dark for several hours last week, after the island’s main power plant broke down. The plant was back online the following day and power gradually returned.
Since 2024, Cuba has gone through three total blackouts, the longest of which lasted for days.
In recent months, rolling blackouts — the norm since 2020— have intensified since Trump announced the U.S. de facto oil blockade on the island.
With China’s help, the island has turned to solar energy to reduce its dependence on fuel and power plants. Last month, Díaz-Canel said 38% of the island’s daylight consumption now comes from solar power.
Rome, March 11 (Prensa Latina) During a demonstration held in the southern Italian city of Naples, dozens of protesters rejected the imperialist offensive of the United States against Cuba and Venezuela, a spokeswoman said today.
The event was attended by members of the National Association of Friendship Italy-Cuba (Anaic), the Solidarity Network with Venezuela, as well as the Solidarity Movement with Palestine and the Network of Communists, among other groups, a spokesperson for the event organizers told Prensa Latina.
Indira Pineda, a member of the Neapolitan circle of Anaic, reported that the event condemned the treacherous US military attack against Venezuela on January 3, in which 32 Cuban combatants died heroically, and the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was kidnapped along with his wife, Cilia Flores.
The activist indicated that during that solidarity activity, the speakers expressed their condemnation of the genocidal US policy of economic strangulation of Cuba, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to try to prevent the entry of fuel into that country.
This measure represents a tightening of the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by Washington on the Caribbean nation for more than 60 years, the participants stressed, who expressed their support for the solidarity campaigns with the Cuban people currently taking place in Italy.
Pineda, a Cuban sociologist residing in Italy, referred to the “Energy for Life” initiative promoted by Anaic, in conjunction with the ARCI Social Promotion Association, the Italian General Confederation of Labor and the National Association of Partisans of Italy.
To date, they have already raised more than 200,000 euros, which will be used to purchase and install solar panels in schools, hospitals, cultural facilities and workplaces in Cuba, according to a statement released by the project’s promoters.
The event also expressed support for the “A Century of Light” campaign promoted by the Cuban community residing in Italy and solidarity organizations, for the shipment of containers with aid to the people of that country, the source added.
United Nations, March 11 (Prensa Latina) Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, reiterated that the tightening of the US blockade against Cuba is having serious humanitarian consequences today.
Dujarric explained in his daily press conference yesterday that the inability to import fuel affects hospitals, vital medical treatments, and food distribution.
“I can tell you that we remain deeply concerned about the deteriorating situation caused by the inability to import fuel. This has triggered an energy crisis,” he stressed.
The UN has repeatedly condemned the US blockade of Cuba. In January, the Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Farhan Aziz Haq, reaffirmed the organization’s position in favor of lifting this unilateral embargo.
“As you know, the General Assembly has repeatedly called for an end to the blockade against Cuba,” the spokesman said in response to a question from Prensa Latina about the strengthening of that policy, following the executive order by the Donald Trump administration on January 29 that would deprive the island of access to oil.
“We urge all Member States,” he said, “to comply with the resolutions of the General Assembly.”
An executive order issued by the White House on January 29 and signed by the Republican president declared a “national emergency” regarding Cuba and, to address it, deemed it “necessary and appropriate” to establish a system of tariffs (which he later revoked) against countries that provide “directly or indirectly” any type of oil to Cuba.
Days before Trump’s return to the White House last year, the UN confirmed to Prensa Latina that it welcomed “the United States’ announcement of January 14 regarding, among other measures, the removal of Cuba from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.”
It was a belated act by the outgoing Joe Biden administration, but it was a step in the right direction.
However, after taking office a week later, in his first hours in the executive mansion, Trump reversed Biden’s decision with an executive order without presenting any new evidence and ignoring the work and judgment of his own federal agencies.
Cuba was first included in that list of State sponsors of terrorism in 1982, during the government of Republican Ronald Reagan until, in 2015, Democratic President Barack Obama withdrew such designation, considering that it lacked merit.
The economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba constitutes a unilateral, coercive and extraterritorial policy that violates International Law and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.
After more than six decades of its application, the objective has not changed: to deteriorate the standard of living of the population, to provoke dissatisfaction, despair and irritation, as a means to bring about a change in the constitutional order that the Cuban people have freely chosen.
The current US administration persists in ignoring the almost unanimous call from the international community to end this illegal and inhumane policy against Cuba, expressed in 33 UN General Assembly resolutions.
More than seven million people in the U.S. are estimated to suffer from Alzheimer’s, a disease that systematically destroys a person’s memory, personality and ability to function. While there is no cure, there’s reason for hope. Despite being battered by a severe economic crisis fueled by U.S. sanctions, a group of patients from the U.S recently traveled to Cuba to access a promising medication called NeuralCIM.
Studies indicate that, unlike other medications, NeuralCIM has managed to slow the disease’s progression over an extended period of time without significant side effects, and has even reversed symptoms in some cases.
Colorado physician Dr. Bill Blanchet has accompanied his patients to Havana and says the impact of NeuralCIM, in just six months, has been life-changing.
“Making this drug available to the rest of the world is a mandate. It’s not a wish,” Blanchet told Belly of the Beast. “It will change the world.”
Belly of the Beast’s upcoming documentary, Teresita’s Dream, tells the story of Dr. Teresita Rodríguez, a Cuban scientist who helped develop NeuralCIM while caring for her mother as she lived with the disease.
“It would be very unfair if this product couldn’t reach other parts of the world,” Teresita says in the documentary. “It’s frustrating to think this could happen because of politics.”
Madrid, March 5 (Prensa Latina) A new container of aid was sent from Spain to Cuba, destined for the hospital in Matanzas and the municipality of Marianao, Havana, officials reported today.
The shipment was made in Torrelavega, Cantabria, and will soon depart from the port of Bilbao, in the Basque Country. It is organized by SODePAZ, with co-financing from the groups Matanzas Suiza, Medicuba España, Asociación La Gran Piedra and Asociación de Amistad Hispano Cubana de Málaga.
According to SODePaz, the donations were made by the Sierrallana Torrelavega Hospital, the Laredo Hospital, the Republican Athenaeum of Vallecas and a citizen collection in Santander.
It was also detailed that the container carries 60 computers, 24 electric hospital beds,
27 mattresses, 237 boxes of sanitary supplies, two physiotherapy stretchers, as well as drip sets, a centrifuge and sterilizer for pathology, rehabilitation equipment, ENT and gynecology equipment, among others.
Madrid, March 3 (Prensa Latina) The State Coordinator of Solidarity with Cuba (CESC) of Madrid, today asserted the right of the Caribbean island to defend its territorial integrity by land, sea and air.
In a statement sent to Prensa Latina, the CESC recalled that in the early hours of February 25, a terrorist boat entered Cuban territorial waters and opened fire on the Cuban maritime patrol that ordered it to stop.
In the exchange of gunfire, four of the terrorists from Miami were killed and the Cuban Coast Guard commander was wounded, along with six other terrorists who were captured, he noted.
“The mercenaries captured by the coast guard have subsequently confessed to Cuban authorities their intention to perpetrate terrorist acts in Cuba, for which they were armed to the teeth,” the source said.
The Cuban government has reported this serious incident to the US authorities, but the only thing the latter can think of is to verbally attack the revolutionary island by threatening military intervention, he added.
The statement took the opportunity to highlight the US and Israeli military attack against Iran, as proof that “imperialism was born scattering the corpses of its crimes around the world and it seems that it intends to die in the same way.”
Regarding the thwarted attempt at aggression by sea against Cuba, the CESC stressed that “this is not the first time, and we fear it will not be the last, that attacks of this type occur.”
Their perpetrators carry them out under the protection of the impunity granted to them by acting on behalf of the
imperialism in its terrorist attacks against Cuba, he noted.
In the midst of a fierce economic blockade against the largest of the Antilles, intensified by the administration of Donald Trump, “they thought that Cuba’s response would be different (…) a huge mistake since Cuba has always been and will always be ready to defend its territory, its people and its national sovereignty, from wherever the aggression comes.”
