Revolt or Die: Holding Cuba Hostage by Blockade

August 19, 2026

In 1960, Undersecretary of State Lester Mallory wrote it with a clarity his successors have never matched: the objective of the #Blockade against #Cuba is to “deny money and supplies, decrease monetary and real wages, bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government.” No ambiguity. No euphemism. Hunger and desperation are the means. Overthrow is the end.

International law calls genocide the deliberate destruction of a national group. The 1948 Convention explicitly includes “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Mallory described exactly that in 1960 not as a side effect...