Groups of people from North America, Latin America and Europe will converge in Havana this Saturday in order to deliver over 20 tons of humanitarian aid to the Cuban people, amid the worsening social and economic crisis gripping the island.
Organizers of the Nuestra América Convoy say they have been forced to bring aid into the country, in the midst of the Trump administration imposing a fuel blockade on the island, impacting vital services for residents. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said last week that the island had not received a single shipment of fuel in over three months.
“ We saw a tremendous failure — an abrogation of responsibility by states of the region, of the hemisphere, from the United States to other countries that neighbor Cuba — to provide the supplies on which its people rely,” David Adler, the co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, one of the organizers of the convoy, told WLRN.
The convoy was originally conceived as a maritime flotilla, but Adler said so many people across so many different countries were interested in participating that it became a broader convoy. Some aid will be sent by air and some by boat.
“We are composed of ordinary people from all around the world who are motivated by a shared moral and political conviction, a sense of outrage and concern, and a sense of courage in confrontation with the United States which seeks not only to strangle the island, but also to isolate it,” said Adler.
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Socialist political groups, labor unions and musicians like the Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap will be joining. Also joining is prominent left-wing streamer Hasan Piker and United Kingdom politician Jeremy Corbyn. Four left-wing members of the European Parliament are joining the convoy.
With several of the organizers having ties to the communist Cuban government, it has led to a backlash and questions about the group's true motives.
The island was already facing a historic and worsening humanitarian crisis before the Trump administration began to impose a fuel blockade. Food security was already crumbling. A cocktail of tropical diseases known locally as “El Virus” ravaged the population. Over a million residents have fled the country since 2020 and 2025.
The fuel blockade was imposed immediately after the US military invasion of Venezuela, arrest of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and subsequent capture of the Venezuelan oil industry, worsening the previous crisis. Venezuela had long been the main fuel source of Cuba.
Adler listed the “cascading” issues that come from lacking a fuel supply. Refrigerating food becomes impossible, leading to widespread loss of edible goods. Transportation comes to a standstill, impacting everyone from workers to farmers trying to bring goods to market. Without fuel, water pumps do not work, leaving taps dry. Dialysis patients cannot get treatment. Hospital equipment for the care of newborns are unable to be used.
He pointed to the international economic issues being spread through the closure of the Strait of Hormuz due to the Israel-US-Iran war in the Persian Gulf. Nations like India and Nepal are reeling and worrying about longterm effects on economics and health caused by the closure.
“ In the Cuban case, we're talking about not a reduction, but 100% stripping out petroleum entirely from the economy,” said Adler. “There’s no country in the world that could survive a fuel blockade.”
Cuba produces about 30,000 barrels of oil a day domestically, less than a third of what is typically needed, WLRN has previously reported, fulfilling the island’s needs to a bare minimum.
Adler and other attendees of the convoy like French European Parliament member Emma Fourreau participated in last year’s Global Sumud Flotilla, an attempt to bring humanitarian aid to the shores of the besieged Gaza Strip, which was devastated by an unrelenting Israeli military campaign following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack of Hamas militants on Israel. The Israeli military intercepted the convoy on the high seas in the middle of the Mediterranean, and those aboard the ships were thrown in Israeli prison, and many were deported.
For Adler, there are clear parallels between the two cases.
“ Having been normalized in that part of the world, United States is now importing that tactic into the Western Hemisphere, and so we think it's very important to resist that normalization to stand up against this tactic of siege, which is such a menace to the funs of international law,” said Adler.
He stressed that while it might be seen as provocative or “somehow trying to poke the Trump administration in the eye,” humanitarian aid missions are legal and protected by international law. In the context of the US embargo on Cuba, he said that goods moving from the US to Cuba have all been legally vetted and done “according to the letter of the law.”
“These are legal and, and morally necessary measures to provide for the basic needs of the Cuban people. Just as in the case of the Gaza flotilla,” he said.
Tons of materials
At least half a million dollars worth of solar power materials are being brought by The People’s Forum, a leftist organization based in New York City, according to a press release by the convoy. More solar panels are being brought from Colombia. Adler said the solar power will be directed primarily to hospitals and clinics that would otherwise be left with no electricity.
A delegation from Milan, Italy, is bringing more than four tons in medical supplies, with another half ton coming from a Brazilian delegation, according to the press release. Much of the incoming aid is food from places like the United Kingdom, Ireland, Argentina, Mexico and Turkey and more.
On March 21st, all of the groups coming by air and by boat will converge in Havana to hand off the aid to recipients organizations.
The unfolding humanitarian crisis in Cuba spurred the group to action, said Adler, but also the fact that the United States has been actively militarizing the Caribbean Sea by targeting and killing alleged drug smugglers. At least 157 people have been killed by US strikes across the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific since the Trump administration began the strikes last year, according to NPR. The administration has offered little evidence that targeted boats were carrying drugs.
In 2014 the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States unanimously declared the entire region as a “Zone of Peace,” meaning that all disputes between nations should be dealt with diplomatically and not through military action.
“ For the past 12 years, that ‘Zone of Peace’ has held firm. There have been no interstate conflicts, no hot wars in this huge region of Latin America and the Caribbean, until Donald Trump, for the first time in history, bombarded the South American capital of Venezuela, and of course, captured its president [Nicolás Maduro],” said Adler.
Connections to the Cuban government
The global convoy, while officially independent, has received significant attention from Cuba's communist government in official media, highlighting it as a symbol of global resistance against U.S. aggression and solidarity. The Cuban ambassador to Italy accompanied a delegation to the airport in Rome, state media reported.
Several organizers of the convoy have ties to the Cuban government.
The People’s Forum is co-directed by Manolo De Los Santos, who has participated in several events with Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel and frequently travels to the island. De Los Santos has frequently been described as a “friend of the island” by state media.
Adler has personally met with Diaz-Canel on various occasions, as reported by independent Cuban outlet El Toque. He told WLRN his meetings have taken place as part of “normal protocol” in the context of “large scale conferences.” When Adler was arrested by Israeli authorities in the Mediterranean during last year’s attempted humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza, Diaz-Canel directly called for his release on social media.
Mariela Castro — the daughter of revolutionary leader Raúl Castro — is on the council of his organization Progressive International. Adler said that Mariela Castro is a “pioneer” of LGBTQ issues on the island, crediting her with the passage of a 2022 constitutional amendment that expanded LGBTQ rights. International groups have also recognized her for her work.
Adler told WLRN those connections do not mean the Nuestra América Convoy should be seen as being connected to the government. With the exception of “cold chain medicines” that must be transferred directly to government hospitals, most of the aid will be directly transferred to civil society groups, he stressed.
For some, the push of leftist groups to bring aid to the nation en masse rings hollow.
“I've never seen those people stand up for human rights in Cuba or persecution in Cuba or all those young artists. And workers and campesinos in Cuba who are in prison,” Orlando Guttierez-Boronat, the Secretary General of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, a coalition of 52 civil society organizations both inside and outside Cuba, told WLRN.
“For me, those people have no credibility. They don't know anything about Cuba, and they're just going in there because they need the myth of a successful socialist society hampered only by U.S. economic sanctions. So the Cuban people are a footnote to them. The main thing for them is some kind of ideological struggle,” said Gutierrez-Boronat.
The Mexican government was pressured by the U.S. to cancel planned shipments of fuel to the island, under the threat of sanctions that would be imposed on any country that sends fuel to Cuba. Instead of fuel, the Mexican government has sent over 2,000 tons of aid in recent weeks.
Mexican station TV Azteca reported that much of the Mexican aid has been sold in government stores rather than being provided for free to residents, an accusation the Cuban government rejects.
Latest moves in U.S.-Cuba relations
President Trump has repeatedly suggested that the Cuban government will soon collapse under increased pressure created by his fuel blockade on the island.
“I believe I will have the honor of taking Cuba,” President Trump told reporters this week. “I mean, whether I free it, take it — I think I could do anything I want.”
The U.S. and Cuban governments have both acknowledged that talks are being held, although the nature of the talks is not exactly known. Under increased U.S. pressure, and with the help of the Vatican, Cuba recently announced the decision to free 51 prisoners.
The communist country also announced this week that Cuban citizens who live abroad will soon be able to invest in and own businesses on the island, a sharp break from past restrictions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that those announced reforms do not go far enough as he would like, and that what Cuba really needed was “new people in charge.” That comes as the New York Times reports that the U.S. is pushing for the removal of President Diaz-Canel.
For Adler and other observers, the kind of rhetoric stemming from the U.S. and the accompanying fuel blockade are remnants of times before the Cuban Revolution when the U.S. played a heavy-handed role on the island.
“ I think that's why so many thousands of people wanted to take part in this convoy,” said Adler. “There's a shared recognition that if they can pull off a ‘takeover’ — which is what Trump is threatening — if they can invade and annex this island, and walk us back six decades to a time of US colonial control, that is a threat.”
