Raul Castro

  • Cuban Foreign Minister

    Cuba rebukes US over its ongoing energy blockade, aggression

    During the debate on ending the United States’ economic, commercial, and financial embargo on Cuba in the United Nations General Assembly, Cuban foreign affairs minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla delivered a stinging rebuke to remarks made by US ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz. Kerry Smith reports.

  • Man speaking at the UN Security Council meeting

    United States: Trump threatens to invade Cuba

    United States President Donald Trump is considering launching military action against Cuba, following decades of failed attempts by US imperialism to destabilise the island nation and destroy its socialist project, reports Malik Miah.

  • Cuba in the age of Obama and Trump

    What’s the fate of Cuba in the age of Trump? It is not an easy question to unravel, but Canadian author and journalist Arnold August provides some answers in his latest book, Cuba-US Relations: Obama and Beyond.

  • Ten truths about Cuba’s general elections

    Although the media spends a lot of time portraying Cuba as a “dictatorship”, it has barely covered the fact that Cubans have once again begun a process of electing officials, starting from the local and going all the way up to the national parliament.

  • Cuban Communist Party to launch post-Congress debate amid divergent visions

    In the wake of Obama's historic visit, the Cuban Communist Party held its 7th Congress on April 16-19 in the Havana Convention Centre. Beneath a backdrop featuring a huge likeness of Fidel Castro, PCC secretary Raul Castro delivered the main report on behalf of the Central Committee. Fidel being Fidel, many Cubans would have been reassured by his surprise appearance at the closing session on the eve of his 90th birthday. Traditionally, PCC congresses are the culmination of a months-long process of consultation with the Party's activist base and the wider Cuban society.

  • After historic Obama visit, Cuba says ending blockade the key

    Cuban President Raul Castro has insisted on the need for the United States to end its more than 50-year-long economic blockade on the Caribbean island after US president Barack Obama’s historic visit to the island on March 21. Castro also took the opportunity of the first visit to Cuba by a US president in more than 80 years to say his government rejected “double standards” on human rights.

  • Latin American leaders hail Greece's 'no' to austerity

    Supports of the 'no' vote celebrate in Athens on the night of July 5. Leaders of Latin American left-wing governments have congratulated the Greek government and its people after Greece's historic July 5 referendum. Voters rejected debt austerity proposals by Greece's European lenders. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said: “The ‘no’ vote in Greece is a victory against the financial terrorism carried out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).”

  • Barack Obama's plans for Cuba

    A second round of talks between US and Cuban diplomats began in Washington on February 27, with the aim of restoring diplomatic relations. US President Barack Obama announced, in what he termed the most significant Cuba policy shift in more than 50 years, that he will pursue diplomatic relations and urge Congress to dismantle the US blockade of Cuba.

  • Cuba seeks new socialist model

    The Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), held in April, “endorsed for the first time a fundamental change in the political and economic model”, said Cuban political scientist and Temas editor Rafael Hernandez. This does not mean abandoning Cuba’s socialist project, but renewing this project after two decades of the post-Soviet “Special Period”. This is a deep structural crisis in Cuba’s post-capitalist, centrally-planned economy and an ideological and ethical crisis of the nation’s socialist vocation.