The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) issued a public message in advance of 4 July to U.S. artists, writers, and academics regarding the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence from British rule
“Cuba is experiencing a systematic genocide and a war sustained by the US government that is expressed in a cruel economic and financial blockade for almost 70 years. The current United States government intensifies the commercial and oil fence measures that are causing serious consequences in our country and great suffering for the Cuban population.
“Cuban artists, writers and academics call on American colleagues of good will and humanist commitment to publicly denounce and condemn the policy of asphyxiation and threats of military intervention in Cuba of the Donald Trump administration.
“We do it precisely this Fourth of July, the day on which the signing by the representatives of the thirteen colonies to achieve emancipation from British rule is celebrated in the United States. We know that transcendental text, whose beautiful wording states that men are created equal, endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“Cuba is being attacked by the United States government in its inalienable rights. Ridiculous reasons are put forward to pressure us, among them, the incredible fallacy that this small Caribbean archipelago represents a danger to American national security. Such lies come from delusional and wicked minds. They are ridiculous to anyone informed about the United States, the greatest military and nuclear power of all time.
“Our peoples and cultures have a long common history where examples of a natural link abound, deep academic, artistic and literary connections, which the haters have not been able to erase.
“The Trump government’s policy towards Cuba remains hostage, as has been tradition, by a Cuban-American minority that benefits economically and politically from this stateless and irrational behavior. Today, the greatest exponent of irrational and inhuman confrontation is, without a doubt, Marco Rubio. The secretary of state lies to the American people about our reality and fuels the interference fire with his increasingly criminal actions.
“For Rubio and his acolytes, the oil blockade, the sanctions against foreign companies based in our country, the threats to those who trade with Cuba, the obstacles to humanitarian cooperation, the persecution of supportive friends who visit us are not enough. They even try to impose a global gag on those who defend us in international organizations on the basis of legal and human reasons, respect for self-determination and civilized universal coexistence between peoples and governments.
“Cuban writers, artists and academics know very well the beautiful history that has united our people throughout centuries, which is expressed in milestones such as the contribution of the Cuban merchant Juan de Miralles (1713-1780) to the fight undertaken by George Washington (1732-1799) and the friendship they professed; the myriad of Americans who fought for the independence of Cuba, and died for it on the battlefield, as Brigadier General Henry Reeve (1850-1876) did when he was only 26 years old, whose name is given to the brigades of Cuban doctors who go around the world saving lives and not dropping bombs.
“José Martí (1853-1895), the great Cuban poet and politician, lived in the United States for 15 years, longer than in his own country, and he had great friends there who supported him in his desire to resume, in 1895, the war for Cuban independence against the Spanish colonial government. One of them was undoubtedly Charles Dana (1819-1897), director of The Sun newspaper, who employed the Cuban hero knowing of his ideals and his powerful intellectual capacity.
“When he learned of Martí’s death in combat he wrote: ‘he was a man of good feelings and a big heart, of ardent opinions and high ideals (…) heroes like him do not abound in today’s world, and his warrior grave testifies that even in this era of materialist positivism there are spirits capable of giving everything for the sake of principles, without selfishness or ulterior motives.’
“We Cubans are proud descendants of that lineage. At Uneac we recognize ourselves in that sublime legacy, of fidelity not only to artistic and literary creation but also, and in the same way, to the Homeland.
“Here we are, in the painful daily resistance, but accompanying the people of Cuba with our creations. In very hard times, of great shortages and suffering, we give our neighbors our verses, songs, dances… in an unwavering vocation of service; to comfort souls.
“We want peace, we believe in the values that have united us for centuries to the American people, to its artists, writers, academics, men and women of goodwill. That is why today we ask you to raise your voices, to wage a battle of ideas, and to use your creative work to condemn the criminal policy of your country’s government against our people—a people of whom we are a part and to whom we owe our allegiance.
“No more inflicted suffering, no more deliberate genocide, no more of the war waged against us for the sole ‘sin’ of defending our national independence and our inalienable right to determine our own destiny! The world ought to be a better place, and the United States the country ‘that dreamers dreamed of’—as described by the great Harlem poet Langston Hughes (1901–1967), a close friend of Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989), the founder of UNEAC.
“Let us take Hughes’s verses as a call for sanity directed at a government that does not represent its people when it attempts to suffocate Cubans: ‘Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed. / Let it be that great, strong land of love / Where kings never conspire nor tyrants plot / So that no man is crushed by another.’
National Council of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC).
4 July 2026
Cuba 50 
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