Last month, the Central Committee of the Vietnam Red Cross Society launched a major crowdfunding campaign in solidarity with Cuba. In the first week, more than 1.7 million Vietnamese donors raised millions to support the island, which has been suffocating under the tightening grip of the six-decade-long US embargo. On 1 September, Vietnam handed over the first tranche of assistance worth VNĐ 385 billion ($14.6 million) to the Cuban people.

Vietnamese donors recalled the support they had received from revolutionary Cuba amid the brutal US war in the 1960s and 1970s. While the US dropped bombs, Cuba dispatched doctors and medical staff. It sent medicine, medical equipment, sugar and livestock, helping sustain a population under siege. Fidel Castro launched the Cuban Committee for Solidarity with South Vietnam, which popularised the cause in schools, hospitals and factories across the island — mobilizing the entire nation to stand alongside the Vietnamese people.

Decades later, in a campaign coinciding with 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the Vietnamese people are organizing in solidarity with Cuba – with donations ranging from just VNĐ10,000 to 1,000,000 ($0.38 to $38). The fundraising campaign, planned for 65 days, surpassed its goal in a mere 30 hours. And it is not the only initiative between the two countries. Vietnam has vowed to strengthen its friendship with Cuba and has launched joint projects on food sovereignty and biotech development.

Vietnam is not the only nation to embark on major partnerships aimed at supporting the besieged island. China is rebuilding Cuba’s energy grid, planning to build 55 solar parks in 2025, and another 37 by 2028. By the end of this year, new Chinese projects are expected to fully cover Cuba’s daytime energy shortfall — and two-thirds of all demand in just three years. At the same time, Russia has partnered with the Cuban government to build the “Cayo Digital” — a major tech city on Cuba's Isle of Youth that will house 15,000 people, including 12,000 specialists and 3,000 students. The project aims at boosting Cuba’s technological sovereignty, developing equipment and software for the entirety of Latin America.

These initiatives come at a critical time.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has faced crippling economic pressures and an escalating economic war waged by the United States. Cuba’s socialist system helped contain the worst of the deprivation: while life expectancy in the countries of the former Soviet Union collapsed by as much as six years, in Cuba it rose by two: from 72.2 in 1990 to 74.2 years in 2000. Cuba weathered the “Special Period” and emerged with the highest Human Development Index in one of the world’s most exploited regions.

During the “Special Period”, while Cuba was strangled by the blockade, the small island state still managed to offer material solidarity to the Vietnamese people. The tuberculosis vaccines the Cubans provided at this time left small scars on the left arms of countless young Vietnamese — a lasting mark of an unshakable bond.

But the blockade — which now includes Cuba’s designation as a “state-sponsor of terrorism” — is taking its toll. Blackouts plague the island as the power grid collapses and shortages now touch all areas of life, from medicine to construction materials to food.

But the Cuban people — like the Vietnamese people before them — continue to endure. In 1966, while revolutionary forces in Vietnam fought against the US invasion, Che Guevara reflected on the meaning of the struggle. “How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism,” he said in his January 1966 address to the Tricontinental Conference in Havana. Every strike against imperialism, he said, brought humanity’s liberation closer.

Today, these strikes take many forms. Among them are the new projects and infrastructures of South-South cooperation that increasingly undermine the US’s ability to wage unilateral economic warfare. As US hegemony wanes and a polycentric world emerges, these efforts will only intensify, bringing critical relief to a nation that has never been allowed to develop in peace.

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The Hague Group is coming to the United Nations.

During High Level Week at the United Nations General Assembly, The Hague Group will make its first public presentation. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola and author and activist Noura Erakat will present the Group’s collective plan of legal and diplomatic measures to halt the Gaza genocide and defend the integrity of international institutions.

Register now to save your seat: https://thehaguegroup.org/thgnyc/

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Art of the Week

OSPAAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America) was founded in Havana in 1966 following the first Tricontinental Conference, which brought together revolutionary movements from across the Global South. Established as the institutional expression of Third World solidarity against imperialism and colonialism, OSPAAAL coordinated support between liberation movements in what would become known as the "Tricontinental" struggle.

The organization became internationally renowned for its striking posters, which combined revolutionary politics with iconic graphic design. These posters, produced primarily between 1966 and the 1990s, promoted solidarity with liberation movements worldwide — from the Black Panthers and Vietnamese resistance to African independence struggles and Latin American guerrilla movements.