Summary:

The U.S. Department of State has released a 100-page report titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” The document frames the Cuban regime, since its seizure of power in 1959, as the enduring ideological, operational, and intelligence capital of modern radical leftism — a current it terms “Third Worldism” or tercermundismo. Havana, it argues, perfected a model of irregular warfare against the United States centred on subversion, espionage, proxy networks, racial and ideological agitation, and influence operations rather than conventional military power. This model is presented as more durable than Soviet-style communism because it prioritises civilisational, racial, and anti-Western grievance over pure class struggle. The Cuban approach is said to have shaped the New Left, the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground (a militant left-wing group that carried out a series of bombings across the United States in the 1970s), Puerto Rican terrorist organisations, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Chávez-Maduro project in Venezuela, and to continue influencing contemporary networks including Antifa, Black Lives Matter-adjacent activism, campus organising, and anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collectives.

The report draws on declassified U.S. intelligence, defector testimony, contemporaneous reporting, and Cuban state materials. It is organised in nine sections covering the revolutionary state, the birth of a new left, the export of revolution, Cuba’s espionage apparatus, revolutionary tourism, racial strategy, front groups, anti-American international alliances, and a concluding assessment.

 

Detailed Report

1. The Revolutionary State

For nearly seven decades, the Cuban regime has waged a sustained campaign of subversion against the United States. This campaign has infiltrated the highest reaches of the U.S. government, recruited generations of American activists, backed left-wing terrorism on American soil, and carried out one of the most durable foreign intelligence penetrations in American history.

Havana never possessed the conventional military capacity to defeat the United States. Instead it perfected a model of attrition organised around espionage, infiltration, sabotage, proxy networks, and a revolutionary infrastructure designed to turn America against itself. Despite Cuba’s chronically failing economy, this model is described as having yielded remarkable success. Cuban agents are said to have infiltrated the top levels of the State Department, the National Security Council, and the Pentagon, operating undercover for decades without detection.

The most enduring success has been ideological. Since the 1960s the regime has served as “the beating heart of a new and distinct kind of Marxism, forged around an overriding resentment and fundamental hatred of the United States and the broader West.” This network shaped the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground, and later Antifa, and today maintains ties to leftist non-profits, anti-ICE collectives, socialist groups, and Marxist militant organisations across the United States.

Cuban communism differed from Soviet orthodoxy by emphasising racial, social, and civilisational grievances rather than pure class conflict. While Soviet, Leninist, Stalinist, and orthodox Maoist models largely collapsed or declined, Castro’s ideological project is presented as having achieved near-hegemony in leftist circles by the early 21st century, making Havana “the ideological capital of the modern radical left.”

 

2. Birth of a New Left

A 1958 letter from Fidel Castro to his aide Celia Sánchez is quoted in which he wrote: “I swore to myself that the Americans were going to pay dearly for what they were doing. When this war is over, a much wider and bigger war will begin for me: the war that I’m going to launch against them. I am saying to myself that this is my true destiny.”

By the late 1950s the Western left had grown disillusioned with stagnant Soviet bureaucracy, Nikita Khrushchev’s policy of “peaceful coexistence,” the Secret Speech denouncing Stalin, and the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. In the United States, membership of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) fell from well over 75,000 in 1947 to below 5,000 by 1959 amid government crackdowns.

Castro’s 1959 victory offered a new model of revolutionary will and action rather than waiting for historical stages. His line from the Second Declaration of Havana (1962) — “The duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution” — became a rallying cry. Castro initially denied being a communist and declared himself a Marxist-Leninist only in late 1961.

The distinctive Cuban contribution was tercermundismo (Third Worldism). The 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana assembled more than 500 delegates from 82 countries, including representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the Viet Cong, the African National Congress (ANC), and Puerto Rican independence groups. This formalised an ideology of planetary struggle against Western civilisation. The revolutionary subject shifted from the industrial proletariat to colonised peoples of the Global South and their “domestic counterparts” inside the West, with Black Americans framed as an internal colony.

Cuba actively facilitated the Weather Underground, trained Puerto Rican groups including the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN — Armed Forces of National Liberation) and Los Macheteros, and sheltered leaders of the Black Panther Party. Havana, not Moscow, became the capital of the new ideology. Its influence is described as having burrowed into universities, activist networks, and institutions long after the specific groups of the 1960s and 1970s faded.

 

3. Exporting Revolution

From the outset Castro organised foreign policy around exporting revolution, with the United States as the primary target. Early instruments included the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (regime-funded in 1960), Tricontinental networks, and the Venceremos Brigade, which began in 1969 and brought thousands of American radicals to Cuba for political education under Cuban intelligence control.

Robert F. Williams, a former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) figure who broadcast “Radio Free Dixie” from Havana, is presented as a key Black Power intellectual whose reach Castro personally ensured. Cuban intelligence directives included exacerbating U.S. racial conflict; Castro is reported to have boasted of the capacity to trigger race riots at will.

Nearly every major Marxist guerrilla movement in the Americas since 1959 received Cuban support, including the Tupamaros in Uruguay, the Montoneros in Argentina, the National Liberation Army (ELN) in Colombia, and the 19th of April Movement (M-19), also in Colombia. The Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979 is presented as a major Cuban success involving arms, training, safe haven, and coordination of hemispheric networks. Puerto Rican groups such as the FALN and Los Macheteros are described as heavily directed by Cuban intelligence; by 1973 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimated that 135 Puerto Rican militants had been trained in Cuba.

In Venezuela, early guerrilla attempts failed, but success came with Hugo Chávez in 1999. Cubans embedded deeply in the security and intelligence apparatus in exchange for oil; Cuban officers remained in Nicolás Maduro’s personal detail into 2026. Globally, a 1985 State Department analysis estimated that at least 20,000 persons from virtually every Latin American nation had received military or terrorist training in Cuba. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) estimates put approximately 49,000 Cuban personnel in sub-Saharan Africa during the 1980s, of whom 80 percent were combat troops or military advisers. Cuban state media later claimed a total of 385,908 Cuban combatants took part in “internationalist” missions in Africa. Latin America became the top region for anti-U.S. terrorism in the 1980s, driven largely by Cuban-backed groups.

4. An Espionage Empire

The Cuban Directorate of Intelligence (DI, formerly the Dirección General de Inteligencia or DGI) is described by multiple U.S. counterintelligence veterans as exceptionally professional and effective — frequently ranked above the Soviet KGB in human-intelligence operations against the United States. Former CIA Chief of Counterintelligence James Olson called the Cubans “probably the most aggravating intelligence service I’ve ever worked against… They’re much better than the KGB ever was.” Christopher Simmons, a retired counterintelligence official, has estimated that scores of unidentified DI agents remain inside the U.S. government.

A key 1987 defector, Major Florentino Aspillaga, revealed that virtually every CIA agent recruited inside Cuba since the Bay of Pigs had been a double agent feeding Havana’s disinformation for more than twenty years.

The report details several high-profile penetrations. Victor Manuel Rocha, recruited in 1973, served as Director of Inter-American Affairs on the National Security Council under President Clinton, Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, and later as an advisor to U.S. Southern Command. Arrested in December 2023 and sentenced to fifteen years in 2024, he was described by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland as responsible for “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent.” In an undercover conversation Rocha referred to the United States as “the enemy” and called Cuban intelligence’s achievements “more than a grand slam.” A civil denaturalisation complaint was filed against him in 2026.

Ana Belén Montes rose to become the Defense Intelligence Agency’s senior Cuba analyst — known internally as the “Queen of Cuba.” She briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council and helped produce the 1998 Pentagon assessment that Cuba posed no significant military threat. Former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave testified that Montes “compromised everything — virtually everything — that we knew about Cuba.” She was arrested in September 2001 and released in January 2023.

Other cases include State Department official Walter Kendall Myers and the Wasp Network (Red Avispa), dismantled in 1998 and operationally linked to the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down. After the Soviet collapse the DI retained and adapted its networks; it now shares intelligence with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

5. Revolutionary Tourism

The Venceremos Brigade, established in 1969, is described as one of the most extensive foreign infiltration operations against the United States. Approximately 10,000 Americans have participated. Cuban intelligence controlled the camps, DI agents staffed them, and participants reported weapons training in guerrilla warfare techniques, including the use of arms and explosives. Before departure, brigadistas were required to compile detailed reports on radical activity in their home areas, which were turned over to Cuban officials. The Brigade is linked from the start to the formation and strategy of the Weather Underground.

Alumni include Weather Underground leaders Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers; later mainstream figures such as Los Angeles mayors Antonio Villaraigosa and Karen Bass; Susan Rosenberg of the May 19th Communist Organization, who later worked at Thousand Currents (a fiscal sponsor associated with Black Lives Matter); senior Labor Department officials; presidents of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG); academics; and founders of the magazine Mother Jones.

The model expanded into ongoing solidarity brigades, Friendshipment Caravans organised by the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)/Pastors for Peace, and the International May Day Brigade, coordinated by the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP — Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples) and U.S. partners. A recent example is the March 2026 “Nuestra América Convoy,” involving 120 organisations from 33 countries and participants including Hasan Piker, Christian Smalls, members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Jeremy Corbyn, Pablo Iglesias, and Isra Hirsi.

6. Racial Revolution

Cuba deliberately cultivated Black American radicals as an internal revolutionary column, framing them as a colonised people inside the imperial core linked to Global South struggles. Early efforts included invitations to Black musicians, athletes, and activists, a contract with a Black public-relations firm, and the hosting of Robert F. Williams, whose book Negroes with Guns influenced the Black Panther Party and whose Radio Free Dixie broadcasts reached the United States.

Stokely Carmichael’s 1967 speech at the Organization of Latin American Solidarity (OLAS) conference in Havana (“Black Power and the Third World”) is cited as formalising the internal-colony thesis. Cuba sheltered Black Panther leaders including Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, and William Lee Brent, and later granted asylum, living expenses, and celebrity status to Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army (BLA). Shakur, convicted of murdering New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, remained in Cuba until her death in 2025. By 1998 the FBI estimated that some 77 U.S. felony fugitives had found protection in Cuba, a substantial share of them Black extremists.

Shakur became a central icon for Black Lives Matter-era activism, with her words appearing on the official Black Lives Matter website, the formation of groups such as Assata’s Daughters, and eulogies from Black Lives Matter organisations, the NAACP, and elected Democrats. Cuba leveraged her as propaganda while repressing Afro-Cuban dissidents. Cuban state media celebrated the 2020 George Floyd unrest as proof of U.S. systemic racism while the regime crushed 2021 Cuban protests that were disproportionately Afro-Cuban.

7. Front Groups and Fellow Travelers

While ordinary Cubans face shortages, the regime pours resources into influence networks. The central node is the Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP), established in 1960. It claims more than 2,000 solidarity organisations in over 150 countries and organises almost all U.S. delegations. Defectors have stated that approximately 90 percent of ICAP staff are affiliated with the DI. Its current president is Fernando González Llort, a convicted member of the Wasp Network spy ring. The State Department sanctioned ICAP in June 2026 under Executive Order 14404 as an intelligence instrumentality. DI officers were involved in six of the first eight U.S.–Cuba sister-city arrangements, which provided access to city councils, universities, churches and local activist networks.

Key U.S. counterparts include the National Network on Cuba (NNOC), a coalition that includes the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), CodePink, and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). The NNOC produced a 2026 “National Rapid Response Plan” for coordinated actions against federal buildings, military bases, and ICE facilities within 24 hours of any U.S. military action against Cuba, explicitly linking Cuba solidarity to anti-ICE work. The Black Alliance for Peace supplies target maps of U.S. militarisation sites.

Other organisations detailed include IFCO/Pastors for Peace (long-time caravan organiser and sole U.S. administrator of scholarships to the Latin American School of Medicine, or ELAM), the National Lawyers Guild (described as the historical “legal arm of the movement” with deep Cuba ties since 1960 and continued mass-defence work for protests and anti-ICE actions), and the People’s Forum (a major recent protest hub heavily funded by the Neville Roy Singham network, with leadership having close personal ties to Cuban regime elites).

8. Anti-American Internationale

Post-Soviet contraction forced a narrower focus on the United States, but Cuba rebuilt alliances with China, Russia, Iran, and non-state actors. Cuba hosts the largest Russian signals intelligence (SIGINT) facility overseas and a growing Chinese SIGINT presence, including upgrades at Bejucal. Personnel at these sites are reported to have tripled since approximately 2023, with China-Russia joint operations noted.

Iranian ties include debt forgiveness, technology and port agreements, electronic warfare history, and facilitation of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah, Hamas, and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) networks in the hemisphere, especially via the Cuba-Venezuela axis. Historical DI training of Palestinian fedayeen is noted, along with an ongoing PFLP presence in Havana and ICAP partnership with the Iranian “Axis of Resistance” umbrella organisation Al-Tajammu. Cuba is described as functioning as connective tissue and a “concierge service” for a broader anti-American coalition.

9. Conclusion of the Report

Castro’s 1958 promise of a wider war against the United States was kept for 67 years across every front: guerrillas, terrorists, fugitives, government infiltration, elite cultivation, influence networks, and the opening of the hemisphere to hostile powers.

Cuba integrates hard and soft power into a single revolutionary project aimed at erasing U.S. power and Western civilisation by turning Americans against their own inheritance. Material poverty is described as irrelevant; ideological, subversive, and parasitic power has proven durable, outlasting the Soviets and grafting onto successive partners including China, Russia, and Iran. Cuban agents and networks remain embedded in hundreds of front groups and activist organisations that constitute one of the largest vectors of hostile foreign influence in modern U.S. history. Many recent upheavals — including the George Floyd riots, Antifa activity, and campus pro-terror activism — are said to have Cuban-linked threads. The Cuban people remain hostages of the regime.

 

Conclusion

The State Department report presents a comprehensive historical and contemporary assessment of the Cuban regime’s role as the ideological and operational centre of a distinct form of radical leftism oriented against the United States and the West. It documents continuity from the Tricontinental era through present-day networks and asserts that Havana’s model of irregular warfare and influence operations has outlasted the Soviet system and continues to operate through intelligence services, front organisations, and activist channels.

The document’s release, including the June 2026 sanctions on ICAP, underscores the Department’s current characterisation of these networks as active instruments of hostile foreign influence. The full 100-page report is available from the Department of State.