I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG: Free Cuba Now!

Saturday, December 27, 2025

Free Cuba Now!

The end of 2025 is fast approaching, that time of the year when people of good will assess the blessings of the present year and make decisions about helping causes they believe in before the stroke of midnight on December 31st.

When you donate to the Center for a Free Cuba, you become a force for human rights in Cuba. Your tax-deductible contribution assists victims of repression, engages in advancing human-rights-centered policies for democratic change, and exposes the crimes of the communist dictatorship in the island.

Plus, if you contribute before December 31st, your donation’s impact will be DOUBLED thanks to the generous match provided by one of our board members.

With the help of people like you, in 2025 CFC was able to support political prisoners and their families in the island; provide humanitarian assistance to independent activists in Cuba; provide relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, denounce the violations of human rights of which the Cuban regime is responsible; and keep world leaders, both in foreign governments and the international human rights networks, informed about the real situation that Cuba endures today. All of that is part of our commitment toward a nonviolent struggle for a free and democratic Cuba that we carry on every day.

The following are some highlights over 2025.

On January 8th, CFC's executive director authored an article in The Hill that made the case against returning to the 2014-2017 detente with the Cuban dictatorship, specifically removing Cuba from the list of state terror sponsors.
When Miguel Diaz-Canel, and Daniel Ortega attended Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate inauguration on January 11, 2025 where Dictator Maduro said he would be, “taking up arms together with Cuba and Nicaragua” to preserve “peace” the Center brought attention to it, and called it out.
When the prior Administration announced that Cuba was being removed from the list of state terror sponsors on January 14, 2025, the Center reached out to Nicaraguan and Venezuelan pro-democracy activists to express our concerns and rejection of the action taken by the White House.
CFC joined with Russian activists on February 27, 2025 to remember martyred Russian dissidents Boris Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, and martyred Cuban dissidents Orlando Zapata and Oswaldo Payá, and to call on Cuban mercenaries to leave Ukraine gathered outside the Cuban Embassy in protest, then walked over to the Russian Ambassador’s residence to continue the vigil.
When the current Administration shut down Marti Noticias the Center made the case for reopening the station, providing context to its continuing importance and relevance on March 17, 2025.
On April 10, 2025, the Chairman and Board of Directors of the Center for a Free Cuba sent an urgent appeal to world figures to intercede for the life of political prisoner Alexander Diaz Rodriguez, who is in the Prison Ward of the Abel Santamaría Hospital in Pinar del Rio Province, Cuba, vomiting blood, and amplified his mother’s message.
On May 1, 2025, the Center for a Free Cuba’s executive director took part in a discussion at the Hudson Institute on Cuba’s Kleptocracy: How It Works and Why It Matters for US Policy with Nora Gamez Torres, of the Miami Herald and Daniel Battle, a former State Department official and a fellow at the Hudson Institute. The discussion was moderated by Nate Sibley, director of the Kleptocracy Initiative at Hudson.
On June 6, 2025 the Center’s executive director was invited to speak on a panel discussion at the Rayburn House Office Building on the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration and manipulation of U.S. institutions. A fire alarm went off in the building during the panel necessitating an evacuation but his presentation was made outside in which he pointed out links between Beijing and Havana in efforts to subvert American institutions. CFC also continued to highlight Havana’s relationship with Beijing, and Chinese spy bases in Cuba targeting the United States since 1992.
The Center co-authored with Prisoners Defenders, and the Justice Consortium "11J in Cuba The 'Homeland and Life' Protests A report on the July 2021 protests in Cuba and their aftermath." It was made public on July 10, 2025.
On July 11, 2025 the Center joined with Students for Liberty, and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation on the four year anniversary of the 11J protests in Cuba to hold a vigil outside the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC. Attention was drawn to the cases of political prisoners in serious health conditions, or under severe repression.
The Center’s executive director published an OpEd in The Washington Times on August 26, 2025 titled “Sanctions against Cuba work “ that provided an update on the kleptocratic nature of the regime, which included the August 6, 2025 article by Miami Herald reporter Nora Gamez that Cuba’s military junta was hoarding $18 billion in cash reserves, while pleading poverty to avoid making payments on foreign loans, and denying Cuban nationals life saving medicines.
On September 17, 2025 the Center for a Free Cuba hosted a policy lunch at the Rayburn House Office Building titled “Understanding Cuba’s Crisis and Its Impact on the United States.” It was an in-depth conversation featuring policy experts, firsthand voices from Cuba, filmmaker Jordan Allot, and scenes from his new documentary Cuba’s Eternal Night. CFC’s executive director moderated the event. Activists Ruhama Fernández, and Ariadna Mesa Rubio together with Jordan and fellow filmmaker Luis Alvarez participated in the event organized by the Center. The event focused on Cuba's ongoing repression, exodus, and U.S. policy implications, with film excerpts shown.
On September 18, 2025 Cuba’s Eternal Night premiered in Washington DC at the Miracle Theater, and was followed by a question and answer session. The film follows five Cubans over two years in the aftermath of the historic July 11, 2021 (11J) protests that took place across Cuba. It explores the ongoing crisis through the prism of government repression and political persecution, the humanitarian crisis, the mass exodus from the island, and the challenges faced by five Cubans inside and outside of the island. It provides an unfiltered view of life in Cuba after 66 years of communism.
CFC, the Ibero-American Association for Global Security and the Spanish Association Cuba in Transition identified the Cuban government as the origin and essential actor in the consolidation of the “Cartel of Suns”, the criminal network linked to the Venezuelan Armed Forces and the government, recently declared a terrorist organization by the United States and other Ibero-American countries in a report published in September 2025 titled Cuba, Precursor of the "Cartel of the Suns".
The death of American terrorist and cop killer Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard) in Cuba on September 25, 2025 presented the Center with the opportunity to highlight her case, and that of other terrorists harbored by the Cuban dictatorship.
On October 2, 2025, the Center protested the murder of Russian and Cuban dissidents by Moscow and Havana respectively, and held up a banner with a sampling of Cubans mercenaries identified by Kyiv to be fighting in Putin’s illegal war, called for an end to their involvement, and for Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia be returned to their families. The demonstration began at the Embassy of Cuba in Washington DC then proceeded down the street to the residence of the Russian Ambassador to the United States.
On October 29, 2025 the Cuban government’s annual resolution against the U.S. embargo for the first time saw a split in the European vote. Hungary, North Macedonia, and Ukraine joined with the United States to vote against the resolution. While Albania, Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Moldavia and Romania abstained. Prior to the vote the Center met with diplomats from Central and Eastern Europe regarding the resolution.
On November 20, 2025 the Center’s executive director was invited by the National Association of Cuban American Educators to address Havana's Threat to the National Security of the United States and hemispheric stability at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora in a live stream.
On December 4, 2025 the Foundation for Economic Education hosted a dinner conversation with John Suarez and Mailyn Salabarria with high school students on the realities of communism in Cuba next to the Pedro Pan exhibition at the Victims of Communism Memorial Museum.
On International Human Rights Day (December 10th) in an event hosted by the Czech Embassy, U.S. counterparts and other key partners, the Center for a Free Cuba moderated the meeting with former Cuban prisoner of conscience and dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia to discuss recent developments on the island, the situation of political prisoners, ongoing repression, and concrete ways the international community can better support Cuban civil society.

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