“We must stand with Latin America, but to do that we must win the battles here in Britain too.”
Jess Barnard spoke at a fringe event for Labour Conference 2026 hosted by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. You can read an edited version of her speech below.
For many years, as we all know, the United States has treated Latin America as its backyard, free to exploit the people and the land rather than treat them as the sovereign nations that they are.
The CIA trained, armed and funded a force of Cuban exiles to invade the island at the Bay of Pigs, expecting that the invasion would help bring down the revolutionary government.
Instead, the invasion was defeated by Cuban forces in a matter of days.
For a small Caribbean nation, only 90 miles from the coast of Florida, it still remains one of the most extraordinary blows to the world’s most powerful imperial power.
And they continue to deliver those blows today.
The United States is one of the richest countries in human history, yet it subjects its citizens to millions of dollars of healthcare debt, leaving its own people at the mercy of insurance companies and big pharma.
Just 90 miles away, Cuba has established universal healthcare as a human right, revolutionising medical care and ensuring that the people would never be priced out of healthcare.
And Cuba takes that principle, and they share it with the world.
In 1963, as Algeria emerged from their battle for independence facing a crisis in medical support, Cuba answered that call with its first medical mission.
That became the beginning of an extraordinary tradition of Cuban medical internationalism.
For decades, Cuban doctors and nurses have travelled across Latin America, Africa and beyond, often working in communities where healthcare was desperately needed.
When Ebola devastated West Africa in 2014, Cuba answered the call, sending hundreds of health workers.
Think about the contrast.
One of the richest countries on Earth still allows healthcare costs to fall directly on patients and families.
Meanwhile, a small Caribbean island subjected to decades of economic sanctions has trained doctors not only for its own universal healthcare system, but to send around the world.
That too is a challenge to US power.
Because Cuba’s example poses a simple question: if a small country with a fraction of the wealth and resources can organise healthcare around the principle that treatment should be available to everyone, why should people living in the richest countries on Earth accept anything less?
And Cuban internationalism went beyond medicine.
Thousands of Cubans went to Angola to support its struggle against invasion by apartheid South Africa.
Their contribution to the liberation of southern Africa was later recognised by Nelson Mandela himself.
Speaking in Cuba in 1991, Mandela described the defeat of apartheid South African forces around Cuito Cuanavale as a victory for Africa, connecting it to Namibian independence and the weakening of apartheid’s power across the region.
That history matters.
Because again and again, Cuba has attempted to put internationalism into practice.
Doctors instead of bombs.
Medical missions instead of military occupations.
Solidarity with liberation movements rather than support for colonialism and apartheid.
And today it is Cuba that needs our solidarity.
For decades, the United States has attempted through economic pressure to achieve what it failed to achieve at the Bay of Pigs: to break the Cuban Revolution and force Cuba to accept a future determined in Washington.
The Cuban people have the right to determine their own future.
A country that has sent doctors across the world should be able to obtain the medicines its own people need.
A country that has stood in solidarity with peoples fighting colonialism and apartheid deserves our solidarity when it is under attack.
So our message must be clear.
End the blockade. Defend Cuba’s sovereignty. Hands off Cuba.
Hands off Cuba.
And just as Cuba has stood with peoples struggling for liberation around the world, we will continue to stand with Cuba.
Viva Cuba!
An important part of US imperialism is the destruction of the organised left and socialist movements across Latin America, to destabilise popular movements and organise coups against leaders to ensure that the people of Latin America do not challenge the power of multinational corporations exploiting the people and the total domination of the United States in the region and around the world.
Whenever the people of Latin America have reclaimed their land, their resources and their political system, Washington has responded with the same message:
That might makes right, and if you try to challenge us, you pay the price. Donald Trump has taken this to the extreme but also he has shone a light on the policies which have been carried out under darkness either by US intelligence services over years or disguised by the liberal charade of the Democratic Party.
The strikes inside Venezuela and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro and the capturing of Venezuelan oil are some of the most stark examples of this in modern times, and we call on the British government to apply pressure on America to free Maduro and Celia Flores now and to stand against US interventions.
The White House itself describes its policy as the re-establishment of the Monroe Doctrine they are telling us openly about their intention to ensure that American dominance is never again be questioned, even in the UN. Trump has stood before the United Nations and threatened to use what he called America’s “unmatched military might”.
On Cuba, his government are suffocating the Cuban people with sanctions, and make no mistake, these sanctions are designed to kill. For what other outcome do you impose a blockade on food, water, medicine and power other than to manufacture a humanitarian catastrophe?
And for far too long, Britain has been completely subservient to US foreign policy, at its peril.
From Caracas to Palestine, if you arm your allies as they tear up international law and permit the abduction of leaders or genocide of a people, then Western credibility, including British credibility, around the world faces irreparable damage, and the foundations for human rights and international law begin to crack.
Keir Starmer’s career suffered a fatality as a direct result of this kind of hypocrisy, as he claimed Israel had the right to cut off water and power from the Palestinian people.
International law cannot mean one thing when Russia invades Ukraine and another when the United States sends its military into Venezuela to kidnap Maduro or when Israel commits a genocide against the Palestinian people.
And the impact of Trump’s imperialism is also reflected in domestic policy. When Trump demonises migrants, he is also demonising Latin America. He vilifies the Mexican worker, the Venezuelan, the Cuban, painting them as threats to his white supremacist vision for America.
And there is a US tech company which has aided ICE, which has carried out harassment, surveillance, violent attacks, kidnappings and killings of migrants across America; that assistance is provided by the tech company Palantir, which has recently appointed former Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson as its vice president as it seeks lucrative government contracts, harvesting NHS patient data. It is a disgrace.
So the influence of American militarism and imperialism is clearly still gaining momentum in this country.
That is why, as an absolute bare minimum, we need to put a stop now to lucrative government contracts to these companies.
And ahead of the Brazilian elections beginning next week, we stand with our colleagues in PT in their election, facing the son of fascist leader Bolsonaro and being supported by a fascist billionaire in America.
Lula has put climate justice at the centre of Brazil’s diplomacy, defending the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of the Earth.
He has expanded programs to fight hunger and poverty. And on the international stage, Lula pushes for a multipolar world: strengthening BRICS and insisting that the Global South must have real sovereignty.
We must do all we can to support PT and Lula in the struggle ahead.
So I will end with this: we must stand with Latin America, but to do that we must win the battles here in Britain too, because while Burnham has talked about the domestic issues we have faced, he continues to pursue an economic model making Britain more dependent on arms sales and involving us in wars, with the recent Saudi Arabia bombing campaign. We must be clear: militarisation and illegal wars have never and will never be the answer to our problems.
So we must make the case for an international policy which ends the decades of subservience to America and puts human rights and international law at the heart of all that we do.
No more illegal wars.
No more coups.
End the blockade
Viva Venezuela
Viva Cuba
Solidarity with the people of Latin America
- Jess Barnard is a member on Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) and the former chair of Young Labour. You can follow her on Facebook, X/Twitter and Instagram.
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