Hands off Cuba? This dissident has a warning.

In recent years, Cuba has been largely offstage in geopolitics, left to quietly crumble under communist misrule. But lately, the island nation has been thrust into the news.

First, Cuba was a featured player in the recent seizures of oil tankers from Venezuela. The Cuban economy, such as it is, depends heavily on oil provided at cut-rate prices from the Chavista regime in Caracas. After the United States arrested Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro on Saturday, President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio turned the spotlight on Cuba, suggesting its leaders might be next.

Before marchers in Brooklyn and San Francisco start any “Hands off Cuba” campaigns, they would do well to consider the recent words of Cuban dissident José Daniel Ferrer. They were uttered in November at a ceremony in his honor: The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, in conjunction with the Embassy of Lithuania, presented Ferrer with their Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom in recognition of his struggle against the communist regime oppressing his homeland. His speech is a profound warning against the West’s complacency toward radicalism.

Ferrer did not win this award in 2025. He was originally recognized in 2020, but at that time, he was sitting in a jail for his bold opposition to the Cuban regime’s heinous oppression of its own people. Cuba’s communist government had arrested Ferrer more than 100 times since 2003, in addition to conducting a harassment and intimidation campaign against his friends and family. He said he had been assaulted in his own home, in front of his wife and children, and subjected to inhumane torture and humiliation in prison. The regime finally released him into exile in October 2025, bending to a pressure campaign led by the U.S. and the Vatican.

Read more in the Washington Post.