Trump’s Cuba report borrowed heavily from my book on an anti-imperialist movement – but twisted the arguments

A University of Virginia professor writes that the State Department's July 2026 report, 'Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,' draws heavily on her scholarly book about the Tricontinental movement, a 1966 alliance of anticolonial organizations founded in Havana, without citation. The department did not respond to a request for comment on its sourcing.

Where her research described the Tricontinental as a diverse, nongovernmental network that distributed magazines and posters supporting the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and other liberation struggles, the report reshapes the same history to support the administration's claim that Cuba has 'backed an unprecedented wave of left-wing terrorism on American soil.' The author notes the movement's own activists, including Stokely Carmichael, were often critical of the Cuban government rather than aligned with it, complicating the report's narrative of a unified Cuban plot.

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