US sanctions disrupt Cuba’s nickel industry: Global mineral supply chains reveal neocolonial extraction patterns and geopolitical leverage
Original framing: “Sherritt halts plan to dissolve Cuba nickel mining venture amid US sanctions - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Cuba’s nickel industry dates to Spanish colonialism, but US corporate dominance peaked post-1959 as a tool to destabilize the revolution, culminating in the Torricelli Act (1992) and Helms-Burton Act (1996). The 1970s 'Special Period' saw nickel exports as Cuba’s lifeline, mirroring today’s sanctions-driven resource scrambles. Parallels to Rhodesia’s chrome embargo or apartheid South Africa’s mineral sanctions show how resource wars prefigure today’s 'critical minerals' geopolitics.
The Sherritt-Cuba dispute exposes how US sanctions weaponize mineral supply chains, a tactic with roots in 19th-century colonial resource wars but repackaged for the 'green transition.
' Reuters’ framing obscures the ecological violence of laterite mining, the Afro-Cuban communities displaced by Sherritt’s operations, and Cuba’s historic role as a nickel exporter since the 1970s. The crisis reveals a paradox: nickel is critical for EV batteries, yet sanctions—sold as 'democracy promotion'—disrupt Global South industrialization while enriching Western firms via rerouted trade. Indigenous land-rights movements and Cuban scholar-activists like Monreal offer a path forward: a circular economy that centers sovereignty, reparative justice, and cross-regional solidarity. The real trickster here is the global system itself, which turns 'critical minerals' into tools of control while masking its absurdity with the language of progress.