LIKE many on November 3, I looked on appalled but unsurprised as the US once again opposed the UN General Assembly’s resolution condemning the blockade on Cuba. While it is encouraging that 185 countries voted in favour of the resolution, this now marks the 30th time that the UN has rebuked this decades-long policy to no avail.

Of course, the US and Israel voted against it, while Brazil and Ukraine abstained. It should be stated outright that this is shameful and there is no justification for the US’s brazen abuse.

The US first imposed the blockade in 1960 following the revolution and the rebel army’s seizure of power from the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Ever since, Cuba has flouted supposed economic and social rules and defied expectations.

Many attributed the initial survival of Cuban socialism to being kept within the USSR’s sphere of influence and support — however Cuba has now existed in a post-Soviet world for longer than it has in a world where the USSR was a visible antagonist to US and Western hegemony.

Cuba, like Wales in certain respects, is a country steeped in contradiction. One of Wales’s contradictions stems from a Welsh Labour government espousing radical rhetoric yet remaining firmly wedded to neoliberalism in certain key areas of policy. Cuba’s contradictions are decidedly more fruitful, progressive and serve the working class of the country.

The scholar Helen Yaffe neatly captures this in her book We are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World: “A poor country with world-leading human development indicators; a small island that mobilises the world’s largest international humanitarian assistance; a weak and dependent economy which has survived economic crises and the US blockade; anachronistic but innovative; formally ostracised, but with millions of ardent defenders around the world.

“Despite meeting most of the Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN in 2015, Cuba’s development strategy is not upheld as an example.”

The fact that Cuba is “not upheld as an example” is something that I’ve been working to change. This is why, a day after the UN General Assembly resolution, I put forward a statement of opinion in the Senedd expressing solidarity with the people of Cuba.

In my statement, I proposed five different points. These are that the Senedd: 1) expresses its solidarity with the people of Cuba; 2) notes that 185 countries voted against the US blockade of Cuba at the UN, with only the US and Israel supporting its continuation; 3) further notes that this inhumane policy has been in place for more than 60 years causing severe shortages of food, medicines and fuel; 4) recognises that despite the blockade, Cuba has made real achievements in health and education policy with the results widely applauded by Unesco and the WHO; 5) believes that the Welsh government should develop links with Cuba in areas of mutual interest.

So far, 16 other Members of the Senedd from both Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour have supported the statement. I hope that many more do so, and do so with sincerity. Cuba’s resourcefulness and huge strides in many areas despite the US blockade should be a source of inspiration and learning.

While many countries can partake in regular international trade, the blockade has meant that Cuba has become renowned for its medical internationalism.

Medical brigades, comprised of clinicians and medical experts who have benefited from the socialist Cuban state’s investment in education and health, provide contracts and revenue to the state. While many countries export soldiers and consumer goods, Cuba exports doctors.

Questions around energy security have become prominent in recent times in Britain and Wales, but seldom has decisive action been taken — and now we are all seeing and feeling the fallout of this inaction.

Cuba, on the other hand, has been making significant inroads in this area since 2006, when it introduced a major state initiative to improve the island’s energy efficiency and security by incorporating mass installations of efficient power generators in a decentralised manner, with increased emphasis on renewable energy, and progressive tariffs.

Cuba is also paving the way for renewables experimentation. Through the establishment of Cubasolar, engineers, scientists and planners have been brought together to foster an energy culture necessary to accompany the policy changes required.

It has trained technical brigades to install hybrid wind-diesel systems, hybrid photovoltaic (solar) wind technologies, wind farms, and hydropower plants and provide drinking water in remote and inaccessible communities.

The schemes it has contributed to have taken solar-panelled electricity to over 500 family doctors’ clinics, rural hospitals and farmers’ homes and over 1,800 television and video rooms for people in remote regions. Cubasolar has even assisted in the transfer of technologies to Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and many more through collaborative missions. Cubasolar is one of many institutions experimenting with technologies in this field.

Yaffe concludes her book by writing “Cuba, it appears, wrote the rulebook on resilience. However, its best form of resistance has been not just the assertion of national sovereignty, but the creation of an alternative model of development that places human welfare and environmental concerns at its core.”

If Cuba can achieve this burdened by a crippling blockade, we in Wales — hamstrung by Westminster — can surely look to its imagination as a resource for our own development.

Luke Fletcher is MS for South Wales West and the Plaid Cymru economy spokesperson.