Intensifying efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to end 67 years of communist rule in Cuba are drawing fierce criticism from many congressional Democrats. But not all.

Since Fidel Castro seized power in the 1959 Cuban revolution, the country has been a preeminent cause célèbre for the global Left. In this view, the island nation of about 10 million people, 90 miles from Key West, Florida, stands as a symbolic and physical focal point for anti-imperialism. Throw in decadeslong rhetoric about socialist experimentation and Third World solidarity, and Cuba, in the view of left-wing supporters, becomes a Western Hemisphere blunt-point political weapon to counter American hegemonic ambitions.