An interview withCarlos Fernández de Cossío
We speak to Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs about bilateral relations with Washington and what remains of Cuban socialism in a period of scarcity and unrest.
Cubans walk past the US embassy as they march along Havana's promenade on December 20, 2024, during a demonstration against the blockade and Cuba's remaining on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. (Yamil Lage / AFP via Getty Images)
JACOBIN
12.23.2024
Interview by Bhaskar Sunkara
On April 6, 1960, US diplomat Lester D. Mallory wrote a memo advocating an embargo against Cuba “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Since most ordinary people on the island, he reckoned, supported Fidel Castro and the country’s recent revolution, only extreme measures could shape popular opinion.
Almost sixty-five years later, despite manifest failure on its own terms, that policy remains in place. Cuban workers continue to suffer as a result.
The last few years have been different than the previous six decades, however. After an opening during the Obama administration, the embargo against Cuba became much more radical under Donald Trump. On the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden spoke of Trump’s “failed Cuba policy” and signaled a willingness to return to Barack Obama’s approach. In office, however, he did little to change things.
Combined with the impact of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, the intensification of el bloqueo has yielded greater shortages, crippling blackouts, and new bouts of social unrest on the island. The incoming president, for his part, has openly touted the prospect of “regime change” in Havana. Yet for many progressive Americans, Cuba and the revolution that once captured their imaginations and commanded their solidarity appears further from their minds than ever.
Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara recently sat down with Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, to discuss bilateral relations with Washington and what remains of the Cuban Revolution’s achievements in this difficult time.
Bhaskar Sunkara
You were born in 1959, the same year as the Cuban Revolution. What did the revolution mean to your generation — the generation that was maybe too young to remember the mass mobilization of resources, the literacy campaigns, and all the activity of that early period?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
We call 1959 “the year of liberation.” Mine is the first generation that received the full benefits of the revolution. It’s the first generation that massively entered a public educational system. The first one that massively reached high school, the first one that massively reached university. The first one that’s massively vaccinated.
That led to the equilibrium in which regardless of where you were born, what neighborhood, what training, what professional activity, what wealth your family had, we all went into school and work with the same conditions. So I would say it’s the generation that most benefited from the revolution.
We came of age at the moment of greatest prosperity in Cuba – the end of the 1970s, beginning of the ’80s. We experienced a consistent increase in the standard of living and the equitable distribution of wealth in Cuba and the improvement of the social condition of the population as a whole.
Thousands were going to study in the Soviet Union and the other former socialist countries. It’s a moment in which you had the first PhDs and when our scientific capability exploded. It’s also the generation that massively participated in our internationalist operations in Africa, like our battle [against apartheid South Africa] in Angola.We came of age at the moment of greatest prosperity in Cuba – the end of the 1970s, beginning of the ’80s. We experienced a consistent increase in the standard of living.
Bhaskar Sunkara
Do you fear some of the revolution’s accomplishments are lost on younger generations that came of age through the Special Period and after?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
They know a different reality. These are the children of the generation we were talking about, who did not have the fortune of experiencing the accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution as our generations did for two reasons: First, because Cuba was dealing with a severe economic situation. But second, because they were born when many achievements could be taken for granted, like having health care for all, access to education, racial barriers erased, and more.
They could take these achievements for granted, and yet they were facing the economic constraints of the Special Period when the Cuban economy dropped 36 percent in four years. Then after it began to recover, it never reached the possibilities of the 1980s, and now the younger ones are experiencing the very difficult conditions of the past five years.
Bhaskar Sunkara
Can you describe the extent of these difficulties, since COVID and since Trump’s escalation of the blockade?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
In the past five years, Cuba has undergone a very difficult situation as a result of a combination of factors. One is that the government of Donald Trump, starting in 2019, began to put in place a policy that he called “maximum economic pressure” against Cuba. This is the strongest economy in the world trying to asphyxiate a small country and its economy.
This has had a severe impact in Cuba, especially because the efforts are not only directed against Cuba, but also economic partners that do business with Cuba, including financial institutions. All of that is a big tax on our economy.
Then you add to that the effects of COVID. We shut down the country totally, both from foreigners — which hit one of our main sources of income, which is tourism — but also we shut down factories and workplaces, and the economy hasn’t recovered from that yet.
Then you can add a third factor, which is the war in Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia and Belarus have all been traditionally important commercial partners of Cuba. Products like fertilizers, like cooking oil, like seeds and other products that we import from that part of the world have been stopped or become very difficult to obtain as a result of that war, and that has an impact on an economy.
Bhaskar Sunkara
Can you discuss the current extent of shortages in Cuba, as it relates to social goods and electricity?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
People are facing long blackouts. Health services, which is one of Cuba’s great accomplishments, have been hit in a manner unfamiliar to our population. The capacity of the public health system to ensure the basic scheme of drugs and medicines required for the country is very big. So the limitations imply that many Cubans simply do not have access to basic drugs and medicines that they need, some of them for chronic diseases that need maintenance. We have problems with the availability of food. There’s an issue of inflation that is a huge distortion in the economy.
Bhaskar Sunkara
What are some of the internal factors hurting the economy?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
There’s a fourth factor. It began in 2011, when we took the political decision of transforming our economy. We called it updating the socialist economic model, but we began to take steps in 2016.People are facing long blackouts. Health services, one of Cuba’s great accomplishments, have been hit in a manner unfamiliar to our population.
First, we had to deal with our currency, and there was a long-held conviction that we needed to correct the existence of double currencies and multiple exchange rates. [That currency unification] happened in the middle of COVID in January 2021. That has had an impact on our economy, and it’s difficult to manage it under the very severe constraints that we’re facing.
Bhaskar Sunkara
Cuba has dealt with these constraints — the embargo and US pressure — for decades. Can you describe a bit more how it’s gotten worse in recent years?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
Among the measures taken by the Trump administration — and that the Biden administration continued — was keeping Cuba on the list of countries that allegedly sponsored terrorism. That impacts everything in Cuba economically: it impacts the availability of fuel, the amount of foreign exchange that the country’s capable of generating to deal with basic needs, and also the capacity to produce electricity.
Power consumption in the country has skyrocketed because people have more electrical equipment, appliances, electric bicycles, all that. So the demand has grown, and our power grid has aged, and we’ve had during this very difficult period limitations for maintenance, for repairs, for upgrading. The only way to balance that is through what we call distributed generation. That distributed generation depends on the import of diesel or fuel oil, which has become very expensive for us, above all because of US sanctions against the companies that transport oil to Cuba.
Bhaskar Sunkara
How does this compare to the Special Period?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
The difference between now and the 1990s is that in the ’90s the situation was more equitable. Today you see inflation and very high prices. You see restaurants that are beyond the salary of most, but they have customers. There are Cubans who go; you see the prices in the private stores that have been established, but there are people who buy, and many who cannot. There’s a hidden income — there’s a hidden paying capacity for some in the population through remittances or private business. They don’t depend on a salary like government officials or teachers or doctors.
This generates a level of inequality that hasn’t been experienced in Cuba since the 1960s. That’s a new reality that creates instability, creates this disenchantment in some, and generates migration.
Bhaskar Sunkara
You need hard currency from remittances, but remittances are by nature going to be unequally distributed.
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
US coercive measures have aimed at having the remittances flow to Cuba through irregular means. They don’t go through the banking system, which would allow us to have better management of the economy and a capacity to better distribute wealth and well-being in the country.
Bhaskar Sunkara
As a result of many of these things, your own office of national statistics said that almost a million people — almost 10 percent of the population — had left the island between 2022 and 2023. Most of these are presumably working-age people. And the population of Cuba, in part because of the historic achievements of your health system, is quite old. You have similar demographics to advanced capitalist countries in terms of longevity and your fertility rate.
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
Cuba is like European countries in terms of social development. The advance in education, professional opportunities for women, and women’s rights in general have an impact in reduced fertility rates. Yet we have practically no immigration and a relatively high outward migration.
Bhaskar Sunkara
Does this put the continued existence of the social safety net in imminent jeopardy?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
It puts it under stress. I wouldn’t say it leaves at a point of collapse, but it puts it under stress. But contrary to the past, we cannot say that a million people have truly migrated out of Cuba, at least not permanently. They continue to be and declare themselves residents in Cuba, but they’re not in the country. Some go and work part-time in the United States or some other countries and come back. But in real terms, that means we say we’re not [a country of] 11 million — we’re 10 million.
Bhaskar Sunkara
With this recent wave of Cuban migration, the patterns here are closer to the norm of other Latin American countries compared to previous decades, when there was less of a chance for people to return.
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
That is the case, with the important distinction that the US encourages Cuban migration. As you know, there’s a privileged treatment of Cubans that others don’t have.
Bhaskar Sunkara
In the context of economic difficulty and scarcity, what does Cuban internationalism mean to you? As you discussed just now, when the Cuban economy was stronger, Cuba per capita was the greatest internationalist force on Earth in terms of its efforts in Africa, Central America, in countries like Grenada, and so on. But now the international context without the Soviet bloc is far different, and also Cuba’s resources are far more constrained. So when it comes to efforts to support the Palestinian people, for instance, what can Cuba do today?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
In spite of our current difficulties, we still have at this moment over 24,000 Cuban health professionals working in fifty-six countries. You can add to that teachers, sports trainers, and other professionals. We receive no payment, no compensation for what we do in most instances. It’s pure solidarity. We do receive compensation in the case of economies that are larger or better off than the Cuban economy.In spite of our current difficulties, we still have at this moment over 24,000 Cuban health professionals working in fifty-six countries.
In addition to that, in Cuba we continue to train thousands of professionals from many countries, including the United States and including Palestinians. The students from Palestine, the students from Western Sahara pay nothing to study in Cuba. It’s an internationalist commitment that our population understands very well.
And of course, Cuba stands in solidarity with Palestine. Our president actually marched with our people in support of Palestine. I don’t know many presidents who have done that. Our position is clear and adamant, and we believe that Israel should stop the aggression, return to the borders of 1967, and allow for the refugees to come back to their homes. This includes the end of all the illegal settlements.
Bhaskar Sunkara
A common charge from critics of Cuba is that its medical internationalism is primarily a source of hard currency rather than an act of solidarity. Where did this charge come from, and what’s your response to it?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
Anti-Cuban politicians in the United States fifteen or sixteen years ago began a campaign to discredit Cuban international cooperation, above all in the medical sector, where it was universally applauded.
We focused our medical internationalism efforts on countries that were greatest in need, and only decades after the triumph of the revolution did we receive some payment from nations that were wealthier than Cuba. Is this unusual? If any institution around the world were providing vital services, it would take an administrative overhead of, say, 30 percent to cover services. But when the Cuban government does it, it’s called “slavery.”
Bhaskar Sunkara
What about the claims around the doctors providing medical aid?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
The doctors that participate in these programs are compensated. The Cuban doctors get both their full salary that they would get in Cuba plus an additional stipend in hard currency, which is sometimes multiples times their salary in Cuba. It is very difficult to say that someone who’s practicing abroad is a “slave” when they’re there voluntarily and receive an income much higher than they would receive if they were in Cuba. The people who push this narrative can’t find more than two dozen people to make these declarations, yet over a hundred thousand Cubans over the course of sixty years have participated in these programs.
Bhaskar Sunkara
In the last days of the first Trump administration, Cuba was put on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Obviously, you reject this classification, but can you explain the stated US rationale?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
When Trump came to power in 2017, there was pressure from the anti-Cuban sectors in the US for him to put Cuba on the State Department list of countries that allegedly sponsored terrorism. He resisted, to be truthful, until nine days before he left office.
It’s obviously a slander against Cuba, especially considering that Cuba has been a victim of terrorism organized in the United States. But beyond that, the importance is that once a country is placed in that list, as we’ve discussed, this automatically triggers a set of economic measures that have a chilling effect around the world because it threatens anyone who engages with Cuba.
The pretext used by the US government revolves around the Cuban role in the peace process in Colombia. Upon a request from the Colombian government, Cuba committed to host delegates from an insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the Colombian government delegates in Cuba.
Now, Cuba has been involved in the peace process of Colombia in the past, and we did so together with the government of Norway. Normally these commitments are quite complex because you have to first ensure your impartiality. Second, you must ensure the safety of all those participating. You cannot have any peace process if the participants didn’t believe this was the case.We are going to continue in our determination to have our own political and economic system and to reject foreign interference from the US or from any country.
The government of Iván Duque, as a result of a terrorist attack that occurred in Colombia, simply decided to put an end to the negotiations. We have no quarrel with that decision. It’s a sovereign decision. But the government then demanded that Cuba hand over this ELN delegation.
There was a protocol of what should happen if the talks broke down, and we said we must be true to the protocols we signed. Cuba would not be trusted again with any peace process anywhere in the world if we were to hand over these people. We received the full support of the government of Norway, which was our partner in this process. Yet this was the excuse used by the government of Donald Trump to put Cuba in the list.
The paradox is that once a new government came into power in Colombia, new peace talks were carried out in Cuba. It was in Cuba where two fundamental agreements [between the Colombian government and rebel groups] were forged. None of this would’ve been possible if Cuba at that time would have bent over and said, “Sure, we’ll not respect our commitments.”
Bhaskar Sunkara
Were you surprised that there was little change through the Biden administration?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
Most of the people we talk to in the United States were surprised. I would say that most of the governments of Latin America were surprised too. During the 2020 campaign itself, Biden said that he would change the policy of the Trump administration.
So the fact that he has been so faithful to the policy of maximum economic pressure shows to us that there was never an inclination from the president and his inner circle to change Trump’s policy. Rather, the option was to take advantage of the fact that Trump had put these policies in place and simply wait and see and continue, see them run their course and see if they’re capable of achieving a total collapse of the Cuban economy if they were able to achieve a high level of social unrest in Cuba — regardless of the cost to common people, to millions of Cuban families.
Bhaskar Sunkara
What’s your message to the incoming Trump administration?
Carlos Fernández de Cossío
We are ready to engage, no matter who is in power. But we are going to continue in our determination to have our own political and economic system and to reject foreign interference from the United States or from any country.
Contributors
Carlos Fernández de Cossío is Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs.
Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin, the president of the Nation magazine, and the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality.
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