Cuba Says Biden Applies Blockade Even More Aggressively Than His Predecessors

Biden has maintained many of Trump’s sanctions against Cuba. He must fulfill his promise to reverse Trump’s actions.

By Marjorie Cohn

January 6, 2023

Z Article

Source: TruthOut

End the Embargo Against Cuba!


“The current U.S. government, the one of Joseph Biden, of all those that the Cuban Revolution has known, is the one that has most aggressively and effectively applied the economic blockade,” Carlos Fernández de Cossío, vice minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, declared in a speech on December 14. “It is the one that punishes the most, the one that causes the most damage to the daily life of Cubans and the economy as a whole.”

Fernández de Cossío cited the disruption of Cuba’s fuel receipt by sea, and economic depression resulting in the “extraordinary flow of Cuban migrants” as examples of the severe harms that Cubans have faced due to the Biden administration’s implementation of the blockade.

In his address at a conversation series on “Cuba in the Foreign Policy of the United States of America,” held on December 14 at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana, Fernández de Cossío took aim at the Biden administration’s enforcement of the blockade against Cuba, stating, “there can be no doubt that the economic blockade is the defining factor in the bilateral relations” between the United States and Cuba.

Biden pledged during his 2020 presidential campaign that he would “try to reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families.” In 2021, he claimed, “We stand with the Cuban people.”

But Biden’s actions belie his words. Fernández de Cossío said that Biden has applied “with absolute and surprising loyalty … the policy of maximum economic pressure that was designed by his predecessor, Donald Trump.”

In 2015, the Obama administration restored full diplomatic relations with Cuba, released Cubans imprisoned in the U.S. for trying to deter further terrorist attacks against Cuba, relaxed restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba, and ended some economic prohibitions between the U.S. and Cuba. It also facilitated the export of U.S. internet hardware and telecommunications and established increased cooperation between the United States and Cuba in intelligence-gathering, drug interdiction, scientific research and environmental protection.

Trump undid the progress Obama had made and imposed 243 onerous new sanctions — known as unilateral coercive measures in international law — on Cuba as part of his “maximum pressure” strategy.

The Embargo Was Imposed to Cause Cubans Hunger and Desperation

More than 60 years ago, following the triumph of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the U.S. government imposed an economic embargo on Cuba. The rationale for the embargo was detailed in a State Department memo that advocated the “disenchantment and disaffection” of the Cuban people through “economic dissatisfaction and hardship” so they would overthrow the Fidel Castro government. The memo recommended the denial of “money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

The embargo (which the Cubans call a blockade) “is not a single law, but a complex patchwork of laws, presidential proclamations, and regulations that Fidel Castro once called ‘a tangled ball of yarn,’” American University professor and Cuba scholar William M. LeoGrande wrote in the National Security Archive. “It has evolved over the sixty years since President John F. Kennedy put it in place, loosening and tightening from one administration to the next, depending on the president’s preference for using hard power or soft power in dealing with Cuba.”

Since the Cuban Revolution, the United States “has waged an unceasing assault, both military and economic, against the Cuban people, organizing an invasion, assassinations, terrorist attacks against civilians and systematic economic sabotage,” Isaac Saney wrote at Resumen. The blockade has cost Cuba more than $130 billion in damage, according to the United Nations.

Some Positive Bilateral Steps Taken Last Year

Despite this rocky history, Fernández de Cossío acknowledged that some positive bilateral steps were taken between the United States and Cuba last year. He cited migration cooperation; U.S. grants of 20,000 visas annually; a return to U.S. embassy services in Havana; cooperation between Cuban Border Guard Troops and the U.S. Coast Guard for interception on the high seas and return to Cuba; an agreement to hold exchanges on law enforcement, oil spills, health and the environment; and commercial flights from the United States to different Cuban provinces. The United States has again authorized “people to people” educational group travel to Cuba, but individual travel for education is still prohibited.

Fernández de Cossío also praised U.S. offers of humanitarian aid to Cuba “without political conditions” after a fire at the supertanker base in Matanzas last August and $2 million for repairs after Hurricane Ian. But Cuba still has not received that assistance.
Negative Steps Taken by the Biden Administration

The vice minister of foreign affairs also listed “developments in the opposite direction.” These include the recent U.S. designation of Cuba as a country of special concern in matters of religious freedom “without any real basis, on grounds that are dishonest.”

“In late 2022, the Biden administration took the unprecedented action to list Cuba as a nation of ‘special concern’ regarding religious freedom — which even the Trump administration did not do, and which was not recommended by the related commission created by U.S. law. This is absurd,” Art Heitzer, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s Cuba Subcommittee, told Truthout.

“Members of my Methodist church were prosecuted by the U.S. government for visiting their sister Methodist church’s centennial in Havana,” Heitzer said. “The late Cardinal Jaime Ortega, then head of Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church, told me after mass at the cathedral that he favored ending the U.S. embargo; and because of religious objections, the Cuban government delayed by several years the referendum process which has now granted constitutional protection to same-sex marriage.”

Fernández de Cossío also mentioned the Biden administration’s commitment in May to allow remittances to Cuba, but said that still has not happened and there is no “commitment to dismantle the measures announced by the Trump administration to disrupt the remittances.”

In addition, although the U.S. government announced measures to boost internet penetration and interconnection in Cuba, the United States still prohibits access for Cubans to more than 200 private commercial websites, according to Fernández de Cossío. This includes sites for education, health, science and technology, art, culture and innovation.

The U.S. government, Fernández de Cossío stated, admits that it “intends to promote the Cuban private sector, not to contribute to the development of the Cuban economy, not to improve the standard of living of the population, not to help a majority sector of the population, but rather identifies it as an instrument of political subversion … a political weapon.”

What Biden Could Do to Relax the Blockade

Fernández de Cossío described steps Biden could take “to deliver on his declared priority of promoting human rights and caring for the welfare of the Cuban people.”

Biden could remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. In 2015, the Obama-Biden administration removed Cuba from the list. But at the end of Trump’s term, his State Department added Cuba back onto the list. Within weeks, Fernández de Cossío noted, “45 banks and financial institutions with long-standing relations with Cuba severed their ties with our country.” This impacted Cuba’s trade and access to credit. “It is a devastating impact,” he said. “And even today, on account of its presence on that list, Cuba is still encountering trade and financial organizations that refuse to interact with us for fear of retaliation by the U.S. government.”

Dozens of lawyers have signed an open letter to Biden, stating, “There is no legal or moral justification for Cuba to remain on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list.” They wrote, “Biden has the power to remove Cuba from [the list] and reverse many Trump-era sanctions through executive action. However, Biden has chosen to defend Trump’s aggressive policies.”

Trump also stiffened the economic and travel blockade and activated Title III of the Helms Burton Act, which was enacted to discourage foreign investment in Cuba. Trump’s activation of Title III greenlighted thousands of lawsuits that will discourage tourism and investment in Cuba. In one such lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom issued an order on December 30 against four Florida-based cruise shipping companies that sailed to Cuba, requiring them to pay more than $400 million in damages. Fernández de Cossío pointed out that Biden could have suspended Title III like Trump’s predecessors. Activating Title III has had “a deterrent impact on our developmental purpose of attracting foreign capital,” he added.

In addition, “[The Biden] administration could have ceased the practice of pressuring governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to refuse medical cooperation provided by Cuba,” Fernández de Cossío said. “This U.S. action, of course, is intended to prevent dozens of thousands of people from receiving medical services, which is what Cuban doctors provide.”

Biden could also have ended “punitive measures, threats, and persecution against fuel exporting companies, shipping companies, port agencies, insurance and reinsurance agencies all aimed at depriving Cuba of fuel supplies that our country requires to function,” which “has had an extremely severe impact on the economy and the lives of the Cuban people,” according to Fernández de Cossío.

The Purpose of the Blockade Is Regime Change

The blockade, the vice minister said, “has an impact on everything.” That includes electrical service, transportation, the availability of medicine and material for medical services, and the ability to obtain supplies for food production and building materials.

“The U.S. government cannot pretend to treat Cuba as if it were part of its territory or treat Cuba as if it were a colonial dominion, or treat Cuba as if it were an adversary defeated in a war. We are none of the three,” Fernández de Cossío declared. He cited Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s observation that the intention of the United States is “to strangle the Cuban economy and thus try to provoke social collapse and a political crisis in Cuba.” Although the U.S. has failed in that purpose, it has led to “economic depression” in Cuba and “the extraordinary flow of Cuban migrants.”

Biden himself has called Cuba a “failed state,” and his administration “is doing virtually all that it can to make it so,” Heitzer said.

“The embargo’s overt purpose is to strangle the Cuban economy to promote regime change,” according to the Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE), a coalition of organizations working to end the Cuba blockade. The United States spends more than $25 million each year to fund regime change programs against Cuba.

On November 3, for the 30th time, the United Nations General Assembly called for an end to the illegal U.S. blockade against Cuba. The vote was 185 in favor, two opposed (the U.S. and Israel), and two abstentions (Brazil and Ukraine). The resolution affirmed “the sovereign equality of States, non-intervention and non-interference in their internal affairs and freedom of international trade and navigation, which are also enshrined in many international legal instruments.”

Joe Biden must make good on his promise to reverse Trump’s actions tightening the blockade against Cuba, return to the measures taken by the Obama-Biden administration, and work to dismantle the illegal and immoral blockade once and for all.

Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. A prominent scholar and lecturer, her books include Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law; and Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues She provides commentary for local, regional, national and international media and is co-host of “Law and Disorder” radio.

Cuban Boom

Cuba booms thanks to Canada.

Speaking Friday at a congress of leftist economists, Rodriguez said Cuba had transformed its economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union, once its chief supporter and trade partner.

An economy whose exports were 90 percent goods and only 10 percent services in 1989 now leans toward services, he said. Services now account for 76 percent of Cuba’s overall economy while primary goods, such as crops, amount to only 4 percent.

Rodriguez said growth in Cuba’s GDP "should reach more than 10 percent this 2007" despite high prices for imported food and fuel. Cuba has been aided by steadily rising domestic oil production as well as by significant fuel aid from Venezuela.

He said that if social services and commerce were dropped from the count, Cuba still would have shown 9.5 percent growth last year.

Cuba was aided last year by high prices for nickel and cobalt and by a continuing flow of tourists.

Rodriguez put the number of tourists for 2006 at 2.22 million – a slight drop from the 2.3 million Cuba reported for 2005 to the Caribbean Tourism Organization.

And it is far safer as a tourist resort than Mexico.

Air Canada launches seasonal Cuba link

Cuba ranks among Canadians' top three holiday destinations, Smith noted, adding that Air Canada flies to the Caribbean island 27 times per week.

And Canada's economic and political relationship with Cuba not only includes the tourist industry, but Sherritt and its unique bilateral trade agreement with Cuba for production of coal, oil, nickel and cobalt. Despite American attempts to apply their laws against Sherritt and other Canadian companies doing business in Cuba.

The U.S. government also appears to be stepping up its enforcement of the best known of its extra-territorial measures - laws enforcing its 45-year-old Cuban embargo.

One law prevents foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies from having virtually any dealings with or in Cuba, while another allows U.S. entry to be refused to executives and directors of any company found to be "trafficking" assets confiscated by Cuba after the 1959 revolution.

Under the latter legislation, executives and directors of the Toronto resource company Sherritt International have been barred from the U.S. because the company has interests in a nickel mine and oil-and-gas ventures in Cuba.

And thankfully Canada continues to exert its sovereignty when dealing with Cuba.

Canada's silence on Washington's Cuba policy speaks volumes

Canadians continue to visit Cuba by the millions each year. Canadian businesses pursue mining, tourism and other interests on the island. And the Canadian government maintains normal diplomatic relations with Havana, normal being the operative word, says longtime Cuba observer John Kirk.

Both Kirk and Ritter, who visit the island regularly, emphasize that nothing is likely to shift in Cuba for many years, with or without Castro. They note that Cuba's economy has been getting progressively stronger over the past decade, with higher nickel prices, cheap oil from Venezuelan ally Hugo Chavez and more tourists - all developments that point away from civil unrest in the country.

That cheap oil from Chavez is payment for one of the service industry exchanges that Cuba is exporting; Docs-for-oil trade shows Cuba's flair

The OAS is now looking at its position on Cuba, and Canada as a member of the OAS is in the position of offsetting the United States, which opposes any rapprochement with Cuba.

And thanks to Canada you have a further extension of civil liberties in Cuba

US-based Episcopal Church names woman bishop in Cuba

Cuba was a diocese of the U.S. church until 1967, when it was forced to break away because hostility between the U.S. and Cuban governments made contacts difficult. Cuba's communist leaders were embracing official atheism at the time, a stance abandoned in the early 1990s.

It has operated under a Metropolitan Council now chaired by the archbishop of Canada, Andrew Hutchison. It also includes Jefferts Schori and the archbishop of the West Indies.

And Cuba's export Rum; Havana Club is number two in world sales, which included Canada and Europe but not the United States. Their loss.

I particularly like the Havana Club seven year old amber, which is has a smoky chocolate flavour and is so smooth you can drink straight or on the rocks, no mix. It is like a fine brandy or cognac.

The number one brand is Bacardi which continues to use its wealth to fund anti-Cuban Terrorists in Florida.

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cuba, castro, trade, Canada, tourism, rum, Sherritt, economy,

IRONICALLY THIS INCLUDES ALOT OF ALBERTANS

How Canadian tourism sustains Cuba's army and one-party state

WHO HAVE LIVED UNDER A ONE PARTY STATE IN ALBERTA

Evan Dyer 

© Evan Dyer

 Felix Blanco, who grew up around the tourist city of Varadero, Cuba, attends a protest in Montreal on July 24, 2021.

Standing on a street corner in Montreal, Reinaldo Rodriguez has a message for Canadians.

"Canadian tourists are feeding the Cuban regime," he told CBC News.

Rodriguez was part of a wave of protests that have swept Canada's 30,000-strong Cuban community since unrest spread across the island on July 11.

"The people don't see (the money)," he said. "The same as happens with the money the government makes from its doctors who work overseas. The Cuban hospitals are unsanitary, people don't have medicines."

Fellow protester Felix Blanco carried a sign that read, "All-included resort in Cuba: 51 per cent dictatorship, 49 per cent foreign company, 0 per cent Cuban people."

© Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press 

Plainclothes police detain an anti-government protester during a protest in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, July 11, 2021. Hundreds of demonstrators went out to the streets in several cities in Cuba to protest against ongoing food shortages and high prices of foodstuffs, amid the new coronavirus crisis.

Blanco grew up in Varadero, the heart of the country's sun-and-sand industry.

"The regime uses that money for repression," he told CBC News. "We can see how many police cars they have, how well prepared they are to repress. But we don't have ambulances." (Cuban authorities have said they lack gasoline for ambulances.)

Cuban-Canadian activists say many Canadians are not aware of the extent to which the survival of Cuba's one-party regime depends upon the foreign currency tourists bring into the country, or the lengths the Cuban government will go to keep Canadians coming.

And an even smaller number realize just how many of their dollars are going not to Cuba's undemocratic government, but directly to a group of companies controlled by a small group of well-connected generals in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.
COVID crushes tourism

While foreign arrivals in Cuba have crashed this year, no other nationality has stayed away as much as Canadians, according to Cuban government statistics.

Overall visits are down about 95 per cent compared to 2019, but Canadian visits have plunged by 99.5 per cent. (Russia, by contrast, actually sent more visitors in 2021.)

That is hugely damaging to Cuba's economy, because (in normal years) far more Canadians enter and leave Cuba than citizens of any other country — including Cuba itself.

On January 1 this year, Cuba — like many countries — introduced new rules requiring all visitors to produce a negative PCR test for COVID-19 before travel.

Cuba is an island and few of its impoverished citizens can afford to leave it. Foreign visitors are its main source of vulnerability when it comes to COVID.

But just a few days later, Cuba removed the testing requirement exclusively for Canadian visitors.

It wasn't because Canada's COVID risk was lower. In fact, the rules were relaxed just as Canada was approaching peak caseload for the entire pandemic up to that point — about 8,000 new cases a day. (It's just a few hundred per day now.)

Cuba avoided the worst of the pandemic through 2020. That changed in 2021; Cuba reported just 169 new cases on January 1, 2021, but was recording over 1,000 new daily cases by February 1.

The Cuban government also offered PCR tests to Canadians returning home at about one-tenth of the price one would expect to pay in Canada, the U.S. or Mexico.

Some Canadians remained so eager to visit Cuba they sought to extend the Atlantic bubble to include the Caribbean island — by travelling from Halifax to Cayo Coco to stay in a Canadians-only hotel at a time when Nova Scotia was requiring most Canadians looking to visit the province to apply for government permission.
The army and the resorts

In December 2019, just before COVID hit, Cuban President Raul Castro named Manuel Marrero Cruz as Cuba's first prime minister in over 30 years.

The last person to hold the post had been Fidel Castro himself, who left it to become president. The appointment of the long-serving minister of tourism demonstrated the vital importance of hotels and resorts to Cuba's economy.

Other than tourism, there is little Cuba has to offer world markets in comparison to its needs. For every dollar it gains through exports, it spends five on imports. It looks to tourists to make up that yawning gap year after year.

 Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters 

A woman passes by a poster displaying images of late Cuban President Fidel Castro, Cuba's First Secretary of the Communist Party and former President Raul Castro and Cuba's President Miguel Diaz Canel in Havana, Cuba, on April 12, 2021.

Raul Castro, more than anyone else, is responsible for Cuba's modern resort industry. Seen by many Cubans as more pragmatic than his brother Fidel, Raul was in charge of the Revolutionary Armed Forces when Soviet aid to Cuba dried up.

He used the country's defence budget to branch out into tourism and other businesses, creating the nucleus of a business empire that today is the biggest player in the Cuban economy. Hotels went up around Cuba's western coast, although Cuba's own people were forbidden to visit them until 2008 (the same year the Cuban government dropped its ban on cellphones, computers and DVD players.)

A hotel empire led by a general

At the top of the military's hotel empire sits General Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja, father of two of Raul Castro's grandchildren and a member of Cuba's Politburo — a man some Cubans believe is the one really running the country alongside his father-in-law, using President Miguel Diaz-Canel as a replaceable public face.

Rodriguez Lopez-Calleja heads the armed forces' holding company GAESA, which runs a range of tourism, construction, banking, air and ground transport and retail businesses across the country, including the hotel chain Gaviota, which owns most of the four- and five-star hotel rooms in the country.

The Cuban state also owns Cuba's two other big chains, the Gran Caribe Hotel Group and Cubanacan, although both chains recently have been losing ground to the military's holding company.

The accounts of the chains, like those of all state enterprises in Cuba, are closed.

But the Cuban government has been very public about its intentions to build its economic future on tourism.

Cuba's current development plan foresees the construction of over 100,000 new hotel rooms by 2030, along with 24 new golf courses.

At the heart of the growth plan are GAESA and other companies owned by the armed forces. GAESA will spend over $15 billion on 121 hotel projects, twice as much as is expected to come from foreign investors and Cuba's civilian government combined.

The Cuban military is on track to own over 90,000 hotel rooms by 2030 — more rooms than currently exist in the entire Dominican Republic, the most hotel-rich country in the Caribbean.

And spending on new hotel and real estate ventures now far outstrips Cuba's shrinking budgets for health, education, agriculture and science combined.

Even as the pandemic gripped Cuba and tourism plunged, Cuba's Communist government was able to find Canadian partners. Blue Diamond Resorts, a company that already manages about 20 state-owned hotels in Cuba, went into business with the Cuban state again in August 2020 to open boutique hotel Mystique Casa Perla in Varadero.

© Fernando Medina/Reuters

 Tourists walk at the beach in Varadero, Cuba on December 7, 2018.

Neither Blue Diamond nor its parent company Sunwing responded to CBC News inquiries for this article. Neither did the Cuba Tourist Board of Canada.

Richard Feinberg of the University of California San Diego co-wrote a paper on Cuba's tourist industry for the Brookings Institution. He said foreign hotel chains typically have one of two types of arrangements with the Cuban state or military.

Hotels owned by the Ministry of Tourism, he said, often have foreign companies as junior partners (typically with a 49 per cent stake in the property, with Cuba holding the controlling share). Military-owned hotels, he said, more often belong entirely to the military's real estate company Almest S.A., and foreign partners merely have management contracts.

Low wages, 'captive' workforce

Workers are provided through an employment agency also controlled by GAESA/Gaviota. While a foreign company pays Gaviota an estimated $750 a month for the average base-salary worker, the worker would typically receive less than 10 per cent of that amount in salary. The rest goes to the Cuban military.

Cuban hotel workers take home only a tiny fraction of what their counterparts in Cancun or the Dominican Republic earn for similar work. Guest workers from India working on one hotel were paid ten times more than their Cuban peers.

Communist Party organs defended the pay difference by claiming that the productivity of Indian workers was "three or four times better" than the average Cuban's.

© Ramon Espinosa/Associated Press 

Wearing a mask against the spread of the new coronavirus, a maid goes to clean the rooms at the Hotel Comodoro in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Feb. 11, 2021.

In addition, GAESA's construction projects benefit from the forced labour of military conscripts, such as those who dug the foundation beneath the new Hotel Prado y Malecon in Havana.

Felix Blanco points to another difference between Cuba's tourist industry and other Caribbean destinations: a captive workforce. While Mexican workers unsatisfied with their wages can leave and set up on their own, "my family in Cuba are not allowed to have their own business." A Cuban who leaves a $40/month job in the tourist sector will be lucky to earn $30/month in other sectors of the economy.

Tourism jobs are highly sought after, said Feinberg.

"Cubans leave their jobs as engineers, as medical professionals, as teachers, to work in those hotels," he told CBC News, "because that's where the salaries are better, the working conditions are better, and you have access to tips from international tourists."
No way around the military

Some tourists choose to avoid big hotels and resorts in Cuba, preferring private homes and B&Bs. Even then, it's hard for them to avoid enriching Cuba's military. It operates the banks through which tourists make credit card payments to individuals. It operates the stores that sell imported food and goods.

The Cuban military dominates hotel building in Havana and five years ago took over control of Habaguanex, the consortium that operates Old Havana's stores and restaurants, previously run by the city's official historian Eusebio Leal.

As U.S. hotel company Marriott discovered last year, it is virtually impossible to operate on the island today without enriching what is already the country's richest institution: the Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Opinions are divided on whether Canadian tourists might, by staying away, hasten the fall of Cuba's one-party state. Cuban-Canadians like Felix Blanco say they believe it would help.

Feinberg, meanwhile, said he's skeptical of "the idea that if we could only reduce the number of stays at these hotels we could somehow starve out and shrink the Cuban security apparatus."

The Cuban government would ensure that resources flow to that apparatus one way or another, he said.

What's not clear is where they would flow from. Cuba's increasing dependence on tourism has been acknowledged by President Miguel Diaz-Canel himself, who has called it "the locomotive of the Cuban economy" and once told national deputies that "what we have on a weekly basis to pay credits, to buy raw materials and to invest, comes from tourism."

"Cuba is a place that a lot of Canadians have affection for," said Karen Dubinsky of Queens University, who has written about the lives of ordinary Cubans.

"Canadians aren't stupid. They know that to be on vacation in a resort hotel is not the same as living life, certainly not the same as how Cubans live life. And maybe Canadians could dig a little deeper," she told CBC News. "If Canadians become more sympathetic and educated tourists as a result of this, that's a good place to start."

END THE EMBARGO!

Biden Must Remove the Designation of Cuba as Terrorist-Sponsoring Nation

BY W. T. WHITNEY

 APRIL 4, 2024
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Photo by Alexander Kunze

President Obama in 2015 removed Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism (SSOT). President Trump reversed that action in January 2020, thereby aggravating economic difficulties for Cuba. President Joe Biden needs to end the designation. The time is now for representatives, senators, and other elected officials to pressure him.

Cuba is no terrorist-sponsoring nation. In accusing Cuba of hosting terrorists, the Trump administration disregarded Cuba’s invitation to Colombian guerrillas to join representatives of Colombia’s government on the island to negotiate peace.

The SSOT designation requires that targeted nations not use dollars in international transactions. The U.S. Treasury Department punishes institutional offenders. Dollars are the world’s dominant currency, and in normal circumstances, banks would use them in transactions involving Cuba. Now, however, foreign lenders steer clear of Cuba. Payments for exported goods and services may not arrive. Cuba is financially paralyzed.

Cubans are suffering. Food is short, as are spare parts, raw materials for domestic production, school and healthcare supplies, spare parts, consumer goods, and cash.  The aim of U.S. policy, as specified by a State Department memo of April 1960, is to cause shortages, despair and suffering serious enough to induce Cubans to overthrow their government.

The labeling of Cuba as a terrorist-sponsoring nation is part of the decades-long U.S. policy of embargo, which is more accurately characterized as an economic blockade, this in recognition of its worldwide reach. Reasons for removing the SSOT designation are the same ones for ending the blockade.

After all, ending the blockade is the Cuba solidarity movement’s prime goal. The campaign to persuade congresspersons to pressure the president to remove Cuba from the SSOT list must refer to the blockade, even as it pursues the more limited goal.

Congresspersons know that, as per the Helms-Burton Law of 1996, congressional action is required for the blockade’s end. They know that current political realities are unfavorable for such action.  Were they to agitate for presidential action on the SSOT matter, they would, in effect, be preparing for a fight against the whole blockade. That’s why it makes sense to use the one rationale to back up each fight.

Ending the blockade (and SSOT designation) has its uses

+      Producers and manufacturers would sell goods in Cuba.

+      With despair and discouragement having diminished, fewer Cubans would be heading to the United States; 425,000 Cuban migrants arrived in 2022 and 2023.

+      U.S. citizens could visit Cuba for recreation, cultural enrichment, and education. Their exposure to Cuban artists, scientists, and educators visiting in the United States would be gratifying.

+      For the blockade to end would disappoint proponents.  They should have been disappointed by the results of the decades-long experiment showing that the blockade did not work. Regime change did not happen. Blockade apologists could reasonably enough move on to something else.

+      An end to the U.S. blockade (and SSOT designation) would gratify nations in the UN General Assembly that annually, and all but unanimously, vote to approve a resolution calling for the blockade’s end. Critics of U.S. interventionist tendencies, wherever they are, would be pleased. The U.S. government would earn some love.

Ideals and values 

+      The blockade is cruel. It causes human suffering.

+      It violates international law: “Whatever view is adopted, either that of coercion or aggression, it is quite evident that the imposition of the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba constituted an illegal act … the blockade is a fragrant violation of the contemporary standard which is founded on … sovereign equality between states.” (Paul A. Shneyer and Virginia Barta, The Legality of the U.S. Economic Blockade of Cuba under International Law, 13 Case W. Res. J. Int’l L. 451 (1981) 

+  The blockade is immoral. It contributes to sickness and deaths: “By reducing access to medicines and medical supplies from other countries and preventing their purchase from US firms, the embargo contributes to this rise in morbidity and mortality.” (Richard Garfield, DrPH, RN, commenting on Cuba’s “Special Period” of shortages following the fall of the Soviet Bloc – Am. J. Public Health 1997, 877, 15-20.)

+ The blockade exposes certain failings of U.S. democracy. U.S. political leaders remain oblivious to polling data showing strong support for normal U.S.-Cuba relations and for ending the blockade. Leaders of the Cuban exile community have long exerted undue influence in determining U.S. policies toward Cuba. The appearance is that of an important aspect of foreign policy having been farmed out to a strident minority.

Contradictions

The U.S. government claims the blockade serves as punishment of Cuba for allegedly violating human rights. But the United States has easily co-existed with governments famous for disregarding human rights, like Nicaragua’s Somoza regime, Chile under Pinochet, Haiti ruled by the Duvaliers, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

U.S. policymakers see Cuba as a Communist dictatorship and, on that account, as deserving of economic blockade. Even so, the United States trades with Vietnam and China, where Communist parties are in power.

Vice President Joe Biden presumably backed President Obama’s action in removing Cuba from the SSOT list. Contradicting himself, he refuses to reverse former President Trump’s placement of Cuba back on the list.

Contradictions point to Cuba as special case in the history of U.S. relations with other countries. Only Cubans find an open door on arrival in the United States as irregular migrants. Such red-carpet treatment stands alone in the record of how the U.S. government handles immigration.

The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 ensured that Cubans arriving in the United States without documents would at once receive social services and a work permit and a year later be granted permanent residence and the opportunity for citizenship.

The fact of U.S. hegemonic intent and actions regarding Cuba for 200 years must be extraordinary in the history of international relations. From Thomas Jefferson’s time until the 20^th century, leaders in Washington sought to own or annex Cuba. They would later on find other modalities.

U.S.- Cuba relations have long been on automatic pilot. Pursuing justice and fairness, elected officials in Washington would be moving beyond that history. They would go against the grain as they pressure a U.S. president to no longer designate Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. Persevering, they would fight to relieve Cuba of all U.S. harassment.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

Cuba calls U.S. trade embargo a 'hurricane' that never ends

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Wednesday said the decades-old U.S. trade embargo has been causing record financial losses and untold human suffering in recent months, at a time when Cuba was also battling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricane Ian.


Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez speaks in Havana

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez made the comments at the launch of an annual campaign for a United Nations resolution condemning the trade embargo, which was put in place after Cuba's 1959 revolution.

The foreign minister's comments follow a Biden administration announcement on Tuesday saying it would provide $2 million to Cuba for emergency relief efforts following Hurricane Ian, a rare olive branch between the two long-time foes.

"Despite the positive announcements... the blockade has not changed in its scope or depth," Rodriguez told reporters in a news conference in Havana.

He said Cuba was grateful for the U.S. aid but was still crippled by the embargo, which he called a "hurricane" that never ceases to batter the island.

Related video: Hurricane Ian Makes Landfall in Cuba as It Approaches Florida
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"The embargo is a permanent pandemic, a constant hurricane," he said. "Today the policy of President Biden's government towards Cuba is... the same Republican policy, no changes have been introduced in that policy."

Former U.S. President Trump, a Republican, introduced stiff new sanctions against Cuba, beginning in 2017. The administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has since eased some policies around remittances, flights, tourism and more recently, migration, saying it would reopen full consular services in Havana in 2023.


Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez speaks in Havana

© Reuters/ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI

The broader embargo, however, has remained largely unchanged. The web of U.S. laws and regulations complicate financial transactions and the acquisition of goods and services by the Cuban government.

The United States has said its policies are aimed at channeling "funds toward the Cuban people and away from a regime that has failed to meet the most basic requirements of a free and just society."

Rodriguez on Tuesday blasted that assertion, saying the blockade was "aimed at causing the inability of the country to meet the fundamental needs of the population."

The U.N. General Assembly will vote on Nov. 2 and 3 on a non-binding resolution condemning the trade embargo. It will be the 30th time Cuba has marshaled international support against the embargo. The resolution has historically garnered near unanimous support from member nations and is expected to pass again this year.

Economic losses caused by the embargo from August 2021 through February 2022 amounted to $3.8 billion, a record for that seven month period, Rodriguez said, bringing the total cost to $154 billion since the embargo's inception.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood and Nelson Acosta, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

Cuba estimates monthly losses due to U.S. blockade at more than 454 million euros

Daniel Stewart - Yesterday - News 360

The Government of Cuba has denounced this Wednesday that between August 2021 and February 2022 the island suffered losses amounting to 3,806 million dollars (a similar figure in euros), equivalent to more than 450 million per month, due to the blockade imposed by the United States six decades ago.


Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez - 

MINISTERIO DE EXTERIORES DE CUBA

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who emphasized in a statement that this means monthly losses of 454 million dollars, denounced that during the first 14 months of U.S. President Joe Biden's term of office, Cuba has lost 6.364 billion dollars, a milestone he described as a "historic record".

"Between August 2021 and February 2022, the losses caused by the blockade are in the order of 3.806 billion dollars. This is an historic record amount for a reduced period such as these seven months. Cuba's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to very conservative data, could have grown, despite the adverse circumstances faced by the Cuban economy, by 4.5 percent in that period, had these measures not been applied," Rodriguez assured during a press conference.

Since the United States imposed a blockade against Cuba six decades ago, the island would have requested a total of 154.217 billion dollars, more than seven times the U.S. GDP.

"(This is an) exorbitant figure for a small economy, without great natural resources, insular, underdeveloped, like the Cuban one (...). Imagine, imagine, imagine what Cuba could have done with these resources. What Cuba would be like today if the country had had those resources," added the Cuban Foreign Minister.

The Cuban Executive has accused Biden of continuing "inertially" the same policy as his predecessor, Donald Trump, regarding the economic blockade of Cuba, which was strengthened by the previous tenant of the White House during his term in office.

He also remarked that the blockade "reaches and harms every Cuban family, Cubans living in the United States, U.S. citizens and people and businesses around the world", which is why he has called on Washington to remove it.

"Cuba has the right to live without a blockade, it has the right to live in peace. Cuba would be better off without a blockade, better off. Everyone would be better off without it. The United States would be a better country without a blockade against Cuba," Rodriguez said during the press conference.


SIX MILLION MORE THAN THE U$ GAVE

The UN provides almost 8 million euros to support the reconstruction of Cuba after hurricane ‘Ian’.

Daniel Stewart - Yesterday -

The United Nations has announced $7.8 million (a similar figure in euros) to support relief efforts following the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian in Cuba, where more than half a million people are in need of humanitarian aid and 3.2 million people have been affected.


Aerial view of hurricane 'Ian' as it advances towards Cuba

 - NOAA / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffiths, has ordered the release of funds from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to "enable relief efforts and kick-start recovery" on the island in the wake of the hurricane.

"The people of Cuba have shown tremendous resilience and have acted quickly with early warnings when faced with storms," Griffiths said, assuring that, however, the weather crisis "makes storms more intense and frequent."

"People were expecting 50 centimeters of rain, but they experienced three times that amount, losing their homes, family photos, school supplies for children and medicine for elderly parents. We must all help people respond and recover," the assistant secretary general said.

Related video: All of Cuba without power after Hurricane Ian

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In this regard, he detailed that food, health supplies, hygiene kits, shelter supplies and other items that arrived prior to the hurricane "are already being distributed to people in need".

However, Griffiths warned that the Cuban population needs "much more support", since "Ian" damaged nearly 170 health clinics and more than 1,000 schools, affecting the education of 139,000 children.

"Several community food distribution centers and processing warehouses were lost, and many people lost fishing boats, livestock and other means of livelihood," he said.

In addition, he warned that the lack of electricity in much of the affected area and the limited availability of fuel are hampering the UN response.

Hurricane Ian claimed the lives of at least two people in the western Cuban province of Pinar del Rio and displaced more than 50,000 people in the west and center of the island.