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The Criminal US Embargo on Cuba

Fall in line, be ‘a liberal free-marketeer’ and open your country to our capital. If we don’t invade you, we make sure we kill you slowly.

“Cubans have lived under a US economic embargo since 1962. Now, following a disastrous currency reform, inflation is spiralling, food and medicines are in short supply, and the black market is rampant.



Food scarcity drives prices up: queueing for vegetables,
Havana, 31 March 2023. Adalberto Roque · AFP · Getty

After a period of relaxation during Barack Obama’s second term (2013-17), Donald Trump brought in 243 new sanctions. In 2019 alone, 54 ship owners and 27 companies were fined for carrying fuel to Cuba. That same year, the US Treasury Department sanctioned 34 vessels operated by the companies Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), Ballito Bay Shipping (headquartered in Liberia) and Proper In Management (registered in Greece).

Trump expanded the embargo, enabling individuals and companies to be prosecuted for investing in former American companies that had been nationalised after the revolution of 1953. Remittances, Cuba’s third-largest source of foreign currency – which, unlimited until then, had stimulated its economy under Obama – were suddenly capped at $1,000 per quarter. Western Union was ordered to cease operating in the country. During Trump’s term, 22 banking and financial institutions were accused of breaking US rules and penalised. French multinational Société Générale SA was fined over $1bn in 2018 for transactions involving Cuba, Iran and Sudan.

A few days before leaving the White House, Trump listed Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism because it had hosted peace talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Colombian government in 2016. ‘Norway was a guarantor of that agreement,’ Rodríguez points out, ‘but it wasn’t accused of anything.’ Cuba also refused to extradite members of the National Liberation Army (ELN, another armed Colombian group) who have remained on the island since the 2018 suspension of negotiations with the Colombian government that had begun the year before. Since taking office in 2021, Joe Biden has removed the $1,000 cap on remittances and made visa applications slightly easier, but that’s about it. According to Cuba’s foreign minister, the embargo cost his country some $5bn in losses during 2022.

A year and a half ago, Carolina quit her studies in sociocultural development to move to Germany with her husband and seven-year-old son. ‘Before 2020 I had never considered leaving, but then Covid came. That’s when everything went to pot. All my university friends left… There’s so much talent here. The revolution brought literacy and helped train excellent professionals. But I want to give my son a better quality of life; I want him to eat ice cream and have toys.’ Like many highly qualified Cubans, she now washes dishes in a Munich restaurant.”

Full article on Le Monde Diplomatique




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