If Biden Wants to "Stand With the Cuban People," He Can Ease the Cruel Blockade

Purpose of Embargo Was "to Bring About Hunger, Desperation and Overthrow of Government"

"[C]urrent events in Cuba are a direct consequence of the interventionism of the US government, be it of the Democratic or Republican Party, and their plans to suffocate the country and cause disorder and chaos, to destroy the Cuban Revolution and its example," the American Association of Jurists, a nongovernmental organization with consultative status at the United Nations, said in a recent statement.

Indeed, since the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the U.S. government has sustained a cruel economic, financial and commercial embargo against Cuba. By pressuring other countries not to trade with Cuba, it has become a blockade. The U.S. embargo of Cuba was launched by Eisenhower in response to a 1960 memo written by a senior State Department official, which set forth the U.S. strategy for regime change in Cuba. The memo said:

"The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship...every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba...a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."

For the last six decades, the blockade has caused the Cuban people immense suffering. But it has not succeeded in destroying the Cuban Revolution.

In 1997, the American Association for World Health concluded that the blockade had "dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens" and "caused a significant rise in suffering and even deaths in Cuba" as a result of "critical shortages of even the most basic medicines and medical hardware."

Over the past six decades, the blockade has caused more than $134 billion in quantifiable losses as of 2018.

The blockade violates the U.N. Charter, which enshrines the right to self-determination of sovereign states and prohibits forcible regime change.

Sanctions -- or unilateral coercive measures -- constitute collective punishment of the civilian population, which is prohibited by the Geneva and Hague Conventions. They also violate the Charter of the Organization of American States, which prohibits intervention in the internal or external affairs of another country and the use of economic or political coercive measures "to force the sovereign will of another State."

The blockade has exacerbated the suffering of the Cuban people during the pandemic. Conditions are dire in Cuba. There are long lines for food, water and supplies. And a gasoline shortage caused by the blockade is preventing food grown in the countryside from reaching the market in the cities. Speaking to protesters on July 12, Diaz-Canel explained -- that they have had to convert hotels to hospitals because of the spike in COVID-19 cases. This has caused electricity shortages.

Even before the pandemic, there were serious food, medical and fuel shortages. In 2020, seven UN special rapporteurs and independent experts concluded that the blockade was "obstructing humanitarian responses to help the country's health-care system fight the COVID-19 pandemic."

As a result of the pandemic, Cuba is unable to buy ventilators or personal protective equipment. It can't receive financial transfers from foreign companies and humanitarian organizations. The blockade has had a "drastic effect on Cuba's vaccine industry" by making it difficult to obtain the raw materials to make the vaccine, according to Oxfam.

"Even so, the state's generous and long-term investment in health care and education means it was able to develop its own COVID vaccine only to then face a shortage of syringes, the blockade making it difficult to buy them from manufacturers," Branko Marcetic wrote atJacobin.

In March, 80 House Democrats urged Biden to repeal the Trump administration's "cruel policies against the Cuban people." They told Biden that, "with the stroke of a pen, you can assist struggling Cuban families and promote a more constructive approach by promptly returning to the Obama-Biden Administration policy of engagement and normalization of relations."

"The embargo is absurdly cruel and, like too many other U.S. policies targeting Latin Americans, the cruelty is the point," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said in a statement. "I outright reject the Biden administration's defense of the embargo. It is never acceptable for us to use cruelty as a point of leverage against every day people." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Mexican President Andre's Manuel LÃ ³pez Obrador and former Brazilian President Luiz Ina'cio Lula da Silva all laid the blame for the conditions in Cuba on U.S. policy.

Black Lives Matter condemned "the U.S. federal government's inhumane treatment of Cubans" and urged it "to immediately lift the economic embargo," which it called a "cruel and inhumane policy, instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans' right to choose their own government," noting that it is "at the heart of Cuba's current crisis."

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