A beast is at its most dangerous when wounded. On 23 October, the US Trump administration, facing an uncertain election in the midst of national crisis, inflicted new sanctions on Cuba. In a global pandemic, the calculated tightening of the blockade is an expression of pure imperialist contempt for human life. Yet faced with these challenges, Cuba demonstrates its unwavering commitment to humanity, developing novel treatments and vaccines and sending 52 medical brigades to around 40 countries to treat Covid-19 patients. In response to Cuba’s actions, there is a growing demand to lift the blockade as the Biden US presidency promises to re-open the debate over rapprochement between the two countries. WILL HARNEY reports.
Another one bites the dust
Socialist Cuba looks to have officially survived the billionaire Donald Trump’s exceptionally virulent presidency, the 12th hostile US administration since the triumph of the revolution in 1959. It has not been easy. During Trump’s tenure more than 240 hostile actions have been taken against Cuba, reversing almost 20 agreements reached under the previous Obama-Biden administration which saw the opening of diplomatic and commercial relations from December 2014. Launching Cuba’s 29th annual campaign for a vote at the UN General Assembly to condemn the blockade, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez revealed that damages from April 2019 through March 2020 amounted to $5.5bn, $1.2bn more than the previous year, and the first time the cost has exceeded $5bn in one year.
Just two weeks before the elections, Trump brought in measures which would effectively halt remittances from the US to Cuba: Cuban financial entity Fincimex was added to the US government’s restricted entities list. It is the main Cuban partner of foreign credit card companies and Western Union. These firms are used by 700,000 Cubans in the US to send $1.5bn a year to their families on the island (a figure already greatly diminished during the pandemic). Western Union has 407 outlets across Cuba which will be forced to close. This added to bans in September on US citizens bringing Cuban cigars or rum back, or staying in Cuban state-owned hotels, measures designed to hobble the Cuban tourism industry just as it starts to re-open following successful efforts to control coronavirus on the island (see FRFI 277).
Cuba’s loss of trade, remittances and tourism during the pandemic, exacerbated by targeted US sanctions, has resulted in a scarcity of foreign currency and made it more difficult to get imports of goods which Cuba still struggles to produce domestically. This has necessitated careful planning to safeguard welfare: chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other essentials were added to the libreta ration book from May 2020 to prevent hoarding. Fuel has been scarce due to US threats against ships bringing oil to Cuba. The ‘special period’ of the 1990s has not returned as some had feared, but years of progress have been lost, and ordinary Cubans face hours-long queues at state stores to get basic goods, some having to wake as early as 4am to queue before work. ‘The US has used the pandemic as an opportunity’, says Johanna Tablada, Assistant Director for the United States at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations.1 Cubans are understandably hopeful to see the back of Trump.
What will a Biden-Harris White House mean for Cuba?
‘Americans – and especially Cuban-Americans – can be our best ambassadors for freedom in Cuba. Therefore, as president, I will promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.’ – Joe Biden, Americas Quarterly 4 March 2020
Joe Biden was part of the 2008-2016 Obama administration that pursued a historic change of relations with Cuba – initiating secret talks in 2013 followed by the restoration of diplomatic relations in 2014. Although the blockade continued (with a record level of fines against companies and banks doing business with Cuba) and the US’s commercial engagement with Cuba was minimal, travel restrictions were eased and political attacks ceased. The ‘demonstration effect’2 of US rapprochement encouraged third countries to engage: the EU increased its investments in Cuba, allocating €50m to development projects in the 2014-2020 period; agreements were reached with international creditors. Tourist arrivals increased from around 2.5m in 2014 to peak at 3.3m in 2017 (before declining again as Trump brought in travel restrictions). Cuba’s GDP grew by 4.4% in 2015 – its highest growth rate since the 2008 global financial crisis. This hints at what could happen if the blockade was lifted. It also shows that the world wants to engage with Cuba.
Will there be a return to rapprochement? Biden says he wants to resume diplomatic dialogues and has promised to eliminate restrictions on remittances and travel. He wants to restore links between families in Cuba and the US, eliminating a backlog of 20,000 visa applications under the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program halted by Trump in 2017. Biden’s team has appointed some officials that are happy to engage with Cuba. For example, Dr Marcella Nunez-Smith, who will co-chair Biden’s Covid-19 task force, has visited Cuba and held up the Latin America School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana as a model, praising it for training US medical students from deprived communities.
Biden could, in theory, take executive action to unilaterally end the blockade.3 But he has little reason to go so far. Trump’s alliance with the right-wing Cuban and Venezuelan exile lobbies in Florida was crucial in his bid for a second term. Headed by bitterly anti-socialist ideologues, these lobbies can sway Hispanic voters who form 20% of the electorate in a state worth a potentially decisive 29 Electoral College votes. They relentlessly demand regime change against Cuba and its allies. New York Times polling suggests Trump increased his share among Cuban American voters by 14 percentage points in 2020 from four years ago, to 59%, through a campaign which painted the Democrats as bent on turning the US into a socialist state like Cuba. 54% of Cuban Americans support the continuation of the ‘embargo’. The Democratic Party will be careful not to alienate these voters.
Changes of US policy towards Cuba must be recognised as a calculated adjustment to the Monroe Doctrine: exclusive US domination of the Western Hemisphere. This adjustment has been forced by 60 years of staunch Cuban resistance to US imperialism, now in relative decline. The US blockade epitomises growing US isolation under Trump, which is benefiting global rivals in the strategically important Caribbean: China has offered low-interest loans worth $6 billion over 15 years to countries in the region, developing infrastructure and dispatching test kits, masks and ventilators during the pandemic. This is what Biden has in mind when he warns ‘Russia and China…should be on notice that Trump’s incompetence and neglect in Latin America and the Caribbean will end on Day One of my administration’.4
In this vein, Biden may demand that Cuba abandon its support for anti-imperialist Venezuela as a condition for any discussion of relaxing the blockade. On 11 November, marking the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Cuba-Venezuela Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel made it clear that solidarity is not up for sale: ‘in spite of the pressure and threats of the Government of the United States, our decision and commitment to maintain the collaboration with the sister nation of Venezuela is unwavering.’
Cuba’s global leadership5
The Cuban state has responded to the pandemic with a science-led approach that has kept the virus under control, with 8,026 total cases and 133 deaths as of 25 November. Door-to-door health teams check up on vulnerable groups, using the knowledge of community-based family doctors. These teams mobilise medical students, civil defence militias, the Federation of Cuban Women, Committees for the Defence of the Revolution and others to visit 100 houses per day. ‘I am proud to be part of this great army’, says Leticia Collymore, a GP in Cuba. The US blockade obligates Cuba to produce PCR tests for Covid-19 and ventilators domestically. The Cuban response has emphasised preparing for the worst-case scenario; nonetheless, Intensive Care Units in the country have never approached their capacity, due to the successful test, trace and isolation system in communities.
Cooperation, not competition in Cuba’s world-leading biomedical research sector has made possible the rapid development of novel treatments for Covid-19. JUSVINZA, a peptide which treats cytokine storms in critically ill patients (preventing inflammation of the lungs) has been developed by BioCubaFarma. In an interview with BBC News on 17 November, the chairman of BioFarma Innovations (a UK-Cuba joint venture with BioCubaFarma) David Triesman explained that ‘JUSVINZA, made in Cuba has had a phenomenal success rate in helping 94% of people who would have died, survive and return home healthy.’ Such treatments are vital in the second wave as vaccines are not yet ready for deployment. Cuba now has four vaccine candidates in clinical trials, with more under development.
Cuba’s medical innovations could save millions of lives internationally. This is not lost on people in the US: on 11 November, Sacramento, California passed a resolution calling for a lifting of restrictions to allow US-Cuba medical cooperation, the 14th US city to do so in 2020; the resolution recognised that the people of Sacramento ‘would benefit from Cuban biotechnological, medical and public health expertise in combating the Covid-19 pandemic.’ On 25 November, Sicily requested Cuba to send a brigade of 60 medics as a second wave of infections builds, having seen the positive role played by the Henry Reeve medical contingent in Lombardy. Cuba’s status as a beacon of medical internationalism is unassailable – and this is thanks only to the socialist revolution and its supporters across the world. The US will continue to place unacceptable conditions on Cuba in return for the prospect of loosening the blockade – only unconditional support for Cuba’s revolution will strengthen the hand of socialism.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 279, December 2020/January 2021
1. See source in note 5.
2. See Helen Yaffe, We Are Cuba! (2020) pp197-203.
3. See Robert Muse, Global Americans, 8 October 2020.
4. Americas Quarterly, 4 March 2020.
5. Information in this section is drawn from Cuba & Covid-19: public health, science and solidarity (2020) produced by DaniFilms in collaboration with Belly Of The Beast and presented by Helen Yaffe and Valia Rodriguez, available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGYHwldJ_gY
