In mid-May 2024, the US State Department announced that it no longer regarded Cuba as a country ‘not cooperating fully’ with the United States’ supposed efforts in combating terrorism. According to a statement, this decision came after the restoration of law enforcement cooperation between the two nations. The State Department added Cuba to this blacklist in 2019. Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela remain on the list.
This does little to end to the economic warfare being waged against the socialist state. Cuba remains on the separate list of ‘State Sponsors of Terrorism’ (SSOT), a key component of the United States’s 62-year blockade of the island. Inclusion on the SSOT list enables the US to wield its considerable power over financial markets to punish institutions which do not cut ties with Cuba: cutting off the country’s access to credit, investment, bank transactions and even humanitarian donations. These restrictions impact tourism, a vital source of income and international trade for the island.
The US announcement coincides with the release of a new documentary Uphill on the Hill by the Belly of the Beast Cuba production company, based in Havana. The Cuban presenter, Liz Oliva, interviews black residents of Washington DC who condemn Cuba’s inclusion on the SSOT list by the politicians in their city: ‘It’s really just colonialism and racism’, says one. Another adds, ‘the most extreme level of terrorism that we’ve seen has been done by the US military’. As the documentary explains, Cuba was first added to the SSOT by President Reagan in 1982 as punishment for Cuba’s internationalist support for the left-wing guerrilla movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Cuba was removed in 2015 during the Obama administration’s rapprochement, then returned by Trump on the pretext that Cuba was harbouring terrorists from Colombia. In fact, Cuba was hosting peace talks between the Colombian government and National Liberation Army guerillas. Biden has kept Cuba on the list despite growing calls within the US for Cuba to be removed.
A lobby of powerful right-wing Cuban exile groups in the electorally significant swing state of Florida ensure Cuba is kept on the list, heedless of the suffering this implies for the Cuban population. Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar is pushing to pass the FORCE (Fighting Oppression until the Reign of Castro Ends) Bill, to permanently retain Cuba on the SSOT list and strip presidential authority to alter that status.
The elimination of Cuba from one list and not the other defies logic: how can Cuba simultaneously cooperate against terrorism and sponsor it? Further progress in resolving this contradiction, by removing Cuba from the SSOT list, requires strengthening the US solidarity movement to demand an end to US sanctions.
The US blockade inflicts huge suffering not only on Cubans but also on people in the United States who, for example, are denied access to life-saving treatments developed by Cuba’s world-leading biomedical sector. An example is the diabetic ulcer treatment Heberprot-P. Developed in Cuba, this drug is the only one in the world to reduce diabetes-related amputations rates by over 70%. Tens of thousands of US patients undergo amputations every year but most could be prevented with Heberprot-P. Significantly, on 4 May the US Food and Drug Administration approved phase three trials of Heberprot-P by US company Discovery Therapuetics Caribe. The drug is already available in 20 countries and has benefited more than 400,000 patients in Cuba, yet the blockade meant that researchers had to apply for a license from the State Department to go ahead with the trials.
End the illegal US blockade!
Will Jones
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 300 June/July 2024
