By Ismael Sánchez, on April 4, 2025 from Seville Spain
There are statements that, due to their harshness, deserve to be read twice. Once to understand them and once more to take in the magnitude of their meaning. What Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former Trump administration official on the National Security Council and now the US State Department’s special envoy for Latin America, recently said to the World Affairs Council of Miami is not just another diplomatic anecdote. It is, in so many words, a confession. A confirmation of what Cuba and much of the world has been denouncing for decades: that the true purpose of the US economic blockade against Cuba is to inflict pain. Pain on the people. Daily suffering as a political tool. Hunger as a strategy for political change.
In Claver-Carone’s own words, it is about accepting “short-term pain for long-term gain”. He says it naturally, coldly, even with a certain pride. And the most alarming thing is not only what he says, but how he says it. As if it were legitimate to attack an entire population to force a different political model. As if hunger, scarcity, forced migration or hopelessness were simply the necessary tolls to a future desired… by them.
These words, far from surprising us, put a name to an inhumane policy that for more than six decades has tried to subdue a sovereign country. A policy that has failed in its ultimate objective, but has achieved something no less serious: hindering the economic development of the island, limiting its access to essential goods, restricting its international relations, and punishing, day after day, the Cuban people for having chosen a different path.
Now, without concealment, what was always denied is publicly recognized. That the sanctions are not designed to affect a government, but to directly harm the population as a whole. To make life so unbearable that the only way out seems to be surrender. It is abuse as doctrine, cruelty as state policy.
One can have different opinions about the Cuban political model. As one can also have about many other regimes in the world with which, by the way, the United States maintains cordial relations. But what cannot and should not have a place in 21st-century international politics is the use of human suffering as a weapon to force wills. That has another name: crime.
Cuba is not the only target of this ruthless strategy. Claver-Carone extends it to Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries in the region that do not align themselves with Washington’s interests. And he does so, moreover, by resorting to arguments that reek of the Cold War, to the stigmatization of entire peoples, to the criminalization of migrants. The comparison between migrants and alleged criminals sent to “destabilize” the United States is an exercise in dangerous and repugnant xenophobia, unworthy even of the cynicism that is commonplace in US foreign policy.
Today it is not only necessary to strongly condemn the criminal blockade against Cuba, but also to clearly denounce the impunity with which the United States allows itself to talk about intervening in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. It is an outrage to international law, a continuous aggression that must cease immediately. And it is also a wake-up call for individuals and peoples who believe in justice, sovereignty and dignity.
Cuba has resisted because its people have known how to organize themselves, look after what is shared and defend their project with mistakes and successes, but with determination. They have done so in the face of a policy which, as is now being admitted, does not seek dialogue or cooperation, but collapse.
Today it is time to commit to internationalist solidarity, to extend support to the Cuban people from all corners of the world. They are not alone. In the face of planned hatred, we respond with brotherhood. In the face of the economic blockade, we build bridges of cooperation. And in the face of the cynicism of those who confess their cruelty as if it were a legitimate strategy, we affirm categorically that all peoples have the right to live in peace, without interference or punishment for daring to build their own destiny.
Let no one forget this confession. Because it lays bare not only a foreign policy, but a whole way of understanding power: as imposition, as punishment, as abuse. And because, although it is said in Miami, it resonates strongly in Havana, in Caracas, in Managua… and also here, in Seville.
Source: Ismael Sanchez Blog, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English