By Tatiana Coll on June 26, 2025
Against Cuba, a Fetid, Arbitrary, and Despotic Obsession
In the port of Havana, there is a ship with tons of rice, anchored and waiting to unload. It may not get to unload, because in order to do so, it must receive a signal from the commercial center that hired it, indicating that it has received $60,000 in payment. For the $60,000 to reach that trading company, which could be anywhere in the world because it is very difficult to find ships willing to transport goods to Cuba, Havana has to carry out almost clandestine operations through a series of camouflaged movements so as not to be detected by US surveillance systems monitoring Cuban transactions. If the $60,000 manages to achieve this feat and reaches the company’s account, the ship will unload the rice; if not, it will turn around and leave.
The cargo may also be wheat flour, oil, spare parts, supplies for manufacturing medicines, paper pulp, or any of the many other things that are needed to sustain the basic social, cultural, and economic life of the island. Payment must always be made in this way to evade the international tax dogs that the Yankees have deployed for many years for financial control. This financial control makes Cuba a country without access to credit, without loans of any kind, everything has to be paid in cash at the time of purchase, in a world of free markets and financial havens.
In Mexico, we can make a bank transfer to any country, to any bank, but not to Cuba; no bank will do it. This is a little-known part of the blockade, but it is certainly devastating. Not only because of the shortages it imposes, but also because of the increase in the price of all products; companies and ships that decide to take the risk of bringing something to Cuba take advantage and double their prices.
During the pandemic, for example, oxygen equipment, syringes, and medicines had to be bought at double or triple the price, when they could be found. There are 37 wonderful art schools that are performing miracles to stay afloat, there are 2,300 cultural institutions. How can they get violins, guitars, oil paints, canvases, ballet shoes? How much does it cost to bring in sneakers, balls, and maintain sports fields?
Cuba is a large island, but like all Caribbean islands, its environment imposes very limited conditions on production. It has always had an Achilles heel in its lack of energy, limited food diversity, and need for raw materials of all kinds to sustain domestic production. Without energy, obviously, nothing moves: not even a small household fan, transportation, factories, elevators, shops, or the Internet. Everything shuts down.
In the 1980s, the USSR proposed building a nuclear power plant, but its disappearance left behind a huge construction project abandoned to the hurricanes that are dismantling it. Mexico, an oil-producing country, has never wanted to establish an exchange that could be beneficial: supplying oil that would be refined, for example at the Ñico López refinery, and returned to our country as gasoline. Agreements were signed with Central America to supply oil, but never with Cuba.
The focus of the activities of the Solidarity Promoter ¡Va por Cuba! was precisely that: oil for Cuba from Mexico. Today, the dismantling of Pemex has left incredible losses. For example, on May 30, 3 million liters of stolen fuel were found in Tabasco. Now they are embezzled assets that have been recovered. Couldn’t they be sent to Cuba? Couldn’t we open up ways to supply the island? The oil that Cuba needs is really minimal in relation to our production.
Even the smallest detail is observed and blocked by this fetid, unhealthy, arbitrary, and despotic determination of the US. Cubans ask themselves with dismay: What else are they going to invent? What other measure will appear? They started by taxing remittances, which in itself is a feat to send to Cuba. This month, they imposed two new ones: restrictions on the entry of citizens into the US. Twelve countries were notified, including Cuba and Venezuela. Trump said: “We will not allow people who want to harm us to enter.”
Now they are no longer welcome, when previously their illegal departure was encouraged in various ways. Now they are even deporting them to countries like Sudan. Another completely arbitrary measure is the decision not to grant visas to officials from third countries who hire Cuban doctors. I hope this threat does not scare the directors of the IMSS and the ISSSTE, or the Mexican Secretary of Health. Cuban doctors fill positions that we cannot fill and do indispensable work. Only the right-wing fascists in our country are echoing this nonsense.
Amid the imperial madness that is sweeping the gringos, who are dropping bombs everywhere, we are very concerned that the answer to the question “What else are they going to do?” will be to bomb the brave and united island. It would be a historical aberration, abject in the face of any notion of civilization.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English