By Francisco Delgado Rodríguez on October 1, 2025
Maya is one of many strong women living in Cuba, which someone once renamed the Big Island, precisely because it has women like Maya. That name is associated with one of the most advanced pre-Columbian civilizations, which covered almost all of southern Mexico and northern Central America; stories so distant in time, yet so close in the hearts of us Americans, Maya’s parents.
Maya has a daughter, Lucía; the girl is eight years old and very talented, with a love of reading, not on a mobile phone, but in traditional books, made of ink and paper. When the Covid pandemic hit, Lucía fell ill and her small lungs were on the verge of collapsing because there was not enough oxygen to cope with thousands of cases like hers.
It will surely be remembered that in the midst of such an emergency, the Cuban government requested help from third countries and the US government flatly refused, citing the sanctions they themselves impose, that is, the blockade against Cuba that has been in place since 1962.
Of course, Maya was already aware of this ruthless siege, described as the longest in recent history, which has caused damage amounting to more than $170 billion. In the last annual period alone, March 2024 to February 2025, losses totaled $7.556 billion.
Maya has also read that the blockade has become more sophisticated over time, as the revolutionary government has found ways to circumvent it. They call them surgically applied measures, turning the blockade into a veritable spider’s web, excessive due to the accumulation of extraterritorial sanctions, if you’ll pardon the redundancy.
This policy, which relentlessly pursues and punishes those who, in their natural right, decide to do business with Cuba, generates a kind of terror in the financial sphere, causing constant changes in the banking entities that manage the normal financial flow to and from the island.
This monetary lockdown includes a ban on the use of US dollars, i.e., the currency used in at least 55% of all monetary transactions worldwide. To impose this, the US authorities invented a justification, placing Cuba on a spurious, unilateral list, like the sanctions themselves, which serve to punish those countries that support terrorism, effectively prohibiting any bank from trading with Cuban counterparts.
Maya does not fully understand what this invented list is all about; she does know that there are no terrorists in Cuba, nor would anyone even think of promoting such a thing, quite the contrary.
At the beginning of the Revolution, her father’s uncle was murdered, burned alive in a terrorist act promoted, organized, and financed from Miami. No one can fool her; the crime is recorded in her family’s records, with names and surnames. She also remembers that notorious murderers of civilians, such as Posada Carriles, who conceived the bombing of a civilian aircraft in mid-flight, die peacefully in some comfortable residential area in that city in South Florida.
The extraterritoriality is incredible. Maya’s father told her about a friend from Havana, for that matter, who went to live in Egypt about 15 years ago. The man makes a living running a tourist business with camels; it makes him laugh because what can a person born in Luyanó know about such a noble animal? But the point is that last year, his father’s “camel driver” friend tried to send about $300 to an acquaintance in Lebanon, and on the way, the poor man’s money was confiscated, just because he identified himself with his Cuban passport.
Let’s agree that the US is a long way from Cairo, where the “camel driver” from Luyanó has been living for 15 years. And the clarification is relevant, Maya explained to a co-worker, because the Americans’ argument is that the embargo—they say perfidiously—only prevents Cuba from selling or buying anything in the US.
Incidentally, it should be noted that Maya is a teacher, a profession particularly affected by the blockade. Imagine that, according to available data, this economic war generates losses, in just five hours, of what is needed to purchase teaching materials for all the country’s daycare centers, or in 21 hours, what it would cost to replace the deteriorated technological resources of Cuban educational institutions. Incredible, that is, one day without the blockade would have a significant impact on the country’s educational processes.
In this context, Lucía faces another particular danger: in theory, she could lose the building that her school currently occupies. Yes, Lucía’s school is located in the Vedado neighborhood, in a majestic house that belonged to a manager linked to the Bacardi family, the owners of the famous rum brand.
It turns out that the Bacardís, when they had the opportunity, financed a law in the US Congress that blatantly regulates the extraterritoriality of the blockade, the well-known Helms-Burton Act of 1996. According to this legislation, the aforementioned manager or his descendants can file a lawsuit in US courts to recover ownership of the house where Lucía studies. Of course, she can rest assured that this will never happen.
Like any Cuban, Maya also has to deal with the critical situation facing Cuba’s national electricity system. There is much to be said about how the blockade impacts electricity production in the country, both in terms of maintenance and modernization, through the installation of renewable energy, to name just two aspects.
In this regard, a few days ago she learned about the situation of the main unit of the system, the famous Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant. Initially acquired from a French company, the latter ended up being bought by the US transnational General Electric in 2015, and since then, due to the blockade, financing, spare parts, and technical advice have been cut off.
Of course, Maya cannot count how many atrocities, how much impact, how much misery, how much stress this sordid war, without bombs or cannon fire, generates in ordinary, everyday people, as they say.
But there is something that particularly irritates Maya, because it eventually affects the health of Lucía, her parents, her acquaintances, and her neighbors. Of course, because the blockade prevents, for example, the acquisition at low cost, or at least at the price established by the international market, of insulin for a whole year, or supplies to treat cardiology, neurology, or cancer pathologies; not to mention the importation of wheelchairs and other technical aids.
As if that were not enough, the State Department, led by crusader Mr. Rubio, redoubled its cruel efforts to dismantle Cuba’s extensive medical cooperation program around the world. This is something Maya does not understand, no matter how much they try to spin it, and she finds it perverse, to say the least, that the pretext is that the medical personnel involved are “slaves.” It is a gratuitous insult to these doctors, Maya thinks, who sees these people as the example she would like her daughter Lucía to follow.
Lucía’s mother and the girl herself were born, like the vast majority of the Cuban people, in the midst of this enormous siege, and it is very likely that they will never be able to forgive the small group of neo-Batistians who have been promoting such aggression from the US for so many decades.
These promoters of economic warfare against Cuba fail to understand the resilience of people like Maya, or her parents, or even Lucía, who was saved when her lungs were about to fail, thanks only to the quality of medical services and the social system in Cuba.
And the Cuban Revolution has no choice but to continue evading the blockade; not even to wait for some U.S. political leader to have enough courage and strength tomorrow to tear down this ancient wall of ignominy. And of course, as Maya rightly points out, when that time comes, Cuba has nothing to offer in return; the wall must come down, period.
Disclaimer: The characters in this chronicle are fictional; the events are the harsh reality for many because of US aggression against its neighbors across the Florida Straits.
Source: Cuba Si, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English