By Giorgio Trucchi on November 14, 2024, from Honduras
Cuban doctors arrive in Honduras during Covid
A serious energy crisis, two hurricanes and an earthquake, all in less than a month, have seriously affected the largest of the Greater Antilles. But the bigger concern for the Cuban people perhaps is the sweeping re-election of Donald Trump in its hostile neighbor to the North.
Natural disasters in addition to chronic weaknesses (obsolete infrastructures, lack of fuel, maintenance and foreign currency) are the most dramatic result of the economic war and the financial and energy persecution of the United States towards Cuba.
In spite of the fact that the world recently condemned once again the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade – this is the thirty-fourth declaration presented by the Cuban authorities before the United Nations General Assembly – the anachronistic, archaic and fundamentalist measure continues to wreak havoc.
According to estimates by the Cuban authorities, the ten-year blockade has caused damages of more than U$164 billion. Between March 2023 and the end of February of this year, the damages and material losses exceeded U$5 billion, that is to say U$421 million a month, more than U$13.8 million a day, and more than U$575 thousand every hour.
The support of the governments of Mexico, Russia and Venezuela has made it possible to alleviate somewhat the energy crisis that Cuba is suffering. Moscow has just informed that it will send 80 thousand tons of diesel and repair equipment.
An already very complicated scenario, which could even deteriorate further after former U.S. President Donald Trump swept the last elections.
The return of Trump
After the measures to relax restrictions on economic exchange between the United States and Cuba, adopted in 2015 by President Obama (2009-2016), which also included the restoration of formal relations between the two countries, Donald Trump (2017-2020) assumed the presidency.
A few months after his inauguration, from Miami, Trump put a brake on the process of thawing towards Cuba and lashed out.
He withdrew 60% of the staff of the new embassy in Havana, restricted the granting of visas and expelled several Cuban diplomats from the embassy in Washington.
A total of 243 measures were adopted by the Trump administration to tighten the blockade, further suffocating the country with the aim of subverting the internal order and creating conditions conducive to overthrowing the Cuban revolution.
Lawsuits were allowed in US courts under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, giving the possibility of promoting legal actions against persons and entities, even from third countries, that invest in Cuban territory in properties nationalized after 1959.
Travel to Cuba was also further restricted, strong limits were imposed on remittances, international medical cooperation agreements were boycotted, and new coercive instruments were created in the commercial sphere, such as preventing the importation of products from any country containing more than 10% of U.S. components.
Likewise, the importation into the United States of rum and tobacco of Cuban origin was prohibited and a list of 231 Cuban entities with which it is forbidden to carry out direct financial transactions was created.
The Trump administration also intensified the persecution of Cuban banking and financial operations, adopted measures against ships, shipping companies, insurance and reinsurance companies linked to the transportation of fuel, and included Cuba in arbitrary lists on human rights, religious freedom and human trafficking.
On January 12, 2021, the then U.S. Secretary of State included Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. As a result, persons who have traveled to the largest of the Greater Antilles as of that date are no longer eligible to travel to the United States under the visa waiver program.
Same double standards
“With the Obama administration there was an opening toward Cuba and we recognize this. Unfortunately, with the arrival of Trump there was a tightening of sanctions that came to make the situation on the island more precarious,” said Erasto Reyes, president of the Honduras Cuba Friendship Association (AHC).
The victory of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the 2020 elections did not improve the situation.
“In the end he did nothing to reverse the measures imposed by his predecessor. It is the same double standard with which U.S. governments act towards any country that fights for its full independence and freedom,” explained Reyes.
Recently, the organization The People’s Forum sent a letter to President Biden asking him, before handing over the office to his successor, to repeal the harsh policy that the United States maintains against Cuba, in primis the inclusion in the illegal list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
In this sense, the triumph of Donald Trump in the recent elections generates a strong concern in those people and organizations in solidarity with Cuba, its people and its revolution.
“The vote in Florida in favor of Trump has been massive. We are concerned that these types of commitments that are generated as a result of the vote, must be marked by a hidden agenda that could include even more radical recipes than those that have been imposed on Cuba,” warned the president of the AHC.
“We continue to express our solidarity with Cuba, with the right to self-determination, demanding a halt to foreign interference, an end to the criminal blockade and respect for its freedom and independence,” he added.
A government in solidarity
Reyes valued as very important the work carried out during the last 24 years by the Honduras Cuba Friendship Association, as well as the policies of rapprochement and solidarity exchange of the current government of Xiomara Castro with the island.
“There has been a greater opening of relations and there is a real possibility that they will expand even more. It is very important not only in terms of friendship, solidarity, exchange between peoples, but also for the strengthening of political integration spaces, such as Celac,” he said.
The activist recalled that, in Honduras, Cuban doctors have provided more than 29 million medical care, while more than 1,500 young Hondurans went to study and graduate in Cuba as professionals in different specialties.
This November 11, with the aim of working synergies and promoting collaboration in education and research, a framework cooperation agreement was signed between the Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences (ICCP) and the National Pedagogical University ‘Francisco Morazán’ (UPNFM).
“I am firmly convinced that it is these types of relations that should interest us. Here (José) Martí, (Antonio) Macedo, (Máximo) Gómez and other Cuban independence leaders who were friends of those Honduran leaders passed through here.
The relations between Honduras and Cuba have historically been one of respect -concluded Reyes- and today, with this government and this organized and supportive people, the process of friendship and exchange will be strengthened”.
Source: LINyM translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English