By Salim Lamrani on March 4, 2026
Salim Lamrani, foto: Bill Hackwell
For more than six decades, the United States has been suffocating the Cuban people by imposing anachronistic and inhumane economic sanctions. These measures affect the most vulnerable sectors of the island’s population, particularly the sick, children, the elderly, and pregnant women, and have a dramatic impact on all areas of Cuban society. Retroactive and extraterritorial in nature, they contravene the most basic principles of international law. Since 1992, they have been unanimously condemned each year by the United Nations General Assembly.
Imposed in 1960 with the aim of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s government, these sanctions have been steadily reinforced by successive US administrations, particularly during Donald Trump’s presidency. During his first term, Trump imposed 243 new unilateral coercive measures—50 of them in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic—against the Cuban people, attacking the island’s main sources of income, namely medical cooperation, remittances from the diaspora, and tourism. Thus, between 2017 and 2020, the White House imposed, on average, one new sanction per week for four consecutive years.
In 2025, the sanctions cost Cuba $7.5 billion, or an average of $20 million per day, or $15,000 per minute. This sum is equivalent to the electricity consumption of 10 million Cubans for six years. With that same amount, Cuba could guarantee the supply of basic necessities for the entire population for six years. Since their imposition in 1960, sanctions have cost Cuba a total of $170 billion, and more than 80% of the Cuban population has been born under this state of siege.
On January 29, 2026, the Trump administration adopted a presidential decree that classified Cuba as an “extraordinary and unusual threat to the security of the United States,” imposing tariffs on any country that supplied oil to Cuba. Since then, the island—already hard hit by the economic blockade and repeated natural disasters—has found itself in an extremely difficult situation, deprived of the fuel vital to its economy and essential services. In Cuba, the electrical system, which powers the drinking water sanitation network, hospitals, and schools, is heavily dependent on oil supplies.
Cuba is not in crisis: it is the victim of an economic crime perpetrated by the United States for decades. The international community must reject this illegal economic and energy stranglehold that is suffocating the island and provide urgent support to the Cuban people, who are facing an extremely serious humanitarian situation.
Source: Canarias-Semanal, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English