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Silvia
from Miami, Eduardo from Hialeah, Abel from Lakeland. The names pour
in on the donations
page for
"Syringes to Cuba" as Carlos Lazo promotes the campaign on
his popular Facebook Livestream. An energetic Cuban-American high
school teacher in Seattle, Lazo created a group called Puentes
de Amor,
Bridges of Love, to unite Cuban Americans who want to lift the
searing U.S. blockade that is immiserating their loved ones on the
island.
Puentes
de Amor is the latest addition to the Syringes to Cuba initiative,
which was started
by the Saving
Lives Campaign and
the humanitarian organization Global
Health Partners
to help Cuba vaccinate its people against COVID-19. With the help of
two other groups, The
People’s Forum
and CODEPINK,
the campaign has raised over $350,000 and has already placed an order
for four million syringes. Two million will arrive in June and the
balance in July.
This
initiative is in response to the dire economic situation in Cuba,
where the economy shrank
by
11 percent last year—Cuba’s worst
economic downturn
since the early 1990s when the country was left reeling from the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc. The present
economic meltdown is largely a result of the COVID-induced shutdown
of the tourist industry and a tightening of the embargo under Trump.
Reversing the gains made by the Obama-Biden administration in
normalizing relations with Cuba, Trump added over 200 restrictive
measures, including limiting remittances Cuban Americans can send to
their families, stopping U.S. flights to every city but Havana, and
prohibiting cruise ships from docking in Cuban ports. As a
final stab
in his parting days, Trump took the completely bogus step of adding
Cuba to a U.S.-created list of state sponsors of terrorism, a
designation that discourages investments and substantially limits the
entry of foreign currency.
As
a presidential candidate, Joe Biden pledged
to “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have
inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance
democracy and human rights.” Early in the Biden administration,
the White House announced
that it was undertaking a review of Cuba policy. But to the surprise
and disappointment of many Cuba watchers, and despite the fact that
most of Trump’s policy changes could be reversed with a single
executive order, Biden has not moved an inch. Questioned about this
at an April 16 press conference, Press Secretary Jen Psaki callously
claimed
that changing U.S. policy towards Cuba was “currently not among
the president’s top foreign policy priorities.”
On
May 25, the State Department even announced
that it would continue Trump’s determination that Cuba does not
cooperate with U.S. anti-terrorism efforts. The Cuban Ministry of
Foreign Affairs fired
back, calling
this action “irresponsible and shameful” and reminding
U.S. officials that Cuba itself has been “the victim of 713
terrorist attacks, in their majority organized, financed and executed
by the U.S. government or individuals and organizations that are
protected and act with impunity in U.S. territory.”
On
June 23, the U.N. General Assembly will hold its yearly vote calling
for the U.S. to lift its embargo on Cuba. Every year since 1992, the
world’s nations overwhelmingly reject
the embargo, leaving the U.S. and one or two of its allies, like
Israel and Brazil, clinging to this unpopular and anachronistic
policy. In 2016, the Obama administration broke with 25 years of U.S.
opposition to the UN resolution by abstaining.
A new lobby group ACERE
(Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect), with the support of over
100 organizations, is calling on Biden to follow President Obama's
lead by not opposing this year's resolution, and instead of using the
occasion to announce the measures that his administration will take
to provide relief for the Cuban people and a return to the path of
normalization.
A
push for action has also come from the grassroots, through creative
and growing anti-blockade car and bicycle caravans held on the last
Sunday of every month. The largest of the nation's caravans winds
through the heart of the pro-blockade world: Miami. In the most
recent May
30
Miami caravan, over 200 people participated, most of them
Cuban-Americans. “We’ve had 10 of these caravans so far,”
said organizer
Jorge
Medina (a.k.a. El Proteston Cubano on YouTube). “Each one is
bigger than the last and the energy is fantastic.” But so far,
the media–and the Biden administration–have ignored them.
Congress
has been pushing Biden as well. In March 2021, 80 representatives,
led
by
Congressman Bobby Rush, sent a letter to Biden urging him to take
swift executive action to reverse the Trump administration’s
draconian policies and return to the diplomatic path charted by the
Obama–Biden administration, and Congressman Rush later
introduced a bill
to that effect. On May 21, U.S. Senators Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Amy
Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced
the bipartisan Freedom
to Export to Cuba Act
that would eliminate the legal barriers to Americans doing business
in Cuba, a move that would be particularly popular
with farm and business groups interested in trade and export
opportunities.
Unfortunately,
Biden seems more concerned about catering to right-wing Cuban
Americans in southern Florida, where the Democrats, failing to stand
up to Trump’s red-baiting, lost the state and two congressional
seats in the last election. Despite the talk that his administration
is guided by human rights concerns, Biden ignores what the
humanitarian group OXFAM, in its detailed report
on the devastating effects of U.S. policy, called “The Right to
Live Without a Blockade.”
But
Biden ignores the crisis in Cuba at his peril. The dire food and
medicine shortages may well spark a migration crisis that will
exacerbate the rush of Central American asylum seekers at the Mexican
border that the Biden administration is already unable to cope with.
Cuba expert Bill LeoGrande predicts
“a mass exodus of desperate people” if Biden doesn’t
act soon.
Biden
would do well to heed the warning and with the stroke of a pen, lift
trade and travel restrictions and allow unrestricted remittances.
These measures would quickly infuse more money into Cuba’s
economy and alleviate the needless suffering Cubans are experiencing
at the hands of an administration that does not consider the
well-being of 11 million Cubans “a priority.”
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