{"id":2186,"date":"2020-06-20T19:45:40","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T19:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/?p=2186"},"modified":"2020-06-21T11:32:29","modified_gmt":"2020-06-21T11:32:29","slug":"trump-hammers-cuba-while-cuba-cures-the-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/trump-hammers-cuba-while-cuba-cures-the-sick\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Hammers Cuba While Cuba Cures the Sick"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by\u00a0MEDEA BENJAMIN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A team of 85 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Peru on June 3 to help the Andean nation tackle the coronavirus pandemic. That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced another tightening of the sanctions screws. This time he targeted seven Cuban entities, including Fincimex, one of the principal financial institutions handling remittances to the country. Also targeted was Marriott International, which was ordered<\/a> to cease operations in Cuba, and other companies in the tourism sector, an industry that constitutes 10 percent of Cuba\u2019s GDP and has been devastated globally by the pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that the more Cuba helps the world, the more it gets hammered by the Trump administration. While Cuba has endured a U.S. embargo for nearly 60 years, Trump has revved up the stakes with a \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d strategy that includes more than 90 economic measures placed against the nation since January 2019. Josefina Vidal, Cuba\u2019s ambassador to Canada, called the measures<\/a> \u201cunprecedented in their level of aggression and scope\u201d and designed to \u201cdeprive the country of income for the development of the economy.\u201d Since its inception, the embargo has cost Cuba well over $130 billion dollars, according to a 2018 estimate<\/a>. In 2018-2019 alone, the economic impact was $4 billion<\/a>, a figure that does not include the impact of a June 2019 Trump administration travel ban aimed at harming the tourist industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the embargo is supposed to have humanitarian exemptions, the health sector has not been spared. Cuba is known worldwide for its universal public healthcare system, but the embargo has led to shortages of medicines and medical supplies, particularly for patients with AIDS and cancer. Doctors at Cuba\u2019s National Institute of Oncology have had to amputate<\/a> the lower limbs of children with cancer because the American companies that have a monopoly on the technology can\u2019t sell it to Cuba. In the midst of the pandemic, the U.S. blocked a donation<\/a> of facemasks and COVID-19 diagnostic kits from Chinese billionaire Jack Ma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not content to sabotage Cuba\u2019s domestic health sector, the Trump administration has been attacking Cuba\u2019s international medical assistance, from the teams fighting coronavirus today to those who have travelled all over the world since the 1960\u2019s providing services to underserved communities in 164 countries. The U.S. goal is to cut the island\u2019s income now that the provision of these services has surpassed tourism<\/a> as Cuba\u2019s number one source of revenue. Labeling these volunteer medical teams \u201cvictims of human trafficking<\/a>\u201d because part of their salaries goes to pay for Cuba\u2019s healthcare system, the Trump administration convinced Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil to end their cooperation agreements with Cuban doctors. Pompeo then applauded the leaders of these countries for refusing \u201cto turn a blind eye\u201d<\/a> to Cuba\u2019s alleged abuses. The triumphalism was short lived: a month after that quote, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil begged Cuba to resend its doctors<\/a> amid the pandemic. U.S. allies all over the world, including in Qatar, Kuwait, South Africa, Italy, Honduras and Peru have gratefully accepted this Cuban aid. So great is the admiration for Cuban doctors that a global campaign has sprung up to award them<\/a> the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trump administration is not just libelling doctors, but the whole country.  In May, the State Department named<\/a> Cuba as one of five countries \u201cnot cooperating fully\u201d in U.S. counterterrorism efforts. The main pretext was the nation\u2019s hosting of members of Colombia\u2019s National Liberation Army (ELN). Yet even the State Department\u2019s own press release notes that ELN members are in Cuba as a result of \u201cpeace negotiation protocols<\/a>.\u201d Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodr\u00edguez called the charges<\/a> dishonest and \u201cfacilitated by the ungrateful attitude of the Colombian government\u201d that broke off talks with the ELN in 2019. It should also be noted that Ecuador was the original host of the ELN-Colombia talks, but Cuba was asked to step in after the Moreno government abdicated its responsibilities in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The classification of Cuba as \u201cnot cooperating\u201d with counterterrorism could lead to Cuba being placed on the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which carries tougher penalties. This idea was floated by a senior Trump administration official to Reuters<\/a> last month. Cuba had been on this list from 1982 to 2015, despite that fact that, according to former State Department official Jason Blazakis,<\/a> \u201cit was legally determined that Cuba was not actively engaged in violence that could be defined as terrorism under any credible definition of the word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, the United States is in no position to claim that other countries do not cooperate in counterterrorism. For years, the U.S. harbored Luis Posada Carriles, mastermind of the bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane in 1976 that killed 73 people. More recently, the U.S. has yet to even comment on the April 30 attack on the Cuban Embassy in Washington D.C., when a man fired on the building with an automatic rifle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there are certainly right-wing ideologues like Secretary Pompeo and Senator Rubio orchestrating Trump\u2019s maximum pressure campaign, for Trump himself, Cuba is all about the U.S. elections. His hard line against the tiny island nation may have helped swing the Florida gubernatorial campaign<\/a> during the midterm elections, yet it\u2019s not clear that this will serve him well in a presidential year. According to conventional wisdom and polls, younger Cuban-Americans \u2013 who like most young people, don\u2019t tend to vote in midterms \u2013 are increasingly skeptical of the U.S. embargo, and overall, Cuba isn\u2019t the overriding issue for Cuban-Americans<\/a>. Trump won the Cuban-American vote in 2016, but Hillary Clinton took between 41 and 47% percent of that electorate, significantly higher than any Democrat in decades<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an electoral strategy, these are signs that Trump\u2019s aggression towards Cuba may not pay off. Of course, the strategy might not be just about votes but also about financing and ensuring that the Cuban-American political machinery is firmly behind Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strategy has certainly not paid off when it comes to achieving the goal of regime change. The Trump administration is arguably farther from achieving regime change in Cuba now than the U.S. has ever been in over 60 years of intervention. During Trump\u2019s tenure, Cuba calmly transitioned from the presidency of Raul Castro to that of Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel. In 2019, Cuban voters overwhelmingly ratified<\/a> a new constitution. These aren\u2019t signs of a country on the brink of collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All Trump has achieved is making life more difficult for the island\u2019s 11 million inhabitants, who, like people all over the world, have been battered by the economic impact from coronavirus. Tourism has collapsed. Income from remittances has tanked (both because of new U.S. restrictions and less income in the hands of the Cuban diaspora). Venezuela, once a major benefactor, is mired in its own crisis. But Cuba\u2019s economy, which was forecast to contract by 3.7% before the pandemic hit, has been through worse, particularly during the 1991 to 2000 economic crisis known as the \u201cspecial period\u201d after the collapse of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A change in the White House would bring some relief, although Joe Biden has staked a rather ambivalent position, saying he would restore relations as President Obama did, but adding that he was open<\/a> to using sanctions as punishment for Cuba\u2019s support to the Venezuelan government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s clear that from now until November, and perhaps for four more years, the Trump administration will pummel its island neighbor. Cuba will continue to seek global condemnation on the blockade (the 2019 UN vote<\/a> was 187 against vs 3 in favor\u2014the U.S., Brazil and Israel) and continue to show what a good neighbor looks like. It responded to these latest provocations in the way that only Cuba does: with more global solidarity, sending Covid-19 healing brigades to Guinea and Kuwait a day after the June 3 round of sanctions. A total of 26 countries now have Cuban medical personnel caring for their sick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the kind of goodwill that money just can\u2019t buy and it greatly presents a stark contrast to the Trump administration\u2019s shameful behavior during the pandemic. Back in March, as Cuban doctors arrived in Italy, former Ecuadorian President\u00a0Rafael Correa tweeted<\/a>: \u201cOne day we will tell our children that, after decades of movies and propaganda, at the moment of truth, when humanity needed help at a time when the great powers were in hiding, Cuban doctors began to arrive, without asking anything in return.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: Counter Punch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0MEDEA BENJAMIN A team of 85 Cuban doctors and nurses arrived in Peru on June 3 to help the Andean nation tackle the coronavirus pandemic. That […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101011,"featured_media":1362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43,1,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized","category-us-aggression"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":970,"url":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/spanish-ceo-barred-from-us-over-his-companys-cuba-interests\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":0},"title":"Spanish CEO barred from US over his company\u2019s Cuba interests","author":"Editorial Team","date":"February 15, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Gabriel Escarrer, president of Melia opens a new hotel in the Cuban resort of Varedero with Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel A major Spanish hotel chain said Wednesday that the U.S. State Department informed the CEO he is barred from entering the United States because of his company\u2019s business interests\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Cuba"","block_context":{"text":"Cuba","link":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/category\/cuba\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/3942_2692.jpg?fit=650%2C434&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/3942_2692.jpg?fit=650%2C434&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/wp-content\/uploads\/3942_2692.jpg?fit=650%2C434&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2915,"url":"https:\/\/www.cubasupport.ie\/latest\/cubas-two-pandemics-the-coronavirus-and-the-us-embargo-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2186,"position":1},"title":"Cuba\u2019s two pandemics: The coronavirus and the US embargo","author":"Editorial Team","date":"July 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The Trump administration is trying to hinder Cuba\u2019s efforts to tackle the coronavirus emergency at home and abroad. Josefina Vidal FerreiroJosefina Vidal Ferreiro is the Cuban Ambassador to Canada. 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