CubaBrief: The U.S. Embargo on Cuba does exist, it has saved U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars from Havana’s communist central planning
U.S. – Cuba trade 2000 – 2025, Source: U.S. Census Bureau
Milan Kundera, the Czech writer, in his 1999 novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting observed that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Memory provides context to unfolding events today, and helps to render informed judgements. On the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth it is a good moment to revisit some of his observations on the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
Thirty years of Fidel Castro claiming U.S sanctions were unimportant
Havana claims that the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba over the past sixty six years has cost the Cuban dictatorship $1.499 trillion, but that was not what the regime, and their maximum leader, said during the first 30 years of the Cuban dictatorship. Here are some of the statements made by Fidel Castro between the 1964 through 2000 related to the economic embargo.
“We are going to have, within ten years, a milk production higher than the Netherlands and a cheese production higher than France. That is the great goal that we propose to achieve. By that date we think that the amount of 30 million liters of milk will be exceeded. So there will be to export … you can imagine.” said Fidel Castro, in an interview with Eddy Martin from the official Hoy newspaper on March 2, 1964.
“The great battle of the eggs has been won. From now on the people will be able to have sixty million eggs each month,” said Fidel Castro in a speech on January 2, 1965.
“In 1970 the Island will have 5,000 experts in the cattle industry and around 8 million cows and calves that will be good milk producers” …. “There will be so much milk that the Bay of Havana will be able to be filled with milk,” said Fidel Castro in his December 1966 speech during the Assembly of the Federation of Cuban Women, a mass organization of the dictatorship.
Fidel Castro, speaking at the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in December 1975 bragged about the unimportance of economic sanctions saying,“at first (the United States) their cancellations were quite annoying … but when luckily, we did not depend on them for anything, neither in trade, nor in supplies, nor in anything. If we are already victorious now, after victory, what can they threaten us with? With canceling what … what? ”
“The United States has less and less to offer Cuba. If we could export our products to the United States, we would have to start making plans for new production lines … because everything that we produce now and everything that we are going to produce in the next five years has already been sold to other markets. We should deprive other socialist countries of these products in order to sell them to the United States. But the socialist countries pay us much better prices and have much better relations with us than we have with the United States. There is a popular saying that goes: ‘Don’t trade a cow for a goat.’” said Fidel Castro in his interview with Playboy published in April 1985
“Cuba will not buy an aspirin or a grain of rice. They have put a lot of restrictions (on the permission to sell food and medicine) that make it humiliating for the country, but also make it impossible in practice,” said Fidel Castro, in front of the United States Interests Office, in Havana, Cuba on October 18, 2000.
Fidel Castro had a point. Cuba’s existential economic crisis was not due to the embargo. The Castro regime would go on to purchase billions in American agricultural products between 2000 and the present, but to do so they defaulted on what they owed to others. The peak year of trade between Cuba and the United States was in 2025, the last full year on record of the the Donald J. Trump Administration.
Nevertheless food security has not improved, nor was it better during the Biden Administration.
The 2024 bread shortage in Cuba
Flour was scarce in Cuba in 2024.
Havana on March 4, 2024 confirmed it had sought help from the World Food Program to guarantee the supply of subsidized powdered milk for children. On February 24, 2024 Emerio Gonzalez Lorenzo, president of the “Grupo Empresarial de la Industria Alimentaria” (GEIA) [Food Industry Business Group] which is under the Cuban government’s “Ministerio de la Industria Alimenticia” (MINAL) [ Ministry of the Food Industry ] announced that “there is little bread in Cuba due to a lack of flour,” and that this situation would continue until the end of March 2024.
Official press channels made no mention of the “25,000 tons of wheat donated by the Russian government that arrived in mid-January” 2024 which “exceeds the 20,000 tons that, authorities assured [on February 24th], are necessary to cover the rationed daily bread rolls for a month. If this is the case, the shipment of Russian wheat should have been enough to supply the stores for the remainder of this month and the next”, reported 14ymedio.
The suspension of bread from the ration book in 2024, announced by Havana, was not due to U.S. sanctions as the Cuban dictatorship claims.
The shortage of bread is due to the fact that of the five mills to turn wheat to flour in Cuba, only the one currently operational is in Cienfuegos. There is no shortage of wheat, but of flour due to the Cuban government’s monopoly over the means of production, and its inefficiency, and corruption.
This is compounded by the regime’s track record of giving priority for supplies of flour for tourists in luxury hotels, compared to the hunger of Cuban families who also suffer blackouts, piles of garbage on corners with infestations of mice, mosquitoes and cockroaches, plus sewage leaks and lack of drinking water.
The US State Department in its 2025 fact sheet on the “Provision of Humanitarian Assistance to Cuba” clearly states: “While the embargo remains in place, the U.S. government prioritizes support for the Cuban people, and U.S. law and regulations include exemptions and authorizations relating to exports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods to Cuba, as well as disaster response.”
Trade in mainly agricultural products with Cuba amounted to $400 million in 2023, in contrast to only $241.8 million during the last full year of the Obama Administration’s thaw with Havana in 2016.
Press accounts of the U.S. Embargo on Cuba do not mention how it saved American taxpayers from joining their Canadian, Chinese, European, and Russian counterparts in paying off bad debt by the Cuban government. Nor do they discuss the circumstances that drove the United States to impose an embargo on Havana.
How the U.S. embargo on Cuba came to be imposed
U.S. policy towards Cuba has not been static since January 1, 1959 but has been changing and driven by various interests, including U.S. national interests. There is a lot of disinformation about how the U.S. Embargo was first imposed on Cuba, and how and why the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Havana. Here is a brief breakdown of what happened between January 1, 1959 and January 3, 1961.
Fidel Castro overthrew the Fulgencio Batista regime on January 1, 1959 following a U.S. arms embargo being imposed on the military dictator in the spring of 1958. The United States had actively pressured Batista to leave office since 1958. On January 7, 1959 the United States recognized the new Cuban government ushered in by the Castro brothers. It took just seven days to recognize the new regime.
In comparison it had taken the United States 17 days to recognize the government of Fulgencio Batista following his March 10, 1952 coup. The United States had not been consulted ahead of time about Batista’s plans and this led to the delay in recognition.
In April 1959 Fidel Castro visited the United States on an eleven day trip that concluded with a three hour meeting with Vice President Richard Nixon on April 19, 1959.
Within nine months of U.S. recognition of the revolutionary government in Cuba the new regime began targeting American interests on the island, allying itself with the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and plotting the overthrow of several Latin American governments.
It is important to revisit how the embargo was first imposed, and why it remains relevant today.
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Fidel Castro visits Caracas on January 23, 1959 and meets with Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, a social democrat, “to enlist cooperation and financial backing for ‘the master plan against the gringos.’”
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On March 3, 1959 the Castro regime expropriates properties belonging to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and took over its affiliate, the Cuban Telephone Company.
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On May 17, 1959 the government expropriated farm lands over 1,000 acres and banned land ownership by foreigners.
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Havana beginning in 1959 sent armed expeditions to Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to overthrow their governments.
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On February 6, 1960 talks began publicly between the U.S.S.R and Fidel Castro. The Soviet Union agreed to buy five million tons of sugar over five years. They also agreed to support Cuba with oil, grain, and credit.
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On July 6, 1960 the Castro regime passed a nationalization law authorizing nationalization of U.S.- owned property through expropriation. Texaco, Esso, and Shell oil refineries were taken.
The Eisenhower Administration reduced the sugar quote for Cuba on July 6, 1960 by 700 tons.
The Eisenhower State Department in response to the above actions imposed the first trade embargo on Cuba on October 19, 1960, and it “covered all U.S. exports to Cuba except for medicine and some foods.” This did not alter Havana’s behavior.
- On November 19, 1960 Ernesto “Che” Guevara heading a Cuban delegation in Beijing met with Mao Zedong between 4:20pm and 6:30pm and discussed revolutionary objectives in Latin America.
On December 16, 1960 the sugar quota by the United States for Cuba was reduced to zero.
The last straw: When the limit was reached, and diplomatic relations severed
Tens of thousands of Cubans were lined up outside of the U.S. embassy in Havana seeking visas to flee the communist dictatorship, and this became a source of embarrassment for the communist regime. Fidel Castro communicated with the Eisenhower Administration on January 3, 1961 and demanded the expulsion of 67 U.S. diplomats, within 48 hours, reducing their number to 11, the same number at the Cuban embassy in Washington DC. The Americans had over 50,000 visa applications to process when the ultimatum was delivered.
On January 3, 1961 at 8:30 p.m. EST President Eisenhower issued a statement stating: “There is a limit to what the United States in self respect can endure. That limit has now been reached,” and severed diplomatic relations with Cuba.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy took office on January 20, 1961.
A year later, between January 22, 1962 to January 31, 1962 the Kennedy Administration successfully lobbied the Foreign Ministers of the member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) to expel Cuba from the regional body.
The U.S. embargo was expanded and formalized on February 3, 1962.
On July 26, 1964 the OAS imposed multilateral sanctions on Cuba and member states broke relations with Havana throughout the Western Hemisphere, with Mexico the only country maintaining relations with Havana at the time.
Warming of relations between Washington and Havana did not begin until the tail end of the Nixon Administration, following the start of detente with China and the Soviet Union. Nixon traveled to China in February 1972 and met with Mao Zedong dropping opposition to Beijing’s entry to the United Nations, and in May 1972 Nixon traveled to the Soviet Union and met with Leonid Breshnev and supported a nuclear arms agreement. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had laid the groundwork for both meetings, and the overall detente.
In 1973 Henry Kissinger assumed the position of Secretary of State while also retaining his position as National Security Advisor in the Nixon Administration, and began to explore the possibility of a detente with Fidel Castro. Nestor T. Carbonell, in his important 2020 book Why Cuba Matters: New Threats in America’s Backyard, describes what happened next.
“Cuba remained a controversial political issue in the United States, so Kissinger guardedly looked for an intermediary to make initial contacts with the Castro regime (as President Kennedy had done with journalist Lisa Howard following the Missile Crisis). The choice this time was Frank Mankiewicz, a freelance journalist and former spokesman for Robert Kennedy who had recently shot a documentary on Cuba for CBS and was returning to Havana to interview Castro…” According to Kissinger, Nixon was not enthusiastic about the emissary, but he went along with a message to Castro along these lines: “America in principle was prepared to improve relations [with Cuba] on the basis of reciprocal measures agreed in confidential discussions … and was willing to show our goodwill by making symbolic first moves.”
Fidel Castro responded to the outreach with Mankiewicz with a box of Cuban cigars for Kissinger and a message expressing interest in “relaxing tensions” – the definition of détente. In the meantime, Watergate led to the early departure of Nixon from the White House on August 9, 1974 and Gerald Ford, his vice president, replacing him. [However, Kissinger continued with both positions through November 3, 1975, and as Secretary of State until the end of the Ford Administration on January 20, 1977.]
“A preliminary meeting was held on January 11, 1975, at a cafeteria in New York, by Deputy Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger with two Castro representatives: Ramón Sánchez Parodi, a senior official of the Cuban Communist Party, and Néstor García, first secretary of Cuba’s UN mission. This was followed by a substantive discussion on July 9 at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, led by Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs William Rogers, who covered some of the steps approved by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to relax tensions, phase out the embargo, and normalize relations. […]
“Eager to clinch a deal with Castro, the Ford administration offered several inducements to the Cuban ruler without any quid pro quo. First, the United States voted in favor of the July 29, 1975, OAS resolution, effectively ending the multilateral diplomatic and economic sanctions against the Castro regime. Then on August 19, President Ford eased the US embargo, allowing foreign subsidiaries of US companies to trade with Cuba, dropping foreign aid penalties on countries trading with the island, and permitting ships en route to Cuba to refuel in the United States.”
The hoped for “easing of tensions” did not occur, but instead the Ford Administration ended up with egg on its face.
Castro’s response was to send thousands of Cuban troops to Africa, first to Angola. According to the [Department of State Bulletin Volume 89 – February 1989] On September 23, 1975 “Secretary of State Henry Kissinger declared that events in Angola had taken a ‘distressing turn’ and that the United States was ‘most alarmed at the interference of extracontinental powers,’ i.e., the Soviet Union and Cuba.” [ Cubans had been there since at least March 1975]
All pretense that Cuba only had an advisory role was dropped on November 5, 1975, [Department of State Bulletin Volume 89 – February 1989] when thousands of Cuban troops were fighting in Angola; by February 1976, the number had increased to an estimated 14,000.” Cuban involvement in Angola would continue until 1991.
Kissinger was so angered by the Cuban intervention in Angola, and the failure of detente that he entertained the idea of air strikes on Cuba.
This pattern of opening up to the Castro regime with unilateral concessions, legitimizing it internationally, providing it more resources, followed by negative consequences was established by Henry Kissinger during the Nixon and Ford Administrations and would be repeated on greater scale by the Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden Administrations over the next five decades.
To understand the US embargo, it is important to understand the internal blockade
Afro-Cuban American scholar, Amalia Dache, an associate professor in the Higher Education Division at the University of Pennsylvania who “engages in research within contested urban geographies, including Havana, Cuba; Cape Town, South Africa; and Ferguson, Missouri” explained in July 21, 2021 the reality of the US embargo and the Castro regime’s internal blockade.
“No. It’s very hard for me to say that as someone who still has family living in Cuba. But lifting the embargo would not magically improve their lives. Here’s why: To understand the US embargo, it’s important to know about the internal blockade the Cuban government imposes on its own people. For example, the US embargo does still allow for food and medicine sales to Cuba. The Cuban government buys $100 million worth of chicken from producers in the United States annually. It sells that chicken to the Cuban people at a marked-up rate, sometimes at double the cost, and uses the profit to fund the regime. Other countries trade freely with Cuba, but because the government is heavily involved, the internal blockade keeps those profits from reaching the Cuban people. Poor neighborhoods — Afro Cuban neighborhoods — get the worst of the shortages. The police and military get money for new cars and surveillance technology.”
The dictatorship in Cuba is also a kleptocracy, pleading poverty while hoarding 18 billion dollars in the coffers of the Cuban military’s conglomerate GAESA. The profits don’t reach the average Cuban, but regime elites, beginning with Fidel Castro, and today with his great grand nephew, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro. lived and live lives of great wealth while 94% of Cubans live in extreme poverty.
Brussels Signal, August 13, 2026
Nothing to Celebrate: Fidel Castro’s Centenary and Cuba’s Kleptocratic Legacy
By John Suarez
VOZ, July 9, 2026
The figure that sums up the accusation is this: $2.7 billion (2.44 billion euros). That was, according to the report “The Price of Sustaining the Castro Regime,” the amount of Cuba’s debt to Spain that was restructured in 2016. Of that amount, Spain reportedly directly forgave nearly 1.5 billion euros, about 60% of the total. New relief measures followed: a debt conversion program of up to 375 million euros and a new operation valued at 291 million, which, according to calculations by the Juan de Mariana Institute, reportedly reduced Cuba’s obligations to Spain by nearly 90%.
In July 2025, the Spanish government presented the Debt Conversion Program with Cuba in July 2025 as a tool to channel up to 375 million euros toward sustainable development projects in energy, water, and food security. The Spanish government argued that the mechanism would transform debt into investments with a social impact.
The report, however, views the operation from the opposite angle: not as cooperation, but as financial lifeline for a regime that has offered no verifiable political reforms in return. Its central thesis is devastating: Spain has not supported a democratic transition in Cuba; it has helped lower the cost of the dictatorship’s survival.
“The most compelling evidence of the financial support Spain is providing to the Cuban regime is the series of debt relief, conversion and restructuring measures that Madrid has extended to Havana,” stated Diego Sánchez de la Cruz, head of studies at the Juan de Mariana Institute, during an interview with VOZ.
A dictatorship subsidized in stages
The Castro regime was never self-sufficient. At first, it depended on the Soviet Union, which, according to the report, transferred more than $120 billion dollars to Cuba in aid, subsidies and loans. Later, Venezuela replaced Moscow as the main external supporter, with oil and transfers that, at the height of the Chavista alliance, accounted for up to 22% of Cuba’s GDP. More recently, Russia has once again taken on a central role through debt forgiveness, loans, payment deferrals and energy supplies. Mexico has also—albeit more discreetly—provided other forms of support to the island’s state apparatus.
Spain appears in this chain not as the largest financier, but as a “key player within the democratic world”: a member country of the European Union that, despite the repression on the island, has continued to normalize its financial and diplomatic relations with Havana.
The most sensitive issue is the debt. In 2016, Cuba owed Spain 2.44 million euros. According to the report, the initial debt forgiveness amounted to 1.5 billion euros. Subsequently, the 375 million euro Debt Conversion Program allowed outstanding obligations to be converted into projects on the island. In 2025, another debt relief operation of 291 million euros was added. The result, according to calculations by the Juan de Mariana Institute, is that the outstanding balance is around 286 million euros.
“In 2016, Spain recognized nearly 2.5 billion euros of Cuba’s outstanding debt, and today that figure is less than 300 million. That means that for every 100 euros of debt, barely 10 remain outstanding,” the economic analyst explained to VOZ.
The report goes further and calculates the effective financial cost: if Cuba had had to finance that debt under market conditions, with a compound interest rate of 8% per year, the balance would have reached about 5.28 billion euros ($6 billion) by 2026. Based on that scenario, Spain’s support would amount to a financial impact of nearly 5 billion euros. This is an estimate from the document itself, not an official figure from the Spanish government, which has kept these issues under wraps for decades.
The official argument: Cooperation and development
The Spanish government’s defense rests on one idea: converting unpaid debt into useful projects. According to Madrid, the program—worth up to 375 million euros—aims to fund initiatives in critical sectors such as energy, water and food security, and is linked to the multilateral agreement reached at the Paris Club.
But this raises the central question of this investigation: Can there be effective cooperation when the recipient is an opaque, one-party state with no free press, no independent parliamentary oversight and political prisoners?
The report by the Juan de Mariana Institute answers no. Anyone familiar with the reality in Cuba would also reach this conclusion. It argues that the funds, although formally labeled as development aid, ultimately serve to strengthen state capabilities in the hands of the very same political structure that represses Cuban society. It also mentions sales of police equipment, energy programs, administrative digitization, institutional cooperation, technical assistance and food aid.
The other cost: Prisoners, poverty and exodus
The financial dimension cannot be separated from the political context. In 2026, Cuba held more than 1,200 political prisoners, according to Prisoners Defenders, and hundreds of people linked to the July 2021 protests remained imprisoned or subject to restrictions.
Amnesty International warned in April 2026 that the releases announced by the regime continued to be marked by arbitrariness, a lack of transparency and the absence of guarantees of full release for those who were imprisoned for exercising their fundamental rights.
The Juan de Mariana Institute’s own report cites even higher figures from human rights organizations: thousands of prisoners held for political reasons, more than 20,000 political prisoners since 1959, and nearly 300 prisons or detention centers.
Added to the repression is economic collapse. The report states that the average real wage is equivalent to about $4 per month, that 89% of Cubans live in extreme poverty, and that seven out of 10 people are forced to skip at least one meal a day due to a lack of resources, according to studies by organizations such as the Food Monitor Program, which closely monitor the issue of food insecurity and the precarious conditions currently facing the island.
The exodus completes the picture. Between 2021 and 2024, more than 1 million Cubans left the island, an exodus equivalent to nearly a quarter of the population.
“There have been decades of cooperation with a one-party dictatorship that continues to maintain more than 300 prisons, hold more than 1,000 political prisoners, and repress any form of dissent. There has been no verifiable improvement in human rights nor any economic or political opening that would justify all these concessions,” stated Sánchez de la Cruz.
Spanish companies: The partner that doesn’t get paid
This data shifts the political context. It is not merely a relationship between two states. There are also Spanish private companies trapped in a market where the regime controls payments, foreign currency, authorizations and the repatriation of profits. Spanish policy toward Cuba has combined public debt forgiveness with an inability to ensure that its own businesspeople get paid.
The moral problem
For years, Spain has justified its policy toward Cuba with a familiar formula: dialogue, presence, cooperation and influence. But the picture painted by the report is quite different. After decades of relations, Cuba remains a one-party dictatorship; civil liberties continue to be suppressed; the 2021 protests were punished with long prison sentences; the economy is collapsing and the population is fleeing en masse.
The question is no longer whether Spain should maintain relations with Cuba. All states maintain relations, in one way or another, with authoritarian governments. The question is what Cuban society gets in exchange for every financial concession granted to its government.
If the answer is greater transparency, more freedom, the release of prisoners and genuine openness, then such cooperation could be justified. But if the answer is opacity, default, repression and propaganda, then the Juan de Mariana Institute’s assessment gains traction: Spain would not be financing a transition, but rather ensuring the survival of a regime.
The price of looking the other way
The final figure—nearly 5 billion euros in actual financial cost, according to the Juan de Mariana Institute’s estimate—may be debatable as an economic calculation, but it is powerful as a political symbol. Because behind it lies a reality that is hard to ignore: while Spain forgives, converts and restructures debt, Cuba imprisons, impoverishes and expels its people.“There can be no cordial relationship with Havana as long as Havana remains what it is—one of the pillars of evil in the West, a country that actively cooperates with all the authoritarian regimes that make life difficult for citizens of the free world, but which also oppresses its entire population with a totalitarian model that has been in place for decades and decades since 1959,” concluded Diego Sánchez de la Cruz.That is the price of propping up the Castro regime. And also the price of looking the other way.
https://voz.us/en/world/260709/37258/the-cost-to-spain-of-propping-up-the-castro-regime-report-reveals-billions-in-aid-to-the-cuban-regime.html
Humanitarian corridor would aid Cubans, not the kleptocrats oppressing them
By John Suarez – Tuesday, August 26, 2025
OPINION:
Cuba’s kleptocratic military junta, with billions of dollars in cash reserves, pleads penury while Cubans living in extreme poverty die because of a lack of lifesaving medications. Meanwhile, regime elites live the good life, visiting Europe and the United States.
Through its conglomerate GAESA, the Cuban dictatorship’s military has $18 billion in bank accounts, more than the foreign reserves of Costa Rica, Uruguay and Panama.
Eighty-nine percent of the Cuban population lives in extreme poverty. Although the Cuban regime claims it has no money, Cubans die, and the government uses the misery it has manufactured on the island to sell the lie. This includes a failure to purchase lifesaving drugs.
Reports that emerged in 2024 show approximately 146 patients dying daily in Cuba because of a lack of such medications. Government pharmacies have a shortage of 63 key pharmaceuticals, yet keeping these essential drugs available to Cubans would cost only $43 million annually.
Extreme poverty rates in Costa Rica, Uruguay and Panama are far lower than those recorded in Cuba. Costa Rica has an extreme poverty rate of 1.3%, Uruguay’s is 0.2% and Panama’s is 3.7%, according to Our World in Data. Uruguay is doing substantially better than even the United States, which has a 1.2% rate of extreme poverty.
Extreme poverty coincides with the absence of the rule of law
What is the difference between these three Latin American countries and Cuba? The main one is the rule of law index, on which Cuba does not even register. Other Latin American countries, despite challenges, have democratic institutions, including independent judiciaries. This has been absent in Cuba since 1959.
From 1899 to 1959, Cuba had an independent supreme court. Over half a century, Cuba developed a multiparty system, competitive elections, a free press, a modern public health system and a strong labor movement. From 1902 to 1952, 17 Cuban presidents were elected in multiparty elections. This resulted in socioeconomic achievements that placed pre-1959 Cuba at the top of Latin American indexes, outperforming Castro’s Cuba.
Cuban democracy ended on March 10, 1952, when Fulgencio Batista disrupted the constitutional order. Nevertheless, the judiciary maintained independence.
Fidel Castro vowed to restore democracy and condemned Batista’s dictatorship. Instead, once in power, Castro imposed a communist dictatorship. (Before assuming power, he worked with the KGB to establish a police state.)
Rule of law versus rule by law
At the start of the Cuban revolution, Castro abolished the rule of law — a system by which laws are independently decided, equally enforced, publicly disseminated and compliant with international human rights standards — and replaced it with “rule by law,” which considers the governing authorities to be above the law, with the authority to enact and execute laws as they see fit, regardless of the impact on people’s larger liberties.
In their 2006 monograph on corruption in Cuba, Sergio Diaz-Briquetz and Jorge Perez-Lopez cited the formula “Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability.” The communist dictatorship in Cuba has monopoly control over all aspects of life, and the military dictatorship has total discretion over how to allocate resources — and zero accountability.
Cuba’s regime is a kleptocracy
Cuba, under the Castro regime, is a kleptocracy. It is organized corruption on a grand scale, done by political leaders for their personal enrichment and maintenance of power. This is why they use front people connected to regime elites to run “private” businesses.
Havana also plunders the resources of other countries, including Venezuela. It infiltrates governing structures and transnational criminal networks to enrich itself and pursue ideological objectives to export its political model.
“In many respects, Cuba can be accurately characterized as a violent criminal organization masquerading as a government,” former Defense Intelligence Agency Officer Christopher Simmons testified to Congress in 2012.
The positive role of sanctions
Loosening U.S. sanctions and providing this criminal enterprise with more resources has resulted in subjugation, first of the Nicaraguan people in 1979, during the Carter administration, and then of the Venezuelan people in 1999, during the Clinton administration.
Hard-line policies during the Reagan-Bush years brought a democratic renaissance to Nicaragua under Violeta Chamorro in 1990, reducing Havana’s negative influence in Latin America and coinciding with a democratic wave in the region.
President Obama’s December 2014 thaw coincided with the expansion in subsequent years of the Cuban military’s control of the Cuban economy. Havana also successfully assisted Daniel Ortega’s return to power and Nicaragua’s becoming a “full-blown dictatorship” from 2014 to 2016, despite Washington maintaining a free trade agreement with Managua.
History demonstrates that sanctions work to constrain Havana’s ambitions and protect U.S. taxpayers. That’s why the Center for a Free Cuba, along with other individuals and groups, continues to argue for a humanitarian corridor to directly assist Cubans on the island while not benefiting the kleptocrats who oppress them.
• John Suarez is a human rights activist and executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba and a former program officer for Latin America Programs at Freedom House.
https://www.washingtontimes.
Daily Herd Management, March 7, 2024
Cuba Turns to World Food Program for Milk Supply as Crisis Deepens
By Reuters March 7, 2024
Cuba on Monday confirmed it had sought help from the World Food Program to guarantee the supply of subsidized powdered milk for children, according to a report in state-run media, a sign of deepening economic woes on the communist-run Caribbean island.
Cuba first announced in February that it was struggling to shore up milk supply as domestic production falters, the latest shortage to strain a decades-old subsidies scheme created by the late Fidel Castro.
“Cuba requested (World Food Programme) assistance for the purchase of powdered milk in order to guarantee supply to Cuban boys and girls,” state-run media outlet CubaDebate reported on Monday.
A ship carrying 375 tons of powdered milk is set to arrive in the coming days from Brazil as a result of Cuba`s request to the World Food Programme, CubaDebate said.
Spanish news agency EFE first reported Cuba`s decision to seek aid from the World Food Programme last week.
Cuban officials said in February the country had also run short of wheat, forcing it to slash the supply of subsidized bread.
Both bread and milk for children are key components of Cuba`s “rationbook” system introduced after Castro’s 1959 revolution to provide subsidized staples for all.
The system however has fallen into disarray as economic crisis handicaps the communist-run government’s ability to make good on its commitments, prompting shortages in food, fuel and medicine.
Cuba blames the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and stiffened sanctions against the island implemented under former U.S. President Donald Trump for fueling economic crisis and handicapping its purchasing power on global markets.
Cuba nonetheless said on Monday it had also purchased 500 tons of milk from the United States, under exceptions that allow for the sale of agricultural products, as well as from Canada and Brazil.
https://www.dairyherd.com/news/exports/cuba-turns-world-food-program-milk-supply-crisis-deepens
Havana Times, February 25, 2024
Cubans and Tourists Without Bread Until the End of March
despite a donation of Russian wheat
Of the five mills on the Island, only one, the one in Cienfuegos, is operational
HAVANA TIMES – Once again, there is little bread in Cuba due to a lack of flour. The “complex situation,” as the official press defines it, will last until the end of March, according to Emerio Gonzalez Lorenzo, president of the Food Industry Business Group.
Although state media say that the “impact” on the rationed bread rolls began to “show” this Saturday, it is something that consumers have been experiencing daily for months, even in establishments aimed at tourism.
Similarly, the report on national television said that the last shipments of raw materials arrived at the end of January “and ensured the activity of mills and bakeries for most of February.” At no time does it mention that 25,000 tons of wheat donated by the Russian government that arrived in mid-January.
That amount exceeds the 20,000 tons that, authorities assured this Saturday, are necessary to cover the rationed daily bread rolls for a month. If this is the case, the shipment of Russian wheat should have been enough to supply the stores for the remainder of this month and the next.
The Government, as usual, blamed the situation on “financial restrictions mainly due to the intensified US embargo, [which they call a blockade] and the logistical limitations that Cuba suffers to bring wheat from distant markets.” However, following that, the president of the Food Industry himself said that of the five mills on the Island, only one, the one in Cienfuegos, is operational, and it cannot produce more than 250 tons per day, out of the 700 demanded for the rationed bread rolls.
The substitute products added to bread – such as cassava, squash, or rice – are not a solution either, as they only make up 15% of the total needed to make the bread rolls, according to official notes. And neither is buying bread from private vendors: although they claim that “the purchase of imported flour by non-state forms of management is being negotiated,” this contribution amounts to only 3,000 tons per month, and, as Gonzalez says, in any case, “the tons that arrive at the port will not cover the needs.”
It is not the first time that there has been a shortage of flour and, consequently, bread on the Island. At the end of last year, the regime justified this shortage by saying that the war between Russia and Ukraine had increased the cost of wheat imports, something that was denied by economists like Pedro Monreal. Based on data from the Business Insider website, the expert asserted that the price of cereal was at its lowest point since 2020.
https://havanatimes.org/features/cubans-and-tourists-without-bread-until-the-end-of-march/
Miami Herald, June 5, 2023
Even before Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, arrived in Havana it was clear that addressing the plight of more than 1,000 political prisoners in Cuba was not a top concern.
Before his official visit to Cuba, from May 25-27, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Civil Rights Defenders and five other human-rights organizations sent Borrell a letter, made public on May 22, urging him, together with E.U. member states to respond to the country’s human-rights crisis during the third EU-Cuba Joint Council in Havana.
They asked him “to lead the E.U. and its member states in robustly engaging the Cuban authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all those detained solely for exercising their human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.” They asked, specifically, that they “raise the cases of José Daniel Ferrer García, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Maykel ‘Osorbo’ Castillo Pérez, Aymara Nieto, Sissi Abascal Zamora, Donaida Pérez Paseiro and dissident artists Richard Zamora Brito “El Radikal”, Maria Cristina Garrido Rodriguez and Randy Arteaga-Rivera.”
On May 23, the European Parliament Subcommittee on Human Rights held a hearing on Cuba, where some members raised concerns, including the chair, who asked Jonathan Hatwell, head of the EEAS Division for Latin America and the Caribbean, if his boss, Borrell would be taking a list of political prisoners to hand over to the Cuban government and press for their release.
Hatwell’s meandering response, in which he said he didn’t know, spoke volumes.
On May 25, the European External Action Service tweeted: “Did you know that the European Union and its member states are Cuba’s first investor and first trading partner?” That same day, Borrell did not address Cuba’s political prisoners or mention the Cuban regime approving on the first day of his visit the “Social Communication Law,” which further criminalizes and seeks to muzzle independent journalism and penalizes user interaction on the internet to silence Cubans.
Instead, Borrell highlighted the micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) on Twitter. His first public event in Cuba was not a meeting with activists or the relatives of political prisoners, but a meeting with so-called “entrepreneurs” in a location owned by the son of a high-ranking military official.
Apparently, the European Union is competing with Russia in creating a new oligarchic class that is politically connected and will oversee Cuba’s private sector. Without the rule of law or private property rights, as is the case in Russia today, the private sector is determined by those connected to the inner circle of the dictatorship and the military.
The European Union’s high representative criticized U.S. sanctions, but made no mention of the internal blockade created by Cuban communists that results in great misery or that dissidents are calling for multilateral sanctions and international isolation of the Cuban dictatorship.
Borrell also criticized Cuba’s inclusion on the U.S. State Department’s state terror sponsor list, despite the fact that Havana is linked to terrorism around the world, and this includes Spain, Borrell’s home country.
The first ETA cadres were trained in Cuba. In 1964, members of the Basque terrorist group received training in kidnappings, subversion and sabotage. This terrorist gang, responsible for the murder of more than 850 Spaniards, has been given sanctuary in Cuba.
A January 2021 U.S. State Department report found that Cuba refused Colombia’s requests to extradite 10 ELN leaders living in Havana after the group claimed responsibility for the January 2019 bombing of a Bogota police academy that killed 22 people and injured more than 87 others. The report also found that Havana’s intelligence and military apparatus infiltrated Venezuela’s security and military forces to maintain a stranglehold over Venezuelans.
Havana’s support for FARC dissidents and the ELN continues beyond Cuba’s borders, as well, and the Castro regime created a permissive environment for international terrorists in Venezuela.
Money is fungible, and the European Union and its member states have forgiven Havana billions in debts. How many of these billions have gone to fund terrorism?
John Suarez is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuba-e-u-official-prioritized-150632661.html?guccounter=1
The American Presidency, February 3, 1962
John F. Kennedy
35th President of the United States: 1961 ‐ 1963
February 03, 1962
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Whereas the Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Serving as Organ of Consultation in Application of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, in its Final Act resolved that the present Government of Cuba is incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system; and, in light of the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet Communism with which the Government of Cuba is publicly aligned, urged the member states to take those steps that they may consider appropriate for their individual and collective self-defense;
Whereas the Congress of the United States, in section 620(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (75 Stat. 445), as amended, has authorized the President to establish and maintain an embargo upon all trade between the United States and Cuba; and
Whereas the United States, in accordance with its international obligations, is prepared to take all necessary actions to promote national and hemispheric security by isolating the present Government of Cuba and thereby reducing the threat posed by its alignment with the communist powers:
Now, Therefore, I, John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America, acting under the authority of section 620(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (75 Stat. 445), as amended, do
1. Hereby proclaim an embargo upon trade between the United States and Cuba in accordance with paragraphs 2 and 3 of this proclamation.
2. Hereby prohibit, effective 12:01 A.M., Eastern Standard Time, February 7, 1962, the importation into the United States of all goods of Cuban origin and all goods imported from or through Cuba; and I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of the Treasury to carry out such prohibition, to make such exceptions thereto, by license or otherwise, as he determines to be consistent with the effective operation of the embargo hereby proclaimed, and to promulgate such rules and regulations as may be necessary to perform such functions.
3. AND FURTHER, I do hereby direct the Secretary of Commerce, under the provisions of the Export Control Act of 1949, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2021-2032), to continue to carry out the prohibition of all exports from the United States to Cuba, and I hereby authorize him, under that Act, to continue, make, modify, or revoke exceptions from such prohibition.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be affixed.
DONE at the City of Washington this third day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-sixth.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-3447-embargo-all-trade-with-cuba