U.S. policies have the Caribbean in the dark and under rubble

Let’s talk about Cuba.

(Disclaimer : I know I’ve already riled up a bunch of people just by bringing up the island nation. So I want to make something very clear: I am going to be talking about the people living in Cuba with respect and empathy. If you were looking for me to rant about Fidel Castro, communism and other Cold War-era talking points, you must have me confused with Marco Rubio.)

Over the weekend, Cuba suffered yet another nationwide blackout, which came only a few weeks after it was hit with three blackouts in nine days in July.

The island nation has been plagued by power outages over the last two years, caused by mechanical failures, damage from severe storms and fuel shortages.

But the situation has been greatly exacerbated by the United States.

Venezuela had long been a provider of oil and fuel to Cuba, but after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. took control of the South American country’s oil reserves. President Trump also threatened to impose tariffs on countries that send oil to the island.

The U.S. embargo against Cuba goes back over 60 years, to when Castro seized power by ousting the U.S.-backed leader, Fulgencio Batista, in the late 1950s. The fear of communism somehow hopping from the island to the U.S. set in stateside and was further bolstered by the fact that the Soviet Union began backing Cuba. Insert the Bay of Pigs invasion, the nuclear arms race and the other stuff you probably (hopefully) learned about in school — and that’s how we got to the current situation.

All these years later, the U.S. stubbornly is standing by Red Scare ideologies to rationalize the embargo.

Relations with Cuba have further worsened under the Trump and Biden administrations. In 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration severely restricted the flow of tourism to the island with the Cuba Restricted List: an ever-expanding registry of Cuban businesses — largely tourism-based institutions such as hotels — that Americans were prohibited from doing business with.

That list was further expanded last year at the start of the second Trump administration. The U.S. also banned all cruise ships from going to Cuba beginning in 2019.

The U.S. had further disincentivized businesses and financial institutions from operating in Cuba when it deemed the Caribbean country a state sponsor of terrorism in 2021, a distinction Cuba shares with North Korea, Iran and Syria.

Changes in import legislation imposed by the U.S. have led to a lack of access to medical tools and medications in Cuba. Because of this, more than 50% of medications on the island are in short supply.

Restrictions on remittances also have limited the amount of aid Cubans can receive from family members and charitable organizations from the States. This lack of funds, in turn, leaves families without the ability to purchase necessities.

“I would argue that a war with Cuba has already begun,” said Lee Schlenker — a research associate at the trans-partisan political “action tank” and communications project called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

“It’s very difficult for the over 9 million Cubans who are just coming out from the sixth nationwide blackout to argue that this administration’s indiscriminate war against the island’s economy hasn’t already begun,” he told The Times. “[Cubans] believe mostly that things will only get worse before they get better.”

But why has the U.S. decided to ramp up its offensive against Cuba over the last few months? Look no further than son of Cuban exiles and current secretary of State: Rubio.

“This is really a pet project of Marco Rubio,” Schlenker said. “The operation to extract Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela was very clearly aimed at destabilizing Cuba through cutting off oil sales. Rubio was the architect of the 2017 national security presidential memorandum that reversed the Obama administration’s historic détente with the island, despite the objections of basically all of the first Trump administration’s deputies in all of the major cabinets.

“He’s always been beholden to a small group of powerful and influential Americans in South Florida,” Schlenker added. “[He’s] a hawkish neoconservative who believes that we must export human rights and democracy, allegedly, whether through force, through coercion or diplomatic arm twisting.”

Cuba is a boogeyman character for Rubio. There’s nothing he’d want more than to bring down the Cuban government to heel and tout that as a victory — in spite of all the Cuban people who would be endangered by that.

This is all part of the larger “Don-roe Doctrine,” in which the U.S. looks to justify its interference with all governments in the Western Hemisphere.

Having recently gone to the Caribbean nation, Schlenker saw firsthand the devastating effects of how badly the U.S. is choking out the country.

“People are tired, they’re exhausted. There’s really no hope,” he said. “People don’t even know who to blame anymore. They know that Trump is to blame, that they have their hands tied. They don’t really see a way out.”

I too would be hard-pressed to see a way out if I was living in complete darkness, if I needed to wait weeks for a necessary surgery, if my children were on the brink of starvation, if I saw the other nations were too scared of the U.S. to send aid, if infant mortality rates were skyrocketing and cancer survival rates were plummeting.

What would the Cuban people have to look forward to if the U.S. was able to swing its political power within the country? Let’s just look at Venezuela.

The U.S. was able to go in and extradite Maduro and have Delcy Rodríguez play the part of puppet — they didn’t even install Trump’s populist political buddy, María Corina Machado, after the takeover. Venezuela has lost control of its valuable resources and has yet to benefit from the U.S. intervention.

You’d think the U.S. would have a vested interest in helping move along Venezuela’s recovery process after twin earthquakes devastated the country in late June, which resulted in more than 6,000 deaths. But that hasn’t been the case.

“Venezuela has crucial resources that it is not being allowed to access. The United States and Europe are blocking the nation from more than $11 billion that Venezuela should legally have,” Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently wrote in a column for The Times.

“There are some billions of dollars more that are being held by the Trump administration, despite an executive order stating that these funds ‘constitute property of the Government of Venezuela.’ This is cash from the sale of Venezuela’s oil, which the Trump administration has taken control.”

But why does all this matter to Latinos in the U.S.? Well, it reflects this administration’s views of Latinos.

We are resources and political tools to the government — nothing more. Just chess pieces that are used to gain imperialistic points.

Whether Latinos live or die is not of importance to the U.S. political machine; it’s obvious.

Create an unstable situation that makes life unmanageable and then demonize the victims of that situation when they ask you for help — that’s the U.S. government’s MO.

Last year, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for 600,000 Venezuelans, making them all eligible for removal from the country. That ruling also stripped away protections for thousands of Cuban in the U.S.

Today’s Venezuelan earthquake and Cuban blackout victims are tomorrow’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees.

Remembering the El Paso shooting

On Aug. 3, 2019, a gunman drove more than nine hours from North Texas to an El Paso Walmart and killed 23 people while injuring 22 others. The assailant later admitted to authorities that the attack was racially motivated against Latinos.

The shooter is facing 23 life sentences for his crimes, and the families of the dead must face every day without their loved ones.

Over the last week, vigils for the victims have been held at memorial sites throughout the Texas city.

“It was not only Walmart, it was our community at the border that was attacked. Violently,” an immigration reform and human rights advocate told El Paso NBC affiliate KTSM. “So yes, we need to remember each of them. But at the same time we need to remember, and not forget, the ideas, the narrative behind that attack.”

Seven years after the shooting, I wish I could say I feel more hopeful that something like this never will happen again, but I really can’t.

Latino hate crimes are up across the nation, reaching record highs last year, and Latinos continually have been shot and killed in the streets by government officials over the last few years. Thousands more Latino men, women and children have been locked up and forced to live in rundown, disease-and-vermin-filled detention centers.

Gun laws continue to remain loose throughout the majority of the country, especially in Texas. Just this week, a Texas judge passed a ruling that could allow firearm owners to purchase firearm suppressors and other firearms without registration, while also removing a layer of background checks.

What a messed-up country we live in.

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