{"id":190715,"date":"2021-08-02T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=190715"},"modified":"2021-08-01T05:00:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T04:00:21","slug":"as-progressives-call-for-end-to-blockade-biden-announces-more-sanctions-against-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/08\/as-progressives-call-for-end-to-blockade-biden-announces-more-sanctions-against-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"As Progressives Call for End to Blockade, Biden Announces More Sanctions against Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The move comes after Democratic leadership in the House blocked an amendment to roll back limits on how much money people in the United States can send to family on the island nation.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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A Cuban takes part in a rally calling for the end of the U.S. blockade against Cuba, in Santa Clara, Villa Clara Province, on April 25, 2021. (Photo: Yamil Lage\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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30 Jul 2021 – <\/em>While President Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge<\/a> to reverse the “failed” policies of his predecessor that “inflicted harm on Cubans and their families,” his administration\u2014already under mounting pressure from progressives to deliver on that promise\u2014announced<\/a> new sanctions against Cuba today.<\/p>\n

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Following Cubans’ recent protests<\/a> over shortages of food, medicine, and other essentials during the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Cuba’s main law enforcement body, Polic\u00eda Nacional Revolucionaria (PNR), as well as its director and deputy director, Oscar Callejas Valcarce and Eddy Sierra Arias.<\/p>\n

The Treasury Department said<\/a> in a statement announcing the moves that “the Cuban regime deployed the PNR\u2026 to suppress and attack protesters.” In the midst of these protests, progressives have highlighted the role of the United States’ decadeslong blockade, and called out U.S. media for how it has handled that history and its present-day effects.<\/p>\n

“Cuba has a population of 11 million people. The protests pale in comparison, both in terms of turnout and in state repression, to mass mobilizations that have rocked Colombia, Haiti, Chile, Ecuador, and other Latin American countries over the past few years\u2014or even Portland, Oregon, or Ferguson, Missouri,” Medea Benjamin and Leonardo Flores of the U.S. anti-war group CodePink wrote<\/a> for Common Dreams<\/em> this month. “Moreover, U.S. media have paid little attention to the counterprotesters, who have gone out into the streets to express their support for the government and Cuban Revolution.”<\/p>\n

Benjamin and Flores continued:<\/p>\n

The protests should also be understood in the context of a brutal economic war waged by the United States against the island nation for more than 60 years. This was laid out<\/a> clearly by the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in 1960, when he explicitly called for “denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.” This strategy has failed in its goal of regime change for decades, and it is unlikely to be successful now.<\/p>\n

…While the blockade has been in place for over six decades, it was tightened in significant ways under the Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure<\/a>.” This strategy targeted Cuba’s tourism, energy, and other key economic sectors. It even restricted the amounts of money Cuban Americans can send home and closed the Cuban branches of Western Union<\/a>, the main vehicle for sending remittances. These policies have had a disastrous impact on the Cuban economy, especially when the Covid-induced shutdown of the tourist industry has deprived the island of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. For its part, the Biden administration has been “reviewing” its Cuba policy for six months, all the while continuing Trump’s strategy of economic warfare that is designed precisely to create the shortages Cubans are now experiencing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Bel\u00e9n Fern\u00e1ndez put it<\/a> in a piece for Al Jazeera<\/em> on Thursday: “Cuba’s dire situation has just about everything to do with United States interference\u2026 particularly the six-decades-long blockade that, under international law, technically qualifies as an act of war.”<\/p>\n

“Although mainstream articles do often mention U.S. sanctions,” Fern\u00e1ndez wrote of U.S. newspapers, “they almost never convey their comprehensively asphyxiating nature\u2014context without which none of Cuba’s contemporary history can begin to be understood.”<\/p>\n

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More registered US voters believe we should *help* the Cuban people (either by donating vaccines, loosening remittances, lifting the embargo, etc.) rather than sanction the Cuban government. <\/p>\n

The US should listen to the people and #LetCubaLive<\/a>: https:\/\/t.co\/dCMsBI350G<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/jitctmP5oA<\/a><\/p>\n

— CODEPINK (@codepink) July 30, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n