Just four hundred miles south of Miami, Cuba has proven itself to be a thorn in Washington’s foot. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Cuba has been alone in the world, its biggest ally tossed to the dustbin of history. But remarkably, the Cuban nation has withstood the test of time, managing to survive in the new world order it was subjected to overnight. In the face of oblivion, Cuba has faced the wind for decades, alone. Against all the odds, they’ve come as an unlikely survival story.
Cuba’s medical program, for example, has been a frontrunner in global solidarity. During the height of the pandemic in Covid-battered Italy, hundreds of Cuban doctors were dispatched to combat the pandemic. Not to mention the significant contributions they’ve made in creating the first lung cancer vaccine, in collaboration with the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. It is the only vaccine of its kind globally, a monumental feat undertaken in collaboration with American doctors.
And following a referendum in 2022, Cuba’s new family code provided some of the most progressive provisions on LGBTQ and women’s rights in Latin America. Same-sex marriage and adoption, alongside measures against gender violence, passed after millions of Cubans flocked to the polls. In comparison to the nation’s Latin American counterparts that have routinely lagged on these issues, these are both massive achievements that should be praised.
But these achievements haven’t come easy. America’s siege on Cuba, particularly through its ongoing embargo, is a deliberate attempt to force the Cuban people to submit to our influence.
The origin of the embargo comes following the Cuban Revolution, which saw the American-backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship overthrown. Following the Bay of Pigs invasion, where mercenaries armed and supported by the American government landed in an attempt to overthrow the fledgling government, things fell apart. Relations never recovered.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the new government allowed for Soviet missiles to be placed on the island, the Kennedy administration blockaded all ‘non-essential’ aid to Cuba. While this officially ended with the negotiated withdrawal of these weapons, America has continued to embargo the island nation into submission.
This has continued into the present day. Now over sixty years removed from the end of the Cuban Revolution, the United States has continued to pummel the island with numerous restrictions.
America’s embargo on Cuba is enforced through a few pieces of existing legislation. The 1963 Cuban Assets Control Regulations froze all American assets in Cuba and prohibited all Cuban exports unless explicitly allowed with a special, often hard-to-obtain, permit.
More recently, the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act has been particularly harsh, barring all foreign ships that docked in Cuba from docking in the United States for six months. This is beyond just the sphere of the United States. It is an attempt to isolate Cuba from the rest of the world.
Make no mistake about the intention. In the early days of the embargo, back in 1960, Assistant Secretary of State Lestor D. Mallory made it very explicit why we were doing this. Not just to “weaken the economic life of Cuba,” but to “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
The consequences of this blatant aggression remain devastating even today.
In 2023, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated that some 88% of Cuban households live in extreme poverty, in part as an outcome of the economic warfare waged on the island. With the severe restrictions on importing humanitarian supplies, notably medicine, and food, the World Food Programme of the United Nations points out that the rationed food that is available provides barely a fraction of the nutritional needs of the Cuban people.
Those rations have actually been reduced significantly over the years. According to the Cuban government, inflation in 2023 ended at around 30%. In early 2024, Finance Minister Vladimir Regueiro announced a 25% increase in electricity prices, as long subsidized fuel prices have staggered even with concessions to private industry. America’s willingness to try to bleed Cuba dry has led to a nation sinking increasingly into crisis. The social welfare system, once lauded as the strongest in the world, is at risk of collapsing entirely.
This economic warfare has been disastrous for the island nation. Economically, the cost of the embargo for Cuba has been estimated by the United Nations to be around $130 billion over the six decades it’s been imposed. The fiscal deficit has only continued to grow, and with the introduction of private businesses, social inequality has only continued to visibly get worse.
This has contributed to a terrible feedback loop. Tough economic conditions force the expansion of painful economic reforms, increasing inequality, and creating even worse conditions for the island’s underclass.
And perhaps worst of all, it’s near-universally unpopular. Every year since 1992, the UN has routinely put forward a resolution condemning the embargo, with 187 nations voting to repeal the blockade in 2023 alone. The two nations that have voted against the resolution every single session? The United States and Israel.
This is unacceptable. The embargo on Cuba is a glaring violation of sovereignty.
The Cuban people deserve the right to self-determination, a right the United States has functionally curtailed severely. As Cubans rally in the street, exhausted from an economic crisis only heightened by the United States, America has continued to wring the Cuban people dry.
Locked in a seemingly intractable struggle to breathe, the seriousness of the blockade on the Cuban people cannot be understated. This is not an issue that can be kicked down the road any longer. Without a proper end to the embargo, any genuine attempt to address the century long oppression that America has forced onto Cuba is entirely void in its nature.
America’s siege must end. And in repealing this legislation that has chained Cuba to a downward spiral, the destiny of this island can be allowed to write itself, a future denied for generations. It’s time to allow the Cuban people to finally decide their future.