Cuba and the US Return to a Time of Confrontation

Nearly five months after he arrived in the White House, Joe Biden is maintaining sanctions on Cuba and distance with Havana, as the acrimonious rhetoric of the Trump era returns.

We knew that Joe Biden was not going to be Barack Obama with respect to Cuba. And we also knew that lifting Donald Trump’s sanctions and resuming the rapprochement policy of the former Democratic president could take some time. But no one imagined that things could go so wrong. Nearly five months after Biden took office, not a single one of the 240 measures Trump took to tighten the embargo on Cuba has been rescinded. Washington’s reproaches about the human rights situation on the island are increasing, and the new administration has said that because Havana does not fully cooperate with Washington in the fight against terrorism, it will remain on its blacklist. The response of the Cuban Foreign Ministry was immediate: “It is about an absolutely unfounded accusation used to pursue political purposes, intended to justify the attacks against Cuba, including the inhumane economic, commercial and financial blockade that is being suffered by our people.”

Little remains of initial expectations. Day by day, we return to the acrimonious rhetoric of the Trump era, while no one discusses Obama’s normalization of the relationship with Cuba anymore. For Cuba, Biden is the perpetuation of the past.

In recent weeks, diplomatic squabbles between the two countries have multiplied. On May 4, during the 51st Conference on the Americas, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. would “condemn the repression of human rights on the island,” and “will continue to advocate for the human rights of the Cuban people, including the right to freedom of expression and assembly.”

Hours later, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodriguez replied, “If Secretary Blinken were interested in the human rights of Cubans, he would lift the economic blockade and the 243 measures applied by the former U.S. administration, which are still in force today amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. He would reestablish consular services and family reunion.”

Last week, following the hunger strike of artist and dissident activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was forcibly transferred to a hospital in Havana (where he has been hospitalized and isolated for nearly four weeks), and the subsequent arrest of opposition rapper Maykel Osorbo, Julie Chung, the State Department’s assistant secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said that the U.S. “rejects the detention of artists for exercising their freedom of expression. The Cuban government cannot silence its critics through violation of their human rights.” This time, it was Deputy Director for U.S. Affairs at Cuba’s Foreign Ministry Johana Tablada who responded by describing Chung’s statement as “openly demagogic and interfering” and “a simulation of concern for human rights, while hiding the true purposes of the U.S. government.”

The U.S. “is not interested in the Cuban people and does not even care about those Cuban citizens who are systematically financed, oriented and promoted with high visibility to fabricate illegal destabilization actions and generate a false image of Cuba, pretexts with which it tries to justify its criminal policy of economic blockade.”

To make matters worse, this week Washington designated Cuba, together with Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela, as one of the countries which do not fully cooperate in the fight against terrorism. This would justify the inclusion of the island on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, as Trump did nine days before he left the White House, a last action aimed at hindering any possible rapprochement with Havana. “This slanderous action as well as continued enforcement of Trump’s policy and his 243 blockade measures are both surprising and irritating,” Rodríguez countered.

U.S. scholar William LeoGrande recalls that Biden supported Obama’s opening to Cuba when he was Obama’s vice president, and promised during the 2020 campaign to resume his commitment. “But early signals from administration officials indicate that an internal debate is underway between those who favor returning to Obama’s policy, and those who would continue the policy of pressure, leaving many of Trump’s sanctions in place,” LeoGrande pointed out in a recent article.

In recent months, several members of Congress and senators of both parties have introduced various legislative initiatives in favor of, and against, the easing of the embargo on Cuba. The lobbying is growing, and key to its growth is the position adopted by powerful Democratic Sen. Bob Menéndez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is committed to maintaining a hard line with Cuba. In recent days, Menéndez and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, who supported Trump’s sanctions policy against the island, introduced a proposal to prohibit U.S. courts from recognizing rights to a person or a company over a trademark that has been “confiscated by the Cuban regime.” It added fuel to the fire. About the same time, the nongovernmental organization Oxfam urged Biden to take measures as soon as possible to normalize ties with Cuba and lift sanctions for humanitarian reasons, recalling that of the 243 measures taken by Trump, 55 were imposed during the pandemic.

The course of action that Biden should take regarding Cuba is a matter of debate in the United States. Prestigious think tanks, such as the Center for Democracy in the Americas, the Washington Office on Latin America or the Cuba Study Group, have requested in various documents that the new administration give priority to the Cuban issue and reestablish Obama’s policy of rapprochement and critical engagement. But so far, nothing has changed. In the difficult game of power in Washington, “there may be domestic political gains to be had by maintaining the status quo, but no one should pretend it will produce anything positive as foreign policy,” LeoGrande observed. “An effective Cuba policy requires a realist mindset that recognizes, once and for all, Washington’s inability to impose its will on Cuba … Policymakers need to give up the illusion that sanctions will produce victory, and get about the hard work of engaging with a regime that we may not like, but that is not going away any time soon.”

The other option is to continue the same policy of pressure from 60 years ago, which has proved to be a failure and feeds the psychology of the “square under siege” of the Cuban government. And, in the middle, as always, the Cuban people are the ones bearing the brunt of it.