Tag Archives: #SanctionsKill

Cuba-U.S. relations: the thaw that didn’t happen

by Jim Hodgson

A decade ago this week came news that the United States and Cuba would begin a process to restore relations broken in 1961 in the wake of the Cuban Revolution and at the height of the Cold War. 

Simultaneous announcements, December 17, 2014. Image: OnCuba News. For more background, please see my 2021 series of posts about Cuba, beginning here.

“Today, America chooses to cut loose the shackles of the past so as to reach for a better future—for the Cuban people, for the American people, for our entire hemisphere, and for the world,” said President Barack Obama. 

“As we have repeated, we must learn the art of coexisting, in a civilized manner, with our differences,” said President Raúl Castro. 

Obama did not, however, back away from historic U.S. criticisms of Cuba’s revolutionary option; nor did Castro promise to surrender national sovereignty or its political system. But a process was set in place for dialogue over differences. Prisoners were released on both sides of the Straits of Florida. People could visit each other once again. Perhaps the United States would finally become a “good neighbour” to Cuba and other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Tragically, hope inspired that week and by Obama’s visit to Havana in March 2016 has proved but fleeting—“ephemeral” says an editorial Tuesday in Mexico’s La Jornada daily newspaper. 

When Donald Trump came to power in January 2017, he cancelled all the advances of the Obama era and, as La Jornada puts it, added “new layers of sadism to the criminal blockade against Cuba.” He even maintained his “maximum pressure” on Cuba during the COVID-19 pandemic, obstructing Cuba’s efforts to obtain vital medical supplies during the crisis. (Yes, Cuba produced its own vaccines, but syringes and other specific items were in short supply.)

We kind of knew then (as we do now) that dealing with Trump in a rational manner would be difficult, but it was a disappointment that President Joe Biden failed so miserably to alter any but the most minor of sanctions that the United States—alone in the world—applies to Cuba. The harshest measure—maintaining Cuba on a U.S. list of “state sponsors of terrorism”—blocks Cuba from normal international financial activity. It is applied in an “extraterritorial” way, complicating efforts even by humanitarian organizations in other countries (including Canada) to share financial resources or for freight companies to carry material aid to Cuba.

As I have said before, sanctions in almost every instance harm civilian populations and fail to produce their stated goal: regime change. In Cuba today, the consequences verge on catastrophic (again, the word used by La Jornada): Cuba is now “unable to generate urgent resources in order to restore its energy system, start food production, take advantage of its tourism potential, and restore industries devastated by the isolation to which Washington has subjected it.”

Cubans will march to the U.S. embassy in Havana on Friday, December 20, against “imperial shame” and for an end to hostility.

In these next four years, leaders of the United States represent a menace to their own population—especially Trans people, pregnant women, and immigrants—but also to other nations. In the face of Trump’s tariff threats, Canada and Mexico are both scrambling to mitigate damage. They’ll be choosing which battles to fight.

Canada, together with countries like Mexico, must retain its distinct foreign policy, a feature of which for 65 years has been solidarity with Cuba. And those of us who care for Cuba’s choice to do things differently must remind Trump and his cohort that they cannot punish a country simply because it chooses not to govern itself as the United States wishes.

Canada has increased aid to Cuba, but it should also press Biden to ease sanctions

by Jim Hodgson

In these final months of his administration, Joe Biden could take some steps to at least temporarily ease hardship in Cuba and to complicate whatever his successor does. 

With power outages, hurricanes and then two earthquakes on Nov. 10 that measured 6.0 and 6.7, Cuba is having a hard year. And it comes on the heels of several hard years as measures by Donald Trump’s 2017-21 administration took hold—suspension of family remittances, restrictions on banks, among others—and with the decline of tourism revenue during and after the Covid pandemic.

For almost two years, Canadian churches, trade unions and solidarity groups have called on the government of Canada to increase humanitarian aid to Cuba and to press the Biden administration to ease sanctions and to remove Cuba from its list of so-called “state sponsors of terrorism.” Their work complimented the work of U.S. and other international groups that sought to get Biden to at least bring the U.S. relationship back to where it was near the end of Barack Obama’s administration in 2017—before Trump made things worse. 

Canadian embassy Nov. 1 announcement of support to UNICEF’s delivery of medical kits in Guantánamo area, and a photo of delivery of 28 of the kits Nov. 10.

Now they’re asking for letters to be sent to Canadian politicians to press for more aid and for action with Biden on the sanctions. 

Here’s what Katrina vanden Heuvel had to say to Biden about Cuba after the U.S. election in The Nation: 

In another common-sense change that would undo decades of senseless policy, the president could also finally normalize relations with Cuba. That would mean the restoration of official diplomatic ties, removal of the island from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, and honoring the 22 bilateral agreements signed during the Obama administration before being torn up by Trump. It would also mean lifting sanctions that have fuelled Cuba’s ongoing economic crisis, and providing robust aid to people beset by severe fuel shortages and food rationing. Closing Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and returning it to Cuba as a hospital would disassemble the starkest symbol of American domineering on the island. And though Trump will almost certainly seek to reverse any executive actions on Cuba, Biden could make that politically complicated by opening up private-sector investment there.

Here in Canada, we’ve had more success with our request for more aid. Canada announced Nov. 1 that it will provide $350,000 to Care Canada to provide water, sanitation, and hygiene services, and distribute relief supplies to 25,000 people for up to 6 months in Guantanamo, and for $50,000 to UNICEF-Cuba for delivery of medical kits that will sustain up to 12,000 people over three months. A further announcement that would bring aid up to $900,000 is expected soon.

Headlines Nov. 13 in the English-language version of Granma newspaper.

Now, with Trump set to take office on Jan. 20, the available window for Canada to press the Biden administration has become short.

What you can do:

Here’s a way that you can write to Canada’s foreign minister and other leaders to press for increased humanitarian aid and to press the U.S. government to ease sanctions and to remove Cuba from its list of “international sponsors of terrorism.”

Please act: https://petition.web.net/CanadaActNowOnCuba 

As you request more Canadian assistance, you may also wish in your letter to thank the government of Canada for its announcement Nov. 1 of $350,000 to Care Canada to provide water, sanitation, and hygiene services, and distribute relief supplies to 25,000 people for up to 6 months in Guantanamo, and for $50,000 to UNICEF-Cuba for delivery of medical kits that will sustain up to 12,000 people over three months.

After grief, the resistance begins

by Jim Hodgson

I feel some relief this morning by two newsletters from U.S. activists that arrived in my email.

One is from “Stop The Coup 2025,” a campaign to fight Project 2025 (the Republicans’ plan for the next Trump administration). It has a toolkit for community organizers that includes a section, “Spotlight on Risk Preparedness/Criminalization/Underground Survival Tips.” It discusses the importance of organizations and individuals taking steps now to prepare and assess their vulnerability to Project 2025’s agenda and learning from LGBTQIA+ activists in other places who have been forced to live and organize under the radar due to state-sanctioned criminalization.

Here’s a bit more information about Project 2025:

Project 2025 has a radical anti-democracy, anti-diversity, anti-gender agenda to:

  • systematically dismantle the federal government – a soft coup
  • give the next Republican president new “supreme powers” – an autocracy
  • use Executive Orders to “legally” reverse many of our civil rights
  • use the military to help clamp down on domestic dissent
  • criminalize & erase gender & LGBTQIA+ identity from government protection
  • reverse racial equality, attack diversity, and reverse environmental gains
  • replace secular education with Christian theocracy and a pro-life agenda
  • recruit and train 20,000 conservatives for government jobs 
  • Use “Schedule F” to remove 50,000 civil servants 
  • Require government “Loyalty Pledges” to an extremist right-wing agenda 
  • Reverse historic US defense policy of deterrence to offense 
  • Require US foreign policy, USAID to align with pro-life agenda 
  • LAUNCH THEIR 180-DAY ADMINISTRATION TAKEOVER ON January 20, 2025

The other newsletter that brought hope to my inbox today came from Codepink, the U.S. network of feminist peace activists. I’ve worked with them in the past to counter the harm caused by U.S. sanctions in Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere, and some of my colleagues have worked with them for peace in the Korean peninsula and the Middle East. Part of the message today:

We don’t want to waste your time with platitudes about how everything will be okay or even talk about the breakdown of the election. We think it’s more useful to go off what we know for certain now: Donald Trump is going to be president in January. 

But, a majority of Americans oppose U.S. support for Israel, and don’t want their tax dollars funding weapons that murder innocent people and destroy the earth. A greater majority of Americans oppose the U.S. starting new wars. It’s okay to feel deflated and discouraged, but don’t forget that the people are on our side – all we have to do is reach them.  

We will continue to do what we have always done: educate by exposing horrific violence carried out by those in power, activate a movement for peace, and cultivate local communities that represent the world we want to live in. Solidarity is our best friend. Finding new and creative ways to scratch at power is our path forward.

Political signs of the times at a rest stop near Junction, Texas.

Last time, and this time: concern for rights of refugees

Back in 2016, I was in Antofagasta, Chile, when I learned that Donald Trump had defeated Hillary Clinton and won the U.S. election. The news was unexpected, just like now. 

I was in Chile’s far north to meet and show solidarity with Chilean Methodists who were working with migrants who had come from Colombia and other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, including Haiti. 

Indeed, a great deal of my personal and professional life has been devoted to work with refugees and other people who are forced to flee their homelands because of various political, economic and environmental causes. 

Caravans of migrants from many countries continue to cross Chiapas on their way north, holding out hope that they might score a formal U.S. refugee application before January 20 when Trump, who promises mass deportations, will take power. (Images: La Jornada, Mexico). 

Now I am in north-western Chiapas, having crossed in recent weeks several of the “red states” where support for Trump is strong.

In the wake of the election, pundits point out that Trump weaponized ‘fake news.’ He played to machismo and racists and to people who haven’t a clue what being Trans even means. That he won over a smart, articulate, experienced woman of colour after being convicted of crimes and successfully sued for sexual assault is an indictment of U.S. democracy.

Some, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, point as well to the Democratic Party establishment which again defended the status quo. “It should come as no surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”

As ever, don’t expect the Democratic Party to save us. Now is the time for grassroots action.

For Natasha Lennard, writing in The Intercept, the answer is radical action from the grassroots: 

“Far-right policies and parties tend to win the day when so-called centrists take up conservative platforms to purportedly capture disaffected white voters and thus keep the far-right at bay; the upshot is treating conservative nationalism as the fulcrum of all politics. This is what the Harris campaign did, particularly when it came to immigration. At best, as with Britain’s currently ruling Labour Party, the Tories might have lost, but right-wing politics have been reconfigured as the normalized center.”