This article is based on a long piece on Drop Site News by Ed Augustin.
The full article is available at https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/where-to-watch-the-debateand-a-dispatch

It begins:

“HAVANA — The sight of hungry people scavenging through dumpsters and panhandling was once more common in cities in the United States and Europe than in Havana. But a series of quite moves, first by Trump, and now by Biden, have produced a humanitarian crisis throughout Cuba….”

Garbage is piling up in the streets.

Augustin quotes a Cuban in southern Havana, a retired history teacher, who says “When it comes to food and medicine, we’re living through an extraordinary difficult situation. The country has always been sanctioned, and we used to get by. But Trump filled in the gaps.”

Cuba has been sanctioned for longer than any other country, since the 1959 Revolution. Cuba’s crimes in the eyes of Washington? First, the Revolution overthrew a U.S. installed dictator who had guaranteed U.S. capitalists’ interests. Second, it expropriated U.S. land owners, such as the United Fruit company in order to carry out an extensive land reform benefiting peasants who were the majority.

U.S. sanctions against Cuba’s economy led it to turn to the Soviet Union, expropriate U.S. and then Cuban capitalists, and declared the socialist character of the Revolution. And Cuba sought to aid revolutionary anti-imperialist movements in the rest of Latin America and Africa.

 “But almost a decade ago the Obama administration softened sanctions on the island and restored diplomatic relations with Havana, admitting that over half a century of immigrating the island had failed to oust the communist government. The economic rebound was swift,” writes Augustin

“But in the final weeks of the Trump administration the White House put Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, alongside Iran, Syria and North Korea” and restored sanctions.

The charge of state sponsor of terrorism was imposed without a shred of evidence.

In spite of promises Biden made while running for office in 2020 that he would “reverse the failed Trump policies that inflicted harm on Cubans and their families” once in office he “one-upped Trump by going further than the previous administration in attacking Cuba’s tourism industry — the main engine of the island’s economy” writes Augustin, and kept the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

“Two years ago, the Biden State Department barred foreigners who visit Cuba from visa-free travel to the U.S. That meant that people from the United Kingdom, France, Spain and 37 other countries found out that a mere holiday in Cuba could forfeit their visa waver, and many decided not to risk a visit to the island.”

As a result, European travel to the island in only half of what it was.

“The terror designation, together with more than 200 sanctions enacted against island since Obama left office, has pulped the Cuban economy by cutting revenue to the struggling Cuban State. Economists calculate that the loss of tourism revenue resulting from the terror designation costs the state hundreds of million dollars a year. The combined annual cost of the Trump-Biden sanctions, they say, amounts to billions of dollars a year….

“Cuba still has more doctors relative to population than any country in the world — but no medicine. Like everything else, the supply has dried up….”

“The one-two punch of the hardened sanctions and the pandemic have ushered in a grim new reality for Cubans. For many, power outages can last for more than 12 hours a day. With pharmacy shelves barren, the price of medicines on the black market has slipped beyond the reach of much of the population.

“Without money to repair old infrastructure, hundreds of thousands now live without running water. Worst of all, things have been bad for so many years that people have lost hope.”

A result has been over ten percent of the population — more than a million people — have left the country between 2022 and 2023, according to official figures.

An investigation by the Washington Post “recently laid out, and away from the press conferences and headlines, both administrations have reverted to a policy of regime change premised on reducing hard currency flowing into the island’s coffers and ratcheting up the suffering of the people….

“Joy Gordon, an expert on sanctions at Loyola University Chicago … told Drop Site News “that there has been a shift towards minimizing visible harm to civilian populations since the sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s, which resulted in widespread malnutrition and epidemics. ‘There’s a strategy of trying to offload the enforcement to the private sector,’ she said.

“ ‘U.S. policy has created conditions that make it commercially compelling for the private sector to withdraw from whole markets, resulting in severe and widespread economic harm, but in a form that is not directly attributable to U.S. policy makers.’ ’’

The designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, “almost overnight […] provoked both global banks and vital exporters to pull out of the Cuban market, according to diplomats and business people on the island,” Augustin wrote.

“ ‘Very few banks want to work with Cuba now,’ a Havana based European businessman, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Drop Site News. He said his bank informed him his account would be closed just days after the designation….”

“ ‘Enforcement is now delegated to the banks which have been dragooned into self-prosecuting,’ another Western businessman based in Havana said. They ‘can’t claim they don’t know anymore.’ ’’

A third businessman who no longer sells high-tech equipment to the Cuban Ministry of Public Health said the terrorism designation was game changer. Now, “if there is a trace of a Cuban account, it will be blocked.”

Augustin wrote, “Government food rations — a lifeline for the country’s poor — are fraying. Domestic agriculture, which has always been weak, has cratered in recent years for lack of seeds, fertilizer, and petrol, forcing the state to import 100 percent of the basic subsidized goods.

“But there’s not enough money to do that. Last year the government eliminated chicken from the basic food supply. Last month the daily ration of bread available to all Cubans was cut by a quarter. Even staples like rice and beans now arrive late. Food insecurity on the island is rising, according to a recent report by the Inter-American commission on Human Rights.

“Vulnerable groups — older people, pregnant women, children and people with chronic illnesses — are most affected by the knock-on effects of U.S. policy.

“ ‘When food rations are funded by the state, it’s no surprise that if you bankrupt the state, food insecurity would increase, particularly for those who do not have family abroad to send remittances,’ said Gordon, the Loyola professor.’

“In March, the U.S. got a hint of the unrest its policy aims toward, with hundreds of people hitting the streets in the eastern city of Santiago decrying long power outages and shouting” ‘We’re hungry!’ ’’

The capitalist, imperialist rulers of the United State are cruel in pursuit of world domination. Their crimes against Cuba are not well known in the United States. This Drop Site article should be widely distributed by socialists and even just democratic and humane people here and abroad.

End the false designation of Cuba as a terrorist state!

End the evil sanctions!

Restore diplomatic and economic relations!

Solidarity with the Cuban people!