Lissa Weinmann is a board member of Windham World Affairs Council, a partner in 118 Elliot, and director of the Brattleboro Words Project. She helped found and direct Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, a coalition that helped ease the embargo's restrictions on food sales to Cuba, and she directed the former World Policy Institute's National Summit on Cuba.
BRATTLEBORO-On Oct. 30, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the U.S. embargo on Cuba. The vote in the 193-member world body was 187–2. Only the U.S. and Israel voted against the resolution.
It was the 32nd time the world had pushed back on the cruel and illegal policy, the longest running and most comprehensive set of sanctions in modern history.
The Cubans call the policy a blockade because, in so many ways, it impedes their country's ability to trade with other nations. These countries do not wish to participate in sanctions, nor do they see Cuba as a threat.
In international parlance, a blockade is an act of war. For more than six decades, we've been waging this war - one meant to break the Cuban government and crush a people for having dreams of a different kind of future.
With all eyes on Gaza and the election, news of an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Cuba has been invisible to most, but not to U.S. border agents who have witnessed more Cuban migrants entering our country over the past three years than during all the years since the Cuban Revolution began in 1959.
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The restoration of diplomatic relations under President Barack Obama in 2015 had heralded a new era of cooperation and a loosening of government restrictions in Cuba, including more space for a developing private sector, a positive trend that President Donald Trump killed with the stroke of the pen in 2017.
Among other acts, Trump severed all U.S. remittances (transfers of funds from citizens working abroad) to the island. Developing nations depend heavily on remittances, which make up almost 30% of Honduras's gross domestic product and about 5% in 2023 of Mexico's. He also blocked U.S. citizens' travel to Cuba, which had flowered greatly under Obama.
Trump's most cynical and premeditatively destructive act as president, done just days before he left office, was - without any real justification - putting Cuba on the government's official list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. He knew that for Cuba and its growing private sector, being on that list would freeze access to banking, credit, and contract tourism, stoking more hardship and sharply increasing migration to U.S. shores.
Though he eventually restored remittances to try to alleviate the migration crisis Trump's act directly provoked, President Joe Biden has yet to remove Cuba from the so-called "terrorist list," much to the consternation of his political allies.
U.S. Sen. Peter Welch has spoken on the Senate floor about the need to restore the Obama policy toward Cuba, including removal from the list. Former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy has urged the White House to do the same.
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Cuba has trooped on all these years, doggedly dedicated to the two sacred goals of the Revolution: access to higher education and health care for all. But its ability to deliver on its promises to the people is now facing its most difficult test.
The country has lost about 10% of its population - University of Massachusetts, Boston Cuba migration expert Denisse Delgado Vázquez, Ph.D., says Cuba's long-cited 11 million population figure is, according to independent analysis, more like 8.6 million living in Cuba today. Recent blackouts and hurricanes may finally be accomplishing a 1992 pledge from U.S. Rep. Robert Torricelli, who was responsible for the Cuban Democracy Act, legislation that expanded the extraterritorial reach of the embargo. The New Jersey Democrat promised the new law would "wreak havoc on that island."
Recall that Cuba had achieved a peaceful transition away from Fidel and then Raúl Castro in 2018. Miguel Díaz-Canel, then 58, became president, and in 2021, he also became leader of the Cuban Communist Party, making way for a new generation of leaders to chart the island nation's path forward.
Díaz-Canel's government has slowly continued Cuba's reforms toward political liberalization and a more mixed economy, a process that began after the Soviet Union fell in 1989.
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The origin story and geographic reality also bear remembrance. A ragtag group of self-described "freedom fighters" backed by nothing but their own grit and a strong vision of social justice, on New Year's Eve 1958, drove out a U.S.-backed dictator to begin the Cuban Revolution.
The Revolution carries on as a government that has achieved widely admired successes, especially for a "developing" nation, as well as notable failures. Freedom of speech and political expression have been curtailed. The blockade has provided the excuse for just about everything, especially for Cuba rushing into the arms of the Soviets way back when.
Think about how our own government has cut into our political freedoms after 9/11 and during other times of war. A common threat is lifeblood to authoritarianism: There's no bigger threat than the strongest nation in the world hovering menacingly above.
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It behooves the U.S. to offer a change in policy toward Cuba lest it once again be essentially forced to turn to Russia - or, these days, China - for help.
It is ironic that politicians of all stripes seem ravenous for a war with China over its claim to Taiwan (a claim the U.S. promised to recognize under its longstanding One China policy) while supporting our country's long drive to control its own close island neighbor.
In commenting on the latest U.N. vote, Cuba's foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said Cuba remains open to any and all dialogue with the U.S., and expressed hope a new president would end the blockade "and allow our country to develop its true potential and capabilities."
To do so would benefit the people of Cuba as well as U.S. citizens who oppose our government blocking our freedom to trade with and visit a close and very interesting, beautiful, and culturally rich neighbor.
Americans have always been touted as ambassadors of freedom. Why not set us free on Cuba?
Most importantly, ending the embargo would signal a small but significant step toward a new era of respect for the international laws and institutions the U.S. helped shape in order to protect our country's interests and achieve a more peaceful world.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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