Eve is here. Medea Benjamin provides a graphic and harrowing account of Cuba’s escalating plight caused by the U.S. oil blockade. It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost impossible to go to work or prepare food. Please spread it widely.
Sadly, the fact that the Cuba sanctions are illegal because they are not approved by the United Nations is not considered even worth mentioning. The United States long ago succeeded in normalizing what should be considered cheating.
By Mehdi Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace. Co-authored with Nicholas J.S. Davis, “The Ukraine War: Understanding a Senseless Conflict”
Marta Jimenez, a hairdresser in the eastern Cuban city of Holguin, covered her face with her hands and broke down in tears when asked about President Trump’s blockade of the island. Especially now that the US has stopped shipping oil.
“You can’t even imagine how that would affect every part of our lives,” she sobbed. “It’s an all-encompassing vicious spiral. We can’t go to work because the buses don’t run without gas. We only have electricity for three to six hours a day. There’s no gas for cooking, so we burn wood and charcoal in our apartments. It’s like going back 100 years. The lockdown is suffocating us, especially single mothers,” she said, crying into her hands. “No one can stop the demons Trump and Marco,” Rubio said. ”
Thanks to fundraising efforts by CODEPINK and the Cuban-American organization Puentes de Amor, we came to Holguin to deliver 2,500 pounds of lentils. On my last trip, I took a 50-pound bag of baby formula to a children’s hospital. With President Trump now imposing a brutal medieval siege on the island, this humanitarian aid is more important than ever. But lentils and milk alone cannot power a country. What Cubans really need is oil.
There were no taxis at the airport. We hitchhiked into town on the truck that had come to pick up the donations. The road was really empty. Although there were few gasoline-powered cars and no buses running in the city, the city was full of bicycles, electric motorcycles, and electric tricycles transporting people and goods. Most Chinese, Japanese, or Korean motorcycles are shipped from Panama. Priced at nearly $2,000, it’s only available to people with family members sending money overseas.
Javier Silva, 35, looked longingly at his Yamaha parked on the street. “I could never buy something like that with my monthly salary of P4,000,” he says. With soaring inflation, the dollar is now worth about 480 pesos, and his monthly income is less than $10.
Cubans don’t pay rent or have mortgages. They own their own homes. Although healthcare has deteriorated significantly in recent years due to shortages of medicines and medical equipment, healthcare remains free and the system is suffocating but not abandoned. When my partner Ty had an asthma attack, we went to the clinic and within minutes he was inhaling albuterol mist from a nebulizer. There are no insurance forms. It’s not a bill. Just be careful – we will respond with competence and a smile. That’s what happens when healthcare is treated as a human right.
The biggest expense for Cubans is food. There is stock in the market, but prices are out of reach, especially for popular items like pork, chicken and milk. Even tomatoes are now out of reach for many households.
Holguin was once known as the breadbasket of Cuba due to its rich agricultural land. Its reputation took a serious hit this year when Hurricane Melissa hit the state, destroying vast tracts of crops. Without gasoline for tractors and electricity for irrigation, replanting and repairing damage is nearly impossible. Less food means more expensive things.
Production across the economy is coming to a halt. Factories cannot function without electricity, and wages are too low for many skilled workers to quit state jobs. Jorge, whom I met while selling bologna at the market, was once an engineer at a state-owned company. Veronica, a former teacher, now sells sweets she bakes at home when the electricity is on. Ironically, while Marco Rubio claims he wants to bring capitalism to Cuba, US sanctions are currently crushing the very private sector that most Cubans depend on for survival.
I talked to people on the street who blamed the Cuban government for the crisis and openly said they couldn’t wait for communism to fall. The young people told me that their goal was to leave the island and live somewhere where they could earn a decent living. But I didn’t meet a single person who supported blockade or US invasion.
“This government is terrible,” said a thin man exchanging money on the street. This is illegal but acceptable behavior. But when I showed him a photo of Marco Rubio, he didn’t hesitate. “That man is the devil. A selfish, slimy politician who doesn’t care about the Cuban people.”
Some argue that the United States is squarely responsible. They point out that life improved dramatically after President Obama and President Raul Castro reached an agreement and the US government eased many sanctions from 2014 to 2016. “The Cuban government was the same as it is now,” one man told me. “But when the United States loosened the rope around our necks, we could breathe again. If they left us alone, we would be able to find a solution on our own.”
The only way for Cubans to survive this siege is to help each other. They trade rice for coffee with their neighbors. They improvise. Nothing, but it’s resolved (we don’t have much, but we make it work). The government provides daily meals to the most vulnerable, including the elderly, the disabled, and mothers with no income, but that is becoming more difficult by the day as the state distributes less food and uses less fuel for cooking.
At one feeding center, elderly volunteers said they spend hours each day scavenging for firewood. He proudly showed us blocks of wooden pallets, nails, etc. “This guarantees me food for tomorrow,” he said, his face torn between pride and sadness.
So how long can Cubans hold out as the situation worsens? And what is the endgame?
When I asked people where this led, they had no idea. Mr. Rubio wants a change of government, but no one can explain how that will happen or who will replace the current administration. Some believe there is a possibility that an agreement could be reached with President Trump. “Please make Trump the Minister of Tourism,” a hotel employee said half-jokingly. “If we give him a hotel and a golf course (Mar-a-Lago in Varadero), he’ll probably leave us alone.”
Who will win this diabolical game that Trump and Rubio are playing with the lives of 11 million Cubans at stake?
Ernesto, who repairs the refrigerator when the electricity is on, bets on the Cuban nationals. “We are rebels,” he told me. “We defeated Batista in 1959. We survived the Bay of Pigs. We survived the special period when the Soviet Union collapsed and there was nothing left. We will survive this too.”
I summed it up with a line from the great songwriter Silvio Rodriguez that Cubans know by heart: “El tiempo esta favar de los pequenos, de los nudes, de los foredos – time belongs to the small, the exposed, the forgotten.”
Over the course of time, patience outweighs control.
