The United States has been strangling Cuba for decades but the Donald Trump Administration has really tightened the grip. He has blocked all oil shipments to the small island state, signing Executive Order 14380 on January 29, which imposes additional tariffs on imports into the US from any country that directly or indirectly supplies oil to Cuba.
The Australia-Cuba Friendship Society (ACFS) is promoting two emergency aid campaigns: The Nuestra América Convoy initiated by the Progressive International and CodePink and the Let Cuba Live! Campaign to donate solar panels and generators for Cuban hospitals.
ACFS spokesperson Lia Weitzel told Green Left on March 21: “Cuba is in desperate need of our solidarity and it’s time for us to return it to Cuba who have been offering solidarity with countries all around the world since the revolution started.
“The Nuestra América Convoy to Cuba is delivering aid by land, sea, and air and the first groups of that convoy arrived yesterday and today.
“CodePink had a plane load of people arriving with thousands of pounds of aid just this morning, as part of the Nuestra América Convoy. So, that’s very exciting and we encourage our members to donate to that initiative to get as much aid there as possible.”
She said ACFS is also supporting an initiative to get solar panels to Cuba, which “we hope will have a lasting impact and energy in Cuba where they have plenty of sun”.
Rapid shift to solar energy
While there are reports that the proportion of Cuba’s electricity that comes from solar energy has gone from 5.8% to 20% over just a year, with China’s support, 70% of its Cuba’s electricity generation depends on oil.
There have been at least three countrywide electricity blackouts in recent days. This has had a crippling effect on hospitals, schools, public transport and the delivery of food and other essential items.
Larissa Payne, an activist with Progressive International (Pacific) told GL that the US blockade had cost Cuba the equivalent of US$130 billion in damages, according to estimates from the United Nations.
“The US has been strangling Cuba for decades, but it’s the Trump administration that has really tightened the grip. As far as life and death go, the key difference between bombs and blockade is the longevity of suffering and the speed at which people die. Inflicting suffering and killing en masse is a perverse art form that the US has perfected.
“Its sanctions framework has killed 38 million people worldwide since the 1971 Nixon administration. Now, despite years of Cuban ingenuity, resilience and dignity, we’re seeing these sanctions reach their sadistic crescendo.
“This is economic warfare.
“The Trump administration seeks not only to isolate, suffocate and crush Cuba, but to disrupt its ‘very metabolism’ — blocking fuel — which, in a world still infuriatingly reliant on fossil fuel, is essential for powering everything from harvesting crops to humidicribs,” Fernández said, citing senior professor and researcher at the University of Havana Luis René Fernández.
“In 1991, the US State Department declassified the 1960 Mallory Memorandum that revealed what Cubans and anti-imperialists already knew: that the purpose of the blockade was (and is) to deny economic resources to Cuba to manufacture ‘hunger and desperation’ and to inspire internal unrest to overthrow the government.
“This has been US policy for decades lest they risk the threat of a revolutionary good example.”
Australia’s role
“The Australian government could do a lot to help Cuba at this hour of need,” Weitzel said. “It could start by condemning the US blockade against Cuba. Australia already votes in the UN every year against it and that’s an excellent start. We could send many aid packages to Cuba and, finally, we could end our alliance with the US and fight for justice globally for oppressed peoples and for the sovereignty of peoples around the world.”
The Anthony Albanese Labor government has voted at the UN against the US blockade, but its stance is not being matched by action. Payne said it is up to Australians to show their solidarity with Cuba. “The Nuestra America convoy is quite literally an attempt to circumnavigate Trump and his gusano-in-chief [Marco] Rubio.
“It has done this by mobilising unionists, organisers and activists, doctors, lawyers, creatives like Irish republican band Kneecap, sitting and former politicians from 17 countries — including Jeremy Corbyn, Pablo Iglesias [former vice president of Spain], and Clara Lopez [sitting Colombian senator and presidential candidate] among others.
“More than 20 tonnes of aid and hundreds of comrades have arrived in Havana in cargo flights and by boat,” Payne said.
“The Convoy is a global corridor of solidarity carrying medicines, cancer treatments, hospital supplies, menstrual products, baby formula, hygiene products. There will be deliveries of solar panels and generators, with more to come,” Payne added. “This is not an act of charity or simply a humanitarian mission: it is solidarity.
“It’s a declaration that international working class solidarity cannot be quelled, something we’ve all learned from the master class that is the dignity, resolve, and focus of the Cuban people. It’s a principled stand for Cuban self-determination that demands an end to Washington’s illegal siege,” said Payne.
“It is the best of humanity who refuse to accept a world that is built on the domination and subjugation of others. So we invite you to follow the convoy, share the journey and extend your solidarity via our fundraiser — even a few dollars will help.”
[Donations to the Nuestra América Convoy can be made: Account name: PI Pacific BSB: 633 000, Account: 241 947 689. Donors must not mention “Cuba”, the convoy, or anything to trigger US enforcement of the US sanctions. In the past, funds raised for humanitarian purposes in Cuba have been confiscated or halted by US-affiliated platforms and companies.]
