Trump’s final approval of Cuba, blow to residents

This is the last shock of the Trump administration against Cuba: Analysts warn that the island’s return to the list of countries that support terrorism is a “political decision” that will affect the population without subsidizing the communist government.

Also read: The Trump administration has pushed Cuba back on the list of “states that support terrorism.”

“We remember Trump as the hurricane that hit Cuba in 1932,” sighed Angel Luis Lopez, 58, on a round street in the old town, the deadliest in the country’s history (3,000 dead). Havana.

“Trump, his nightmare Cuba, is dead but he still wants to invade Cuba,” adds 56-year-old Ambarina Columbi.

The announcement on Monday of this final sanction, just nine days before Donald Trump left the White House, provoked outrage in Cuba, as the strengthening of U.S. sanctions between the coronavirus epidemic had already severely damaged.

“At the height of the aversion, the Trump administration accused terrorists and unethical people of supporting terrorism,” President Miguel Diaz-Connell responded on Twitter on Tuesday.

For the Cuban government, this is “American opportunism”, an opinion shared by the American think-tank Washington office on Latin America (Vola).

Revenge

“This is a politically motivated decision, a reward for the Trump administration ‘s internal political allies in recent weeks, more than a foreign policy,” Vola President Geoff Thale said in a statement.

According to Vola, the move will complicate Joe Biden’s new government’s relationship with Cuba and exacerbate Cubans’ financial difficulties.

“This is an act of retaliation that affects the Cuban people and does nothing to really advance human rights or the interests of the United States,” Geoff Thale said.

Former Democratic President Barack Obama, including Vice President Joe Biden, removed Havana from the list in 2015, during a spectacular agreement between the two hostile nations, and later re-established their diplomatic relations in an attempt to turn the page. The Cold War.

These enchanting parentheses boosted American tourism on the island, stimulating the creation of restaurants and the private sector in general, bringing new cash flows and better paying jobs to many residents.

But since Donald Trump came to power, Cubans have rained heavily on sanctions, more than 190 in four years: a ban on American cruises and barriers to sending money to America from loved ones. The island, in particular.

No discount

Cuba’s return to the blacklist, along with Iran, North Korea and Syria, restricts its foreign trade and exposes foreign investors on the island to litigation in the United States.

For Professor and former Cuban diplomat Carlos Alzugare, the sanctions that have been in place with Obama since 1962 no longer apply, “at 90%, he could not go any further, and Trump brought them up to 99%”.

This latest permit is “very repulsive and hypocritical against the island, because they know full well that they have no evidence”.

For this former ambassador, Joe Biden should go back and call on the American Congress to unconditionally lift the embargo.

“The United States is so inaccessible to Cuba that nothing more can be done (…), at one point they blamed us for our forces in Angola, at another time Latin America supported Cuba for guerrilla movements,” he said of any conditions the U.S. government might want to impose before easing its pressure.

Compensation was the only thing agreed to in the Cuban debate after the confiscation of property from Cubans and Americans on the island during the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro.

“What does Cuba do? Change its internal function? No, it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to change the way things are done under pressure, “said Carlos Alzugare.