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Helen Yaffe is an economic historian specialising in Cuba and Latin America, the history of economics, and the political economy of late development. She is a Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and a Visiting Fellow at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre in the London School of Economics. She is the author of several books on Cuba, most recently We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World.  

This week Progressive International’s Campaigns Coordinator Ana Arendar caught up with Yaffe to discuss the latest developments on US sanctions against Cuba and Biden’s failure to take meaningful action to reverse the tightening of sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. 

Ana: Let's start with an update on financial sanctions and the blockade and where we are. What’s the current situation concerning US financial sanctions on Cuba? Has Biden reversed any of the policies introduced by Trump which tightened the sanctions? 

Helen: In two years, Biden has done little to reverse the suffocating sanctions on Cuba. Financial transactions with Cuba were already obstructed by unilateral US legislation, and then, very vindictively, about two days before leaving office, the Trump administration put Cuba back on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list [Obama had taken Cuba off the list a few years before]. Biden came into power after this unprecedented escalation of the US blockade, making sanctions more stringent than ever before, severely impacting Cuba's trade and relations with the rest of the world and its ability to use the international financial system. 

The situation has been made worse by changes in the international financial system over recent years, where we have seen some big banks receive heavy fines for things like money laundering. While that was nothing to do with Cuba, it means that big banks have invested a lot in their risk assessment apparatus and now, with this reinforced risk assessment, banks – which are risk-averse entities – won’t risk transactions involving Cuba. They just don't want to contemplate the kind of fines that are being threatened and imposed by the OFAC (the Office of Foreign Asset Controls) of the US Treasury. And that means that banks have stopped doing transactions with Cuba. You can count on one hand the number of banks in the world that will still transact with Cuba, and for that they may have to apply for licences. Obviously, if you prevent transactions, you interrupt trade, imports, exports, remittances and even humanitarian donations – and that's what we've seen since. 

In fact, now even the word Cuba is being blocked [by banks], not just the country. For example, as a British citizen with a British bank account, if I make a £1 payment to a European bank account but put the word ‘Cuba’ in the reference, that transaction will be blocked – even though it is not being sent to the island. Last year, a new international campaign was set up to challenge non-US banks illegally applying US unilateral sanctions against Cuba in violation of their own national laws, which make doing so illegal. It is called the ‘1 cent for Cuba campaign’, and I encourage everyone to check it out. 

Just to clarify, the United States is the only country in the world that has sanctions against Cuba. These are completely unilateral sanctions. There’s actually a British law that says that it's illegal to apply US sanctions against entities and individuals in Britain, and similar legislation in the European Union. 

So by blocking transactions, banks are acting illegally because they don't want to risk getting fined by the OFAC. They get away with it because political or legal institutions in other countries are not challenging it. They [the banks] are doing a simple calculation, the risk of OFAC fines is greater than the risk of violating laws in other jurisdictions. 

Trump’s decision to put Cuba back on that list was very malicious, very detrimental and baseless. So Biden comes into power and says that they’re reviewing the Cuba policy, which creates a bit of optimism, especially since he was Obama’s Vice President during rapprochement and the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States. But he's got advisors who are against rebuilding the relationship and who are convinced that Cuba is going through a serious crisis, which it is, but they don't understand the nature of the crisis or Cuba’s capacity to respond and pull through. 

And then you have the protests in Cuba on 11 July 2021. And they [the Biden administration] thought these violent protests, the first protests in Cuba in decades, were a sign that the system was close to collapse. The Biden administration hedged its bets that the economic crisis generated by sanctions would lead to a social and political one, ultimately bringing about the overthrow of the government and system. Now I guess they are a bit flummoxed because the Cuban government, and the socialist system, has not collapsed. The economic crisis continues, of course, because the sanctions continue. This has generated unprecedented irregular emigration, with 313,000 Cubans arriving in the United States in 2022. Among those leaving have been key members of the opposition. 

The Cuban leadership have responded intelligently to these protests through engagement with the population, addressing the problems in their communities and fighting back collectively with creativity and resourcefulness. And they have also kept up their internationalism, most recently sending medical specialists to Turkey and Syria following the devastating earthquake. Tourism has returned, an important source of revenue, and Cuba is Chair of the Group 77 + China, a coalition of 134 developing countries – showing that the island is far from isolated. 

Ana: Can you elaborate on Cuba’s response to the 11 July 2021 protests? Have they had a lasting impact?

Helen: President Miguel Diaz Canal, at least for the first six months after the protests, seemed to go, almost every day, to one of the poorest barrios in Cuba and speak to people. He went first to where the protests were most violent. He would get stuck in the crowds and ask: ‘Where are the street committees here?’; ‘Why is there rubbish here?’; ‘Who's looking after the old people here?’. The idea is to reinvigorate the organisations of the masses, like the street committees (CDRs), which were originally set up in 1962 as a way to resist the sabotage and bombings taking place at the time. 

In 1960, Castro was giving a speech in Havana when a bomb went off, and he had responded by saying that committees should be set up on every street to defend the revolution. But when that period of military attack subsided, these committees became mobilizing forces for local communities. They would organize street parties, or national consultations, arrange mammograms for women over 50, or help kids set up a football team. However, during COVID-19, the committees stopped functioning as the state closed public spaces to avoid community transmission. 

So, the government has now returned to the barrios and reactivated the street committees and local-level organising. They've been doing these neighbourhood regeneration schemes such as redoing the housing, cleaning up the streets and building new roads. Of course, it's a challenge because of the cost of materials and imports. And they have also maintained the ‘conquests’ of the revolution: free healthcare and education, and so on. 

Hence, the revolution hasn't collapsed or gotten close to collapsing. The opposition has dissipated, there is a growing movement of Cuban Americans and solidarity activists within the United States vociferously denouncing the US blockade and counterbalancing the Miami voices. These factors influenced Biden's Cuba announcements in May 2022 that said that his administration would reverse a few of the worst Trump measures. There were also international factors influencing these announcements. Biden’s statement was made just before the Summit of the Americas, when several regional governments were threatening not to attend because the US hadn’t invited Cuba. So he made an announcement on Cuba to try and appease them. 

Biden also reinstated the Cuban family reunification program, which was suspended five years ago, and re-authorised flights from the US to different parts of the country, as Trump had restricted them to Havana. So it's not significant progress; it’s just a reversal of how it was pre-Trump. 

On 3 January 2023, the US consulate in Havana resumed processing visas for Cubans. At the same time, Biden sought to reduce the Cuban migration to the US, undermining the historic privilege of Cubans who, since 1966, have had the right to residence in the United States a year after arriving, whether they entered illegally or not. 

Biden also announced that 30,000 visas would be granted every month to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who apply from outside the United States and have US-based sponsors. According to the Department of Homeland Security, by late January, ‘unlawful crossings’ had fallen by 97% from the previous month. The online system for managed migration is operating in Cuba, and the first travel authorisations are being processed. 

On 18 and 19 January, US and Cuban officials met in Havana for bilateral talks on law enforcement (terrorism, migrant smuggling, and immigration fraud). This was the first time talks were held on these issues since 2018, and it was the third high-level meeting between the US and Cuban governments in less than a year.

Ana: And has the situation with remittances changed after Trump effectively blocked them?

Helen: On 11 January, the Western Union announced that it had resumed sending remittances, initially just from Miami to Cuba, on a limited basis. This does not solve the problem for Cubans outside Miami or the United States who wish to send money. The financial institution in Cuba, which is set up to distribute remittances through a nationwide network, remains on the US list of ‘restricted entities’. So remittances are now being sent to specific Cuban banks. 

Ana: Having spent so much time in Cuba over the past years/decades, how did you find the situation there during your most recent visit?

Helen: Cuba has come out of the other side of the pandemic with the population, from two-years old up, fully vaccinated with their own domestically produced vaccines. Things have opened back up, and people are back at work and school, on the beach and socialising, so that's positive. 

But the economic crisis continues, with shortages of basic goods, fuel, transport, energy, and medicines. Conditions are similar to the Special Period of the 1990s. Daily life is challenging, but Cubans are resilient people. 

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