In statements to Prensa Latina, researchers from the Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies (Cehseu) stressed that current President Joe Biden (Democrat) failed to keep his campaign promises and continued with the same coercive trend of his Republican predecessor.
“In the last year, Biden has signed seven new measures against the island, among them four modifications to add people and a ship to the so-called black lists, which prevent them from carrying out any type of commercial operation,” commented Seida Barrera.
According to the doctor in legal sciences, this method of “piecemeal” sanctions was used by Donald Trump (2016-2020) more often than any other president in the last 26 years, giving an image of an iron fist, whose real scope is not really so far reaching.
For her part, researcher Melina Johanna Iturriaga pointed out that Biden extended the national emergency against Cuba, including certain authorities under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 and included as a novel sanction the creation of a Special Watch List for a country in which “there are severe violations of religious freedom”, all this without evidence.
“There are also several sanctions that have already been announced in the press, such as the one aimed at the Airbnb lodging platform, but which has not yet been officially enacted in the US Federal Register,” she said.
According to both specialists, the measures of the current US President were added to the many coercive actions, still in force after the Trump administration, the one who most applied this type of siege against Cuba since 1996.
Historical research shows that U.S. Executive Order 3447 occurred after the island’s expulsion from the Organization of American States and during Operation Mongoose (invasion of Playa Giron).
Then President John F. Kennedy formalized with his signature a measure that, in fact, had been in effect at least since September 4, 1961, when Congress authorized the cessation of all trade with the island.
The act intensified the hostile policy of the U.S. government against the triumphant Revolution of 1959, which had already faced economic coercion and the rupture by Washington of diplomatic relations on January 3, 1961.
In this context, other actions approved by the White House were the invasion of Playa Girón (April 1961) which ended in defeat and the launching of the so-called Operation Mongoose (November 1961), a subversive program with more than five thousand acts of sabotage and terrorist actions against the island in the following months.
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