For years now we have marched, rallied, protested, passed resolutions condemning Israel’s genocide against Gaza and the Palestinian people, aided by our own U.S. government. Slowly but surely, the public, along with the rest of the world, is grasping the extent of the horror and voicing the need to call Israel to account.
There is another genocide taking place, a slow and silent one initiated and directed by the United States forcing countries around the world into complicity. With this column, I appeal to all of the public to rally equally against this outrage.
This is the 10-month fuel blockade and mounting sanctions against Cuba, an attempt to bring Cuba to its knees and to the will of the United States. Added to the 60-plus years of economic and financial embargo against Cuba, our government has brought Cuba into a humanitarian crisis amounting to nothing less than a slow genocide.
Cuba, from the start of its project in equality in social construction and sovereignty, its 1959 “Revolution,” built over 60 years an infrastructure of medical care, education, electrification, transportation, culture, sports and science enviable throughout the Caribbean and much of the rest of the world. They did this despite the economic embargo of the U.S. that blocked them from imports, investment and finance with much of the rest of the world. They did it even while recovering from the collapse of their main trading partners, the countries of socialist Europe. They managed to hold on through the renewal of ever more stringent economic sanctions and financial restrictions placed on Cuba in Trump’s first administration. They did it through the Covid 19 pandemic, marshalling all their resources to deploy advanced medical treatments, quarantining and assisting all exposed, producing cheap, effective and viable vaccines.
They have had virtually no defense against the rain of economic and financial bombs unleashed by the Trump administration starting with his reelection. Starting at the end of January, Trump cut off the supply of oil from Venezuela while sabotaging the Venezuelan government and kidnapping its head of state. Trump declared a prohibition on oil deliveries from all other countries, cutting off at the knees Cuba’s ability to generate electricity. Trump, with his chief policymaker Marco Rubio, has imposed repeated sanctions on virtually all remaining trade with Cuba, involvement of foreign enterprises in key sectors of Cuba’s economy, closing down of all potential financial instruments and investments, and blocking virtually all shipping to Cuba.
Trump has hollowed out Cuba’s medical infrastructure and system, its electricity and water delivery systems, its transportation, trash and garbage pickup, plunged families into endless hours of darkness and brutal heat, crippled supplies of food and fertilizers, damaged its ability to deliver education to children and adolescents, virtually shut down tourism, Cuba’s most important source of hard currency for purchasing needed medicines and goods abroad, hobbled its ability to obtain other hard currency through medical services abroad and production and sale of its innovative and life-saving drugs.
People in Cuba are dying. For lack of medicine. For lack of operations (10,000 people await surgery). For lack of cancer treatment (only 65% of child cancer patients are surviving). For lack of maternal care (infant mortality has risen to 14.0 babies per 1,000). For lack of nutrition (more than 50% of Cubans are now said to be living in poverty).
We can do something. Cuba is our neighbor. Not only that, but relations between Massachusetts and Cuba go back almost 200 years of commercial, academic, scientific, cultural, and agricultural exchange. Families, students, academics, dancers, and scientists have gone back and forth to Cuba for many, many years.
What can we do? We can support legislation introduced by U.S. Rep Jim McGovern to end the embargo, H.R. 7521 and S.136 introduced by Sen. Wyden, ensuring that all members of our Massachusetts delegation sign on to those bills, push those bills through a prospective Democrat majority House and Senate (https://masspeace.us/SupportBillsCuba).
We can pass resolutions calling for an end to the embargo, the sanctions and the fuel blockade, as have the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Medford, Somerville and Brookline, as well as hundreds of others around the country. Here is a proposed resolution for Amherst. We can help other towns write their own. (https://masspeace.us/DraftResolution)
We can send medical aid and other humanitarian assistance to mothers and infants through Global Health Partners (https://ghpartners.org/) and directly help load up the Pod being set up in western Massachusetts by local Cuba support activists.
We can come together as a group and decide how we will support Cuba and how we will work to stop this silent genocide. We have built a movement that has declared Israel a war criminal and built broad solidarity and support for Gaza and Palestine. We can do the same for Cuba. Cuba is our neighbor.
For more information and to join the movement, write to me at info@masspeaceaction.org.
Merriam Ansara is a resident of Easthampton. For 20 years as director of the organization Common Ground, she sent a wide range of Cuban Americans, professionals, students, artists, scientists, environmentalists, and farmers to Cuba for exchanges of mutual benefit. Currently, she collaborates with Cuba in the Valley Films, the first Monday of every month at Luthier’s in Easthampton. She is a member of Massachusetts Peace Action, The Raging Grannies, and W. Mass Code Pink.