A young pregnant woman walking down the street in Havana, Cuba, tried to stop a group of easily identifiable Black American tourists to ask — using the best English she knows — for a small amount of money to buy food for her children.
It’s been days since they’ve eaten, she explained, and there is no money for milk, eggs, or bread.
“Please,” she begged. “I am six months pregnant, and I need money to buy food for my children. There is no work here, and I have to beg for money to feed my children.”
Experiencing such interactions is all too familiar for anyone privileged or courageous enough to visit Cuba today. President Donald Trump’s embargo, which was initiated on Jan. 23 and intensified on May 1, is strangling the Cuban economy to the extent that government and health leaders, and the Cuban people, are calling it a “genocide.”
Dr. Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World (IBW) and the Pan African Unity Dialogue (PAUD), led a delegation of 23 Black Americans to Cuba May 26-30, to “see first-hand the devastating impact of policies of the U.S. government on the masses of the Cuban people.”
The group not only saw but also experienced the blackouts Cubans are experiencing daily. They also heard about food shortages, the lack of medicines and medical equipment needed to help sick Cuban patients and the lack of water and electricity, causing refrigerated food to go bad, and the impact that is having on children whose school days have grown shorter and meals less healthy and frequent.
The “Emergency Fact-Finding Delegation for Mutual Solidarity and Engagement” included participants from U.S. civil and human rights organizations, faith and business professionals, civic leaders, and journalists. They met over three days with Cuban legislators, health care providers, women and Afro-descendant leaders, and an unexpected visit with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The meeting with Diaz-Canal came nearly a week before the U.S. imposed sanctions on him, his wife and three other individuals, on June 6, in the latest threat by the Trump administration to intervene or impose military action on Cuba to change the island country’s political system.
The goal, Daniels told the group upon landing on the island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, is to return to the U.S. with a commitment to advocate for an end to the Trump administration’s “intolerable acts” and to broaden the Cuba solidarity movement in the U.S.
“This small island nation of 8 to 10 million people has contributed so much despite its struggles, by going out to the world with its doctors, engineers, and even its soldiers when necessary,” Daniels said. “Because of this, we owe a debt to Cuba.”
The Long Strain Between the U.S. and Cuba
On Jan. 29, Trump signed an executive order, which was expanded in May, that essentially transformed U.S. policy toward Cuba from a longstanding embargo into a more aggressive “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at restricting Cuba’s access to fuel, foreign investment, and international commerce.
Also in May, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging Raul Castro Ruz, the brother of former President Fidel Castro who just turned 95, and five other members of his regime for the 1996 deaths of four Brothers to the Rescue members. The charges were: conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircraft, and murder, to which Cuban officials quickly pushed back.
“This is a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba,” Diaz-Canel wrote in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on May 20. “The U.S. lies and distorts the events surrounding the downing of the planes belonging to the narco-terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue in 1996.”
The protracted tensions between the U.S. and Cuba have extended for more than 90 years. When Cuba gained its independence from Spain following the Spanish-American War, the U.S. gained significant influence in the island country about 90 miles from Key West, as well as control of the naval base in Guantanamo Bay.
With U.S. influence came increased corporate investment in commodities, including sugar, tobacco and the country’s infrastructure.
Many Cubans grew increasingly uncomfortable with their country’s economic dependence on the United States, leading Cuba to undergo a dramatic political transformation when Fidel Castro launched the Cuban Revolution and overthrew the Batista government in 1959.
As Castro consolidated power, Cuba aligned itself with the Soviet Union, prompting the United States to impose a trade embargo and economic sanctions that remain a defining feature of the relationship.
Tensions escalated further with the Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Castro, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. These events cemented decades of Cold War hostility and led to the severing of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.
Under Castro’s leadership, Cuba became a communist state and a key Soviet ally in the Western Hemisphere, fundamentally reshaping U.S.-Cuban relations for generations.
In 2015, President Barack Obama attempted to restore diplomatic relations under the leadership of Raoul Castro, who succeeded his brother, Fidel due to illness, and who was later elected as president of the National Assembly in 2008. Embassies were reopened, travel opportunities were expanded, as well as increased cultural and business exchanges.
Despite those advances and others restored by President Joe Biden, sanctions against Cuba were not lifted. Trump, in his first term, reversed Obama’s policies and redesignated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Following a visit to Cuba in April, U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) emphasized the challenges Cubans face due to Trump’s policies.
“The illegal U.S. blockade of fuel to Cuba — 90 miles south of the United States — adds to the longest embargo in world history and is causing untold suffering to the Cuban people,” the legislators wrote in a statement. “The United States prevented a single drop of oil from entering Cuba for over three months. This is cruel collective punishment — effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country — that has produced permanent damage. It must stop immediately.”
Message to Americans, Particularly Black Americans: Deepen Solidarity, Amplify Voices
James Early, a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Policy Studies and IBW/PAUD, implored the delegation of Black Americans visiting Cuba to engage residents as much as possible.
“Ask Cubans anything you want to ask and hear what they have to say about how they feel about their government, the economic situation, and about the U.S.,” Early advised.
In meetings with the National Assembly, civil society leaders of La Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas (ACNU), physicians at the Hermanos Ameijeiras Clinical Surgical Hospital, and encounters with people on the street, while not monolithic, the response was consistent. Cuba is not a threat to the U.S.
Cuba is on life support because of the U.S. embargo. Fuel, food, medicine and water have been cut off from communities who desperately need it.
Many Cubans noted: “Tell the American people we need their support.”
However, Cubans also emphasized pride for their country.
“We will defend our land with our lives until the end,” many Cubans emphasized during the trip.
At a press conference held Tuesday, June 9 at the National Press Club, Daniels was joined by Dr. Julianne Malveaux, economist; Mel Foote, founder of the Constituency for Africa, and Dr. E. Faye Williams, board member of the World Conference of Mayors.
The group announced their respective plans to engage women, the Divine 9 — the African American Greek-letter fraternities and sororities — as well as the African diplomatic corps, and state and local legislators to visit Cuba, hold meetings there, and join the call for an end to the U.S. blockade.
Jackson, who also attended the press conference, referred to the delegation as “brave souls.” He commended members of the Black Press who accompanied the delegation, and told them, “You are our eyes and ears, and your voice will help to get this message out to millions of people.”
The Illinois congressman said he was shocked to see that the “U.S. government is doing economic asphyxiation, cutting off and killing the Cuban economy, which kills the people,” during his trip with Jayapal in April.
“The irony, the contradiction, the hypocrisy,” he continued, “of us fighting to keep open the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, to have the free flowing of petroleum, because every country needs it, but right off of our shores we are strangling and denying a sovereign nation access to oil. We know that equals death.”
In closing, Jackson offered a call to action for the American leaders.
“It is time that the U.S. recognizes Cuba as a sovereign nation, and that people have their own right to self-determination,” Jackson declared. “So, I stand by their right to govern themselves in the way that they see fit.”
