Guests

A Russian tanker carrying around 700,000 barrels of crude oil has arrived in the port of Matanzas, Cuba, breaking the U.S. blockade imposed by President Trump three months ago. Fuel shortages in Cuba have caused dayslong blackouts and have brought all sectors of the country to the brink of collapse.

The White House is claiming the arrival of the Russian tanker, unimpeded by the United States, does not signal a “formal change in sanction policy,” and said U.S. decisions on shipments going forward would be made on a case-by-case basis.

“I think possibly what’s going on is that the administration has begun to worry that their effort to strangle the economy could push the economy over the edge and generate a mass migration crisis,” says William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University.

“Who is the United States? Who gave you the authorization to say how much oil is going into Cuba or not? This is illegal,” adds Liz Oliva Fernández, a Cuban journalist with Belly of the Beast.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

A Russian oil tanker has arrived in the port of Matanzas, Cuba, breaking the U.S. blockade imposed by the U.S. three months ago. The tanker is carrying around 700,000 barrels of crude oil. Fuel shortages in Cuba have caused dayslong blackouts, have brought all sectors of Cuba to the brink of collapse. This is Havana resident Ismael de la Luz Caballero.

ISMAEL DE LA LUZ CABALLERO: [translated] I see the arrival of the ship and the fact that they allowed it in very positively. However, we need them to let more shipments through. After all, a single ship amounts to just over 75,000 barrels, and that lasts only 15 days. What happens after that? We’ll be right back to the blackouts and the transportation crisis. Things are in a dire state on that front. The Americans need to let us live a little, to let us breathe, because we’ve reached a point where we can barely breathe anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: The White House is claiming the arrival of the Russian tanker, unimpeded by the United States, does not signal a formal change in sanction policy, and said decisions on shipments going forward would be made on a case-by-case basis. President Trump spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One Sunday.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If he wants to do that and if other countries want to do it, it doesn’t bother me much. It’s not going to have an impact. Cuba’s finished. They have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership. And whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter. I’d prefer letting it in, whether it’s Russia or anybody else, because the people need heat and cooling and all of the other things that you need. Go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Havana, Cuba, we’re joined by the award-winning journalist Liz Oliva Fernández of the Belly of the Beast. She’s been reporting on the impacts of U.S. sanctions for years. In Washington, D.C., we’re joined by William LeoGrande. He’s a professor of government at American University, specialist in U.S.-Latin American relations and co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana.

We’ll talk about how hard Cuba has been hit by the U.S. sanctions. I mean, President Trump has been threatening countries around the world against delivering aid to Cuba, and oil. Professor William LeoGrande, can you explain what’s happening? Whether or not Trump says it’s not a change in policy, that will surprise countries around the world that he has demanded they not help Cuba. What is going on here?

WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: Well, I think possibly what’s going on is that the administration has begun to worry that their effort to strangle the Cuban economy could push the economy over the edge and generate a mass migration crisis. That obviously is something that will be very contrary to the president’s overall policy of not allowing anybody into the United States, if he can help it.

They’re playing a dangerous game, I think, in the White House. They are tightening sanctions on Cuba in the hope that somehow this is going to force the Cuban government to surrender to their terms at the negotiating table. But if the Cuban government doesn’t surrender, then there is this risk of bringing the economy really to the edge and over the edge of collapse and generating social chaos on the island and mass migration, and then pressure from the Cuban American community for direct military intervention.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Professor LeoGrande, isn’t this also a sign that the Trump administration realizes it cannot risk a confrontation with Russia in the Caribbean, while at the same time having to have so many troops and so much military hardware deployed in the Persian Gulf and in Iran, and that they’d rather just let the Russian tanker go through? Because, obviously, they’re still putting a lot of pressure on weaker or smaller countries to maintain the embargo against — or, the blockade against supplies to Cuba.

WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: Well, you know, the tanker was not accompanied by any Russian naval forces, so the administration could have seized it with no real resistance. But this administration very rarely does anything that is confrontational with Russia. And I think this is just sort of par for the course with the Trump administration of wanting to, for whatever reason, stay on good terms with Russia, come what may.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And we’ve heard a lot of talk from both Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump about the contours of some kind of a deal with Cuba. And Rubio has been saying that the current president of Cuba has to go. What’s your sense of this, this issue of: Are there back-door talks between the two countries?

WILLIAM LEOGRANDE: Well, it seems there certainly has been sort of preliminary conversations between the two countries. Both governments have confirmed that over the last few days. There was at least one face-to-face meeting between Secretary Rubio’s advisers and Cuban representatives on the island of Saint Kitts during the CARICOM meeting.

But what the United States really wants is still very much unclear. Initially, it sounded like what the United States was most interested in was some kind of economic deal, and even Secretary Rubio was sort of underscoring that in his public statements. Then the Cuban government said that pretty much anything was open to discussion except their internal affairs, and particularly the shape of their government or who their political leaders would be. So the Cubans really drew a red line around that issue of political leadership. After that, Secretary Rubio came out and, in a couple of public statements, was pretty clear that he thinks that the Cuban leadership, in fact, has to change.

So, it’s an open question now whether there is enough common ground between the two countries to reach some kind of agreement around economic issues, which, of course, is what President Trump was interested in primarily in Venezuela, or whether or not we’re going to have a deadlock in these negotiations because the United States insists on infringing, in effect, on Cuban sovereignty by telling them who their leaders can be.

AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied there’s a naval blockade on Cuba.

SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO: [There isn’t] a naval blockade surrounding Cuba. The reason why Cuba doesn’t have oil and fuel is because they want it for free, and people don’t give away oil and fuel for free on a regular basis, unless it was the Soviet Union subsidizing them or Maduro subsidizing them. They just don’t do it. They may get a shipment here or there, or now and then someone — but not enough to sustain their country. … Ultimately, the reason why Cuba is a disaster is because their economic system doesn’t work. It’s a nonsensical system. And the people of Cuba are suffering because of the decisions — because of the unwillingness of the people who govern that country to make the changes that need to be made so they can join the 21st century. It is sad that the only place — Cubans can only be successful if they leave the country. That’s a very sad thing. You see Cubans go all over the world and find success, except in Cuba.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Cuban American U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Liz Oliva Fernández, you’re a Cuban journalist in Havana right now. If you can respond to what he’s saying, saying that there is not a naval blockade, and also talk about — while he allows in a Russian oil tanker, for example, when it comes to Mexico, hasn’t Mexico said that they would be threatened with tariffs by Trump if they sent this kind of oil to Cuba?

LIZ OLIVA FERNÁNDEZ: I don’t need to respond to that, because President Trump already did. Like, it’s funny, like, as many times these people are, like, fighting each other. They say — the things that they say don’t have any sense. They said there is not an oil blockade, but then they are threatening people, threatening countries, with tariff if they just, like, try to get oil to Cuba. And then the President Trump say, “Well, we are going to allow this.” And then the secretary of — in the White House, the press conference, they say, “Well, we need to see case by case.” Like, what is the point, if there is not an oil blockade?

And I think, like, the things — it’s not like they talk about this. I think, like, the bother me the most is like when the people phrase it and then they allow it, like this is legal. So, what is — what is the United States doing? Who said that the United States can’t allow how many oil or who is sending oil to Cuba? Who is the United States? Who give you the authorization to say how many oil going into Cuba or not? Like, this is illegal. They can’t do that and say that they allow it. We are, like, legitimize an action that is illegal itself.

And also, for me, it’s complicated to understand. Like, I don’t get it. Like, I know that they are lying, but I don’t get it, how they can just stand and say that this is not affecting the people. How many countries around the world can just survive without oil? Like, oil is a fundamental part of everything.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Liz Oliva Fernández, it’s not clearly just oil for —

LIZ OLIVA FERNÁNDEZ: Like technology.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Liz Oliva, it’s not just about oil, as well, as we know for decades now the United States has been blockading and mounting a solo embargo against Cuba, condemned by virtually every country in the United Nations General Assembly. What’s been the impact of these decades of economic isolation that the United States has sought to put Cuba in on the people of your country?

LIZ OLIVA FERNÁNDEZ: First, I need to say that, no, like, we haven’t — they have maintained a blockade for more than 60 years now. But not all the eras, not all the times on all the periods are the same. There are times like they shrink as much as it can, as has happened since the first Trump administration and this one.

For example, to put you in context, when we are looking at, like, infant mortality in Cuba, in 2018, there was four per 1,000 kids. And now, after all the sanctions that the United States and Trump administration first, then Biden had just maintained the things like it is, and then Trump again, like, the mortality, infant mortality, in Cuba has raised until 10. That’s crazy. That’s how much impact the U.S. sanctions has in Cuba, and not just infant mortality. Let’s talk about expectancy of life. Cuba has one of the expectancy of life that could be compared with other Western Hemisphere — Western countries, sorry.

And then they have been, like, getting in the — the impact of the sanctions are cruel, because it’s not just like they are, like, putting sanctions on. This is like on a war between the United States and Cuba. This is an isolation. They are trying to asphyxiate the Cuban people in order that we want to overthrow our own government.

When they say, “Oh, we don’t want” — we don’t know — we are not sure what they want. They want regime change, not because I say it, because they write it down in the '60s. They have been wanting regime change since always. And I think, like, this is the first time in my life and experience, like, people are tired in Cuba. We don't want to go through this anymore. So, people want to something happen.

AMY GOODMAN: Liz Oliva Fernández, I want to thank you for being with us, Cuban journalist with Belly of the Beast, speaking to us from Havana. She’s not just reporting on the sanctions and blockade; she is living it. William LeoGrande, professor at American University, co-author, with Peter Kornbluh, of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana.

Coming up, the dramatic story of the secretive, decadelong Pentagon campaign to deliver America into the age of AI warfare. We’ll speak to the author of a new book called Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Different Kind of World,” performed by Maggie Rogers at No Kings rally in the Twin Cities. She also performed with Joan Baez at that rally, and you can see that at democracynow.org.