And start again. Five years after the United States removed Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, when the governments of Barack Obama and Raúl Castro began the thaw and reestablished diplomatic relations, the Trump Administration returns to the starting box and includes Havana in its country catalog they did not “fully cooperate with the US counter-terrorism efforts in 2019.” It is the first step for Cuba to return to the famous black list of “sponsors of terrorism”, that of Washington’s greatest enemies, which includes Iran, Syria or Venezuela, and which implies various sanctions and restrictions. The matter does not take the Cuban government by surprise, which considers it a “mockery” and saw it coming, since since Donald Trump arrived at the White House began to disassemble one by one most of the standardizing measures taken by its predecessor.
Washington’s last action, while The United States recovers the belligerent tone of the worst moments of the Cold War, occurs amid the coronavirus pandemic and when the island demands explanations from the Trump Administration for a shooting that occurred last week against its embassy in Washington. Just yesterday, hours before the State Department notified the US Congress of the inclusion of Cuba in the list, in Havana the Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, accused Washington of “complicit silence” for not giving explanations for the armed incident, nor having condemned what the island considers a “terrorist attack”.
“The decision of the US State Department to include Cuba in the list of countries that do not cooperate in the fight against terrorism seems like a mockery when it remains silent about an assault rifle attack against the Cuban embassy. Who gave the United States the right to make these politicized lists? ”Wrote the Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca, immediately. Along the same lines, other officials spoke out, calling the decision “insulting”, “challenging” and “aberrant”.
On this occasion, Washington’s argument for punishment is Havana’s decision to refuse to extradite to Colombia a group of guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) who were negotiating in Cuba a peace agreement with the Government of Bogotá, when there was an attack with explosives, in January 2019, against a school of police cadets, which caused the death of 22 people. At that time, Cuba refused to hand over the negotiators, alleging that this violated what was stipulated in the negotiation protocols, and this is the reason why the US assures that Cuba “is not cooperating with the US work in support of Colombia’s efforts. oriented to achieve a just and lasting peace, security and opportunities for its population ”.
Havana says that the argument is fallacious and has neither head nor foot, since it considers that nobody has done more than Cuba for peace in Colombia by sponsoring and serving as headquarters for years for negotiations between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC ) and Bogotá, which led to the peace accords. For the Miguel Díaz-Canel government, the US decision only responds to one objective: to continue to escalate tensions and sanctions in order to worsen the island’s difficulties, when the country is going through a severe economic crisis aggravated by the coronavirus epidemic.
Being included in the list of countries that sponsor terrorism has a series of legal implications regarding restrictions on exports and trade, which, in the case of Cuba, affects relatively since nothing that it prohibits is allowed by the rest of the sanctions that make up the US embargo policy. However, being on this black list does allow Washington to increase pressure on the financial system and to pursue dollar transactions with Cuba with greater weapons, which in the past has led to the imposition of multimillion-dollar fines on European banks for operating with the island. Since Trump’s arrival at the White House, this pressure has increased markedly, which has made it difficult for foreign businessmen to do business with Cuba, something already difficult due to the country’s fragile economic situation.
It was the government of Ronald Reagan (1980-1988), in moments of maximum tension with Cuba, that put Havana on the list of sponsors of terrorism for its support of the armed movements in Latin America. It was in 1982, and it took 33 years for Barack Obama to retrace his steps, remove Cuba from the list of marres and initiate a normalizing process that involved flexible measures for American citizens to travel to the island, the authorization of the cruises tourism and direct flights between the two countries, among other opening measures that Trump has been gradually dismantling. Since 2017, the White House has included Cuba on numerous blacklists – for example, lists of hotels where US citizens cannot stay, or of stores where they cannot buy – in addition to allowing lawsuits in court. Americans against foreign companies that allegedly traffic in expropriated property after 1959, under the Helms-Burton Act, which the EU does not abide by because of its extraterritorial nature. Now, when the world fights against coronavirus, Washington goes back to the Reagan times.
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