The U.S. is drowning the Caribbean
Allison Robbert/AP, Mauro Lima, Daniel Sessler.)
The U.S. government’s recent actions in the Caribbean nations of Cuba and Venezuela highlight the administration’s dehumanizing view of Latinos worldwide.
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Let’s talk about Cuba.
(Disclaimer : I know I’ve already riled up a bunch of people just by bringing up the island nation. So I want to make something very clear: I am going to be talking about the people living in Cuba with respect and empathy. If you were looking for me to rant about Fidel Castro, communism and other Cold War-era talking points, you must have me confused with Marco Rubio.)
Over the weekend, Cuba suffered yet another nationwide blackout, which came only a few weeks after it was hit with three blackouts in nine days in July.
The island nation has been plagued by power outages over the last two years, caused by mechanical failures, damage from severe storms and fuel shortages.
But the situation has been greatly exacerbated by the United States.
Venezuela had long been a provider of oil and fuel to Cuba, but after the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. took control of the South American country’s oil reserves. President Trump also threatened to impose tariffs on countries that send oil to the island.
The U.S. embargo against Cuba goes back over 60 years, to when Castro seized power by ousting the U.S.-backed leader, Fulgencio Batista, in the late 1950s. The fear of communism somehow hopping from the island to the U.S. set in stateside and was further bolstered by the fact that the Soviet Union began backing Cuba. Insert the Bay of Pigs invasion, the nuclear arms race and the other stuff you probably (hopefully) learned about in school — and that’s how we got to the current situation.
All these years later, the U.S. stubbornly is standing by Red Scare ideologies to rationalize the embargo.
Relations with Cuba have further worsened under the Trump and Biden administrations. In 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration severely restricted the flow of tourism to the island with the Cuba Restricted List: an ever-expanding registry of Cuban businesses — largely tourism-based institutions such as hotels — that Americans were prohibited from doing business with.
That list was further expanded last year at the start of the second Trump administration. The U.S. also banned all cruise ships from going to Cuba beginning in 2019.
The U.S. had further disincentivized businesses and financial institutions from operating in Cuba when it deemed the Caribbean country a state sponsor of terrorism in 2021, a distinction Cuba shares with North Korea, Iran and Syria.
Changes in import legislation imposed by the U.S. have led to a lack of access to medical tools and medications in Cuba. Because of this, more than 50% of medications on the island are in short supply.
Restrictions on remittances also have limited the amount of aid Cubans can receive from family members and charitable organizations from the States. This lack of funds, in turn, leaves families without the ability to purchase necessities.
“I would argue that a war with Cuba has already begun,” said Lee Schlenker — a research associate at the trans-partisan political “action tank” and communications project called the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
“It’s very difficult for the over 9 million Cubans who are just coming out from the sixth nationwide blackout to argue that this administration’s indiscriminate war against the island’s economy hasn’t already begun,” he told The Times. “[Cubans] believe mostly that things will only get worse before they get better.”
Now is the time to ‘end the economic war on Cuba,’ say Cuban Americans for Cuba, an emerging collective that joined the recent convoy to Havana.
But why has the U.S. decided to ramp up its offensive against Cuba over the last few months? Look no further than son of Cuban exiles and current secretary of State: Rubio.
“This is really a pet project of Marco Rubio,” Schlenker said. “The operation to extract Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela was very clearly aimed at destabilizing Cuba through cutting off oil sales. Rubio was the architect of the 2017 national security presidential memorandum that reversed the Obama administration’s historic détente with the island, despite the objections of basically all of the first Trump administration’s deputies in all of the major cabinets.
“He’s always been beholden to a small group of powerful and influential Americans in South Florida,” Schlenker added. “[He’s] a hawkish neoconservative who believes that we must export human rights and democracy, allegedly, whether through force, through coercion or diplomatic arm twisting.”
Cuba is a boogeyman character for Rubio. There’s nothing he’d want more than to bring down the Cuban government to heel and tout that as a victory — in spite of all the Cuban people who would be endangered by that.
This is all part of the larger “Don-roe Doctrine,” in which the U.S. looks to justify its interference with all governments in the Western Hemisphere.
Having recently gone to the Caribbean nation, Schlenker saw firsthand the devastating effects of how badly the U.S. is choking out the country.
“People are tired, they’re exhausted. There’s really no hope,” he said. “People don’t even know who to blame anymore. They know that Trump is to blame, that they have their hands tied. They don’t really see a way out.”
I too would be hard-pressed to see a way out if I was living in complete darkness, if I needed to wait weeks for a necessary surgery, if my children were on the brink of starvation, if I saw the other nations were too scared of the U.S. to send aid, if infant mortality rates were skyrocketing and cancer survival rates were plummeting.
A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that the U.S. sanctions on Cuba were likely “the primary cause” for the sharp increase in the infant mortality rate on the island over the last decade.
What would the Cuban people have to look forward to if the U.S. was able to swing its political power within the country? Let’s just look at Venezuela.
The U.S. was able to go in and extradite Maduro and have Delcy Rodríguez play the part of puppet — they didn’t even install Trump’s populist political buddy, María Corina Machado, after the takeover. Venezuela has lost control of its valuable resources and has yet to benefit from the U.S. intervention.
You’d think the U.S. would have a vested interest in helping move along Venezuela’s recovery process after twin earthquakes devastated the country in late June, which resulted in more than 6,000 deaths. But that hasn’t been the case.
“Venezuela has crucial resources that it is not being allowed to access. The United States and Europe are blocking the nation from more than $11 billion that Venezuela should legally have,” Mark Weisbrot, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, recently wrote in a column for The Times.
“There are some billions of dollars more that are being held by the Trump administration, despite an executive order stating that these funds ‘constitute property of the Government of Venezuela.’ This is cash from the sale of Venezuela’s oil, which the Trump administration has taken control.”
But why does all this matter to Latinos in the U.S.? Well, it reflects this administration’s views of Latinos.
We are resources and political tools to the government — nothing more. Just chess pieces that are used to gain imperialistic points.
Whether Latinos live or die is not of importance to the U.S. political machine; it’s obvious.
Create an unstable situation that makes life unmanageable and then demonize the victims of that situation when they ask you for help — that’s the U.S. government’s MO.
Last year, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for 600,000 Venezuelans, making them all eligible for removal from the country. That ruling also stripped away protections for thousands of Cuban in the U.S.
Today’s Venezuelan earthquake and Cuban blackout victims are tomorrow’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees.
Remembering the El Paso shooting
On Aug. 3, 2019, a gunman drove more than nine hours from North Texas to an El Paso Walmart and killed 23 people while injuring 22 others. The assailant later admitted to authorities that the attack was racially motivated against Latinos.
The shooter is facing 23 life sentences for his crimes, and the families of the dead must face every day without their loved ones.
Over the last week, vigils for the victims have been held at memorial sites throughout the Texas city.
“It was not only Walmart, it was our community at the border that was attacked. Violently,” an immigration reform and human rights advocate told El Paso NBC affiliate KTSM. “So yes, we need to remember each of them. But at the same time we need to remember, and not forget, the ideas, the narrative behind that attack.”
Seven years after the shooting, I wish I could say I feel more hopeful that something like this never will happen again, but I really can’t.
Latino hate crimes are up across the nation, reaching record highs last year, and Latinos continually have been shot and killed in the streets by government officials over the last few years. Thousands more Latino men, women and children have been locked up and forced to live in rundown, disease-and-vermin-filled detention centers.
Gun laws continue to remain loose throughout the majority of the country, especially in Texas. Just this week, a Texas judge passed a ruling that could allow firearm owners to purchase firearm suppressors and other firearms without registration, while also removing a layer of background checks.
What a messed-up country we live in.
Stories we read this week that we think you should read
Unless otherwise noted, stories below were published by the Los Angeles Times.
Politics and immigration
- Video shows worm-like creatures in drinking water at ICE detention center
- Pregnancy, suicide attempts, frostbite: Records detail ICE medical claims before payment system collapsed
- Federal judge holds government in civil contempt for not imaging immigration agents’ personal phones
- California sues Trump to block latest tariffs, sharing of needy families’ data with ICE
- They hoped to fix their immigration status. They got scammed instead
- Judges nix Trump’s mandatory immigrant detention policy, teeing up Supreme Court fight
- Steve Hilton challenges Xavier Becerra to agree to a series of debates in California’s governor’s race
- U.S. cites ‘unauthorized travel’ to end DACA status for a mother of 3 deported to Mexico (AP)
- Trump remains unpopular, but Republicans still back him on immigration, poll shows (AP)
Arts and entertainment
- At Hard Summer, Latino DJs and ravers push festival culture forward
- With new LP ‘Ruido Tovar,’ Camilo Lara wants to take cumbias into the future
- ‘The De Los Podcast’: Being Latino is tough right now, but still worth celebrating
- Here’s why North Redondo Beach should be known as ‘Little Brazil’
- L.A. County weighs a grant fund to keep indie films from leaving
- FCC votes in favor of lifting limits on TV station ownership
- Inland Empire’s KCAL-FM cuts entire on-air staff in move to all-music programming
Southern California
- L.A. city and county officials move to bolster recovery from Boyle Heights warehouse fire
- Bass imposes new limits on rebuilding process for warehouse that burned in Boyle Heights
- ¿Multas de hasta $1 millón? Boyle Heights pasa a la ofensiva tras el incendio que desató una crisis sanitaria
- Thousands of complaints, few punished: How LAPD handles claims of racial bias
- Homelessness has dropped 57% on Metro system since 2024, count finds
- Measles-infected Universal Studios visitor spent whole day at the park
- Marmots got money troubles: Cuts to UCLA research lead scientists to OnlyFans
Insights
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The article contends that Cuba’s rolling nationwide blackouts and broader humanitarian emergency are not just the result of storms or mechanical failures but have been dramatically worsened by more than six decades of U.S. embargo and, especially, by a recent tightening of sanctions that restrict fuel, tourism, remittances and access to medical supplies.
It argues that policy shifts under both the Trump and Biden administrations have deepened Cuban isolation, citing expanded tourism restrictions, the ban on U.S. cruise ships, the state-sponsor-of-terrorism designation and limits on remittances as measures that collectively amount to an “indiscriminate war” on the island’s economy, with ordinary families bearing the brunt through medicine shortages, delayed surgeries and rising infant mortality.
Through quotes from Quincy Institute analyst Lee Schlenker, the piece portrays everyday Cubans as exhausted, hopeless and unsure whom to blame, while emphasizing that many on the island see Washington’s strategy—not only domestic mismanagement in Havana—as a central driver of their suffering.
The column places particular responsibility on Secretary of State Marco Rubio, describing Rubio as the architect of the reversal of the Obama-era rapprochement with Cuba and as a hawkish neoconservative beholden to a small, powerful segment of Cuban American elites in South Florida, whose long-standing hostility to the Cuban government is presented as a “pet project” now elevated into official U.S. policy.
It introduces the notion of a broader “Don-roe Doctrine” in which the Trump administration uses its power to intervene across the Western Hemisphere, casting recent U.S. moves in Cuba and Venezuela as part of the same imperial template of coercion, regime change and resource control.
By invoking Venezuela’s experience after the extradition of Nicolás Maduro and the installation of a more U.S.-aligned leadership, the article argues that U.S. intervention has stripped Venezuela of effective control over its oil wealth while ordinary Venezuelans have seen little benefit, even after devastating earthquakes, reinforcing the idea that Washington treats Latin American countries as resource providers rather than partners.
Citing economist Mark Weisbrot’s earlier writing, the piece underscores that billions of dollars in Venezuelan oil revenue remain frozen or controlled by U.S. and European authorities, framing this as further evidence that U.S. policy priorities center on geopolitical leverage rather than on the survival and recovery of Latin American populations.
The article then connects foreign policy to domestic politics, asserting that the way the U.S. government treats Cubans and Venezuelans abroad reflects how it values Latinos at home: as expendable political tools and “chess pieces” whose lives matter less than the electoral and ideological gains they can be used to secure.
It links that devaluation of Latino life to a continuum of harms: the termination of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Cubans; the prospect that today’s disaster survivors could become tomorrow’s ICE detainees; and the persistence of squalid, dangerous conditions in immigrant detention centers as documented by news coverage and lawsuits.
Finally, the column situates the 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre—explicitly motivated by anti-Latino hatred—within a broader rise in anti-Latino hate crimes, police shootings and lax gun laws, arguing that the United States has failed to meaningfully confront the narratives and policies that enable violence against Latinos, and concluding with a bleak assessment of the country’s moral and political direction.
Different views on the topic
In contrast to the article’s depiction of U.S. sanctions as an “indiscriminate war” on Cuba, many Cuban American political organizations and U.S. officials have long argued that the embargo and related restrictions are necessary tools to pressure an authoritarian government that suppresses dissent and controls the economy, contending that Havana’s own mismanagement, corruption and one‑party rule are the primary causes of shortages and blackouts rather than U.S. policy.
Advocates of a hard line toward Havana also maintain that loosening sanctions risks entrenching the current Cuban leadership by providing it with fresh revenue and legitimacy; these voices often frame sanctions as a means of supporting Cuban civil society and human rights activists by weakening state security forces and limiting the regime’s access to hard currency, rather than as a blanket attack on the Cuban people.
Similarly, on Venezuela, U.S. officials and opposition figures have defended asset freezes and control over certain oil-related revenues as measures intended to prevent the Maduro government and its allies from looting national wealth, presenting these steps as a way to safeguard funds for a potential democratic transition rather than as a denial of resources to ordinary Venezuelans.
Where the article reads U.S. moves in Cuba and Venezuela as evidence that Washington views Latinos as expendable, administration officials often point to significant humanitarian aid packages, refugee and parole programs for Venezuelans and Cubans, and funding for civil society as signs that policy is aimed at alleviating suffering while isolating abusive governments, even as critics question the effectiveness and reach of such efforts.
On the broader theme of U.S. “war” in the Caribbean, coverage of the recent U.S. military campaign of boat strikes against suspected drug-trafficking vessels notes that Pentagon officials describe these operations as a lawful counter-narcotics effort designed to disrupt cocaine shipments headed to the United States, emphasizing that targets are alleged traffickers on the high seas rather than civilians or governments.[1][2][3][4]
In these accounts, U.S. authorities argue that the use of lethal force against fast-moving boats in international waters is justified to protect U.S. communities from the harms of the drug trade, and they stress that intelligence reviews and legal vetting precede strikes, even as human rights groups and some legal experts dispute whether the operations meet international law standards.[1][2][3][4]
Responding to accusations of extrajudicial killings, defense officials have asserted that existing laws-of-war and self-defense frameworks permit such maritime actions against non-state criminal actors, and they have highlighted congressional notifications and internal investigations as evidence of oversight—positions that sharply diverge from advocates who see the same strikes as emblematic of U.S. impunity in Latin America.[1][3][4]
On immigration and detention, while the article portrays ICE facilities as fundamentally abusive and dehumanizing, Department of Homeland Security and ICE spokespeople routinely state that detention is used to ensure court appearances and protect public safety, that facilities are subject to standards and inspections, and that allegations of mistreatment are investigated—claims that immigrant rights groups contest based on their own reporting and litigation.
Regarding Temporary Protected Status and broader immigration enforcement, administration defenders argue that changes in TPS designations reflect statutory criteria and country conditions reviews rather than racial animus, and that the federal government has an obligation to manage borders and enforce immigration laws even when doing so has painful consequences for mixed-status families.
Finally, on gun policy, the column’s condemnation of permissive gun laws contrasts with the stance of many Texas lawmakers and gun-rights advocates, who argue that measures such as easing suppressor restrictions or limiting background checks are necessary to uphold constitutional rights; these advocates typically insist that the focus should be on enforcing existing laws and addressing mental health rather than on new gun regulations, a view that remains influential in many state legislatures despite repeated mass shootings.
