The Embargo on Cuba Doesn't Represent American Values. But Visiting Cuba Does!

On June 30, Donald Trump issued a presidential memorandum reaffirming the U.S. government’s “maximum pressure” Cuba policy, which aims to starve the island into submission through ever harsher sanctions.

Cuba is suffering through its worst social and economic crisis in memory. Tourism has plummeted from nearly five million annual visitors during President Barack Obama’s opening a decade ago to around one million today. The current policy aims to push this number down further.

Hope for a better future has disappeared. As a result, some 1.4 million Cubans have left the country since 2021, most emigrating to the United States.

U.S. policy toward Cuba has long been dictated by the Cuban-American community in South Florida. They too have suffered. I know about this firsthand as my parents left Cuba as orphaned teenagers in 1960 as part of a program aptly named Peter Pan. Just after they left, my great uncle began serving a 17-year sentence in Cuba’s notorious Presidio prison for transporting equipment to counterrevolutionaries in the Escambray mountains. He was tortured and was never the same again.

I grew up in Miami, hearing every day about Fidel Castro and the need for regime change in Cuba. But as an adult I have come to know another side of the story. I have traveled to Cuba frequently for my work as a marine biologist for the last 25 years. Geographically, Cuba is by far the largest Caribbean island nation. It holds the most significant biological diversity and endemism (species that only exist in one area) in the region. Its people are passionate and resilient; features which strike anyone who travels to the island. What I see with every visit are people committed to sustaining their rich natural and cultural heritage.

But the ferocity of U.S. sanctions puts all this at risk. Walk the streets of Havana and you will see children, parents and grandparents caught in a vice and struggling to get by. After 63 years, the embargo has not achieved its objective. It has not given Cuban Americans the free homeland they long for. It has only hurt people – both in Cuba and in the United States – by restricting the flow of remittances, increasing bureaucracy and stunting business development. The embargo also restricts travel by scientists like me, limits the flow of supplies and technology for cutting-edge scientific research and prevents Cuban scientists from traveling to the U.S. for academic exchange and training.

My work in Cuba will continue since its coral reefs are one of the few remaining spots of hope for the wider Caribbean coral ecosystems I study and strive to protect. Florida, whose coral ecosystems are flatlining, is a major beneficiary of marine biodiversity from Cuba and other Caribbean islands. Fish and sea turtles migrate back and forth between Cuba and the U.S. mainland, which is one of the reasons why ecosystem recovery in the U.S. could depend in large part on our ability to protect ecosystems in Cuba. Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy will not only hurt Cuba’s economy; it will ultimately impact our own ecosystem, particularly in my home state of Florida.

The embargo is fundamentally un-American. It restricts our freedom to travel, to engage with people from another country, to work together across borders to build a better world – and a better United States. These limitations stand in direct opposition to the values, principles and liberties that lie at the heart of what our nation is meant to represent.

What can we do? Contacting our representatives in the U.S. is one way to push for change. But right now, with the present administration, it’s unlikely to achieve much.

Perhaps the best thing we can do is travel to Cuba and get to know the island – and its people – ourselves. The U.S. government doesn’t make that easy. It’s illegal for U.S. citizens to visit Cuba as tourists. But you can still go! There are 12 different travel categories under which travel is still legal.

Go see the island for yourself, talk with a Cuban cousin, priest, marine scientist, entrepreneur or artist, and ask them how their lives have changed since Trump reversed Obama’s opening ten years ago. And before you go, learn about the impact of sanctions – a great place to start is Belly of the Beast’s documentary series The War on Cuba.

There may be little hope for a policy change in the near future, but that doesn’t mean we can’t exercise our rights to engage with Cuba. It’s in times like these that reaching across borders is more important than ever.

Fernando Bretos is the director of the Cresta Coastal Network, a project of The Ocean Foundation. He can be reached via email at fernando@crestacoasts.org.