China Gives Aid in Boatloads; U.S. in “Wheelbarrows”
China delivered a 15,000-ton shipment of rice this week as part of a larger aid package that includes 60,000 tons of food and $80 million in electrical equipment aimed at stabilizing Cuba’s collapsing energy grid. Beijing had already shipped 15,600 tons of rice and provided $100 million in aid over the past year.
U.S. humanitarian aid, by contrast, which is being distributed through the Catholic organization Caritas, is “small potatoes” due to the fuel crisis, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski told USA Today.
"Caritas was using almost what I would describe as wheelbarrows to distribute it,” he said.
The U.S. has delivered only a fraction of the $9 million it pledged following last October’s Hurricane Melissa, according to Cuban authorities.
Rubio has offered an additional $100 million “humanitarian” package, which, even if genuine and Caritas capable of distributing it, would represent a fraction of the billions of dollars in annual damages the U.S. blockade inflicts on the Cuban people.
What the country needs much more than aid is fuel. But the Trump administration has blocked all oil from entering the country except one Russian tanker two months ago.
Another Russian tanker carrying 250,000 barrels of diesel that appeared headed toward the island has reportedly changed course.
The Trump administration recently moved to deepen Cuba’s isolation by excluding the island from a U.S. Treasury waiver allowing countries to receive already-sanctioned Russian oil shipments.
UN experts have condemned the U.S. fuel blockade for creating food insecurity across Cuba.
“Energy starvation as a coercive tool is incompatible with international human rights norms,” a UN expert said. “By depriving a population of the energy required to run essential services, this executive order is obstructing Cuban people’s right to development and undermining their rights to food, education, health, and water and sanitation.”
Watch our video of how the U.S. oil blockade and economic warfare threaten children’s health and pediatric care in Havana.