Cuba has ‘urgent’ need for sanctions relief, island’s diplomat tells U.S. officials

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A Cuban diplomat met with a top State Department official last week in Washington D.C., a previously unreported meeting that underscores renewed efforts by the Cuban government to seek relief from U.S. sanctions as the economic crisis in the island deepens.

On Oct. 10, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs Eric Jacobstein met with Johana Tablada de la Torre, a top official dealing with U.S.-Cuba relations at the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry.

According to a State Department spokesperson, the officials discussed “diplomatic facilities, consular services and irregular migration.”

The spokesperson said human rights, a focal point of tension between the two governments, were also part of the agenda.

Jacobstein “pressed Deputy Director Tablada for Cuba to release the approximately 1,000 unjustly detained political prisoners incarcerated and to allow Cubans to exercise their fundamental freedoms,” the State Department official said.

In an interview with The Hill, Tablada said she “visited different entities of the U.S. government or Justice Department. And I’ve met with other departments — I won’t mention which ones because I don’t want them to be subpoenaed to Congress.”

The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security did not reply to emails seeking information about the meetings.

In interviews with U.S. outlets, Tablada said her trip had one purpose: to improve relations with the United States and persuade the Biden administration to lift sanctions that she says are affecting Cuba’s population.

“Relations are not going very well,” she told CNN en Español. She said Cuban authorities were “trying to improve relations, move towards a more constructive position…and also honestly, trying to imbue our counterparts in the government, in civil society, in the United States Congress of the urgency we have to change the policy of United States towards Cuba at least in some of the aspects that are most difficult today and that have a greater impact on the lives of the citizens.”

Cuba is under a long-standing U.S. trade and financial embargo, though exports of food, medicines and other supplies for the benefit of the Cuban people are authorized.

Cuban officials continue to voice their frustration that President Joe Biden has kept in place sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. Those measures effectively pushed the Cuban military out of the business of remittances from abroad, a significant revenue stream for the Cuban government. In particular, they have insisted on Cuba being removed from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, which they said has further scared banks, creditors and companies from doing business with the communist island.

The country is going through dire times, with shortages of food, medicines and oil and a crumbling infrastructure that cannot provide essential services. The government fought islandwide demonstrations in July 2021 with a crackdown—which Tablada denied at the time— and new legislation banning criticism of the authorities and the Communist Party.

More than 400,000 Cubans have fled the deteriorating situation to come to the United States in the past two years, a historical migration wave that Tablada squarely blamed on U.S. sanctions.

While sanctions have contributed to the current crisis, reducing the flow of money going to government coffers, experts also point out several other factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the slow recovery of tourism, dwindling support from Venezuela, a poorly implemented monetary reform that led to soaring inflation and, ultimately, the government’s reluctance to embrace broader market reforms to increase food production and attract foreign investment.

The Biden administration has said it has facilitated sending humanitarian aid to the island and is focusing on supporting an emerging private sector that could help meet the population’s needs. Last month, U.S. officials signaled they were getting ready to announce regulations allowing Cuban private entrepreneurs to open bank accounts in the United States to facilitate their operations. But the official announcement has been inexplicably delayed.

One main obstacle to better relations with Cuba remains: the fate of hundreds of peaceful anti-government protesters and dissidents who are in prison.

Despite repeated calls by the U.S. government, the European Union and the Vatican, Cuban authorities have signaled their unwillingness to release them unless the gesture is reciprocated by the Biden administration taking Cuba off the list of sponsors of terrorism.

Repeating Cuba’s main talking points on the issue, Tablada said the United States has used human rights as a justification for its harsh policies on Cuba. She was not asked about the release of the political prisoners.

Cuba’s diplomatic push comes amid some changes in the U.S. policy landscape towards Latin America and the Caribbean and a broader discussion about the efficacy of sanctions.

On Tuesday, the United States welcomed a deal it helped broker between the Nicolas Maduro government and the opposition in Venezuela. A State Department spokesperson told the Miami Herald that the administration is willing to consider “modifications to U.S. sanctions” if the Maduro regime takes concrete democratic reforms and meets conditions for free and fair elections in 2024.

Tablada’s trip to Washington came after U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a Cuban American, was forced to quit his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as he faces bribery charges and accusations of having acted as a foreign agent for Egypt. Menendez has been a fierce advocate for maintainig the sanctions on the Cuban regime. His replacement, Sen. Ben Cardin, is perceived as being more willing to work with the Biden administration on foreign policy issues.

In that context, Tablada appealed to the administration’s more pragmatic approach to dealing with authoritarian governments.

“[The] U.S. has political, diplomatic, economic relations with countries that are far, far, far away in their standards of human rights [from] where Cuba is right now,” she told the Hill. “And I don’t want to mention any names, because we probably also have good relations with them.”

But she mentioned China “because the U.S. has a better relationship with China than with Cuba. Honestly.”