KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

The Cuban Em­bassy has ex­pressed its grat­i­tude to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T for sup­port­ing a Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the decades-long Unit­ed States em­bar­go against Cu­ba.

Cuban Am­bas­sador Gus­ta­vo Veliz Oli­vares said the em­bassy “high­ly val­ues the vote of Trinidad and To­ba­go, which reaf­firms the will to con­tin­ue ex­pand­ing and deep­en­ing bi­lat­er­al ties, as an ex­pres­sion of the friend­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty that have been main­tained be­tween the two broth­er­ly na­tions—re­la­tions that will mark their 53rd an­niver­sary since their es­tab­lish­ment on De­cem­ber 8, 1972.”

On Oc­to­ber 29, the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) vot­ed on the res­o­lu­tion, ti­tled The Ne­ces­si­ty of End­ing the Eco­nom­ic, Com­mer­cial, and Fi­nan­cial Block­ade Im­posed by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca Against Cu­ba.

T&T joined its Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­ter­parts in sup­port­ing the mea­sure, as an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty of the UN’s 193 mem­ber states urged Wash­ing­ton to lift the sanc­tions. A to­tal of 165 na­tions vot­ed in favour of end­ing the block­ade, while sev­en—in­clud­ing the Unit­ed States, Is­rael, Ar­genti­na, Hun­gary, North Mace­do­nia, Paraguay and Ukraine—vot­ed against. Twelve coun­tries ab­stained.

“The block­ade con­sti­tutes an un­jus­ti­fied at­tempt to stran­gle Cu­ba and rep­re­sents the main ob­sta­cle to the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment, with no sec­tor or group of Cuban so­ci­ety spared from the ef­fects of this crim­i­nal pol­i­cy main­tained for more than 60 years,” the Cuban Em­bassy said in a state­ment.

It added that be­tween March 2024 and Feb­ru­ary 2025 alone, the em­bar­go caused an es­ti­mat­ed US$7.56 bil­lion in ma­te­r­i­al loss­es to the Cuban econ­o­my.

The em­bassy al­so ex­tend­ed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to the “Friends of Cu­ba” group and to oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­sti­tu­tions, and in­di­vid­u­als who have con­tributed to strength­en­ing re­la­tions be­tween Cu­ba and T&T over the years.

The Unit­ed States first im­posed an arms em­bar­go against Cu­ba on March 14, 1958, dur­ing the Ful­gen­cio Batista regime. By Oc­to­ber 19, 1960—near­ly two years af­ter the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion that over­threw Batista—the US ex­pand­ed the em­bar­go to in­clude most ex­ports, fol­low­ing the na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can oil re­finer­ies with­out com­pen­sa­tion.

Since 1992, the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly has an­nu­al­ly adopt­ed res­o­lu­tions de­mand­ing an end to the Cuban eco­nom­ic em­bar­go, with the Unit­ed States and Is­rael con­sis­tent­ly vot­ing against it.