KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Trinida­di­ans Oren Gor­don and Sariyah Mo­hammed re­turned from Cu­ba with first­hand ac­counts of an is­land grap­pling with wa­ter ra­tioning, pro­longed black­outs, fu­el short­ages, poor garbage col­lec­tion and short­ages of food and med­ical sup­plies.

Rep­re­sent­ing Trin­ba­go for Pales­tine, the pair spent two weeks in Cu­ba from Au­gust 5 to 18.

They said the con­di­tions they en­coun­tered were dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with Cu­ba’s im­age as a Caribbean tourist des­ti­na­tion.

Mo­hammed said, “We saw one of these closed-up ho­tels when we were in Old Ha­vana, and it was a re­al­ly fan­cy ho­tel. It was right at the edge of the wa­ter, but you can see how they are de­lib­er­ate­ly tar­get­ing this tourism in­dus­try. A lot of the sanc­tioned en­ti­ties are ho­tels.”

She said they al­so saw few tourists dur­ing their stay.

At their last ho­tel, wa­ter was ra­tioned dai­ly be­tween 7 and 8 pm, forc­ing them to re­main there un­til the sup­ply be­came avail­able.

The re­stric­tions ex­tend­ed be­yond the ho­tel, with fu­el short­ages af­fect­ing trans­port and mak­ing it hard­er for the vis­i­tors to meet Cuban friends.

“By the time we were done us­ing our wa­ter, they would be, ‘Oh, well, it’s too late, it’s dark now,’ or ‘it’s too late to leave home’, and ‘I won’t be able to get back’, and ‘the trans­port is ex­pen­sive.’”

They added, “All of this, this fu­el block­ade, and all of these oth­er re­stric­tions that the Unit­ed States is im­pos­ing on Cu­ba are al­so im­pact­ing peo­ple’s so­cial lives.”

Their ac­count came as Cuban am­bas­sador Gus­ta­vo Vél­iz Oli­vares de­fend­ed his coun­try’s po­si­tion, blam­ing US re­stric­tions for wors­en­ing short­ages and ar­gu­ing that the is­land’s cri­sis could not be sep­a­rat­ed from Wash­ing­ton’s eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy.

“Cu­ba is not a threat. The threat is the block­ade,” Oli­vares said.

He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as a “silent geno­cide” and said Cu­ba was fac­ing what he called an “en­er­gy siege”, claim­ing US re­stric­tions had made it in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult for the coun­try to ob­tain the fu­el need­ed to sus­tain its econ­o­my and es­sen­tial ser­vices.

Out­lin­ing the im­pact on health­care, head of the Cuban Med­ical Brigade in Trinidad and To­ba­go Dr Or­lan­do Díaz said the US ex­plic­it­ly tar­gets the health­care sec­tor by block­ing ship­ments of im­port­ed med­ica­tions, pre­vent­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of raw man­u­fac­tur­ing ma­te­ri­als and halt­ing im­ports of es­sen­tial spare parts for crit­i­cal med­ical equip­ment.

Díaz said 250 of Cu­ba’s 639 es­sen­tial med­i­cines must be im­port­ed, con­tribut­ing to short­ages of an­tibi­otics, an­ti­hy­per­ten­sives, di­a­betes med­ica­tion, anaes­thet­ics and can­cer treat­ments.

He said about 3,000 haemodial­y­sis pa­tients across 56 cen­tres were re­ceiv­ing short­ened treat­ment times, while more than 100,000 peo­ple, in­clud­ing 12,000 chil­dren, were wait­ing for surgery.

“At present, some provinces have more than ten, in­clud­ing 14 (in­fant deaths) per 1,000 live births,” Díaz said, at­tribut­ing the in­crease to poor ma­ter­nal nu­tri­tion, short­ages of pae­di­atric an­tibi­otics and dam­aged in­cu­ba­tors that can­not be re­paired with­out im­port­ed parts.

Gor­don said the short­ages were al­so vis­i­ble in hos­pi­tals and oth­er as­pects of dai­ly life.

“Pa­tients and hos­pi­tals are go­ing long pe­ri­ods of time with­out re­ceiv­ing the re­sources that they need,” he said, claim­ing dis­pos­able med­ical equip­ment such as catheters was be­ing reused be­yond its in­tend­ed sin­gle use.

Gor­don and Mo­hammed said their ex­pe­ri­ence left them con­cerned about the im­pact of the short­ages on or­di­nary Cubans.