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'Pure Evil': Rubio Ripped for Sanctions Against Cuba's Medical Missions
"The U.S. State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country," said Cuba's president.
Feb 26, 2025
The Trump administration is under fire this week for expanding a visa restriction policy that targets Cuba's medical missions around the world—which U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as "forced labor," a characterization Cuban officials reject.
"This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba's overseas medical missions," Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said Tuesday. "This policy also applies to the immediate family of such persons."
Social media users called the Trump administration's move " depraved," "beyond cruel," and "absolutely repulsive," and warned of the impact it could have on patients across the globe.
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the U.S.-based peace group CodePink, said that "this is PURE EVIL. Punishing people who help provide healthcare to poor people around the world."
As Reutersreported Wednesday:
Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched an "army of white coats" to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world in the name of solidarity. In the last decade, they have fought cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa.
But Cuba has also exported doctors on more routine missions in exchange for cash or goods in recent decades, an increasingly critical source of hard currency in a nation suffering a deep economic crisis.
Venezueanalysisnoted Wednesday that "according to official figures, Cuban doctors in Venezuela numbered as many as 30,000, with approximately 255,000 serving in the country since the start of the program following a deal signed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuban President Fidel Castro in the year 2000, primarily working in low-income barrios. Havana's support was key during the Covid-19 pandemic, supplying vaccines that Caracas found hard to secure due to wide-reaching U.S. sanctions."
Cuba has been targeted by U.S. sanctions for decades—and although former President Joe Biden notified Congress of his intent to remove the island nation from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list shortly before leaving office last month, President Donald Trump swiftly reversed that decision and restored a list of "restricted entities" created during the Republican's first term.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel and Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez denounced those decisions and the visa policy.
Rodriguez took aim at the U.S. secretary of state on Tuesday, saying in English and Spanish social media posts that "once again, Marco Rubio puts his personal agenda before the U.S. interests. The suspension of visas associated to Cuba's international medical cooperation is the seventh unjustified aggressive measure against our population within a month."
"The decision announced today, based on falsehoods and coercion, is intended to affect health services of millions in Cuba and the world, to benefit special groups of interest for which Rubio... guarantees the squandering of the U.S. taxpayers' money," he said.
Díaz-Canel said that "the U.S. State Department should explain to Americans and the international community how the attack on Cuban medical services, on which the health of millions of people in dozens of countries depends, enhances their country."
The new sanctions against Cuba notably come as Republicans in the U.S. Congress work to gut healthcare programs that serve low-income Americans, who have to contend with a for-profit healthcare system dominated by corporate greed.
Every person living in Cuba has access to its universal healthcare system, which is free at the point of service and government-run.
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US, Israel Only 'No' Votes as UN Members Condemn Cuba Embargo for 30th Straight Year
"Today's U.N. vote clearly shows that the global community is calling on the U.S. to lift its brutal embargo on Cuba," CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin asserted.
Nov 03, 2022
Peace advocates on Thursday said that the near-unanimous vote by United Nations member states to demand an end to the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba underscores the imperative for the Biden administration to lift the crippling 60-year blockade.
"What would Cuba be like today, if the blockade didn't hinder its development?"
For the 30th straight year, U.N. General Assembly members voted in favor of a Cuban resolution condemning the embargo, first enacted during the administration of then-President John F. Kennedy, who according to close confidant and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., wanted to unleash "the terrors of the Earth" on Cuba following Fidel Castro's successful overthrow of a brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship.
Thursday's vote was 185-2, with only the United States and Israel dissenting, and Ukraine and Brazil abstaining.
"The Biden administration talks about the need for a rules-based international order. Today's U.N. vote clearly shows that the global community is calling on the U.S. to lift its brutal embargo on Cuba," CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin said in a statement.
\u201cThe United States is completely isolated in sustaining its 60-year embargo on #Cuba.\n\nIn defiance of the international community's nearly unanimous will, the #Biden administration continues to block trade and travel.\n\n#LetCubaLive\u201d— Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA) (@Massachusetts Peace Action (MAPA)) 1667492392
Benjamin added that U.S. President Joe Biden "should respect global opinion" and return to former President Barack Obama's "policy of normalizing relations with Cuba."
Manolo De Los Santos, co-executive chair of the People's Forum, wondered, "What would Cuba be like today, if the blockade didn't hinder its development?"
"It is impossible to quantify the pain generated by power cuts, long queues to purchase food, the obstacles to the life projects of families, particularly young people," he added. "Cuba has a right to live!"
\u201cBiden has faithfully applied the worst of Trump\u2019s 243 additional & illegal sanctions on Cuba that make basic trade & purchases of good nearly impossible. It\u2019s a deliberate act of violence whose only aim has been to strangle Cubans into submission.\u201d— Manolo De Los Santos (@Manolo De Los Santos) 1667491557
Speaking before the U.N. General Assembly Thursday, Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla noted that "more than 80% of the current Cuban population was born under the blockade," which he called a "deliberate act of economic war" akin to "a permanent pandemic, a constant hurricane."
Rodriguez said that since then-President Donald Trump rolled back most of the reforms set in motion by Obama, the United States "has escalated the siege around our country, taking it to an even crueler and more inhuman dimension, with the purpose of deliberately inflicting the biggest possible damage on Cuban families."
Taking aim at Biden, Rodriguez added that "the current U.S. administration does not have a policy of its own toward Cuba. It acts out of inertia and continues the inhuman policy of maximum pressure instituted during the presidency of Donald Trump."
\u201c1\u20e38\u20e35\u20e3 \ud83c\udd9a 2\u20e3\n\nThe international community eloquently confirms, once again, the almost unanimous call for an end to the blockade and the isolation the US suffers due to a cruel policy that violates International Law.\n\n#MejorSinBloqueo\u201d— Bruno Rodr\u00edguez P (@Bruno Rodr\u00edguez P) 1667495798
Rodriguez said the embargo has cost Cuba more than $6.3 billion during the first 14 months of the Biden administration, or more than $15 million per day. In 2018 a United Nations commission estimated the total cost to the Cuban economy of the 60-year blockade was at least $130 billion.
Members of CodePink plan to rally against the embargo Thursday afternoon in San Francisco. This follows CodePink protests to #LetCubaLive in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. over the past several days.
CodePink is set to cap a week of action Saturday by joining with the Cuban-American group Puentes de Amor to send a plane loaded with 8.5 tons of food and medicines to the besieged island.
"Unfortunately," said CodePink Latin American coordinator Samantha Wherry, the shipment "represents a tiny gesture compared to the billions of dollars of harm caused by the U.S. blockade."
The peace activists have three demands: An end to the U.S. blockade, lifting of all travel and economic restrictions on Cuba, and removal of Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Successive U.S. administrations backed a decadeslong campaign of exile terrorism against Cuba, attempted subversion, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a fruitless policy of regime change.
Meanwhile, a dozen U.S. administrations have come and gone since the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959.
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Peace Groups Say 'Let Cuba Live' at US Rallies Ahead of UN Vote on Anti-Embargo Resolution
For the 30th straight year, Cuba will submit--and the world's nations will overwhelmingly approve--a General Assembly resolution demanding an end to the devastating U.S. economic blockade of the socialist nation.
Oct 30, 2022
As United Nations member states prepare to condemn the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba for the 30th straight year, peace groups on Saturday launched a series of rallies that will take place across the nation in the coming days to demand an end to the crippling 60-year blockade.
"From L.A. to NYC we're demanding that the U.S. #UnblockCuba!"
Members of groups including CodePink, Black Alliance for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Democratic Socialists of America, and others rallied in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland on Saturday, with further demonstrations planned on November 2 in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and on November 3 in San Francisco. Activists from Australia to Argentina also held demonstrations of solidarity with Cuba.
The protesters have three demands: End the U.S. blockade, remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and lift all travel and economic restrictions on Cuba.
Cuba will present a draft resolution to end the U.S. embargo at the United Nations General Assembly on November 2-3. The United States--usually along with Israel and a tiny handful of small, dependent nations--perennially votes against such resolutions, which pass overwhelmingly each year. Last year's vote was 184-2, with the U.S. and Israel dissenting and Brazil, Colombia, and Ukraine abstaining.
In Los Angeles, Carlos Sirah of Black Alliance for Peace noted what activists call the absurdity of the U.S. including Cuba on its list of terror sponsors.
\u201cBlack Alliance for Peace @Blacks4Peace, together with other organizations, held a protest in Los Angeles to demand an end to the U.S. blockade on Cuba \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\uddfa and called for Washington to remove Cuba from the list of state-sponsors of terrorism. \ud83d\udcf9@abemarquez3\u201d— Kawsachun News (@Kawsachun News) 1667132684
"Imagine the United States putting someone on the terrorist list--the biggest terrorist in the Western Hemisphere, the biggest terrorist in the world--has put Cuba on the [terror list], which has effectively and materially put a burden on Cuba in terms of limiting the amount of resources it can bring in," Sirah toldKawsachun News.
This "has the effect of not only impoverishing the island, but also the added effect of keeping people from their families," Sirah added. "Who has Cuba bombed? Who has Cuba invaded, versus who has the U.S. bombed? How many bases does the United States have in the world?"
Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CodePink, was among the activists who delivered a petition with the groups' demands signed by more than 10,000 people and over 100 organizations to the U.S. State Department. CodePink is asking the Biden administration to take a big step toward normalizing relations with Cuba--which, after progress during the Obama era, were rolled back under former President Donald Trump--by abstaining from the resolution vote.
\u201cFrom NYC we demand the US government end its illegal and cruel blockade against Cuba #LetCubaLive #MejorSinBloqueo\u201d— Sammy (@Sammy) 1667138507
\u201cFrom LA to NYC we\u2019re demanding that the US #UnblockCuba!\u201d— CODEPINK (@CODEPINK) 1667073441
Having lost effective economic control of the island in 1959 following the successful revolution led by Fidel Castro against a brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship, successive U.S. administrations waged a decadeslong campaign of state-sanctioned exile terror, attempted subversion, failed assassination attempts, economic warfare, and covert operations large and small in a fruitless policy of regime change. There have been 13 U.S. administrations since the triumph of the Cuban revolution.
The United Nations estimated in 2018 that the U.S. embargo has cost Cuba's economy at least $130 billion.
"The Black Alliance for Peace along with this coalition calls for the immediate end of the blockade, but further than that, calls for the demilitarization of the whole hemisphere," said Sirah. "We call for the end to [United States Southern Command]. We call for the end of militarization. We call for the end of the constant meddling in the affairs of Latin America, the Caribbean--and Haiti."
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