Washington
Two Democrats from the US House of Representatives visited Cuba last week, the first such delegation to go to the island this year since US president Donald Trump imposed a de facto oil blockade in a bid to bring Cuba’s communist-run government to its knees.
Congressional representatives Pramila Jayapal, a leading member of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and Jonathan Jackson, a Democrat with a long interest in Cuba, said they had come to “see the suffering that is happening on the ground” as a result of Trump’s fuel embargo, which they called “an illegal blockade of energy supplies.”
The lawmakers’ visit comes at a time of unprecedented tension in the decades-long frosty relationship between the US and Cuba. The Trump administration has closed the tap on remittances to Cuba, threatened to slap tariffs on countries that provide oil to the island and placed it on a list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
“This is the most sanctioned part of Planet Earth right now, just 90 miles off our shores,” Jackson told a small group of reporters at a privately-owned hostel near Havana’s waterfront. “Let´s bring the rhetoric down. People are suffering. And they are suffering for no good reason.”
The lawmakers said their five day trip, which ended on Sunday, included meetings with President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuban lawmakers and top officials at Cuba’s foreign ministry.
Both nations have acknowledged they have begun talking, though few details of those discussions have been made public.
“There has been dialogue–the beginnings of dialogue,” Jayapal said following meetings with top Cuban officials. “I don’t think it’s reached the state of negotiation that we were told. But I think there is a desire to ensure that there is a real negotiation…about what needs to happen in order for the situation to change.”
The lawmakers said they were saddened after visiting an oncology unit and a maternity ward in Havana hospitals that have been deteriorating for decades but have been particularly hard hit by Trump’s fuel blockade.
