[News] Protests in Cuba: how much the United States embargo really affects the island

[Warlock-]

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-57857337

 

 

 

The United States embargo against Cuba is one of the measures that has been rejected the most times in the UN General Assembly, where every year since 1992 a resolution against it has been approved.

 

The condemnation resolution has obtained almost unanimous support in recent years: last June 23, when it was voted for the last time, it had the support of 184 of the 193 members of the UN. Its most convincing result, however, was obtained in 2016 when it added 191 votes in favor and none against, since even the United States government refrained from defending its own embargo. The reasons for condemning the embargo vary and more than an endorsement of the Cuban government in many cases -such as that of the United Kingdom and other European countries- they respond more to a rejection of the fact that the United States intends to limit the possibility that companies from other countries do business with the island or have the embargo seen as a dangerous precedent for unilateral coercive measures.

After the unprecedented protests that occurred last Sunday in several Cuban cities demanding food and medicine, but also "freedom" and the "end of the dictatorship," the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel pointed to the US embargo as the root of the evils. that plague the island.

 

"What we need here is for the 243 additional blockade measures to be withdrawn and the blockade lifted. It is the only thing that Cuba demands," Díaz-Canel said in a broadcast on television and radio on Monday. The Cuban government announced on Wednesday the temporary elimination of customs restrictions on medicines and food, in an attempt to appease the discontent that the aforementioned protests revealed.