Progressive US Lawmakers Urge Biden to Drop Anti-Cuba Sanctions Blocking Covid Vaccine Exports

One of the Trump administration’s final acts was to add Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a retaliatory move for Havana’s sheltering of Colombian militia leaders who traveled there for good-faith peace talks with Bogotá and remained there after Colombian President Ivan Duque, a close US ally, re-launched the war.

A group of 26 US lawmakers on Thursday delivered a letter to US President Joe Biden asking him to revise his administration’s sanctions policy toward Cuba so as to allow the flow of medical supplies, including vaccines, to and from the island. The socialist state has produced five COVID-19 vaccines and a lung cancer vaccine, among other miracle drugs, and its doctor corps brings essential medical care to other Third World nations.

“As our nation and the world continue to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, we ask you to explore possibilities for engaging with Cuba on issues of global health,” the lawmakers, led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), wrote in the letter.

“As an initial step, we ask that you review US policy towards Cuba in order to facilitate greater global vaccine equity, with a particular focus on ensuring that US sanctions do not impede current or future efforts by Cuba to share COVID-19 vaccines and related technology and medical support with low-income countries around the world,” the letter continues.

“Cuba’s goal of vaccinating people in low-income countries offers an important opportunity and bridge for our nations to work together once again on urgent health care issues facing the world,” they added. “Accordingly, we urge your Administration to conduct a review of U.S. policy toward Cuba and take appropriate executive action to ensure that basic medical supplies and components for producing and distributing vaccines are not negatively affected by the U.S. embargo.”

The five indigenously-developed COVID-19 vaccines by Cuba: Soberana 01, Soberana 02, Soberana Plus, Mambisa, and Abdala. Caption reads: "the strength of a country. More protected, more immune, more happy."

© Representaciones Diplomaticas de Cuba en el Exterior

Cuba has been under US sanctions since a socialist revolution overthrew the US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959. The sanctions - referred to as a “blockade” in Cuba - have strangled Cuba’s economy and deprived it of essential trade with its former largest trading partner, the US. While Cuba became an important friend to the Eastern Bloc socialist states and enjoyed a preferential trade relationship with the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 created new hardship, which the Cubans call the Special Period.

Under former US President Barack Obama, US-Cuba relations warmed somewhat, with Obama dropping some sanctions and beginning the process of normalizing ties. However, that was sharply reversed when Donald Trump became president in 2017, with a host of new sanctions put in place as Trump’s administration tried to force a right-wing coup in Venezuela, a close Cuban ally, by strangling its economy and supporting dissident far-right forces like self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaidó.

US President Joe Biden has largely continued Trump’s policies, expanding sanctions even further after US-backed protests erupted across the island in July 2021, building on popular anger over electrical shortages and the COVID-19 outbreak to try and make them into anti-government demonstrations.

Despite the pressure, Cuba’s medical system was able to independently develop five COVID-19 vaccines, although because of sanctions, they were only able to get enough syringes to vaccinate their entire population thanks to a massive donation drive by US peace activists. Havana has recently made a deal with Iran to allow production of its Soberana 02 vaccine in Iran, and China and Cuba recently moved to patent a joint Pan-Corona vaccine to treat COVID-19 and related illnesses.

According to the congress members, Cuba’s vaccine infrastructure could help provide cheap, effective vaccines across the Third World, meeting a critical goal of the Biden administration and helping to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

“US sanctions on Cuba directly impede these goals, not only by harming the country’s ability to vaccinate its own population but also by placing obstacles in the way of Cuba’s ability to produce and distribute its vaccine to other countries that continue to face shortages,” their letter reads.

Pressley and other progressive US lawmakers similarly pressed Biden in February 2021, just weeks after he took office, to revise US sanctions on Venezuela in order to help that country better fight the COVID-19 outbreak.

“It is both a moral and public health imperative that our efforts to combat COVID-19 are global in scope because the pandemic’s economic consequences require international cooperation,” the lawmakers wrote at the time. “The pandemic does not adhere to borders, nor does it account for complex geopolitical realities - until the virus is eradicated everywhere, it is not eradicated anywhere.”