Embargo or Blockade? Examining Granma’s Case Against U.S. Sanctions

Originally published in Spanish on May 5, 2026.

Analysis and opinion | A response to Granma’s May 4, 2026, article on U.S. sanctions, which calls the Cuba embargo a blockade.

A methodological warning comes first. Leidys María Labrador Herrera’s article follows the familiar script of the Cuban Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus. Its rhetoric rests on four pillars: conflating an embargo with a blockade, placing the origins of Cuba’s crisis in Washington, portraying the regime as a sovereign victim despite its conduct abroad, and obscuring the record of Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, spokesman for a government that imprisons political opponents.

1. The Cuba embargo is not a military blockade

A blockade, as addressed by the 1994 San Remo Manual, is a military operation that physically restricts maritime access. Cuba trades with the European Union, China, Russia, Vietnam, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, ALBA countries and much of the world. It also buys products from the United States.

The Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000, or TSRA, provides a framework for authorized exports of agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices. The original analysis cites more than $7 billion in Cuban purchases of U.S. agricultural products between 2001 and 2023, drawing on the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council and the USDA. It identifies the United States as an important supplier of frozen chicken, soy and wheat in 2023.

Those transactions are inconsistent with the image of a country physically cut off from all commerce. The U.S. sanctions system includes humanitarian authorizations, subject to licensing, payment and other rules. The column also points to family remittances and the 12 categories of authorized travel. These are regulated activities, rather than unrestricted exceptions.

2. The regime wants its conduct abroad forgotten

Granma challenges the national-security rationale used under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Its argument ignores the record cited to support that rationale:

• Cuba sheltered Joanne Chesimard, known as Assata Shakur, who was convicted in the killing of New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster in 1973 and became a fugitive. The FBI’s archived 2013 announcement records the case. This is a historical example: Shakur died in Cuba on September 25, 2025.
• Havana hosted leaders of Colombia’s National Liberation Army, or ELN. After the January 2019 bombing of the General Santander police academy in Bogotá, which killed 22 people, Cuba refused extradition, invoking the Havana protocols. That dispute figured in the January 2021 U.S. decision to return Cuba to the state sponsors of terrorism list.
• Cuban intelligence operations include the cases of Ana Belén Montes, convicted in 2002; the Wasp Network, arrested in 1998; Walter Kendall Myers, arrested in 2009; and former U.S. Ambassador Manuel Rocha, arrested in 2023 and pleading guilty in 2024 over decades of covert work for Cuba.
• The Wall Street Journal reported in 2023 on Chinese-Cuban signals-intelligence cooperation involving facilities on the island.
• Former Chávez security official Leamsy Salazar’s accounts are cited in the original column to support allegations about Cuban intelligence officers’ involvement in Venezuela’s security apparatus.

Dismissing the security rationale without addressing that record does not refute it.

3. Migration exposes the system’s failure

Granma shifts responsibility for emigration to the embargo and restrictions on legal migration. The figures demand a different explanation.

The original column cites more than 850,000 CBP encounters involving Cubans between October 2021 and September 2024. Encounters are recorded events, not necessarily distinct individuals or completed admissions. Separately, demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos estimated a population loss approaching 18% over three years when departures to other destinations were included. That estimate is not interchangeable with the U.S. border tally.

The scale of the exodus dwarfs the roughly 125,000 people in the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the roughly 35,000 in the 1994 rafter crisis. The Central American route accelerated departures after Nicaragua waived visa requirements for Cubans. But the reasons for leaving were internal: severe price increases, provincial power cuts lasting 12 to 20 hours, shortages of basic food, state salaries worth less than $20 a month under the comparison used in the original analysis, and the absence of a credible economic future.

The original cites official annual inflation above 30% and much higher independent estimates associated with economist Pavel Vidal and Cuba’s currency and finance observatory. Together, the figures cited by the author describe a collapse in purchasing power.

On legal migration, the health incidents affecting U.S. personnel in Havana in 2016–17 led to the withdrawal of staff and a substantial reduction in consular services. They do not establish Cuban responsibility for an attack as a settled fact. The Biden administration expanded the CHNV humanitarian parole program to Cubans in 2023. The Cuban Adjustment Act dates to 1966.

The argument remains: Cubans are voting with their feet against the system that governs them.

4. The medicine a sick child needs

The appeal to a sick child needing medicine is emotionally powerful. It must still be tested against the facts.

• The TSRA and related licensing framework provide for authorized exports of medicine and medical devices. Humanitarian shipments are governed by specific rules; there is no blanket prohibition on every medicine shipment.
• Cuba buys medicines from suppliers in India, China, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and elsewhere. The central failure identified here is the state’s shortage of funds and the economic model’s collapse, rather than a universal inability to purchase abroad.
• BioCubaFarma exports Cuban medicines. Its exports raise a question for official claims about domestic capacity: why does the industry fail to meet essential needs at home?
• Humanitarian donations can enter legally. Residents have alleged on social media that goods donated after Hurricane Ian, the Saratoga Hotel explosion and the Matanzas fire subsequently appeared in the regime’s foreign-currency stores. Those are allegations about distribution, not independently established findings in this column.

5. Who is imposing collective punishment?

Before invoking collective punishment, identify the actors controlling the economy.

• GAESA, the military business conglomerate, encompasses Gaviota, CIMEX, TRD Caribe, Habaguanex and military real-estate interests. The original article attributes estimates of 60% to 80% of the formal economy to economists Emily Morris and Ricardo Torres. The column contrasts that concentration of power with families’ lack of control over their livelihoods.
• While people queue for bread, the military business system has poured money into hotels. The original cites tourism figures showing occupancy below 25% in 2023–24, contrasting hotel construction with neglected agriculture, electricity generation and pharmaceuticals.
• The MLC store system introduced in 2019 makes access to many goods depend on foreign currency. The column calls that monetary apartheid: a division imposed by the regime itself.

The allocation of resources by the military business empire is a decision made in Havana. Washington does not decide to put empty hotels ahead of Cuban families’ needs.

6. Sovereignty claimed at home, disregarded abroad

Bruno Rodríguez’s defense of sovereignty invites a comparison with his government’s record:

• Military and intelligence deployments presented as internationalist missions in Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Syria.
• Medical missions whose conditions drew concerns in 2019 from U.N. Special Rapporteur Urmila Bhoola about practices that could amount to forced labor. The original column cites annual revenue of $6 billion to $8 billion for the state and payments to professionals of only 10% to 25% of contracted salaries.
• Cuban intelligence assistance to Venezuela’s political and military control apparatus.
• Havana’s support in international forums for allied governments facing criticism over Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Myanmar.

The government demanding respect for sovereignty must answer for the sovereignty it has compromised elsewhere.

7. The silence surrounding political prisoners

Granma dismisses U.S. accusations concerning the persecution of political opponents. Human rights organizations document a different picture.

• Prisoners Defenders and the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights reported more than 1,100 political prisoners at the end of 2024, including participants in the July 11, 2021, protests.
• Sentences following those protests reached 30 years on charges including sedition. The original cites teenagers Brandon David Becerra and Rowland Castillo, the latter sentenced to 18 years.
• Prominent cases include UNPACU leader José Daniel Ferrer, released in January 2025; Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo, sentenced to five and nine years respectively; Dr. Eduardo Cardet; and the Ladies in White. Otero and Castillo are artists associated with the opposition movement around “Patria y Vida”; Castillo participated in the Latin Grammy-winning song.
• Cuba Decide and the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies have documented state-organized acts of repudiation against peaceful dissidents.

Denying the persecution does not erase its victims.

8. The choreography of consensus

Watch the video on YouTube.

Granma celebrates the parade and the “My Signature for the Homeland” campaign. In a one-party system where housing, ration books, state employment and children’s schooling depend on the party-state, mass mobilization cannot simply be equated with freely expressed support.

Official figures put support for the 2019 Constitution at 86.85%, compared with 66.87% for the 2022 Family Code referendum. Officially acknowledged abstention in the 2023 legislative election reached 24.5%. These are the state’s own reported figures, rather than independent measures of freely expressed political consent. Even on those terms, the claim of seamless consensus is difficult to sustain.

9. What Granma leaves out about secondary sanctions

Labrador Herrera’s first rhetorical device is to withhold the document she is challenging. Readers who never see the May 1, 2026, executive order published by the White House are left dependent on the official interpretation. The U.S. government fact sheet cited by the original article sets out Washington’s explanation.

First, the supposedly unnamed targets. The original analysis identifies four categories: supporters of the regime’s security apparatus, participants in government corruption, those responsible for serious human rights violations, and agents, officials or material supporters of the Cuban government. The column’s argument is that senior Interior Ministry officials, GAESA leaders and officials involved in prosecuting July 11 protesters have reason to fear the substance of those categories.

Second, the alleged novelty of secondary sanctions. U.S. sanctions against third-country dealings have precedents in the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996, CISADA in 2010, CAATSA in 2017 and sanctions involving Venezuela and North Korea. Those precedents show that the legal instrument is longstanding. They do not, by themselves, settle every claim about what is new in its particular application to Cuba.

If Havana describes itself as peaceful and respectful of international law, why does it object to a sanctions framework used against Iran, Russia, North Korea and Maduro’s Venezuela? The column locates the answer in the conduct cited by Washington.

Third, the security rationale Granma rejects. The fact sheet alleges that Cuba hosts adversarial facilities used to gather sensitive U.S. national-security information. The original compares this allegation with 2023 reporting on Chinese-Cuban signals-intelligence cooperation, including discussions of Bejucal and El Salao.

It also cites Havana’s close ties to Iran and allegations concerning Hezbollah networks. Presidential visits and biotechnology agreements document bilateral relations; claims about specific clandestine operations or dual-use activity remain allegations requiring their own evidence.

On political persecution, the column points to Prisoners Defenders’ end-of-2024 tally and the U.N. Committee against Torture’s 2022 concerns, recorded in CAT/C/CUB/CO/3, over credible allegations of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in Cuban detention. Those concerns cannot be dismissed as Trump’s rhetoric alone.

On migration, the same distinction matters throughout: the cited figure of more than 850,000 refers to CBP encounters. It does not independently prove either 850,000 unique arrivals or the separate estimate of an 18% population decline. The demographic argument nevertheless demands a response to the internal conditions driving departure.

Finally, geography matters. The original argues that no government can host the intelligence or military capabilities of Washington’s adversaries less than 100 miles from the U.S. mainland and expect that presence to have no effect on bilateral relations. That is the author’s geopolitical assessment.

Fourth, the regional context. The May order followed the June 2025 presidential national-security memorandum on Cuba and a January 2026 order addressing oil supplies to the island. The original relates that sequence to operations identified in the U.S. fact sheet: Absolute Resolve involving Maduro, Southern Spear against trafficking, and Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury involving Iran. These references describe the administration’s stated policy context at the time of the Spanish column.

Havana can read the message: maintaining close relationships with Caracas, Tehran, Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing while demanding normalization from Washington has consequences.

Fifth, what would actually be unprecedented. Publication of GAESA’s budgets. A law recognizing political parties beyond the Communist Party. Half a page in Granma, even once, for Yoani Sánchez, Carlos Manuel Álvarez, Abraham Jiménez Enoa, José Daniel Ferrer or Berta Soler. Unconditional freedom for the July 11 prisoners. Free elections with international observation.

Until those changes occur, new sanctions follow decisions taken by the Cuban state in Havana. The regime’s policies and repression precede the international response.

10. The comparison Granma avoids

Cuba has had six decades to build its model. Vietnam, also socialist and under a U.S. embargo until 1994, opened its economy and achieved sustained growth. China expanded enormously after economic opening. The Dominican Republic offers a nearby comparison without oil wealth. The original comparison cites Vietnam’s 6% to 7% growth and higher per-capita GDP, China’s fortyfold expansion in GDP after opening, and Cuba’s lag behind its Caribbean neighbor. The point is that the economic model must answer for its results.

Conclusion: Granma turns each new U.S. sanction into an excuse to avoid answering for domestic failure. It calls the Cuba embargo a blockade, presents those responsible for repression as victims and hides political prisoners behind slogans about sovereignty. Independent journalism must test those claims against evidence. Labrador Herrera’s article serves power.