“Famine and human suffering” in Cuba are the target of Trump’s latest “emergency” executive order, which blocks the import of oil or “any source of energy necessary for its survival,” warns an open letter issued under the title Let Cuba Live!.
The document is signed by artists, intellectuals, local politicians from the United States and international social organizations who consider this step by the Trump Administration as “a cynical and crude ploy to distract public opinion from internal problems that spark massive public dissent and, as we have seen in Venezuela, a precursor to an illegal military attack.”
The letter is signed by artists such as the writer Alice Walker, and the actors Susan Sarandon and Mark Ruffalo along with academics such as Greg Grandin (Yale University), Michael Hardt (Duke University), Andrew Ross (New York University) and Bruce Robbins (Columbia University).
Among the signatory organizations, ANSWER Coalition, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) and the 50501 collective stand out, which have articulated the international campaign to gather political and social support.
Local American political representatives and social leaders such as Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of The People’s Forum, and Claudia De La Cruz, of IFCO Pastors for Peace, have also signed.
The document was published in a scenario marked by the intensification of US sanctions, particularly the executive order that penalizes countries that supply oil to the island, strangling its economy.
For the signatories, this measure constitutes a form of economic pressure that can aggravate fuel shortages, electrical instability and limitations in the island’s health and food system.
Let Cuba Live! seeks global support and tries to open a debate on the humanitarian consequences of the intensified economic sanctions in contexts of serious crisis on the island.
“Cuba does not represent any threat to the United States,” says the document, which highlights how “subduing a population by hunger is not diplomacy” but “a form of terrorism.”
In this way, the document calls on all people of conscience to reject this cruelty and demand an immediate end to the embargo.
Under the same slogan, a letter was sent to the Joe Biden Administration in 2021.
