Category: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

In Cuba’s report, US blockade comes off as weapon of war / by W.T. Whitney

Image credit: Prensa Latina

South Paris, Maine

Cuba’s foreign ministry annually reports on the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba and its recent impact mostly in order to enlighten delegates of the United Nations General Assembly prior to voting on a Cuban resolution.  For 31 consecutive years the General Assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution claiming “the necessity to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”.

On September 12 in Havana, Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez held a press conference to introduce “Knock Down the Blockade – CUBA’S REPORT March 2023 – February 2024.” Providing information on blockade workings and the damage it causes, the 65-page Report is comprehensive and detailed.

Rodríguez cast the blockade as “the most comprehensive, far-reaching, and prolonged coercive economic measures [ever] applied against any country.” The yearly reports tally economic losses from blockade effects the year before and cumulatively since the blockade’s onset. The figures this year, cited by Rodríguez, are $5.057 billion and $164.14 billion, respectively. With inflation, the latter amount is $1.499 trillion.

Why the blockade has lasted for over 60 years is not clear. The linkage of planned healthcare difficulties and food shortages with the likelihood of some Cubans dying is reminiscent of war. The United States has trouble ending its wars.

The Report covers U.S. legislation, regulations, and policies reflected in the blockade. Three categories get top billing: requirements imposed by U.S legislation, regulations stemming from executive orders, and the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism (SSOT).

The Cuba Democracy Act of 1992 requires that ships docking in Cuba don’t visit U.S. ports for six months afterwards, that companies abroad tied to U.S. corporations don’t trade with Cuba.  The 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act enables the heirs of the former owners of properties nationalized by Cuba’s government to utilize U.S. courts to secure compensation from the third-country investors and companies presently involved with the properties. Consequently, many prospective investors are now hesitant about doing business in Cuba.

Regulations put in place by the U.S. government’s executive branch have long restricted U.S. travel and commercial arrangements with the island. One galling regulation disallows products from abroad containing more than 10% U.S. components from being exported to Cuba. The Trump administration issued dozens of new regulations restricting U.S. travel to Cuba, and they continue.  Regulations requiring “specific licenses or permits” and payments “in cash and in advance” diminish food imports from the United States, approved under legislation in 2000.

The SSOT designation entraps international banks and financial institutions in a system that already restricts the dealings of international corporations and traders with Cuba.  According to the Report, the SSOT label “has brought about serious difficulties to our country’s financial and banking transactions, foreign trade, sources of income and energy, [and] access to credit.”  

The U.S. offers its Visa Waiver Program to the travelers of 42 countries. Persons visiting Cuba are ineligible, because of its SSOT designation. Travelers protecting their waivers stay away from Cuba. Tourism takes a hit.

Indeed, “[t]he US government has used tourism, the main source of income for the country, as a political weapon against Cuba.” In 2023, Cuba … received 2,436,980 international visitors, which represents … 57 per cent of the figure achieved in 2019.”

The Report contains dozens of illustrative examples of harm, shortages, and/or diminished imports bedeviling agencies, activities, and individuals within the various sectors of Cuba’s economy. These are the education, sports, culture, biotechnology, and transport sectors, and the mining, energy, healthcare, agricultural, and food sectors.

According to the Report, “The US blockade against Cuba violates International Law. It is contrary to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations. It constitutes a violation of the right to peace, development and self-determination of a sovereign State.”  

The blockade continues despite appeals to fundamental principles. A journalist in Havana portrays a “humanitarian crisis throughout Cuba.” Describing “hungry people scavenging through dumpsters and panhandling,” he indicates that, “With pharmacy shelves barren, the price of medicines on the black market has slipped beyond the reach of much of the population. Without money to repair old infrastructure, hundreds of thousands now live without running water.”

Humanitarian disaster in Cuba, the product of prohibitions and restrictions applying to Cuba’s healthcare, food, and agricultural sectors looks to be purposeful rather than accidental. 

Highlighted in the Report are shortages of spare parts for intensive care units and operating rooms, spare parts for a device that encapsulates medicines and fills vials, blood gas analyzers, reagents to diagnose immunodeficiency diseases, drugs used to treat cancers, new equipment for neonatal care.

Now 51% of drugs on a “national list of essential medicines … are not available … surgeries have dramatically decreased.”

Food production is down due to shortages of the “fuels, oils and lubricants needed to operate the existing agricultural machinery” and “a shortage of antibiotics, antiparasitic medications, vitamin supplements.” Significant too are: a “deteriorated fleet of agricultural equipment,” loss of “capacity to refrigerate 26,360 tons of products,” and “limited access to fertilizers and pesticides.”

According to Cuba’s Report, “The historical yields of several crops have deteriorated by almost 40 per cent … [leading to] a remarkable decrease, as compared to 2022 figures, in products such as rice, beans, bread, coffee, cooking oil, soybean yogurt, meat products, powdered milk, sugar, as well as in medical diets. As compared to 2019, the production of rice, egg and milk has decreased by 81 per cent, 61 per cent and 49 per cent respectively.”

The president of the Cuban Association of Animal Production indicates that, “The blockade makes it impossible for cooperatives and farmers to have access to inputs, such as spare parts for machinery, tractors, harvesters and other means of transportation that remain paralyzed and are obsolete, as well as raw materials and other products that would otherwise make it possible to use idle land for production.”

One assumes that, what with an intended humanitarian crisis, at least some Cubans are going to die due to the blockade. What one side intends – restrictions, prohibitions, and shortages – becomes coercion for the other side. Coercion bearing the risk of death, whether of one Cuban or more, is war, or something like it. 

The object of U.S. policy toward Cuba was clear in 1960, and remains so. In his famous memo a year after the victory of Cuba’s Revolution, State Department official Lestor Mallory writes of a “a line of action … [that would] bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

To remove a governing system not to its liking, the U.S. government could have turned to diplomacy or to a coup mediated through proxies or agents. It opted for force, with lethal possibilities.

War against Cuba manifests in the U.S. feat, through its blockade, of helping to force a million Cubans out of the country – 10% of the population. It’s a re-worked version of aggressors’ “drain the swamp” theory.  

Prospects for ending the blockade correlate with why it exists and its warlike characteristics. Many U.S. wars seemingly possess a momentum of their own, for instance, the still-unsettled Korean war, U.S. troops still in Iraq, and the prolonged U.S. debacle in Afghanistan. Regime-change in Cuba is a long-term objective. For those in charge and the dominant U.S. media, getting rid of socialism is worth any amount of waiting.   

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

In Bolivia gigantic march reveals socialist divide, elections are ahead / By W. T. Whitney

Hundreds of people take part in the so-called ‘March to Save Bolivia’ against leftist leader Luis Arce, on September 17, 2024. [Photo by Aizar Raldes / AFP]

South Paris, Maine

Beginning on September 17, marchers proceeded north for 118 miles from Caracollo in Oruro department to La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city, arriving there on September 24. Numbering from 5000 to 15,000 – estimates vary – they were supporting former President Evo Morales. They called their march a “National March to Save Bolivia; for Life, Democracy, and Revolution.” The had signs saying “Evo President” and “Lucho Traitor” – in reference to current Bolivian president Luis Arce.

The Movement against Socialism (MAS) Party, the party of both presidents, has split into two warring factions. Arce served for 12 years under Morales as minister of the economy and finances. Morales served three presidential terms, from 2006 to 2019. He had led a federation of unionized coca growers, was Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and been president of MAS since 1998.

Protesting shortages of food, fuel, and dollars and demanding that Morales be president, the marchers twice encountered resistance from hundreds of Arce loyalists.  Security forces made arrests and dozens were wounded.

Meetings and attempts at dialogue in La Paz were inconclusive.  Morales was no-show at one meeting.  Speaking out elsewhere, he revived an old demand, insisting that Arce change his “corrupt, drug-trafficking, and racist” ministers if he wants to continue governing.”  

The Arce government sought to forestall new mobilizations that might “prejudice the normal development of the country.” A Morales spokesperson confirmed that highway blockades would resume on September 30. His forces for two years had been carrying out blockades, strikes, and demonstrations – with 200 days of blockades in 2023.

On learning that the government would replace Justice Minister Iván Lima, the Morales side called off further blockades. Morales announced that “extreme poverty has returned and blockades will make it worse.” He also prioritized fire-fighting. The Morales side demanded that marchers who had been arrested be released.

Meeting in El Alto on September 27, the “Unity Pact” – the name given to government supporters – heard from social movement groups. Concerned about shortages, along with Morales’s partisans, they demanded a “response and solution” from the government. Arce, who was present, charged that he was being forced to resign.

If he did so, the Constitution would require that Senate President and Morales ally Andrónico Rodríguez be installed as temporary president.  Then will come elections set for August 17, 2025, and Morales would be running.

From Cochabamba, Morales proposed a “great national meeting on October 12 where we will be making other decisions.” He accused Arce of “selling out to the rightwing, seeking to diminish the state, and following recommendations of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”

In late 2019 Morales, having won the first-round in presidential voting, was heading for a fourth term. Then came a U.S. assisted coup; he was deposed and went into exile. The responsible parties were big landowners, oil and natural gas empresarios, and assorted racists in Santa Cruz and other eastern departments. Jeanine Áñez became provisional president. She’s now in prison,

From exile, Morales named Luis Arce as the MAS candidate in presidential elections in 2020. He scored a 55% plurality. Morales returned to Bolivia and signs of division emerged. Arce maintained popular support for a while, helped along by a successful response to an uprising in October, 2022 carried out by reactionaries in the eastern departments.

At a MAS Party Congress in October 2023, delegates expelled Arce from the party and endorsed Morales as a presidential candidate for the upcoming elections. The Constitutional Court ruled in December 2023 that Morales may not serve another presidential term.   

In May, 2024, another MAS Congress took place, with a different set of delegates. It backed Arce as presidential candidate and named Grover García, government office-holder and former union leader, as president of the MAS Party to replace Morales.

President Arce blames Evo Morales’s ambition: “[T]he personal and individual appetite of one person cannot drag the Bolivian people into again violating the Constitution.” Arce’s approval rating fell from 42% to 22% between January and September, according to one poll. “The main reason is the economic; basically the increase in prices,” the report says.

Deterioration from an earlier state of affair is remarkable. From 2006 on, the MAS-led government carried out reforms that uplifted one of the most poverty-stricken populations in the Western Hemisphere.

According to one summary, Bolivia became a “Plurinational State” representing 36 indigenous cultures. Land was redistributed and the production of oil, natural gas, and electricity nationalized. The minimum wage and per capita income each tripled; roads, schools, and hospitals were built. The elderly, mothers, and children received generous social support. Health care expanded and schools multiplied.  The economy grew at twice the average rate of Latin American countries. International currency reserves mounted to US$15 billion in 2014.  

Then natural gas production fell. International reserve funds were down to US$139 million in 2024. According to a BBC report, these were the sources of funds used by governments under Morales and Arce to pay for social programs, including fuel subsidies. Now income from natural gas exports, paid in dollars, is short, more so because fuel imports are paid for in dollars. Bolivia imports 56% of the gasoline and 86% of the diesel fuel it uses. 

Dollars were in short supply to pay for the needs of Bolivian society. Borrowing shot up. But shortages persist, and inflation. Foreign debt as a portion of GDP rose from 10% in 2008 to 30% in 2022.

Economics is not the whole story. According to one account, “The main cleavage between Arce and Evo is the increasing inequality of state resources between the factions they represent.” Informal employment in Bolivia is high. But “the government’s executive branch employs half a million people … Control over people and agencies represents power that is available to the Arce administration and not to the other side.

For commentator Luis Vega Gonzalez, racial identity is a factor. On one side of “the abyss that separates them” are the Morales forces who are largely indigenous. On the other side are the “white mestizos represented by those who govern in conjunction with those whose power comes from perks.”

He adds that, “[I]n three years the Indians were displaced from power … the economy was handed over to the market … and the collective aspirations of the plurinational state had to be replaced by individual entrepreneurship and social climbing.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

US misperceptions about Russia feed into war-making in Ukraine / By W.T. Whitney

Waving a Russian flag, Moscow, September 2023 Stringer / Reuters

South Paris, Maine

Indian peace advocate Bharat Dogra recently noted the near impossibility of raising the “issue of improving relations with Russia or stopping the disastrous, destructive Ukraine war.”He sees the Ukrainian people as “victims of an entirely avoidable proxy war that started way back in 2014 with a USA-instigated coup in Ukraine.” He condemns “[t]he mobilization of almost the entire military might of the West and the NATO to encircle and defeat Russia.”

Russia “has to be considered … in an unbiased way,” he insists. U.S. publicists have created “the devilish image of Putin” and “policymakers are forced to respond not to realties but to the false notions.”

The U.S. people and many public officials may indeed be uninformed generally about realities in Russia. The situation would be due to U.S. government actions, recent educational trends, and biases of a subservient media.

In penalizing Russian media personnel, the U.S. government interferes with the transmission of news from Russia to the United States. FBI agents recently raided the homes of Scott Ritter and Dimitri Simes. Ritter is a former United Nations weapons inspector who writes for the Russian news service Russia Today (RT). Simes, a U.S. resident born in Russia, hosts a Russian television talk show. They allegedly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act

The Justice Department on September 4 indicted RT employees Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva under the same charge and issued sanctions against RT editor Margarita Simonyan and several colleagues. The New York Times in 2022 reported that its own journalists and those of other U.S. news outlets were being withdrawn from Russia.

On September 16 Rachel Maddow interviewed former Democratic Party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on MSNBC. One topic was Russian interference in U.S. elections. Asserted Clinton: “I think it’s important to indict the Russians [and] I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. [Perhaps] they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged.”

Schools and universities have skimped on teaching and research about Russia.  An academicians’ group in 2015 reported that Russian studies in universities were in “unmistakable decline in interest and numbers in terms of both faculty and graduate students.” Enrollment levels are presently down by “30 to 50 percent.” College and university students studying Russian dropped 20% between 2007 and 2016.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, “U.S. policy toward Russia has largely ignored such crucial factors as Russia’s history, culture, geography, and security requirements—as they are seen from Moscow.”

Dogra laments that, “the space for hearing and considering differing points of views [is] shrinking fast in the West,” adding that, “[m]ature democracies are supposed to be keen to hear to hear all points of view, including those of opponents.”

The U.S. people, he notes, don’t realize that“Putin tried repeatedly earlier to avoid conflict and to find a place of self-respect for Russia within Europe, … [and] made huge investments in ensuring cheap energy supply to Europe. … [H]e repeatedly pleaded with the West to honor commitments made earlier regarding not moving the NATO and its weapon systems too close to Russia … [and] took the Minsk accords very seriously.”

Dogra asks, “What kind of democracy is this, what kind of free media? What is wrong with people hearing the views of a leader even though he is widely regarded to be hostile by the West?”

Opinion polls have demonstrated high approval ratings for Putin. The U.S. and European public, says Dogra, ought to appreciate the successes of Russian governments under his leadership. They need “to examine his role as a national leader of Russia, whether he has been good for Russia and for the welfare of Russian people.”

In the 1990s, “western advisers had been active in Russia, leading to sale of Russian assets to private businesses, including foreigners as well as Russian oligarchs, at cheap rates, resulting in huge profits for a few but also in terrible disruptions in the economy.” Life expectancy plummeted.

Dogra highlights a “remarkable recovery in terms of human development indicators, to the extent that some of these are now better than or almost equal to those of the USA.”He cites data:

·        In 2021, child mortality under five years of age per 1000 live births “was 5.1 in the Russian federation, while it was 6.2 in the USA,” down from 20 deaths and 8 deaths, respectively. 

·        “Infant mortality under 1 year of age per 1000 births in Russia declined in a big way,” from 19 deaths in 2000 to 4.8 deaths in 2023, the comparable U.S. figures being 7.2 and 5.4, respectively.

·        UN data indicates that, “In the case of maternal mortality rate (reported per 100,000 births), this declined … in Russia” from 52 in 2000 to 14 in 2020, “while that of the USA actually increased from 12 to 21” in those years.

·        “During 2000-2019 according to UN data the life-expectancy in the Russian Federation increased significantly from 65.3 years to 73.2 years.”

·        “The increase of income or GNI per capita in Russia during this period was very significant—from $1710 in year 2000 to $4450 in 2005 to $9980 in 2010 to $11,610 in 2021. The literacy rate for the Russian Federation is around 99% … The Human Development Index of Russia has improved from 720 in 2000 to 822 in 2021”.

There are two conclusions. One, U.S. citizens certainly need to know more about Russia. Two, information blockade accompanies the supplying of weapons as the U.S. prolongs Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Dogra presumes that with more U.S. appreciation of realities in Russia, U.S. prolongation of the war might lose its appeal. He overlooks key factors: the economic boost provided by war-spending, U.S. habituation over a century to anti-Russian hostility, the official view that Russia is ganging up with China against the U.S. and Europe, and the distracting effect of war in the face of seemingly unsolvable U.S. problems. These include an economy mired in debt, apparently intractable inequalities, and a dysfunctional system of democratic governance.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Honduras – next in line for US-imposed coup / By W.T. Whitney

Image: Honduras: Background and U.S. Relations | CRS Report

South Paris, Maine

After narrowly losing elections in 2013 and 2017, Xiomara Castro and her social democratic Freedom and Refoundation Party (Libre) won the next set of elections such that, as of January 2022, she was Honduras’s new president. The defeated National Party had presided over worsening corruption, electoral fraud, poverty, and violent repression for 12 years – President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), for eight of them.

The U.S. government played a part in the military coup that in June 2009 removed President José Manuel Zelaya. He is President Casto’s husband and longtime “coordinator” of the Libre Party. Now the United States is promoting another coup.

Interviewed by media outlet HCH TV on August 28, U.S Ambassador in Honduras Laura Dogu stated that, “We are very concerned about what has happened in Venezuela. It was quite surprising for me to see the Minister of Defense (José Manuel Zelaya) and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Roosevelt Hernández) sitting next to a drug trafficker in Venezuela.”

The seat-mate was Venezuela’s Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López. The occasion was the World Cadet Games of the International Council of Military Sports taking place in Caracas from August 16 on. The U.S. government had charged Padrino López with “conspiring with others to distribute cocaine” and on March 26, 2020 announced bounties for his capture and that of 14 other Venezuelan officials facing drug-related charges.

Responding, Castro immediately declared that “Interference and interventionism by the United States … is intolerable.” Denouncing “U.S. violation of international law,” she canceled Honduras’s 114- year-old extradition treaty with the United States. Honduras has extradited 40 or so individuals to the United States over 10 years for prosecution on drug-related causes. JOH, the best-known of them, was recently sentenced to a 45-year prison term.

Slippery slope

On August 29, President Castro told reporters, “I will not allow extradition be used as an instrument for blackmailing the armed forces …  Yesterday they attacked the head of the armed forces and the minister of defense in our country… [such an] attack weakens the Armed Forces as an institution and makes the upcoming process of elections [in 2025] very precarious.”

In a television interview , Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina indicated Dogu’s comments could set off a “barracks coup” aimed at removing General Roosevelt Hernández. Schisms do exist. A year ago, for example, General Staff head José Jorge Fortín Aguilar’s warned four retired military chiefs to desist from their anti-government activities. 

Reina claimed that the extradition treaty, long used as a “political tool to influence the country internal affairs,” could be used “to bring Roosevelt Hernández or Secretary of National Defense José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to trial in the United States, in order to disrupt the Libre Party’s electoral plans.”

Primary elections take place in April 2025 and elections for president and Congress on November 30, 2025. The Libre Party is vulnerable.

The attorney general is investigating secretary of Parliament and Libre Party deputy Carlos Zelaya following his recent acknowledgement that two narco-traffickers in 2013 offered him money for the Libre Party’s election campaign that year.

Implicated in other drug-related crimes, Carlos is the brother of former President José Manuel Zelaya and brother-in-law of President Castro. On August 31, Carlos Zelaya and Defense Minister José Manuel Zelaya each resigned. The latter is Carlos’s son; he and the former president share the same name.

President Castro replaced the resigned defense minister with lawyer Rixi Moncada. She is running for president in the 2025 elections. As such, she would “continue reshaping Honduras’s economic and financial apparatus to fit with the people’s revolution,” according to an admirer.

The situation for Castro and the Libre Party deteriorated even more after September 3 with wide publicity given to a video showing Carlos Zelaya conferring in 2013 with the narco-traffickers. Obtained by InSight Crime and allegedly leaked by the U.S. government, the video is accessible here. It shows the drug-traffickers “offering to give over half a million dollars” to the Libre Party. They mention “previous contributions” to former President José Manuel Zelaya. 
On September 6, President Castro condemned Carlos Zelaya’s meeting with narco-traffickers where they “discussed bribes” as a “deplorable error.”  That day opposition politicians demanded her resignation. They were leading “more than a thousand Hondurans” in a march through Tegucigalpa.

Fallout and implications

The Libre Party’s loss of political power would jeopardize the already precarious lives of most Hondurans. Government data show a poverty rate of 73.6% in 2021 that fell to 64.1% in 2023. According to UNICEF, “Deprivations are highest in nutrition, followed by deprivations in sanitation, education, water, and overcrowding, respectively.” UNICEF reports that, “The homicide rate was 38.1 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, the highest in Central America and the second highest in Latin America.”

Honduran writer, lawyer, political commentator, and Libre Party partisan Milson Salgado outlines programs introduced by the Xiomara Castro government that promote national development and social rescue.

He cites these: public enterprises recovered from privatization; “high social investment … in the construction of hospitals, repair of educational centers, construction and reconstruction of recreation centers;” extension of the electricity network; and new highways.

The Castro government has funded rural development, provided “educational scholarships at all school levels,” “support[ed] the agricultural sector with loans at the lowest interest rates in history,” provided financial relief for small farmers, “recovered “65,000 hectares of forest,” and provided support for the elderly and disabled.

The U.S. – assisted coup in progress in Honduras is remarkable in two ways. First, it illustrates U.S. reliance on drug war as justifying military and other interventions in targeted Latin American countries. Salgado notes that the United States has “no interest in the fight against narco-trafficking other than to use it selectively as a weapon for blackmailing governments, countries, and people.”

As regards Colombia, the U.S. government invoked the pretext of narco-trafficking as cover for its direct role in combating leftist insurgents. In Peru, a burgeoning drug trade recently prompted the United States to send in troops, most likely out of solicitude for natural resources on tap there. Exaggerated concern about narco-trafficking in Venezuela has rationalized various kinds of U.S. intervention directed at regime change.

Secondly, U.S. strategists altered the device called lawfare that Latin American coup-plotters rely on these days to remove governments not to their liking. That happened in Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador  through perverse manipulation of legal norms.

The U.S. gets credit for innovation. Treaties of extradition are legal instruments that, under international law, enable one country to ensure that its criminals staying in another country can be returned for prosecution. It’s a regular legal process that the United States has adapted for Honduras to bring about regime change there.

In any event, government supporters are planning a “big national mobilization” in Tegucigalpa on September 15 “in support of Honduras’s leader, in defense of the homeland’s independence and the building of democratic socialism, and in condemnation of interventionist activities.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

US Intervention and Neoliberalism Aggravate Political Upheaval inBangladesh / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

Anti-government protestors march towards Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s palace as army personnel (C) stand guard in Shahbag area, near Dhaka university in Dhaka on August 5, 2024. Protests in Bangladesh that began as student-led demonstrations against government hiring rules in July culminated on August 5, in the prime minister fleeing and the military announcing it would form an interim government | Photo by Munir Uz Zuman/AFP via Getty Images

South Paris, Maine

Weeks of student-led and often violent protests forced the resignation and exile on August 5 of Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Demonstrators were reacting to inflation, unemployment, governmental and banking corruption and a quota system that preferentially opens up government jobs to descendants of people participating in the national liberation struggle. Brutal police repression and killings recalled Bangladesh’s long history of recurring coups, protests, and lethal violence.

Sheikh Hasina’s Awami alliance won a large parliamentary majority in elections taking place in January 2024, and she remained as prime minister. She had served as such from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2008 on. Sheikh Hasina faced little opposition in the low-turnout election. The large Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) did not participate.

Her political party harks back to the Awami League, the central protagonist to the liberation struggle that in 1971 turned the former East Pakistan into an independent nation. Sheikh Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, was an Awami leader and Bangladesh’s first president. He and most of his family were killed in a coup in 1975.

Here we consider economic factors contributing to people’s distress and dissent and the U.S. role in the country’s difficulties.

Indian economist Prabhat Patnaik suggests that Sheikh Hasina’s government was oblivious to both the country’s changing economic situation and deterioration of living conditions. He points out that until recently, “growth in Bangladesh’s garment exports [had been] so rapid that it was even suggested that within a very short time Bangladesh would be meeting as much as 10 per cent of the world’s garment demand.” In 2022-2023 that industry provided Bangladesh with 84.58% of its export earnings.

Now production and export are reduced. Patnaik points to “the rise in imported fuel prices after the start of the Russo-Ukraine war [that] has contributed to a serious foreign exchange shortage, given rise toprolonged power cuts, and also caused a rise in the price of power that has had a cost-push effect on the economy as a whole.”

Factors contributing to inflation include “depreciation in the exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar” and “the growing fiscal squeeze that the government is compelled to enforce within a neoliberal setting.” The government is unable “to insulate the people from the effects of inflation.” Additionally, “A rise in the minimum wage, as a means of compensating workers in the face of inflation, is…[impossible] within the neoliberal setting;” “export markets” would suffer.

Patniak’s report appears in People’s Democracy, the website of the Communist Party of India (M). He suggests that, “The transcendence of neoliberalism requires the mobilization of people around an alternative economic strategy that gives a greater role to the State, focuses on the home market, and on national control over mineral and other natural resources.”

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus now heads a make-shift government backed by Bangladesh’s military. The army chief and representatives of three political parties are meeting to form an interim government made up of “advisors.” Preparations for elections are underway.

The Awami League is not participating. Patnaik observes that, “if the Awami League is not allowed to contest the elections that are to be held, then the right-wing parties would emerge as the main beneficiaries of the political upheaval; Bangladesh would be pushed to the right to the delight of imperialism and the domestic corporate oligarchy.”

The U.S. government is paying attention. Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu visited Bangladesh on May 17. Interviewed, he indicated that discussions covered Bangladesh’s role in U.S. strategy for the Indo-Pacific region. He denied reports that the United States wants to build anairbase in Bangladesh.

The US Department of State on May 20 announced sanctions against retired Army General Aziz Ahmed on grounds of “significant corruption.” Its statement testified to “U.S. commitment to strengthening democratic institutions and rule of law in Bangladesh.”

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina spoke at a meeting May 23 of leaders of political parties making up the Awami League. She reported that a foreign country, unnamed, was seeking her approval for an airbase to be built in Bangladesh and would reward her by protecting her tenure in office. The proposal, she said, came from a “white skin country.” She insisted that, “I do not want to gain power by renting or giving certain parts of my country to anyone.”

Hasina’s hold on power was insecure. At a follow-up meeting on June 4 independent Awami League candidates and heads of political parties associated with the League joined in vigorously disputing the results of the January, 2024 elections.

Hasina had earlier predicted that, “if the (opposition) BNP came to power, it would sell the island to the US.” She was referring to St. Martin’s Island, located in the Bay of Bengal at the southernmost tip of Bangladesh. It sits eight km west of the Myanmar coast.

In 2003, American ambassador to Bangladesh Mary Ann Peters rejected speculation about a U.S. airbase in the country. In Parliament on June 14, 2023. Deputy Rashed Khan Menon, president of the Workers Party –Bangladesh’s largest Communist Party– asserted that, “The US wants Saint Martin’s Island and they want Bangladesh in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). They are doing everything to destabilize the current government.”

The Bay of Bengal is crucial to marine commerce in the entire region. An Indian observer notes that, “The island is ideally positioned to facilitate surveillance in the Bay of Bengal which has gained strategic significance due to China’s assertive push in the Indian Ocean region.” A Myanmar analyst refers to China as “the most influential foreign actor in Myanmar [and] the biggest investor” there.

The U.S.-promoted “Quad” alliance, aimed at China, includes India, Japan, Australia and the United States. The U.S. government has long pressured Bangladesh to join, while China has urged Bangladesh to maintain its non-aligned status.

In his remarks, Menon condemned the visa policy announced by the U.S. State Department on May 24, 2023 as “part of their ‘regime change’ strategy.” The U.S. government would withhold visas from Bangladeshis (family members too) viewed as “undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh.”

Menon had more to say: “”During our Liberation War, [the United States] dispatched the Seventh Fleet, aiming to strip us of our hard-won victory. Amidst a severe famine, they rerouted a grain ship from the Indian Ocean, a calculated move to disrupt Bangabandhu’s administration.

Their clandestine influence was also involved in the assassination of Bangabandhu. Now, they are repeating such tactics, doing all within their power to undermine the existing government.” (“Bangabandhu” is the honorific of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Sheikh Hasina’s father.)

Under Sheikh Hasani’s leadership, U.S-Bangladesh relations have cooled, mostly in response to U.S. accusations of human rights abuses and U.S. economic sanctions. Visiting China on July 10 and seeking $20 billion in new loans, Hasani signed 28 bilateral agreements centering on trade and investments. Through its Belt and Road Initiative, China has upgraded the country’s infrastructure.

Bangladesh, it seems, is a small country attached to a worldwide economic system serving big powers but always close to social and economic catastrophe. Its plight is not unique.

Patnaik elaborates upon the theme: “Because of the world capitalist crisis, many third world countries pursuing neoliberal policies are being pushed into economic stagnation, acute unemployment and burgeoning/ external debt, which are going to make their prevailing centrist regimes that maintain a degree of autonomy vis-à-vis imperialism, unpopular; but this creates the condition for right-wing regimes supported by imperialism to topple these centrist regimes and come to power.”

In an authoritarian turn, security forces of the new government on August 22 arrested and detained Workers Party president Rashed Khan Menon, along with other cabinet ministers of the Sheikh Hasina government. They were blamed for deaths resulting from street protests prior to August 5. His defenders see a “political vendetta” on the way.

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

US research stations in Peru and elsewhere prepare for biowarfare / by W. T. Whitney

DARPA: Some experts fear GM viruses could transform into a new class of biological weapons (Image: Getty)

South Paris, Maine

The U.S. government began preparing for biological warfare during World War II. Biological weapons were employed during the Korean War against North Korea and China. President Nixon in 1969 ended the U.S. use of biological weapons for offensive purposes. The United States joined other nations in approving the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which took effect in 1975.

Even so, U.S. agents introduced microorganisms that devastated Cuba’s agriculture intermittently from the 1970s into the1980s. They introduced dengue virus in 1981, thereby provoking an epidemic that killed 169 Cubans. In 2001 the George W. Bush administration disavowed the Protocol that was essential for strengthening the BWC.

A sugarcane plantation in rural Cuba | Wikipedia

A 2017 report from the Latin American think-tank CEPRID tells of suspicious U.S. virologic research centers in Ecuador, of Brazilian soldiers dying of an unknown infectious disease, and “research centers located in countries like Brazil, Guatemala, Panama. Honduras, Costa Rica, República Dominicana, Haiti, [and] Guyana.” The report notes the existence in Peru of U.S. biological research laboratories operating under the façade of sponsorship by local universities. 

“What’s certain,” the report says, “is that research is continuing and new viruses are being created or they are muting to become resistant to all the vaccines that are known.” Mention appeared in 2015 of a “laboratory [in Peru] for the development of bacteriologic war.”  The reference was to one operated by a “Naval Medical Research Unit,” by NAMRU-6. Beginning with WWII or shortly thereafter, the U.S. has operated NAMRUs, numbers one through six, within the United States and in Ethiopia, Italy, Southeast Asia, and Peru. Their purposes varied according to location. Three of them have been discontinued.

Officially, NAMRU-6, also known as NAMRU South, “researches and monitors various infectious diseases with military and public health implications in Central and South America.”  With a presence in Peru since 1983, NAMRU-6 occupies a large office building and laboratory in Lima and a smaller laboratory in Iquitos, on the Amazon River.

NAMRU-6 is in the news. In an article appearing on June 13, Brazilian journalist Tereza Cruvinel notes a big increase in dengue cases in Peru, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina. She cites “an entomologist in a neighboring country” who describes unexpected resistance of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, vector of the dengue virus, to usually effective insecticides. She points to the entomologist’s reference to “a fellow researcher” who abandoned the U.S. NAMRU-South laboratory in Peru, because of “experiments there with the participation of the Pentagon and the Peruvian military.”  

She notes that investigators there are creating new strains of the dengue virus, “which spread more quickly among mosquitoes, with a very high viral load.” Cruvinel reports that, “Latin American doctors and scientists suspect scientific manipulation of the mosquito by powerful forces involving the US and the pharmaceutical industry.”

In his article “US biological weapons,” written in response to Cruvinel,  Costa Rican journalist Jose Amesty claims that “the [current] outbreak of dengue fever, which is a record for sickness and death in Nicaragua, Honduras and Peru, is related to Pentagon experiments in 2023 aimed at creating a modified strain of the aforementioned pathogen.” He cites as his source a “scientist from Namru-South in Peru who, involved with experiments with dengue strains, is disillusioned by implications for the health of millions of people.”

Amesty notes that personnel working at NAMRU-6 in Peru, most of them Peruvians, have had to take on U.S. nationality so they could be prosecuted, if need be, under U.S. jurisdiction and “not be responsible to the Peruvian justice system.”  

Amesty learned from Gabriela Paz-Bailey, dengue specialist at the Puerto Rican branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that a new strain of the dengue virus appeared in 2023 in Peru, one that “diffuses more rapidly among mosquitoes,” leaving them with an “an elevated viral load.” And, “the level of virus dosage sufficient to cause infection has diminished ten times.”

Presumably it’s Amesty himself who notes that, “a similar development of a virus over such a brief period would be impossible without human intervention.” He adds that, the “North Americans achieved a high degree of resistance to insecticides on the part of mosquitos, and that reduced the effectiveness of steps taken by national governments to eradicate the insects with fumigation.”

Paz-Bailey informed Amesty that the NAMRU-6 laboratory has long been relying on the “help of insects” in devising “mechanisms for the proliferation of the virus” both in Peru and elsewhere in the region.

DARPA: The controversial project involves infecting insects with viruses (Image: Getty)

In 2016 the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) presented its plan for mobilizing “Insect Allies” to protect farmers’ crops from disasters. As described, the program “is poised … [to use] targeted gene therapy to protect mature plants within a single growing season.” Insects would transfer genetically modified viruses to plants where they affect the behavior of a growing plant’s genes, for example, increasing its growth rate in conditions of drought, plant diseases, or pesticide use.

The advent of the CRISPR system in 2012 allowed for this program involving insects to be developed. CRISPR, a relatively simple and readily accessible tool, allows for selective modification of the DNA of living organisms.

DARPA’s project provoked criticism, beginning with a report published in the journal Science on October 5, 2018. The title was “Agricultural research, or a new bioweapon system?” The authors drew attention to the Biological Weapons Convention. Their associations were with the Max Planck Institute and the Institute of International Law, both in Germany, and Montpellier University in France,

A simultaneous statement on this report, from the Max Planck Institute, focused on dual use possibilities: “[T]the findings of the Insect Allies Program could be more easily used for biological warfare than for routine agricultural use.” The statement suggested that “[N]o compelling reasons have been presented by DARPA for the use of insects as an uncontrolled means of dispersing synthetic viruses into the environment.”

Research programm with potential for dual use: scientists fear that the Insect Ally program by the US could encourage other states to increase their own research activities in the field of biological warfare. © MPG/ D. Duneka

Journalist and peace activist Bharat Dogra maintains that, “[T]he DARPA program risks being perceived as a biological warfare research program that is justified on the basis of stated peaceful purposes … [That misperception] can start a trend of similar research with biological warfare implications by other countries as well.”

Dogra observes too that the mosquitoes themselves, the insect vectors, are being genetically modified along with the viruses they are carrying. He writes that, “According to a 2022 review by the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, USA, since 2019 over a billion modified mosquitos have been released at world level, in several countries.”

The U.S. government maintains facilities across the world that are related to biological warfare.  Fort Detrick in Maryland, the historic bio-weapons center in the United States, extends across hundreds of acres and is the workplace for almost 8000 military and civilian employees. A network of related U.S.-operated facilities shows up in nations bordering Western Russia. Their role in monitoring and facilitating insect transmission of infectious diseases has been documented. Similar centers exist in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

I suggest that the U.S. government and the U.S. military are very likely building offensive capabilities for biological war. The nature of the DARPA program, activities of NAMRU-6 in Peru, and the U.S. record of disregarding the BWC over recent decades are all consistent with this accusation. Also suggestive is the proliferation within the United States and abroad of U.S. installations dedicated to the study of noxious microorganisms and new ways for their transmission. Lastly, the simultaneous emergence of CRISPR technology and wide dispersion of these activities is more than a coincidence.  

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Vietnam Is Precedent as US Prepares for War with China / By W. T. Whitney

Near Da Nang, South Vietnam, Marines move through ankle-deep mud carry their poncho-covered comrade towards higher ground were, when the weather permits, he will be air-lifted to the rear areas, Jan. 16, 1968. (AP Photo/John T. Wheeler)

South Paris, Maine

Popular struggle for national independence under socialism has regularly provoked U.S. war or hostile interventions, as with Cuba, North Korea, China, Vietnam and other nations. We explore both the extreme danger of possible U.S. war with China and also the changing U.S rationale for fighting wars. This shows in the difference between why the U.S. war in Vietnam was fought and why U.S. war with China may be on the way.   

Vietnam recently commemorated agreements reached 70 years ago in Geneva that on July 21, 1954 ended war between Vietnamese revolutionary forces and the French military, defeated two months earlier at Dien Bien Phu. According to official media, the object of a “scientific conference” held on July 19 was “to emphasize the historical importance of the agreements for the struggle for national liberation of the Vietnamese people and the peoples of the world.”

Nguyen Phu Trong | Photo: Anadolu Ajnsi

Also on July 19, Nguyen Phu Trong died. Once chairperson of the National Assembly and president of Vietnam, this paramount leader, a student and teacher of Marxist theory, had long served as general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam. His death is a reminder, if such is needed, that for Vietnam revolutionary socialism and national liberation were kindred struggles.

To prevent the unification of Vietnam as a socialist nation, the U.S. government went the last mile, first diplomatically and then militarily – from the 1954 Geneva agreements that established Vietnam’s national independence to the departure of defeated U.S. troops on April 30, 1975. The U.S. leadership class, involved in spreading U.S. power and influence across the globe, created and then defended South Vietnam, while attempting to defeat Vietnam’s Revolution, all at enormous human and material cost.

The enclave remaining after a U.S. victory might have ended up as a beachhead for counter-revolution and U.S. control in Southeast Asia. In their various situations, that’s the role performed by South Korea, Taiwan, and even Ukraine in relation to Russia, and Israel vis-a-vis the rest of the Middle East.

U.S. planners, in thinking about what to do about Vietnam, were not entirely devoid of reason. For U.S. imperialists, to beat back Vietnamese Communists – think “domino theory” – and heat up the Cold War against the Soviet Union had a certain logic, according to their own lights.

After the Vietnam disaster, official U.S. planning for war has built upon a variety of ostensible reasons for fighting. Having emerged from World War II well-resourced and strong, the U.S. government consistently demonstrated limited tolerance for the risings of oppressed, colonialized peoples. However, once newly formed independent states showed signs of strength, regional prominence, or even strategic rivalry, U.S. strategists turned to action.

War materialized as the ultimate U.S. fix, no matter the circumstances and under a variety of pretexts, as shown with U.S. war-making in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The rationales for fighting were more diffuse. The threat of U.S. war now looms over Iran and, more ominously, over China. Each is under the gun because they are strong, assertive states.  

Anti-communism was a safer kind of rationale. Vietnam won its “American War,” and the U.S. government backed off. That’s the story. Incidentally, the Vietnamese people scored a clear win. They live according to plans and socialist purpose in a free and independent nation.  

Vietnam has established diplomatic relations with 190 countries. A Vietnamese writer cites “important achievements with infrastructure gradually meeting the needs of industrialization and modernization.”  Since reforms in the 1980s, an economy resting mainly on foreign direct investment in manufacturing and tourism has expanded. Economic growth ranged between 9.5 and 5.5 percent between 1993 and 2022, save for sharp drops in 2020 and 2021. GDP rose 5.05 percent in 2023. By 2022, the poverty rate was down to 4.3%.

Vietnam’s government since 2008 has spent 20 percent of its budget on education. The same report mentions “high primary school completion rates, strong gender parity, low student/teacher ratios,” and school attendance rates that are high.  The British medical journal Lancet indicates that, “Along with the economic growth, the health of the Vietnamese people has significantly improved between 1990 and 2020, whereby the life expectancy grew from 69 to 75 years, and the under-five child mortality rate decreased from 30 to 21 per 1000 live births.” 

Image credit: Friends of Socialist China

Socialist China restored dignity to the vast majority of its citizens, has afforded them decent lives, and created a well-functioning state that responds effectively to the climate crisis and other challenges. It too warrants a pass from the U.S. government.

That’s not happening: the U.S. government, in the hands of a divided leadership class, deals only haphazardly with major problems afflicting U.S. society. It satisfies the material wants of the upper echelons, and presides over war preparations as part of what is, in effect, a new Cold War.

Indeed, the USA has accumulated over 750 bases in 80 countries and posted 173,000 troops in 159 counties. The U.S. share of global arms exports in 2019-23 was 42 percent, up from 34 percent during the previous four-year period, according to sipri.org.

The US has two island chains around the coast of China. The stars indicate major US bases | via solidarity.net.au

In the Pacific waters surrounding China, the United States has expanded the capabilities of its bases; it operates nuclear-equipped naval vessels, arranges for multi-national naval exercises, has vessels engaging in provocative “freedom of navigation exercises,” and will be introducing nuclear-powered submarines.

The idea of multiple and varied reasons for fighting wars, presented above, folds neatly into the overarching notion of a new Cold War, something that by nature is ambitious, far-reaching, and long term.  Where is the justification for that?

Here is a guess: The United States decades ago turned to a great variety of activities related to military preparation, financing, and recovery. These now intrude massively in the U.S.  economy and in society itself, so much so that, in theory, something has to happen to explain and justify such a state of affairs. War provides meaning, without which the whole apparatus might disappear. What then of the economy and of the collective experience of a U.S population variously oriented to the military?

The Costs of War Project of the Watson Institute of Brown University weighs in. Author Heidi Peltier points out that:

Federal spending on the military and on veterans makes up more than half of the federal discretionary budget. Employment in the federal government is dominated by civilian defense workers and uniformed military personnel. Because the majority of taxpayer dollars and federal resources are devoted to the military and military industries, and most government jobs are in the defense sector, the political power of this sector has become more deeply entrenched and other alternatives have become harder to pursue. Instead of having a federal government that addresses various national priorities … the U.S. has a government that is largely devoted to war and militarism.

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Unfortunately, protecting both the U.S. economy and habituation to the military has its downside, specifically extreme danger to humanity itself. Writing in the most recent issue of Monthly Review magazine, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark explain, pointing to China. Discussing “Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific,” they state that:

“Most U.S. strategies for winning the New Cold War directed at China are aimed at a strategic-geopolitical defeat of the latter that would bring down Chinese President Xi Jinping and destroy the enormous prestige of the Communist Party of China, leading to regime change from within and the subordination of China to the U.S. imperium from without … (It) is the United States, which sees China’s rise as a threat to its own global preeminence, with the Indo-Pacific super-region increasingly being viewed as the pivotal site in the New Cold War, that is propelling all of humanity toward a Third World War.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

U.S. policy implicated in the economic crisis driving Cuban protests / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Beatriz Johnson Urrutia (center), the First Secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba, speaks directly with people demonstrating against food and electricity shortages on Sunday. | Photo via Juventud Rebelde

Reposted from the People’s World

This report takes advantage of the cogent observations (see below) of Professor Isaac Saney, former co-chairperson of the Canadian Network on Cuba and Coordinator at Dalhousie University for Black and African Diaspora Studies.

Hundreds of Cubans demonstrated peacefully in Santiago de Cuba and other cities across the island on March 17. Portrayed in some U.S. corporate media outlets as “anti-government” protests, the demonstrations were focused on electrical power outages and food shortages.

The protests were reacting to an accumulation of great economic difficulties that have assaulted Cubans and their government alike for decades.

Cuba is in the midst of a sharp economic crisis. Surging inflation is battering the economy, which shrank by almost 2% last year. Fuel prices rose by more than 500% just this month, while electricity rates climbed 25%.

Exports for 2023 were far below predictions, food production was less than 2022, and tourism income has only recovered to 69% of pre-COVID levels. Shortages of fuel and other supplies—largely because of the U.S. blockade—continues to hamper production in most sectors.

The dire circumstances are driving a mass exodus of Cubans; 425,000 migrants arrived in the United States in 2022 and 2023. Among those leaving are 9% of Cuba’s healthcare workers and thousands of educators. These departures have further aggravated the economic situation.

Responding to the Sunday demonstrations, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel pointed out on social media that “enemies of the Revolution are trying to take advantage of a context [of shortages] for destabilizing purposes.” He noted, “In the last hours we have seen how terrorists based in the United States…are encouraging actions against the country’s internal order.”

On March 18, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry summoned U.S. chargé d’affaires Benjamin Ziff—there’s been no U.S. ambassador to Cuba since 1960—where he received a formal note of protest that referred to “interventionist behavior and slanderous messaging by the U.S. government and its embassy.”

While communicating the urgency of the situation, Díaz-Canel explained that his government’s approach would be “to attend to the complaints of our people, listen, dialogue, explain the numerous efforts that are being carried out to improve the situation, always in an atmosphere of tranquility and peace.”

In this screenshot from video circulating on social media, Cubans in the city of Santiago de Cuba protest food and electricity shortages on Sunday. | via X

The predicament for Cuba is evolving. It’s apparent that upcoming reactions from Cuba’s government, the international solidarity community, and by Cubans themselves will unfold according to economic and historical imperatives that are by no means new.

For insight, we turn to Isaac Saney’s analysis that was released on March 18. Excerpts follow:

Recent events in Cuba illustrate how intense the imperial pressures on the island nation are. It always bears underscoring that every effort to defy imperialism’s dictate and build a new society has faced unrelenting Western destabilization and sabotage: from the Haitian Revolution to numerous African, Asian, and Latin American national liberation projects. …

There is no doubt that Washington will spare no efforts to manipulate the current situation in Cuba through the use of various social media and digital platforms in order to further destabilize the situation. Moreover, it was recently revealed that U.S. intelligence agencies have been directly intervening in the Cuban economy to artificially inflate prices, stimulate inflation, and cause greater shortages of already scarce goods.

Cuba has faced—and is facing—the longest economic siege in history from the most powerful military and economic imperial power that has ever existed. Like the Haitian Revolution, the Cuban Revolution is the unforgivable example that must be destroyed. Washington’s overarching strategy aims at denying and eradicating Cuba’s right to self-determination, sovereignty, and independence.

The empire has never accepted the verdict of the Cuban people. It has waged an unceasing economic war and campaign of destabilization aimed at restoring U.S. imperialism’s domination and tutelage.

Cuba has repeatedly repelled the unceasing all-sided, military, economic, financial, and propagandistic assault by U.S imperialism.

Since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the United States has relentlessly pursued an ongoing assault on the Cuban people, employing both military and economic, including orchestrating invasions, assassinations, and terrorist attacks against civilians, as well as engaging in systematic economic sabotage. …

The sinister goal is to coerce the Cuban people into submission by strangling the economy, creating shortages, hardships, and exacerbating social inequalities—the very issues the Cuban Revolution has tirelessly worked to eliminate. This strategy seeks to instigate massive social unrest that would then serve as a pretext for U.S. intervention.

…The U.S. economic war against Cuba extends beyond U.S. borders, affecting businesses from other countries engaged in or seeking trade with Cuba. It stands as the primary impediment to Cuba’s social and economic progress, representing a blatant violation of the human rights of the Cuban people, costing the island nation more than $1 trillion U.S., underscoring its profound and detrimental effects.

A poignant testament on the criminality and immorality of the U.S. economic blockade was the Nov. 2, 2023, United Nations vote, when for the 31st time—with a vote of 187 to 2—the international community resoundingly rejected and condemned Washington’s economic war against Cuba.

Cuba faces significant—and what, for many, may seem overwhelming—challenges. However, the Cuban people have repeatedly shown themselves capable of meeting the challenges they take up.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Cuba Scores Big Victory in the UN General Assembly / By W. T. Whitney

South Paris, Maine

The United Nations General Assembly on November 2 voted to approve
a Cuban resolution that, unchanged over 31 consecutive years, calls for
an end to the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. Approval once more
was overwhelming: 187 nations voted in favor and two against, the
United States and Israel. Ukraine abstained.

Reacting to the vote, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel proclaimed a
“new victory for the Cuban people and their Revolution!” He pointed to
“the triumph of dignity and the fearlessness of our people,” and
expressed gratitude for “the international community’s recognition of and
support for Cuba’s heroism and resistance.”

For over 20 years, the only nations opposing the Cuban resolution, apart
from the United States, have been Israel and, formerly, a few U.S.-
dependent Pacific island-nations. The blockade began in 1962, and now
80% of Cubans have lived under its sway.

Prior to the vote this year, dozens of delegates representing member
states spoke out against the blockade. Cuba’s Minister of Foreign
Relations Bruno Rodríguez addressed the General Assembly, insisting
that the U.S. blockade interferes with “the right to life, health, progress
and welfare of every Cuban family.”

He explained that Cuba’s financial losses from the blockade reflect
factors like the high cost of substituting for goods excluded under the
blockade with more expensive goods and/or those with higher
transportation costs. Losses take the form also of an overall lack of
necessary materials, goods, and services. And “barriers Cuba faces in
gaining access to advanced technology” lead to monetary loss.

The chancellor emphasized that “sectors like agriculture and energy face
serious obstacles to acquiring spare parts or machinery.” He cited
examples of blockade-related shortages such as extreme shortages of
gasoline and oil, cancer patients being denied “first line treatments and
drugs,” and healthcare providers and their patients lacking respiratory
ventilators and medicinal oxygen normally available from abroad.

The blockade’s assault against the Cuban people shows up clearly and
dramatically in money lost to Cuba’s economy. Rodríguez claimed that
Cuba’s GDP would have grown by 9% in 2022 without the blockade, and
that the $4.87 billion in losses occurring between March, 2023 and
February 2023 correlated with “pain and suffering.”

Cuba’s monetary loss in over 60 years of blockade now totals $159.8
billion, according to one account. What with inflationary change, that’s
$1.3 trillion.

Another report indicates that between August 2021 and February 2022,
losses in the energy and mining sectors added up to $185.5 million, in
the agricultural sector, $270.9 million; and in banking and finance,
$280.8 million. Between January and July in 2021, losses were $113.5
million in the healthcare sector; $30.6 million in education; and $31.3
million in the transport sector.

Cubans’ lives are affected:

* During the last school year, Cuba’s government lacked paper
sufficient to “print and assemble books and notebooks for students,”
in part because a Canadian paper manufacturer did not extend credit.

* Presently, according to Granma news service, no school books are
being produced due to a lack of supplies and spare parts.

* Lack of access to high-performance brands and equipment, as well
as spare parts, serves to handicap Cuba’s telecommunications
sector, thus easing the way for U.S. and European competitors to
reach Cuban users.

Laws authorizing the U.S. blockade include the 1917 Trading with the
Enemy Act, the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (Torricelli Law), and the
1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton Law).
Executive actions taken to implement the blockade have been central to
how that policy affects Cuba. The Obama administration eased many
blockade regulations. President Trump added 243 new measures, with
disastrous effect. The Biden administration continues them.

The U.S. Treasury Department imposes large fines on third-country
exporters failing to comply with its rules and so they often do not sell to
Cuba. Because the Treasury Department forbids foreign banks from
using U.S. dollars, international financial institutions rarely make loans to
entities in Cuba and are reluctant to handle U.S. dollars in transactions
involving Cuba.

The U.S. government has recently been weaponizing its false
declarations that Cuba is a terrorist-sponsoring state. The enabling
legislation on the matter granted the U.S. government authority to
penalize any international financial and banking sectors bold enough to
have dealings with states so designated.

Conveniently enough, Cuban analyst Claudia Fonseca Sosa recently
provide President Biden with advice as to “substantive modifications” of
methods for carrying out his policy. He could authorize “the export of
U.S. products to key branches of Cuba’s economy” and of medical
supplies and equipment to the island to help with the manufacture of
biotechnical products. Biden could allow U.S. companies to invest in
Cuba and enable U.S. citizens to receive medical treatment there.

The prospects for changed policies toward Cuba perhaps have
improved; a recent report documented the major role of the blockade in
propelling Cuban emigration to the United States – and sending
Venezuelans and Nicaragua there too. Those three blockaded countries
presently supply most of the migrants crossing into the United States.

U.S. sanctions cause desperate living conditions, and so people leave.
End all three blockades. Relieve the pressure on people, and maybe
they’d stay home. Who could object?

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

How to Ease the Migration Crisis: End US Economic Sanctions / by W.T. Whitney Jr.

Migrants wait to be processed by US Border Patrol after crossing the US-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, July 2022. (Allison Dinner / AFP via Getty Images)

South Paris, Maine

Top officials of 11 Latin American and Caribbean governments met October 22 in Chiapas, Mexico to deal with the flood of migrants heading to the United States. There was agreement that U. S. interventions in their region fuel migration.  A report from Chicago, released two days earlier and discussed here, concluded similarly.  

The goal of the meeting called by Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador was to form a regional block tasked with finding solutions. Presidents on hand, besides AMLO, were Xiomara Castro of Honduras, Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, Gustavo Petro of Colombia, and Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela.

The joint statement emerging from the meeting outlined baseline assumptions: 

  • “The main structural causes of migration have political, economic, and social origins, to which the negative effects of climate change are added.” 
  • “Unilateral, coercive policies from the outside are by nature indiscriminate; they affect entire populations adversely.”

The statement concluded with an agreement covering 14 points, among them: further development of an action plan, mutual cooperation, attention to commercial relationships, demands put on destination countries, respect for human rights, protection of vulnerable populations, the special case of Haiti, and a plea that the Cuban and U.S. governments “comprehensively discuss their bilateral relations.”  

AMLO declared that “unilateral measures and sanctions imposed against countries in the region, particularly Venezuela and Cuba, contribute to instigating migration,” also that the U.S. government has to “dialogue with us.”  

The Great Cities Institute, a research center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, on Oct 20 released a report prepared by journalist Juan González. It analyzes recently-imposed economic sanctions and U.S. assaults over many years against regional governments.

The report concludes that “U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America …[and] sanctions directed at Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, have played a major role in crippling theeconomies of those three nations, thus fueling for the past two years an unprecedented wave of migrants and asylum seekers from those countries that have appeared at our borders.”

Undocumented Mexican immigrants are shown to have represented 70% of all undocumented immigrants in 2008 but only 46 % in 2021. It appears that, later on, most unauthorized migrants entering the United States came from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

Then Venezuelans “apprehended at the border” increased from 4,500 in 2020 to “more than 265,000 in the first 11 months FY 2023.” There were 3,164 undocumented Nicaraguans crossing the border in 2020 and 131,831 two years later. 14,000 Cubans crossed in 2020; 184,00 did so in 2023. In fact, “more Cubans have sought to enter the U.S. during the past two years than at any time in U.S. history.”

The report indicates that the three countries supplying these migrants “have been targeted by Washington for regime change through economic sanctions, a form of financial warfare that has only made life worse for their citizens.”

Note is taken of Venezuela’s GDP falling 74% over eight years and of $31 billion in oil revenues lost between 2017 and 2020. Venezuela must import most of the pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and food it needs, according to the report. Funds for importing goods and for maintaining oil production derives from oil exports, which are blocked by U.S. sanctions. Shortages mounted, people suffered, and even died. Venezuelans reacted by leaving.

The Obama administration instituted sanctions in 2015 and President Trump added more afterwards. The sanctions block access to international credit, punish owners of foreign ships entering Venezuelan ports, and prevent income generated in the United States by Venezuela’s Citgo oil company from being repatriated.

The U.S government, according to the report, “is virtually alone in the world” in having unilaterally pursued such a lengthy economic blockade against Cuba. The U.S government punishes “an entire population for a political purpose.”  

The report notes that, “Cubans have garnered far less nationwide attention [than Venezuelan migrants] because they tend to settle in just one part of the country.” The real reason is that the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 provides undocumented Cubans with permanent residence a year after their arrival, and until then with work permits. The legislation, magnet-like, draws Cubans to the United States.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, speaking at the Chiapas meeting denounced U.S. “coercive measures aimed, by definition, at depressing the standard of living of the Cuban population, reducing their real income and making them suffer hunger and misery.”

One learns that in Nicaragua after 2006, when the socialist-oriented Sandinistas returned to power, poverty diminished and food supplies increased.  Migration to the United States remained very low. Then, in 2018, protests erupted, with violence and deaths.

The report points out that “investigative journalists” viewed the uprising as “an attempted violent coup organized by U.S.- funded dissident groups.” But the U.S. government saw the Sandinista government as violating human rights and instituted sanctions, strengthening them in 2021.  International loans were now off limits and countries assisting Nicaragua would be punished. Emigration skyrocketed.

Juan González, who prepared the report, recalls having “documented in a previous study, [that] the largest migrations from Latin America over the past sixty years have come precisely from those countries the U.S. has repeatedly occupied and most controlled.”

The report catalogues U.S. interventions, among them: Guatemala, 1954; Cuba, Bay of Pigs, 1961; Dominican Republic, 1965; Chile, coup, 1973; Nicaragua, Contra war, 1980s; Panama, 1989; Venezuela, failed coup, 2002; Honduras, rightwing coup, 2009.

The report offers recommendations for easing the migration crisis. One is to end “economic warfare against Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.” Another is to provide “expedited work permits” to recently arrived migrants and to long-term undocumented immigrants. The report asks that, “our government listen to the rest of the world community and end its destructive embargo against Cuba.”

The United Nations General Assembly will soon vote on a Cuban resolution calling for no more blockade. It has approved the resolution annually for 30 years, overwhelmingly so in recent years. The U.S. government does not listen.

Discussing his report on Democracy Now, Juan González provided a rationale for ending the various economic blockades that, based on cost-benefit analysis, ought to resonant with capitalists in charge of our national affairs.

He pointed to U.S. government spending of $333 billion between 2003 and 2021 “for immigration enforcement and for ICE and Border Patrol and fences.” It makes sense: ending U.S. economic sanctions would result in far fewer migrants at the southern border and, potentially, a big cost saving. 

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

US Intervenes as Indigenous Guatemalans Back President-elect Arévalo / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

Image: Los Angeles Times

South Paris, Maine

Bernardo Arévalo’s victory in first round of presidential voting on June 25 surprised Guatemalans, as did the emergence of his Seed (Semilla) political party. Roadblocks engineered by established political forces threatened his candidacy in the second round of voting, on August 20, and now may keep him from taking office, on January 14, 2024.  

Arévalo and the Seed Party seek to remove corruption from Guatemalan politics. They and others oppose “the Pact of the Corrupt,” individuals with criminal associations that for decades, they say, have occupied all levels of government, national and local. They are, “former military people …sophisticated businessmen, judicial functionaries, legislators, mayors, communications people, bankers, and liberal professionals, the facilitators of business deals worth millions.”

From shortly after Arévalo’s first-round victory until now, their operatives in the government of outgoing President Alejandro Giamattei have alleged voter fraud. The attorney general, a couple of prosecutors, and a few judges of the Supreme Court of Justice and Constitutional Court have forced the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to take measures that would prevent Arévalo from becoming president.

It decreed that ballot boxes be seized and the Seed Party no longer qualify as a political party. It voided the election of congressional deputies.  President Giamattei has rejected widespread demands that Attorney General Consuelo Porras, the offending prosecutors, and a couple of judges be dismissed.

Another surprise was on the way. A national strike of indigenous peoples erupted on October 2. For one commentator, this represented “the discovery of a forgotten and marginalized country, that didn’t exist in the national imagination … [and].came from the provinces, where the Seed Party, with its basically urban and middle-class origins, did not exist.”

Sit-ins and blockades of highways spread nationwide, peaking at 130 or more. Up to 60% of Guatemala’s commerce halted. Schools, colleges, and some local government offices closed. The demands were: no more corruption, remove Attorney General Porras, and Arévalo will become president on January 14.

Indigenous leaders referred to as the “48 Cantons of Totonicapán” had called the strike. They and indigenous officials nationwide were in charge.  Guatemala’s European-descended leadership class had bestowed administrative authority on the “48 Cantons” in the 19th century. Now, somehow, they seem to set the course for indigenous authorities in municipalities nationwide. 

News reports cite the “Ancestral Indigenous Authorities” as representing indigenous participation in Guatemalan politics. The Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, formulated in 1995, had enabled such.  It was part of the Peace Agreement that ended decades of armed conflict during which some 200,000 people died, most of them indigenous.

Partisans of the current strike staged a rally in Guatemala City on October 20 to mark the 79th anniversary of Guatemala’s “October Revolution.” On that day in 1944, a three-person “revolutionary junta” replaced the long dictatorship of Jorge Ubico.  Voters in 1945 elected Juan José Arévalo, father of Bernardo, as president and Guatemala experienced its so-called “Democratic Spring,” which ended in 1954 thanks to a CIA-instigated coup.

Bernardo Arévalo spoke at the rally on October 20:

“The ancestral authorities have opened the way to students, community leaders, professionals, unions, … business leaders. … Look around. We are located in the center of citizens’ life in the country. The legacy of the October Revolution of 1944 is before our eyes. The Guatemalan Institute of Social Security is an instrument of solidarity… and source of tranquility for many families … [and the] Bank of Guatemala guarantees economic stability and supports … an economy whose benefits extend to everyone.”

In Guatemala, however, the poverty rate was 59% in 2020, 80% in rural areas; half of the population have limited access to food. That the average adult income in 2022 was $13,412 testifies to a well-resourced sector of the population. Indeed, 10% of Guatemalans owned 61.7% of the nation’s wealth in 2021.

Journalist Víctor Ferrigno points out the limited ambitions of the national strike: its indigenous leaders claim not to represent a political party but merely to be defending democracy and opposing corruption. Analyst  Ollantay Itzamná adds that Guatemala’s government will emerge unscathed and will “certainly continue being racist and lethal for indigenous peoples.”

He argues elsewhere that the Seed Party, attentive mostly to the urban middle class, is responding to concerns that the government, a big source of employment, might disintegrate because of corruption, racist though it may be.

The U.S. government backs Arévalo, the Seed Party, and the campaign against political corruption. Itzamná points out that USAID finances projects of the 48 Cantons and of NGOs siding with the Seed Party.  Indigenous leadership groups in Guatemala have gained U.S. trust, he indicates, by not “questioning the racist nature of the state or disputing the power of the rich.”

The U.S. government, he explains, is willing to “try out a progressive government in Guatemala as long as it is obedient to U.S. interests.” That government now gains U.S. favor by accepting an indigenous mobilization that serves to “hide the emergence of the pluri-national, anti-neoliberal, or anti-imperialist social subjects that do exist in Guatemala.” Radical indigenous movements, such as the ones active in Peru and especially Bolivia, are to be squelched.  

One would be Committee of Campesino Development (CODECA), formed in 1992 as a “class-based organization” defending farm workers. CODECA announced its own national strike to begin on September 19. Demands were those of the current strike with the addition of a “people’s and pluri-national constituent assembly.”

Calling for a constituent assembly and basic change, Thelma Cabrera, presidential candidate of CODECA’s political party,The Movement for Liberation of the Peoples, won 456,114 votes, or fourth place, in the 2019 elections.   She was ranking in fourth place in 2023, according to opinion polls, when the Supreme Electoral Tribunal rejected her candidacy.

In an interview on February 19, 2023, Mauro Vay Gonón, the CODECA founder, recalled that “state terrorism, mainly at the hands of Guatemala’s military, had cost the lives of 25 CODECA activists.”  Tereso Cárcamo, killed on December 5, 2022, had taken part “in different peasant struggles such as the Popular and Pluri-national Constituent Assembly process.”

Vay Gonón, a guerrilla insurgent during the armed conflict, lamented that, “The entire Peace Agreement” [of 1996] is for nothing. They are walking all over it. This is a sad truth for the Guatemalans, because we sincerely don’t want to go back to a war.”

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.

Gaza Healthcare Workers Refuse Israeli Orders to Evacuate Hospitals / By W. T. Whitney Jr.

Photo credit: Ministry of Health, Occupied Palestinian territory

South Paris, Maine

Imagine there’s war where you live. A week of bombing has killed thousands. The enemy has ordered evacuation of all civilians in anticipation of more bombing and possibly an invasion. Everyone has to leave the hospital where you provide care – patients, nurses, doctors, even intensive care patients, babies in incubators, and bodies in the morgue. You may leave or else join fellow nurses and doctors who are determined to stay.

This is how it is at the Al Awda Hospital in Jabalia in northern Gaza. On Saturday, Oct 14, calls arrived from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) saying that the hospital must be vacated by 10 AM the next day, that it was going to be bombed.

The day before, day seven of the Israeli-Hamas war, the IDF had ordered that the entire population of northern Gaza, 1.1 million people, head to southern Gaza within 24 hours. Observers say an Israeli ground offensive is imminent. 

Al Awda Hospital, established in 1997, is a general hospital and the main provider of maternity services in the northern part of Gaza. It’s a training hospital for nurses. An Israeli assault damaged the hospital in 2015.

Dr Nisreen al-Shorafa, who heads the emergency room at the hospital, received a call from the IDF.  She told the official of the “inhumanity and impossibility” of moving people out of the hospital and sending them elsewhere. “We decided not to leave,” she told Aljazeera,  indicating also that she had slept only ten hours in seven days. In all, 35 nurses and doctors are staying.

According to CNN, Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al-Kaila “blamed Israel for killing 28 health care workers and damaging medical centers.”  He indicated that a general hospital and a children’s hospital have been closed, the latter having been hit by “internationally prohibited white phosphorus bombs.”

Dr. Abdullah Al-Qishawi, head of renal diseases at the Al-Shifa Hospital, warned that some 1200 patients with kidney failure may die soon due to the lack of medications and electricity. 

The Israeli military also on October 13 ordered that the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s Al Quds Hospital in Gaza City be evacuated. The deadline of 6:00AM on October 14 was later extended to 4:00 PM. Hospital officials insist that the facility will not be emptied.   

W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine. W.T. Whitney Jr. es un periodista político cuyo enfoque está en América Latina, la atención médica y el antirracismo. Activista solidario con Cuba, anteriormente trabajó como pediatra, vive en la zona rural de Maine.