AS the US blockade enters its 60th year, one can only imagine the strides Cuba could have made at home and internationally if it had not been held back by vicious economic warfare and an unrelenting policy of intervention from its northern neighbour.

As of December 1, Cuba had fully vaccinated more than 83 per cent of its population, including almost two million children over two years old.

Over 10.5 million Cubans (93 per cent of the population) have received at least one dose of the country’s two homegrown vaccines, and booster jabs are currently being administered to the most vulnerable groups. Clinical trials of a nasally administered vaccine are also under way.

Cuba is on course to reach its target of full vaccination by the end of 2021.

This would be a notable achievement for any country. For a low-income one which has endured almost 60 years of economic blockade, including sanctions and restrictions on scientific and academic exchanges from the US, it is truly phenomenal. 

Even more remarkable is that Cuba managed this despite the best efforts of the US government to cynically use Covid-19 to further suffocate the country.

Fifty extra sanctions were introduced by the Trump administration in the first 12 months of the pandemic. There is no doubt that the US blockade cost Cuban lives during this time.

It prevented not only the delivery of life-saving ventilators, testing kits and masks, but also delayed the development of Cuba’s vaccines.

After a regular supplier of raw materials in Switzerland was bought by a US company, Cuba was forced to put a stop to its vaccination programme while it sourced a new manufacturer willing to sell the vital component to them.

The hypocrisy and irony of the Biden administration’s offer to supply Cuba with one million vaccinations was not lost on Cuban scientists.

It was one of many hollow humanitarian gestures that the US government made in July when Covid was at its peak on the island.

Rather than helping Cuba by ending its inhumane sanctions, the US government is working hand in hand with the most right-wing, pro-blockade groups and politicians in Miami and beyond to wreak the country’s recovery efforts and undermine its government.

In the last two months USAid has granted $7 million for flagrant destabilisation programmes.

One, for example, aims to sabotage Cuba’s tourism industry — a lifeline for millions of Cubans who work in the sector or benefit from international visitors.

And more such funding is likely to follow as the Biden administration comes under pressure from Cuban-American hardliners in the swing state of Florida who are frustrated that their recent attempts to stir up unrest on the island have failed.

Meanwhile Cuba attempts to recover from the economic and health crisis caused by the pandemic.

In the week November 24-30, it registered just five Covid deaths.

The infection rate has fallen rapidly from its peak in July. Deaths per million stand at 336 compared with the 2,338 per million of the United States.

On November 15 tourism and schools reopened on the island for the first time in months.

Although Cuba is still facing critical shortages in food and medicines, it is looking to the future.

In 2017 it launched an ambitious 100-year environmental plan Tarea Vida (Project Life), and has written into its constitution a commitment to promote conservation and flight climate change.

As a Caribbean island it is especially susceptible to hurricanes, coastal erosion and drought caused by global warming.

In addition to these threats, the blockade also restricts access to resources and finances to carry out this plan and invest in renewable energy infrastructure and protective measures.

In March the United Nations granted $23.9 million for Cuba’s “Mi Costa” initiative which the Cuban government will match with $20.3 million.

Funds first had to be approved by the Board of the Green Climate Fund (GFC). When the GFC met to agree the grant, the US representative was the only of the 24 board members to reject the proposal, citing Cuba’s designation by the US as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” 

Mi Costa is expected to save more than 11,000 hectares of mangroves, 3,000 of swamp forests and 900 of grasslands on the southern coasts of Cuba and benefit one million people in the future — people and a future for Cuba that the US government blatantly cares little for, judging by its GFC vote.

Silvio Rodriguez, the Cuban folk singer famous throughout Latin America, gave an interview last week where he imagined what his homeland and people might have been able to achieve if it had not been for the United States stifling them at every move: “They [the US government and supporters of sanctions] don’t want the world to see what Cuba can be without the blockade.

“They surely suspect that we would be an even more supportive country; one that would possibly make vaccines and distribute them in all the countries where there are none … Without a blockade, Cuba would be an even more generous and supportive country, that is, a terrible danger for universal selfishness.”

If Cuba had the funds and resources to develop and mass produce its vaccines they could indeed be a lifeline for people in low-income countries — only 6 per cent of whom have been vaccinated.

Cuba’s vaccines, unlike Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, do not need to be kept at extremely low temperatures, so they would also be easier to deliver in remote and hotter areas.

Without the US dragging it back, Cuba would be able to deliver so much more. Not only for its own people, but for all humanity as Cuba’s internationalism has demonstrated on so many occasions.

Cuba’s current economic difficulties have been seized on by the US government and right-wing exile groups as a chance to achieve their dream of overturning socialism and sovereignty in Cuba. 

Solidarity activists must raise their game in this battle of ideas and to defend the gains of the Cuban Revolution.

End the US blockade! Let Cuba Live!

Natasha Hickman is campaigns manager at the Cuba Solidarity Campaign (cuba-solidarity.org.uk).