Sept. 10, 2026
In 2003, before the United States unleashed the war in Iraq, a webcam maintained a fixed shot of Baghdad for hours. The page’s tagline was more important than the technology: “They are not numbers.” There were no military maps or war reports there, just a street, cars, pedestrians—people still coming and going in a city about to be bombed. The camera didn’t stop the invasion. However, it did something essential. It put a face on those who would soon be reduced to statistics.
Twenty-three years later, it’s time to turn on another camera, this time focused on Cuba. Not to deny its internal mistakes, its aging electrical infrastructure, or the damage accumulated from hurricanes. It would be frivolous to blame every blackout on Washington. But it would be equally dishonest to hide the fact that the United States has made the fuel reaching the island an explicit target for pressuring third countries.
The White House no longer merely seeks to decide with whom U.S. citizens may trade. Executive Order 14404, issued May 1, empowers Washington to sanction foreign individuals and entities for certain dealings with Cuba—particularly in the energy sector—even if those activities are lawful in the country where they take place.
To put it plainly, the U.S. government is going a step beyond the traditional extraterritorial application of the blockade and is now claiming the right to override national jurisdictions and make actions punishable from Washington that may be perfectly legal in Rome, Madrid, Mexico City, or any other capital.
U.S. law thus becomes an instrument of universal coercion, and the dollar, a de facto jurisdiction. If these premises are accepted, it makes sense that Trump could rename the Earth “Planet America”—which, incidentally, sounds like something out of a Marvel comic.
What does a sanctions architecture look like when it trickles down from executive orders to the home of every Cuban? It translates into food that spoils during prolonged power outages. Into parents fanning a baby so it can sleep. Into a child doing homework by candlelight. Into containers of medicine that never arrive. Into water pumps that stop working, forcing people to carry buckets up the stairs.
Data compiled by Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, and presented Sept. 7 describes months with barely two or three hours of electricity per day in many places and a chain reaction of damage to health, food supplies, and transportation. The United Nations reported May 1 that more than 96,000 medical procedures had been postponed due to power outages; some 11,000 of those involved children. A month later, he was already speaking of more than 100,000 postponed surgeries. He also warned that the fuel shortage was affecting dialysis machines, incubators, water supplies, and food distribution. This is no metaphor. When the power goes out at the pediatric hospital in Santiago de Cuba, a machine may stop supplying oxygen, effectively becoming a death sentence for a baby.
The Cuban report presented by the foreign minister—which will be discussed in October at the UN—also includes specific names. Diego, diagnosed with cancer at age 15, must travel with his mother, Licet Rodríguez, between Villa Clara and Havana to receive treatment. Her question—”What happens if the hospital shuts down?”—encapsulates the entire moral debate. We are not talking about “maximum pressure” as a diplomatic abstraction, but about the exact moment when the radiation therapy machine needs to be plugged in so that Licet’s son does not become just another statistic, nor his life lost amid the background noise of “Planet America.”
Although on Sept. 9, in Colombia, Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that “tragically, the Cuban people are suffering,” he repeats time and again that the sanctions are intended to put pressure on the Cuban government, not the population. His justifications avoid the term “collateral damage,” but it hovers in the air—as in Gaza or Iraq—to shift responsibility onto the victim and make “the abominable seem benign,” as Howard Zinn put it.
That is why the debate cannot be reduced to simply being for or against the Cuban government. The ethical dilemma precedes this: Can a policy that seeks to alter the behavior of a state through measures whose foreseeable effect is to increase the material vulnerability of an entire society be considered legitimate? And there is another question that goes beyond the relationship between Cuba and the United States: With what legitimacy can Washington sanction citizens, companies, banks, or institutions in third countries for engaging in activities that are legal under their own laws and that do not take place on U.S. territory?
The webcam in Baghdad did not save Iraq from war nor prevent the horrors of Abu Ghraib, but it left a warning that continues to be ignored. When we talk about punishments that can translate into barrels, megawatts, or containers that never arrive, let’s look at who is walking the streets: Licet’s son, someone’s grandmother, a mother, a father, the children at a school. They are not just numbers.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – US
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