Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Friday confirmed that his Communist-run Caribbean nation has opened talks with the United States, which imposed a crippling energy blockade on Cuba after removing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro from power in January.
Cuba is dependent on support from Venezuela and Mexico — both of which had supplied it with fuel — for its survival.
The US blockade and tariffs directed at any nation that dare sell oil to Cuba have severely handicapped Cuba’s ability to produce power, triggering massive blackouts and an ongoing energy emergency on the island.
Diaz-Canel addressed this issue Friday, saying the government is working hard to increase its own energy output but that efforts have been hampered by the fact that no oil has reached the island in three months.
In televised remarks to the nation, Diaz-Canel said talks with the US would be “aimed at finding solutions to bilateral differences between our two nations.”
Diaz-Canel said the “impact” of the US energy blockade has been “tremendous,” adding that power outages continue to affect communications, education, transportation and health services. He continued, saying that tens of thousands of medical surgeries have had to be postponed and that bakeries are now using wood and coal-burning ovens.
The US State Department did not comment on Diaz-Canel’s remarks.
Cuba’s economy faces a future without Venezuela’s oil
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Back-channel comms between US and Cuba?
After Diaz-Canel’s statement, two US officials confirmed that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been conducting back-channel talks with Cuba’s Communist government and had secretly met with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of retired Cuban leader Raul Castro — Fidel Castro’s brother — during a recent Caribbean leadership meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis.
In a video recorded on Thursday evening, Diaz-Canel confirmed that he was directing the talks from the Cuban side along with the elder Castro and other officials.
In the video, Rodriguez Castro, widely referred to as “El Cangriejo,” or “the Crab,” was seen seated directly behind President Diaz-Canel and among a group of high-level Communist officials.
Rodriguez Castro has no elected position in the government and it is unclear what role he and his influential 94-year-old grandfather will play in the talks.
President Diaz-Canel’s televised remarks featured cameo appearances from former leader Raul Castro and his grandson, both of whom have been involved in back-channel discussions with the USImage: Cuba TV/AFP
Nearly 70 years of distrust between US and Cuba
In confirming talks the US has long hinted at, Diaz-Canel said negotiations had begun as a way, “to determine the willingness of both parties to take concrete actions for the benefit of the people of both countries. And in addition, to identify areas of cooperation to confront threats and guarantee the security and peace of both nations, as well as in the region.”
Diaz-Canel said Cuba would engage in talks on the basis of respect and in the spirit of Cuban “sovereignty and self-determination.”
Speaking with the Associated Press, Cuban citizen Elvis Hernandez spoke for many of his compatriots by saying: “Cubans are desperate. You can’t live without water or electricity. That’s why we want consensus to be reached. If there are talks let them be productive. Let them achieve something good through those conversations.”
Beyond the current energy crunch, Cubans face continued rising prices for staple supplies as well as medicine shortages.
Cuba and the US have maintained an antagonistic relationship for the better part of seven decades. Though things began to thaw slightly under former-President Barack Obama, President Donald Trump has never been shy about voicing his dislike of the island nation’s leaders.
As a result, he has applied his maximum pressure approach to Cuba, recently claiming that it is “gonna fall pretty soon.”
“They have no money, they have no oil,” he told Latin American leaders gathered in Florida last week. “They have a bad philosophy. They have a bad regime that’s been bad for a long time.”
“They used to get the money from Venezuela. They get the oil from Venezuela, but they don’t have any money from Venezuela.”
Cuba crisis deepens as US blockade starves island of oil
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Will the US ‘take over’ Cuba? Trump says a deal is ‘easily made’
While flexing US military muscle in the Western Hemisphere — kidnapping Maduro and ordering the US military to carry out the extrajudicial killing of purported drug runners in South American coastal waters — Trump has repeatedly threatened that Cuba could face the same fate as Venezuela.
Though it must also be said that it is not entirely certain what is in fact happening in Venezuela at the moment.
On Monday, Trump floated the idea of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba before adding, “it may not be a friendly takeover” — echoing similar threats leveled at allies Greenland and Denmark.
On Friday, an anonymous White House official told Reuters news agency in a statement that, “Cuba is a failing nation whose rulers have had a major setback with the loss of support from Venezuela and with Mexico ceasing to send them oil.”
“As the president stated, we are talking to Cuba, whose leaders should make a deal, which he [President Trump] believes ‘would be very easily made,'” the White House official continued.
US military action in Venezuela: Are Cuba, Nicaragua next?
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
