Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel received U.S. House of Representatives members Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson—both Democrats—in Havana; following the meeting, he reiterated the Cuban government’s willingness to engage in dialogue.
“I reiterated our government’s resolve to hold a serious and responsible bilateral dialogue, and to find solutions to existing differences,” the Cuban leader explained on social media.
Díaz-Canel drew attention to “the criminal harm caused by the U.S. blockade,” and “in particular, the consequences of the energy siege decreed by the current U.S. administration, along with its threats of even more aggressive actions.”
For their part, Jayapal and Jackson issued a joint statement denouncing the “illegal U.S. blockade on fuel supplies to Cuba”—as well as the pre-existing embargo—which they stated are causing “incalculable suffering to the Cuban people.”
The blockade is “a cruel collective punishment” that “must cease immediately.” “We witnessed firsthand premature babies in incubators—weighing barely a kilogram—who are at tremendous risk because their ventilators and incubators cannot function without electricity,” they warned.
“Children cannot attend school because there is no fuel for them or their teachers to commute. Cancer patients cannot receive life-saving treatments due to a lack of medication. There are water shortages because there is insufficient electricity to pump it. Businesses have closed. Families cannot keep food refrigerated, and food production on the island has plummeted to just 10 percent of the population’s needs,” they recounted. The congress members expressed their belief that “the majority of Americans do not desire this kind of cruelty and inhumanity.”
Furthermore, they highlighted the “many signals” sent by the Cuban government—such as the release of “more than 2,000 prisoners” during their visit—as well as the liberalization of the economy. “The remaining obstacles to progress in Cuba now lie in the United States changing its obsolete, Cold War-era policy of coercive economic measures and military pressure against Cuba,” they have stated, before advocating for negotiations between Washington and Havana.
