The CBS Sunday Morning program, “Next: Cuba?” which aired on April 26, presented a discussion of the recent intensification of sanctions on and threats against Cuba. I am disappointed that this program, and several other shorter recent segments on CBS News, did not cover some essential points that must be stated about what is happening in Cuba now. My own experience in Cuba, including the recent delivery of humanitarian aid directly to Cubans, contradicts some perspectives presented by CBS.

Fidel Castro is dead. And, he has been dead for a while. He was a fascinating character who still inspires polemic discussions. Stories of Fidel are legendary on the scale of Paul Bunyan. But we think the choice of focus of these eight minutes on Fidel’s legacy is unjust to the Cuban people. The news of the moment is that Cuba is underwater. The CBS Sunday Morning program, instead of engaging in a discussion of a crisis on the island, entertained us with old, mostly obsolete stories about Castro.

Cubans are suffering currently. The US sanctions on Cuba are enormous, by any measure. We find it remarkable that Cuba has withstood for decades sanctions that would bring down any other country of its size and reach within weeks. The recent fossil fuel blockade on the island, however, has placed the people of the island in a choke hold. Cuba’s economy, like those around the world, is dependent on petroleum products for most of its electricity generation, vehicle use, and cooking. Food is rotting in the fields because of a lack of fuel to connect products to markets, and it is rotting in homes because the refrigerators are disconnected.

The recent military blockade prohibiting oil shipments disrupted Cuba’s economy on a level that frightened people, in a way that we would compare to drowning; If something is not done quickly, disaster will occur. The blockade was challenged successfully by a Russian oil tanker, but the sabers from the US State Department continue to rattle loudly.

Cuba deserves to make its path without undue pressure from the US.

A health crisis is happening in real time. The impacts of the sanctions on health are huge. Cubans are accustomed to excellent health services, but hospitals are less able to provide services than ever. Infants who were once saved from preventable risks are now dying, even in the best hospitals. Surgeries are postponed, simply because there are not sufficient provisions, made acute by the recent oil blockade. Let’s be clear: The oil blockade has provoked an epidemiological disaster.

The current suffering has a psychological dimension. A refrigerator that won’t keep food fresh, a stove that won’t cook, darkness all day and night, no transport to the workplace or market, overflowing trash piles every few blocks because the garbage trucks have no fuel, no running water, are not the same as a fun camping trip. Cubans are humiliated as the system they depend on spiraled downward from weakly working to a horror show. The people of Cuba are frightened, in our opinion, not only by the capacity of the US government to cause mayhem, but by their own vulnerability. All Cubans heard President Donald Trump say that he will “take Cuba." Cubans know what happened in Iran, Gaza, and Venezuela, and these words are designed to make them think they are next. The psychological impact of this pressure compounds the physical hardship.

The intent of the current administration can’t be missing the mark—the effect of the fuel blockade, on top of so many, layered, sanctions and complications, is the same as waterboarding a person. By strengthening the intensity and increasing the duration, a waterboarded subject will eventually stop resisting and walk calmly to the next waterboarding session. That waterboarding may have occurred in Guantánamo, on the same island as the 10 million victims of these sanctions, is ironic. Even now, with a Russian tanker arriving to provide only a portion of the Cuban needs, the US government continues the horror of a tightened blockade to convert Cuba into a compliant state.

Cuban voices should be heard. The positions of Cuban Americans regarding the US sanctions on the island are not unanimous, as the........

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