Cuba Map – CC BY-SA 3.0

“You strangle us for forty years and then criticize us for the way we breathe.”  Cuban leader Fidel Castro was replying to the criticism, now reviving, of Cuba as a failed state. In fact, destructive US policies over six decades have finally led to humanitarian crisis. Suffering and death rates are up despite collective resilience.

Recent comprehensive reports provide information about the origins, substance, methods, objectives, and impact of US measures against Cuba, economic blockade in particular. Two of them appear with support from The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). Cuba’s Foreign Ministry produced two others. The UN’s Human Rights Council on September 8 heard Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan’s report on “Unilateral Coercive Measures.”

Children are dying

Analyst Guillaume Long, interviewed by Prensa Latina on September 15, discussed the US blockade. This senior researcher for CEPR andprofessor of international relations at Sciences Po in Paris stated that, after 2017, Cuba’s infant mortality rate rose 148% as a “direct result of the U.S. blockade.” He had co-authored a recent CEPR study documenting disastrous effects of blockade on infant health in Cuba and on Cuba healthcare itself.

Information in the interview and article apply to the period prior to the US oil blockade and the US regimen of secondary sanctions beginning, respectively, on January 29 and May 1. Infant mortality rates are very likely higher now than as reported by Long. Secondary sanctions are US penalties aimed at third-country companies for dealing with already-sanctioned counterparts.

An epochal CEPR-supported study appeared in mid-2025 in The Lancet Global Health, said to be “the leading journal in global health.” It shows that deaths in economically-sanctioned countries increased in recent years “by approximately 564,000” every year. They attribute the excess deaths to unilateral economic sanctions, imposed mostly by the US government. The point out that, “This is comparable to worldwide annual deaths from armed conflict.” Plus, “children under five years old accounted for 51 percent of the deaths caused by these sanctions.”

So that the world and UN General Assembly know

At a press conference on September 7, Cuban Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez introduced his ministry’s annual report on adverse blockade effects. It appears in advance of the vote to be taken October 28 in the UN General Assembly on a Cuban resolution calling for the blockade to end. For 33 years, delegates informed by these reports have overwhelmingly approved the same resolution.

The report documents US actions and measures taken between March 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026. It may........

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