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Cuba: The “Pandora’s Box” of US Humanitarian Assistance

As the US strangles Cuba economically, Marco Rubio is running a $100 million “hearts and minds” program on the island.

On July 21, a cargo plane touched down in Havana carrying the first installment of a promised $100 million in US humanitarian aid to Cuba. The shipment included cardboard boxes of food and plastic buckets of hygiene products for 700 families. Following a media photo op of the aid before takeoff in Miami, stage management of the delivery continued outside Havana where Mike Hammer, the chief of mission of the US Embassy in Cuba, visited some of the first families to receive the aid; he then posted his interactions on social media. The aid kits were branded with American flag stickers and the words, in Spanish, “Donation from the people of the United States of America to the citizens of Cuba.”

Everything about this modest gesture of US goodwill seems designed to win the hearts and minds of the Cuban people—and deflect attention from American policies contributing to the hunger and misery that the food boxes are meant to alleviate. The aid shipment happened to arrive the day after the State Department issued a 100-page report accusing Cuba of leading “a revolution against Western civilization itself,” to justify America’s escalating war of economic aggression and attrition.

For the fraction of the Cuban population lucky enough to receive an aid kit, the rice, beans, cooking oil, sugar, toothpaste, soap, and other items will barely last 10 days. Many will lack running water to use the soap because electrical blackouts affect the water system, and they will cook the rice and beans with wood or charcoal in the dark, as intensifying sanctions imposed by the Trump administration impede access to fuel, electricity, food, and cash on the island.

The Cuban government has accepted the assistance, but officials there have pointed out the hypocrisy of the US economic blockade that has created the need for humanitarian aid. In a message on X, President Miguel Díaz-Canel declared that the US “will encounter neither obstacles nor ingratitude from Cuba, however inconsistent and paradoxical the offer may seem to a people whom the United States government itself punishes collectively in a systematic and ruthless manner.” “One hundred million dollars would certainly help,” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez noted in June, “although we must acknowledge that it only amounts to five days of the [annual cost of the American] blockade” against Cuba.

A Humanitarian Pandora’s Box

The $100 million in aid has been a source of tension since Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced it in May, when back-channel talks to satisfy US demands were sputtering. In a subsequent video address in Spanish directed at Cubans, Rubio elaborated on the objectives of the $100 million: “I want to tell you what we, in the US, are offering to help you not only alleviate the current crisis, but also to build a better future…. The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people,” Rubio claimed. “President Trump is offering a new relationship between the US and Cuba. But it must be directly with you, the Cuban people,” not with government-controlled entities.

To circumvent the Cuban authorities, the State Department assigned $60 million of the aid to Catholic Relief Services to distribute through its church-led Cuban counterpart, Cáritas Cuba. The money will provide kits for nearly 200,000 families, or more than 500,000 people, according to the group. Cuba’s population is more than 9 million. In addition, the Rev. Franklin Graham, an ally of President Trump, confirmed that Samaritan’s Purse, the evangelical disaster-relief organization he leads, is planning to help deliver some of the aid.

The church groups confront a tremendous logistical burden that may slow efforts to get the aid to the people who need it most. The groups must secure delivery trucks and gasoline in a country where vehicles lack repair parts and gasoline has become more scarce and expensive since the US imposed a fuel blockade in January. Indeed, parish priests are still trying to deliver similar food kits that Rubio promised in February as part of a $9 million response to damage from Hurricane Melissa last October. Cuban officials say only a fraction of that Rubio-directed hurricane aid had been distributed by July.

By July, when the first........

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