The Cuban government accused US President Joe Biden on Thursday of maintaining the “maximum pressure policy” of his predecessor, Donald Trump, against the island during 2022.
In a message released on social networks, the island’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, told the Democrat to continue with the measures implemented by the Republican, in order “to collapse the Cuban economy and stimulate destabilizing actions”.
Similarly, the foreign minister added that Biden’s foreign policy is “accompanied by disinformation operations to try to blame Cuba for the impact of inhumane policies of US abuses.”
In this sense, Rodríguez has once again accused Washington of having included the island in the list of sponsor countries of the terrorisma measure that, as Havana insisted, strongly affects the economy of the country and makes access to international markets impossible.
Despite the criticisms, this year has also been marked by a rapprochement of the positions of the two countries, especially on migration.
On November 15, a delegation led by the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, Rena Bitter, and the Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ur Mendoza, visited Cuba.
It was the second bilateral meeting on irregular migration since Biden assumed the US presidency in 2021. The previous one was held in Washington last April.
Days later, a bipartisan group from the North American Congress, made up of three members of its agricultural committee, met with the vice president of the Caribbean country, Salvador Valdés, in the island’s capital.
On Wednesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced on Twitter that he had a meeting with Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, with whom he discussed bilateral relations and the impact of Washington’s sanctions.
The U.S. embassy in Cuba resumed talks today in its consular section as part of the reactivation of the process of granting immigrant visas, something that hadn’t happened since 2017.
