Joe Biden’s presidency raised expectations about a change in US policy toward Cuba, but until today he has implemented a tougher line than his predecessor, Donald Trump, The New York Times reported.
According to the journalistic work entitled ‘It is disappointing: Cubans criticize Biden’s strategy’, the Democrat’s mandate pointed, for many, to a return to the time of Barack Obama (in the last stage of him).
He recalled that Obama sought to bury the last vestige of the Cold War by reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and calling for the end of the embargo (blockade), a policy that, although the newspaper did not say so, the president himself admitted had failed.
«Instead, Biden is implementing a tougher line with Cuba than his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who tightened restrictions on travel and financial transactions,» the text emphasized.
He added that for many Cubans who had seen the election of a Democratic president as a reason to return to normal relations, with more flights to the island and more channels to send cash, medicine and food to their loved ones, the Biden’s approach (which keeps Trump’s 243 enforcement measures in place) has been a major blow.
The article commented that the White House – which has been studying its policy towards the Caribbean country for almost seven months – made the issue a priority on its foreign agenda and «imposed new sanctions against Cuban officials in recent weeks.»
The authors of the work stated that not a few expected that Biden and his Cuban counterpart, President Miguel Díaz-Canel, would take measures «to return to the slow and hesitant process of normalization of relations.»
The article did not include it, but Cuba has always expressed its willingness to dialogue without conditions with the United States, respecting differences and sovereignty, and without compromising principles.
This is how on December 17th, 2014, in a simultaneous announcement, Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama announced the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, unilaterally broken by the United States on January 3rd,
In his words, the then occupant of the Oval Office recognized the failure of the policy of economic, financial and commercial blockade against Cuba and the need to make a change in that regard.
"An Island on a Continent" 