Hundreds of Cuban women stage rally against US blockade as energy crisis deepens

Hundreds of Cuban women gathered in Havana on Tuesday to protest against a US energy embargo and other measures imposed by President Donald Trump that are strangling the Caribbean island.

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The rally was organised by the Federation of Cuban Women, a massive group with close ties to the government and the Communist Party to honour the late Vilma Espín, the federation’s founder, a guerrilla fighter and Raúl Castro’s wife.

The crowd that gathered at a park commemorating a 19th-century independence patriot waved Cuban flags, held signs that read “Down with the Blockade” and clutched pictures of Fidel Castro and and Espín.

Deputy Prime Minister Inés María Chapman and Deputy Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal led the demonstration along with Mariela Castro, daughter of Espín and former President Raúl Castro.

“This policy of abuse has to stop,” Vidal told the Associated Press news agency.

“The Cuban people don’t deserve this. It’s the most comprehensive, all-encompassing and longest-running system of coercive measures ever imposed against an entire country.”

Vidal, a key negotiator in a historic rapprochement between Cuba and the United States in 2014 under the administration of former President Barack Obama, added: “It subjects us to collective punishment, recognised as such under international law, and we couldn’t fail to be here.”

In early January, the US attacked Venezuela and arrested its then-leader Nicolás Maduro, disrupting critical oil shipments to Cuba.

Later that month, Trump threatened tariffs against any country that sells or supplies oil to the island.

However, Trump said he didn’t mind when a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of crude oil arrived in Cuba last week, marking the island’s first oil shipment in three months.

“Cuba’s finished,” Trump told reporters last week. “They have a bad regime. They have very bad and corrupt leadership and whether or not they get a boat of oil, it’s not going to matter.”

Russia has since said it would send a second tanker.

Cuba produces only 40% of the fuel it consumes and the shortage has paralysed the country, affecting its health system, public transportation and the production of goods and services, and deepened an economic crisis that has plagued the island for the past five years.

“I am here fighting for the people of Cuba,” said Leydys de la Cruz, a 57-year-old seamstress who joined Tuesday’s rally. “I would ask Trump to leave us in peace. The situation is very bad because of the blockade he’s imposed on us.”

Trump has pressured for regime change in Cuba and threatened to take over the island while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has demanded the release of political prisoners and liberal economic reforms.

The US and Cuban governments have confirmed talks but the extent of those is unclear.