US Pressure Mounts on Cuba as Havana Rejects Demands, Citing 60 Years of Sanctions

A retired construction worker waited three hours before dawn outside a Havana bank to collect a pension that has shrunk to less than five dollars.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said last week that the island has withstood repeated pressure campaigns without yielding to U.S. demands. "Sometimes we are asked, how has Cuba resisted what we have resisted?" Rodríguez said at a news conference ahead of a UN General Assembly vote on the U.S. economic embargo.

President Trump has increased sanctions on Cuba, restricted oil supplies needed for its electrical grid, and threatened military action. At a campaign rally in Florida, he said ships would stop 50 yards off Cuba's coast and the people would surrender.

U.S. officials seek political and economic openings in Cuba, greater investment rights for exiles, and a break with Russia and China. Washington has spent decades and hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to remove the Cuban government.

The island's economy is in decline, and wealth is concentrated among people with access to scarce goods. A store in Havana sold frozen meat for about ten times the average monthly salary, a price a man at the counter said could not be right.

On Oct. 27, U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz told Foreign Minister Rodríguez at the UN podium, "Back away, this isn't Havana." Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted an appeal on X for Cubans to work with the CIA, and Cuban official Carlos Fernández de Cossío called it a recruitment ad.

Cuban officials say U.S. policies must change. Foreign Minister Rodríguez said the United States has to change "with this government or the following or the one after that." Armando Ruiz, waiting for a pension of 3,900 pesos, said, "Sometimes you say how long can this go on for?"

Retirees line up for hours at government-run banks to receive pensions that have been delayed by power outages. The Cuban peso's value continues to fall against the dollar.