US Deliberately Causing Hunger in Cuba Through Economic Strangulation, Says Professor

The US is deliberately causing hunger in Cuba as part of its economic strangulation of the island, City University of New York professor Danny Shaw has said in an interview with RT’s Rick Sanchez. Speaking on the Sanchez Effect show, Shaw, an ethnography scholar, discussed his recent visit to Cuba and argued that the US is the main cause of the instability. “US foreign policy for 67 years now has done everything to disrupt the Cuban economy, any sense of social and economic harmony,” Shaw said. “The State Department, all these different agencies, the CIA, they know exactly how many calories Cubans have access to, and every day it’s less,” he added. “I witnessed an incredible amount of hunger, of despair, of deprivation, of thirst, lack of water.” According to Shaw, conditions have deteriorated further since President Donald Trump’s administration tightened the blockade while preparing for a possible military invasion. He claimed that in some respects the shortages in Cuba have become worse than those in Haiti, another Caribbean country marked by prolonged instability and economic hardship. Sanchez, who was born in Cuba and raised in Miami, said the issue was personal to him. He also rejected claims by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Cuba’s worsening economic crisis is primarily the fault of its own government, arguing instead that “the United States has destroyed Cuba, not incompetent communists.” Watch the full interview.