United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X on Thursday that the United States was “prepared to offer immediate humanitarian aid to the people of Cuba affected by the hurricane [Melissa].”
Hurricane Melissa, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever recorded, made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday with wind speeds of up to 185mph. By the time it reached eastern Cuba on Wednesday, the storm had weakened from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm.
Regardless, the Cuban Civil Defense evacuated over 735,000 people from eastern Cuba and officials from the affected provinces of Santiago, Granma, Holguín, Las Tunas and Guantánamo reported that roofs, power lines and fibre-optic telecommunications cables had been swept away, roads had been cut, communities isolated and banana, cassava and coffee plantations lost.
The offer of humanitarian support for Cuba from the Trump administration is surprising. Under Trump, the United States has ratcheted up punitive sanctions against the island. After his re-election, Trump immediately reversed a decision made by his predecessor Joe Biden to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
In July Trump also signed a memorandum to impose stricter sanctions on Cuba; the White House announced that it would more stringently enforce a ban on American tourism to Cuba, prohibit U.S. citizens from doing business with GAESA – the Cuban military-run business conglomerate that controls a large proportion of the Cuban economy – and oppose international calls to end the longstanding American embargo against Cuba.
Rubio has been one of the most vocal proponents of tightening sanctions on Cuba. The Florida-born politician has Cuban heritage; his family emigrated from Cuba to the U.S. in the 1950s, before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
In particular, Rubio has been outspoken in his support for sanctions against Cuba’s international medical programs. In August, the U.S. sanctioned African, Caribbean and Brazilian officials over their ties to the Cuban government’s Foreign Medical Missions (CFMM) program.
In a statement, Rubio said the sanctions were imposed on the officials “involved in abetting the Cuban regime’s coercive labour export scheme,” which he claimed “enriches the corrupt Cuban regime and deprives the Cuban people of essential medical care.”
Image Source: AccuWeather via X
The nonprofit Human Rights Watch (HRW), which publishes annual reports on the state of human rights in countries all over the world, seemed to concur with Rubio. HRW reported that “The Cuban government imposes draconian rules on doctors deployed in medical missions globally that violate their fundamental rights.”
However, various ministers of the Caribbean intergovernmental organization CARICOM, including the Antiguan, Vincentian, Barbadian and Trinidadian Prime Ministers, refuted the idea that the CFMM program was exploitative, stating that they would rather forgo a US visa than end the participation of the CFMM in their nations.
Spanish International news agency Agencia EFE reports that the Cuban and American governments are discussing how they might coordinate the delivery of American humanitarian aid. The Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío wrote on social media that “we [the Cuban Foreign Ministry] have contacted the US Department of State and are awaiting details on how and in what manner they are prepared to help”.
De Cossío and Rubio’s statements indicate that, despite longstanding mutual ideological animosity, the Cuban and American governments are on the verge of diplomatic cooperation.
Featured Image: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in 2025
Image Credit: U.S. Embassy Jerusalem via Wikimedia Commons
License: Creative Commons Licenses
