THERE will be a “bloodbath” if America invades Cuba, according to an academic recently returned to the UK from the besieged island nation.
Professor Par Kumaraswami told The National she thought an invasion was unlikely but the threat has long loomed over the Caribbean country, which sits just 93 miles from the US shoreline.
Fears of an invasion have also been raised by the publication of a recent US State Department report which called Cuba the "capital of 21st century communism", linking it to social movements in the west such as the Black Lives Matter campaign.
Prof Kumaraswami dismissed the report as "clumsy McCarthyism", in reference to the 1950s persecution of communists in the US, but said it had added to anxieties about the threat of invasion.
She spent last week in Cuba, visiting Havana and the east of the island, and said that the US’s blockade was “testing” the country’s inhabitants and warned of the dire humanitarian impact on the horizon.
Kumaraswami, professor of Latin American studies at Nottingham University, said: “Everywhere that you look it’s having a huge impact. They are resilient people and they find ways of surviving but a lot of people talked about it in terms of being ‘in survival mode’.”
She added: "It is really testing them."
With the World Cup over, there are fears that the US President’s attention may be tempted by further meddling in the affairs of Latin America, after having started the year with the dramatic abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Prof Kumaraswami said: “Now that the World Cup is over, there is a fear that Trump is once again going to turn his attention to a potential invasion. Even if it’s just words, they’re prepared to defend their country but they’re also terrified in terms of the inequality in terms of arms and ability to defend.”
Asked what the outcome of such a move would be, she said: “They have said they have prepared their Civil Defence, for the civilian defence of the country and using, of course, the army, but it would be a bloodbath because the difference in technology is huge.”
But while the threat is terrifying for Cubans, the founding member of the UK-based Cuba Research Forum said she believed it would remain only a threat because an invasion holds no obvious benefits for the US.
“It’s a threat at the moment,” said Prof Kumaraswami. “I personally don’t believe that that invasion will come to pass because there’s not enough gain, other than the symbolic gain for [US Secretary of State and acting national security advisor] Marco Rubio who is planning his next job which would be president of the US.”
In the meantime, the US blockade on fuel imports to the country has put intense pressure on ordinary Cubans’ day-to-day lives – and women are forced to bear the brunt of the hardship, Prof Kumaraswami said.
Children’s lives are also being cut short, with UN human rights chief Volker Turk warning last month that infant mortality has doubled to 9.9 per 1000 births since sanctions were imposed in January.
Kumaraswami said: “Every aspect of life, the schools close early, universities are considering going online.
“The weight of the responsibility falls on women because, no fridges, you can’t put food in the fridge so they have to cook fresh every day which means they have to go and shop every day for food and as a result of that, many of the small and medium enterprises that are providing that food are raising their prices because there’s such huge demand.
“The government is raising salaries bit by bit to try and deal with the situation but the minute that they raise the salaries in one sector, private enterprise hitches up its prices again.
“No one is starving, that will not happen in Cuba because of the social system, but it’s being held together more than ever by goodwill among the Cuban people.”
And further hardships loom with the Caribbean entering its hottest period of the year. Rubbish is piled in the streets, with cleansing teams impeded by fuel shortages, creating an unhygienic environment where disease can spread.
“Mosquito epidemics, dengue epidemics, malaria, all the things that Cuba had dealt with really well until a couple of years ago are now coming back with a vengeance,” said Kumaraswami.
