When Norges Rodriguez, an engineer who coordinates YucaBytes, a Cuban communications project, saw that Instagram was carrying advertisements for the island's Tourism Ministry, he could not be more surprised.
Even as President Donald Trump was ratcheting up sanctions on the Cuban government because of its support for the Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela, the U.S. company was showing photos of pristine Cuban beaches and inviting tourists to visit a place where visitors "can run or rest."
But U.S. laws ban tourist trips to Cuba.
"I didn't expect that," said Rodriguez, who was in Miami when he saw the ads. The engineer, who also spends a lot of time in Cuba, is carrying out a project focused on information technologies on the island.
"The Cuban government can buy ads on a platform that belongs to Facebook? How do they do that? Do U.S. economic and financial sanctions allow that?" he wrote on his Twitter account in November. Instagram is owned by Facebook, which bought it for $1 billion in 2012.
The answers to those questions are as complex as the legal jargon surrounding the U.S. sanctions on the island, according to experts.
The Cuban government indeed managed to sidestep the social media company's controls and bought the ads even though that could be considered a violation of the U.S. embargo, which since the 1960s has barred most American companies from doing business with the Cuban government.
"According to my understanding of the law, this type of transaction with the dictatorship violates U.S. regulations," said former Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, one of the early sponsors of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act, better known as Helms-Burton, which establishes the conditions for the end of sanctions on the island.
John S. Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Inc. based in New York, says there are "too many unanswered questions" to be conclusive in this case.
"OFAC has generally authorized marketing activities, including the use of advertisements, and entities operated by the government of Cuba could make payments to companies based in the United States provided the Cuban entity is not on a restricted list," he said.
"Should Facebook accept payment for an advertisement even if the advertisement may suggest an activity prohibited by United States law?" Kavulich added. "The company could argue that the advertisement is informative and, as such, not prohibited. Neither the images nor the texts used in the Instagram advertisement specifically say that someone should violate United States law."
The Cuban government has repeatedly complained that it cannot purchase advertisements outside the island.
Rosa Miriam Elizalde, a government-sanctioned journalist known to have close ties to top officials, recently published an article accusing Facebook of "bombarding" the social media platform with "anti-Cuban propaganda."
Facebook would not provide details on the Cuban ads. A company spokesman told el Nuevo Herald only that the company "operates within the framework of restrictions imposed by U.S. government sanctions."
The ads on Instagram were removed after el Nuevo Herald contacted Facebook to ask for a comment. On Cuba's Ministry of Tourism Facebook page, at least seven active ads paid on Instagram could still be found Monday on the platform's Ad Library.
The Ministry of Tourism in Havana did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in charge of enforcing sanctions on Cuba, declined comment on whether companies such as Facebook are authorized to publish paid ads for the Cuban government, saying only that it takes seriously any "accusations of sanctionable conduct."
Facebook can legally operate in Cuba despite the U.S. sanctions, but the use of the platform on the island is restricted. Users can establish pages and use its Messenger feature but in a very basic manner. The sale of advertisements for businesses and politics is strictly prohibited, according to experts.
So how does the Tourism Ministry handle its publicity to attract U.S. visitors to the island?
The ministry's official Facebook and Twitter accounts were created in Argentina, according to public information on Facebook. The entity launched it's page on Nov. 14, 2013, under the name of Mintur Cuba and changed its name five times until it settled in 2015 as Ministerio de Turismo de Cuba.
The account is operated by 16 people, eight of them in Argentina and eight in Cuba. The Facebook page has more than one million followers, and the Instagram account has 27,000.
By being located in Argentina, despite being an official page of the Cuban government, the Ministry of Tourism managed to buy advertising on Facebook. It did the same thing with the Sol De Cuba TV channel, on YouTube, which was created in 2015. Ads that appear on YouTube videos usually generate some income.
YouTube said it never paid the owners of the channel for advertising.
The Sol De Cuba TV YouTube channel was removed, along with the videos, after el Nuevo Herald contacted Google to inquire about the ads. Google, owners of YouTube, said it complies with the laws and regulations of the embargo. The company declined to comment on particular cases.
