Biden’s forgotten promise to Cuba
Camilo Condis is the type of scrappy entrepreneur Americans normally cheer. He’s the co-owner of a small electrical company in Havana, Cuba that used to piggyback on the robust tourist economy, but made a pivot when COVID hit and tourism dried up. Condis, 37, is now trying to capitalize on the green-energy revolution by installing solar panels in a region that desperately needs energy self-sufficiency.
The problem is, Condis gets tangled in American politics in nearly every facet of his business.
Sixty years of U.S. sanctions on Cuba have left the island with almost no domestic production, so Condis must import everything he needs to do business. U.S. sanctions make it impossible to buy on credit or pay for purchases through a bank account. He used to visit the United States regularly, buy what he needed in cash and bring it back on the plane. But tighter visa restrictions and other strictures imposed during the Trump administration largely closed that supply chain.
“The economy is very, very bad right now,” Condis says of conditions in Cuba. “Our first ask is to differentiate the private sector from the Cuban government. If they want to sanction the Cuban government, that’s fine, but don’t sanction the civil society in general. There have to be ways for U.S. government to say, ‘The Cuban private sector not going to be a target.’”
To many visitors to Cuba, an easing of U.S. sanctions seems logical and long overdue. Cuba is no longer a client state of the Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991, or its Russian successor. It poses no unusual national security threat to the United States. In 2014, President Obama began a rapprochement meant to boost U.S. trade with Cuba and export American influence. It