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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Ruaridh Nicoll in Havana

US claims of Cuba’s ‘unique threat’ jar with reality of hunger and blackouts

A man carries a black bin-liner as he steps through piled-up rubbish filling a street in Havana
Uncollected rubbish during a blackout in Havana this month. The country has been under a US oil blockade since January. Photograph: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

The US government’s latest allegations that Cuba is behind “many of the most significant upheavals in recent American political history” and that its leaders pose “a unique threat to American homeland security” have come as startling revelations to those living under the six-month-long US oil blockade in Havana, where desperate people search through piles of uncollected rubbish for food, or else swelter at home in 24-hour-plus blackouts.

The unsigned 100-page report, Cuba: Capital of 21st-Century Communism, published by the US state department on Monday, blames Havana for everything from “the George Floyd riots to the rise of antifa to the explosion of pro-terrorist activism on American college campuses”.

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