The U.S. State Department reiterated an offer of $100 million in aid for Cuba to be distributed by the Catholic Church and other humanitarian organizations.
In a May 13 statement, the State Department said the United States “continues to seek meaningful reforms to Cuba’s communist system, which has only served to enrich the elites and condemn the Cuban people to poverty.”
According to the statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. also made numerous private offers to provide assistance to the Cuban people, including support for free satellite internet and $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance.
“The regime refuses to allow the United States to provide this assistance to the Cuban people, who are in desperate need of assistance due to the failures of Cuba’s corrupt regime.”
“The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical life-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance,” the department indicated.
The funds would go toward numerous programs and organizations, many run by the Church, that provide shelter, food assistance, safe water, and home repair throughout the nation.
Funds would require a ‘regime change’
“The offer is $100 million, but it basically requires the Cuban government to surrender and undergo regime change,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami told EWTN News. “The government doesnʼt seem to be willing to do that yet.”
“Cuba right now is experiencing a total economic collapse because of the restrictions that the U.S. government has put on the importation of oil and fuel to the island,” he said. “So throughout the island, people are undergoing extended periods of blackouts of no electricity. And no fuel to put in the cars.”
The State Department previously “offered $3 million and then later on, another $6 million of assistance to Cuba,“ Wenski said. It was ”directed through the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Relief Services of the United States Bishops Conference was the conduit.”
Along with the Archdiocese of Miami, “they brought supplies – hurricane relief supplies, food, and supplies to the Caritas agency of the Catholic Church in Cuba,” he said.
“Itʼs still ongoing,” he explained. “That total $6 million has not been spent yet because it takes a while to get the stuff distributed, because if you donʼt have any electricity and you donʼt have any gas and youʼre lacking transportation, itʼs hard to get stuff from the port to the affected areas.”
“The $6 million or $3 million is a drop in the bucket,” he said. “The $100 million is in the market of what Cuba really needs,” but the funds “would imply that there would be serious fundamental changes in Cuban governance that would probably go to the state, or the state would be involved in it.”
Thomas Wenski, archbishop of Miami | Credit: Emily Chaffins/EWTN News
Following the offer, Rubio said the U.S. will give Cuba “a chance,” but he does not believe there will be a regime change.
“There is no economy in Cuba,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox on May 13. Any wealth in Cuba “doesn’t go to the people” and “doesn’t even go to the government.”
Rubio said the wealth is controlled by a private company “owned by military generals. They take all the money.”
“This is a country where people are literally now eating garbage from the streets, but they have a company that controls all of the moneymaking there that’s sitting on $15-16 billion,” Rubio said.
“I believe – it’s my personal opinion – you cannot change the economic trajectory of Cuba as long as the people who are in charge of it now are in charge of it,” he said.
“That’s what’s going to have to change because these people have proven incapable. I hope I’m wrong,“ he said. ”But I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think we’re going to be able to change the trajectory of Cuba as long as these people are in charge in that regime.”
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