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The U.S. government's economic war on Cuba doesn't just affect Cubans.

For Massachusetts musician Ben Grosscup, whose mother was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the consequences of U.S. sanctions have become deeply personal.

This week, we speak with Grosscup, who traveled to Havana in search of a potentially groundbreaking Cuban treatment for the disease that is unavailable in the United States.

Also:

Trump’s Oil Blockade Escalates
Cuba: No Negotiations with U.S.
Palestinian Medical Students Caught In Two Crises
Rubio Renews Aid Cut Threats Over Cuban Missions
Fifty Years Since Cubana Flight 455

Trump’s Oil Blockade Escalates

Since January, the Trump administration has sought to choke off Cuba’s fuel supplies by sanctioning foreign companies and threatening tariffs on countries selling oil to the island.

Now, the blockade is escalating from economic coercion to physically stopping fuel before it reaches Cuba.

Federal officials announced Wednesday the seizure of 620,000 gallons of biodiesel at ports in Florida and Texas, including 71 oil storage tanks at Port Everglades and 19 additional tanks at the Port of Houston. They did not specify whether the fuel had already been loaded onto ships.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) says the fuel was destined for ENETEC, a Cuban state-run fuel wholesaler sanctioned in July.

ENETEC was blacklisted on the basis of Trump’s May 1 executive order, which authorized “secondary sanctions” against foreign businesses dealing with sanctioned Cuban entities.

The Coast Guard has also been boarding ships in international waters it claims are carrying illicit fuel to Cuba.

In June, the Coast Guard seized the Jaira Provider, which it said was carrying 200,000 gallons of fuel bound for Cuba.

Last week, the Coast Guard revealed that armed officers stopped the M/V Grace, a Comoros-flagged cargo ship, in international waters between Cuba and Mexico on September 5.

The Coast Guard escorted the ship to Progreso, Mexico, where Mexican naval inspectors say they discovered fuel in the ballast tanks.

Nothing in the May 1 executive order authorizes a naval blockade, maritime interdiction, boarding foreign vessels on the high seas or confiscating foreign-owned oil cargo outside U.S. jurisdiction.

The Coast Guard portrayed the seizure of the M/V Grace as part of its crackdown on “illicit Cuban fuel shipments.” But the alleged violation was the "unsafe stowage of fuel in ballast tanks," not the destination.

When Belly of the Beast asked how the Coast Guard knew fuel was stored in the ballast tanks before boarding, the agency did not respond. Nor did it identify any law prohibiting the delivery of fuel to Cuba.

“It is illegal to harass and intercept ships carrying fuel to Cuba in international waters, just as piracy and plunder are illegal,” Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío posted on Facebook.

The Cuban government has not publicly confirmed that either the Jaira Provider or the M/V Grace were bound for Cuba. The Coast Guard has not publicly disclosed evidence establishing that Cuba was the ships’ destination.

Mexican authorities reported that the ship had authorization from Comoros to travel to the Dominican Republic, with an explicit prohibition on diverting to Cuba.

Cuba: No Negotiations With U.S.

At the United Nations last month, Donald Trump claimed Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “deep into negotiations” with Cuba.

Lianys Torres Rivera, Cuba’s top diplomat in Washington, told Reuters Monday there are no negotiations.

She clarified that the two governments remain in contact through meetings, phone calls and WhatsApp messages, but have made no progress toward an agenda or restarting formal talks.

Cuban officials have been saying the same for months. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said talks—not negotiations—initiated earlier this year had stalled by June.

Back in February, a senior Trump official told Drop Site that Trump’s insistence that negotiations with Cuba were ongoing was based on a lie being told to him by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. According to the official, Rubio’s plan was to eventually declare the talks a failure, blame Cuban intransigence and convince Trump that regime change was the only path forward.

Eight months later, Trump is still predicting the two countries “will make a deal.” Meanwhile, Rubio has overseen a relentless escalation of U.S. sanctions, rolling out new measures almost weekly that have pushed Cuba toward a humanitarian crisis.

Trump is also saying he doesn’t think the U.S. will “need the military.”

But Cuba is preparing for that possibility, anyway.

“We are increasing our [defense] capabilities now more than ever before,” Torres Rivera said.

She said Cuba was open to dialogue, but that regime change imposed by the United States was a “red line.”

Palestinian Medical Students Caught In Two Crises

While the U.S. government backs genocide in Gaza, Cuba has given refuge to hundreds of Palestinian medical students, providing them scholarships to study on the island.

Jenen Hani Alean Alzwaraa was studying to become a doctor in Cuba when Israel escalated its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza after October 7, 2023.

She had already lost family members, friends and her house to Israeli attacks.

After October 7, she struggled to study, worrying about her mother and other family members. She has been unable to return home.

“As a Palestinian, seeing my people being exterminated causes me indescribable pain and anger,” she told Belly of the Beast last year. “I suffer from stress, depression and insomnia. I can barely pay attention to my studies.”

“Thanks to Cuba, I can be the hope of my family and of many Palestinian women,” she said.

Watch Jenen’s story HERE.

Murid Abukhater also came to Cuba to study medicine, enrolling at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).

His goal has always been to return to Gaza as a doctor to care for his family and community. Our documentary From Gaza to Cuba follows his journey.

The country where Jenen and Murid found refuge is now confronting its own deepening crisis.

U.S. sanctions and an oil blockade have worsened shortages of fuel, food and medicine in Cuba and contributed to blackouts lasting for hours—sometimes days.

In August, UN human rights experts warned that the measures risk creating a “silent Gaza” in Cuba and called on the international community to act before conditions deteriorate further.

Three years after October 7, Jenen and Murid remain caught between those two realities: fearing for loved ones in Gaza while enduring the U.S. government’s economic war in Cuba.

Watch From Gaza to Cuba HERE.

“The Blockade Is Harming My Own Family”

When Massachusetts-based musician and activist Ben Grosscup learned his mother had Alzheimer’s, he turned to Cuba for help.

Grosscup traveled to Havana to obtain NeuralCIM, a Cuban treatment for Alzheimer’s that has shown promising results in slowing the disease’s progression.

Our documentary Teresita’s Dream tells the story of how Cuban scientist Dr. Teresita Rodríguez helped develop the treatment while caring for her mother, who had Alzheimer’s.

NeuralCIM is not available in the United States, and given U.S. hostility toward Cuba, that is unlikely to change anytime soon. However, people from the United States and other parts of the world are coming to the island to seek treatment for themselves and their family members.

Bill Blanchet, a doctor from Colorado, has more than 70 patients who are taking the medication.

“We have 7 million people in the United States who need to be on this medication,” Blanchet said in an interview we did with him this year in Havana. “I’m seeing with my own eyes, in my own clinic, ongoing improvement in these patients that is just inspiring.”

Grosscup says his family is hopeful the treatment can prevent a more serious deterioration in his mother’s condition.

But what began as a deeply personal search also forced him to understand the consequences of U.S. policy toward Cuba in a new way.

“I’ve always looked at [Cuba] as a solidarity activist,” Grosscup said. “But this is an instance where it’s so incredibly clear that the policy of the blockade is harming my own family.”

Cuba’s ability to produce NeuralCIM and other medications has been constrained by the U.S. government’s economic war on the island.

“There’s an oil blockade right now, and that blockade limits what level of production can happen here,” he said. “There’s no way for Cuba to meet the global demand for Alzheimer’s with its existing production capacity.”

Watch Ben’s full story HERE.

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Rubio Renews Aid Cut Threats Over Cuban Missions

In its 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report, released yesterday, the State Department renewed a threat to cut U.S. foreign aid to governments and international organizations that pay Cuba for its medical missions.

Under an appropriations bill signed by Trump in February, countries and international organizations that appear on a State Department list for two consecutive years are barred from receiving certain foreign assistance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio decides who makes the list based on whether he has "credible information" of direct payments to the Cuban government "for coerced and trafficked labor of Cuban medical professionals."

Cuba’s international medical missions generate billions of dollars annually, helping sustain the country’s universal healthcare system and providing hard currency to a state that has been gutted by unprecedented U.S. sanctions and an oil blockade.

According to the report, the number of Cuban workers abroad fell from 24,000 at the beginning of 2025 to less than 18,000 in 2026.

Governments across Central America and the Caribbean have ended or announced plans to phase out their medical cooperation agreements under U.S. pressure, including Jamaica, Honduras, Guyana, Guatemala, the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The State Department alleges that the doctors are victims of forced labor and human trafficking.

Belly of the Beast has spoken to dozens of Cuban doctors who served abroad. Every one said they volunteered for their international assignments and were paid significantly more than they would have been working in Cuba.

John Kirk, author of Healthcare Without Borders: Understanding Cuban Medical Internationalism, told us last year that he had interviewed 270 Cuban doctors serving on medical missions.

“I have never met a doctor who said they were exploited,” he said.

In our documentary From Cuba to Calabria, we followed Cuban doctors working in southern Italy, where severe staffing shortages have left communities struggling to access healthcare.

We also interviewed patients and local officials who described how the Cuban medical mission has helped keep the region’s hospitals operating.

Watch From Cuba to Calabria to hear the perspectives of the Cuban doctors serving on the mission in Italy.

Fifty Years Since Cubana Flight 455

Fifty years ago this week, two bombs exploded on Cubana Flight 455 shortly after takeoff from Barbados.

All 73 people aboard were killed, including Cuba’s national fencing team and several children.

In Miami, the terrorist attack has been all but erased from public memory, rarely mentioned by politicians or the media.

In contrast, the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes remains a recurring cause célèbre—invoked by politicians, prosecutors and journalists to condemn Cuba while the history of violence and terrorism linked to South Florida is ignored.

This year, Miami’s congressional Republicans demanded that Raúl Castro face prosecution over the Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down. In May, the Trump administration announced his indictment at Miami’s Freedom Tower. Rep. María Elvira Salazar celebrated the charges, while Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava declared that “the wheels of justice” had begun to move.

That demand for accountability stands in stark contrast to the treatment of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, implicated by declassified CIA and FBI records in the bombing of Cubana Flight 455. They lived freely in Miami until their deaths and were never prosecuted for their alleged involvement in the attack on the airliner.

Read our article on the double standard toward terrorism in Miami and Washington HERE.

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