AMY GOODMAN: All eyes are on Miami today as the Trump administration is expected to unseal an indictment against the former Cuban President Raúl Castro, who is 94 years old. Multiple outlets are reporting the forthcoming indictment will detail charges against Castro related to the 1996 shootdown of two airplanes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, in which four people were killed. Castro was Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the incident. The Department of Justice is holding an event to honor the victims at the Miami Freedom Tower this afternoon, according to an invitation reviewed by Reuters.

Today also marks Cuban Independence Day, as recognized by the United States and celebrated by many Cuban Americans. The Cuban government commemorates Cuban independence on a separate date in October.

The indictment would be the latest escalation in an ongoing pressure campaign against the Cuban government. Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana to meet with Cuban officials a day after Cuba announced it had run out of diesel and fuel oil due to the U.S. blockade and sanctions.

On Tuesday, as President Trump was showing gathered reporters his White House ballroom construction project, a journalist asked the president if a diplomatic deal can be reached with Cuba. Here is how Trump responded.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: With Cuba? I think so. Yeah, I think so. We are — I am very prone toward the Cuban Americans. They’ve been incredible people. Many of them have lost family members. They’ve been very badly hurt themselves. They’ve been in prison. They’ve come to this country, and they’ve been very successful. The Cuban American people in Miami, I mean, they are amazing people. Most of them are in Miami, in Florida, but mostly in Miami. I’m very, very prone to helping them. I mean, that’s — they’ve been — I think I got 97% of that vote.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Havana, independent journalist Ed Augustin is with us. He’s reported from Havana for over a decade, his recent piece for The New York Times headlined “Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say.” And from Cape Cod, we’re joined by Peter Kornbluh, Cuba specialist at the National Security Archive, co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh’s new piece for The Nation is headlined “The CIA Goes to Cuba.”

In a moment, we’re going to talk about the CIA director just recently going to Cuba. But first, Ed Augustin, describe the conditions on the ground in Cuba, and what you understand is happening today, the possible U.S. indictment against the 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro.

ED AUGUSTIN: In Cuba, it’s very clear to any of us here that we’re witnessing an unfolding humanitarian crisis, which has been long in the creation, largely man-made, but which is now getting worse every passing day. Why? We’re now four months into an oil blockade imposed by the Trump administration. And in those four months, only one Russian oil tanker, carrying just over 700,000 barrels of oil, and a trickle of oil through Florida, that only goes to the private sector, has come in. And anyone with common sense, regardless of political ideology, can see that a country that doesn’t have oil in this day and age can’t run, can’t sustain life.

And so, I’ve just come back from a reporting trip in eastern Cuba. Eastern Cuba is far poorer than what [inaudible] today in Havana, the capital. And it’s harrowing to see results. It’s harrowing to see the immiseration of the entire population, almost the entire population, particularly the vulnerable. So, a few examples.

Hunger is rising in Cuba. Ten years ago, Cuba was one of the only countries in Latin America, according to UNICEF, to have all but eliminated child malnutrition. Well, child malnutrition is growing. And I was speaking to farmers in the east who have brand-new tractors donated to them by the U.N. World Food Programme. Can’t use them. Haven’t had any diesel since February. And I was speaking to the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food. She warned of a growing food crisis that could potentially result in not just malnutrition and undernutrition, but widespread hunger, if this goes on. Other people might, say, worry about starvation.

The right to water. Electricity in Cuba is overwhelmingly produced by petrol, and electricity is used to pump 80% of the water in the island. According to Cuban authorities, over a million of people in the country already go without drinking water in their own house. They tend to rely on neighbors and the local church, things like that, go down the road, go to a well to get it. That number is rocketing up, because there’s no fuel to pump the water.

I was in an extraordinary situation in 18-story high-rises in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second city, the main city in the east, where, because the power plants are now running about 20 hours a day, people can’t cook. They used to cook with electricity, with an electric pot. They used to cook with cooking gas, but the cooking gas came from Venezuela, in the case of Santiago. And so, what happens now is that the rich are cooking with charcoal, which basically costs the Cuban salary for a month to get, so they have less access to food. And the poor, who can’t afford it, need to walk down the motorway with a machete, chop some wood and walk back with it over their — over their shoulder, in order to be able to cook. And very poor people I spoke to are simply just going to the mounting piles of trash, that are mounting because there’s no diesel to move it away — obviously, a terrible public health risk in terms of dengue and rodents and other diseases that can be there. They’re just going and picking up cardboard. And to see people cooking in high-rises, where ventilation is not good, with soot everywhere because of charcoal, cardboard and wood, it’s harrowing. People are coughing while they are cooking. One lady I spoke to, the water, when it comes, she uses it to throw over her kitchen to try and get some of the stench away. The curtains are yellow and full of soot. And many people now are just eating one meal a day. Again, even the food that’s being produced, it’s not getting to the cities, increasingly, because there’s no diesel to transport it.

So, what we’re seeing is the immiseration of pretty much an entire population. People like me, foreign correspondents, rich Cubans, Cubans that receive remittances from Miami, they’re doing OK, because the private sector has grown a lot in recent years. But it’s the collective punishment of a population, particularly targeting the poor Black communities, pregnant women, children and the elderly.

AMY GOODMAN: Your headline piece in The New York Times, “Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say.” We’re talking about an island, Cuba, that was once renowned for its universal healthcare system, known for sending its own doctors abroad to help in times of emergency. Can you talk about the crisis in the hospitals of Cuba?

ED AUGUSTIN: Yeah. So, for that article, I spoke to over a dozen public health experts in, largely, U.S. Ivy League universities, and I spoke to a great many Cuban doctors. I’ve reported on health here for a number of years, so I’ve got a lot of contacts there. It was difficult to get people to go on record, like the Cuban doctors, because Cuba is a very proud country, and not too long ago it mastered itself. It was boasted about, how good it was at health, talked about itself as a health powerhouse. And so, this is painful for Cuban authorities to admit, and it was difficult to get people to go on record, but eventually I did.

What they’re telling me is very, very clear: People are dying as a result of the oil blockade. That would be happening in any country you don’t allow oil in, OK? So, for example, I spoke to an anesthesiologist in the main pediatric hospital in the country. Because of the lack of oil, fewer mothers are getting to the pediatric hospital with their children, because they simply can’t get there. Often when he — not often, sometimes — when he is operating, the power goes out, and has gone out mid-operation, where he’s operating kids that can be — babies, rather, that can be weeks old, and has to maintain their vital — maintain them alive without a screen to look at their vital signs, before the backup power system kicks in.

I spoke to vaccine developers, who tell me that production of the Cuban medication is down to lower than 20% of what it ought to be, because there’s simply no diesel in production plants. Vicente Vérez, perhaps Cuba’s most famous vaccine developer — Cuba was the only country in Latin America to come up with its own COVID vaccines, and they’re damn good. They’re as good as the Pfizer vaccine, and a 90% efficacy. He told me, “Ed, I went into public health so that my children and grandchildren would have nothing to envy of children in the developed world. And that’s what we achieved.” Cuba currently has higher vaccination rates for most diseases than the United States. He told me, “Ed, I am now worried about the future of my grandchildren.” He told me that “I am worried that the vaccines that we have stored in polyclinics might spoil.” They have to be kept refrigerated. Thankfully, due to a lot of international solidarity and due to the Cuban government’s prioritization of health, there have been a lot of solar panels going up. And as far as I can see — there’s a hospital down the road — the main hospitals and clinics are getting solar panels, and now, in many cases, those vaccines are safe, for now. But those vaccines also need to be stored in warehouses, and they need to be transported.

And so, it’s very, very clear — clear as a bell — speaking to Cuban vaccine developers and pharmacists and surgeons and doctors, that this oil blockade is killing. Public health specialists that I spoke to said the main group it kills is children. If you look at sanctions more broadly, not just an oil blockade, but the sanctions, there was an important article in The Lancet Global Health, Lancet Global Health, British health journal, last year, which for the first time shows causation — not just correlation, causation — between sanctions and death. And this was not just Cuba. It was a global study, biggest study ever done like that. And it found that 50, 51% of those killed by sanctions around the world are children under 5. Life is the most fragile when it first comes into the world. And so, wherever you look, there is death and suffering as a direct result. And this is just in hospitals. If you broaden out to food and charcoal and lack of water, it gets — there’s a myriad of other consequences wherever you look.

AMY GOODMAN: Ed Augustin is an independent journalist based in Cuba for the last 13 years. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Times, headlined “Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say,” speaking to us from Havana.