The diplomat arrived a year after the island-wide ’11J’ protests and experienced the rise of the private sector on the Island
14ymedio, Havana, 29 October 2024 — The United States Embassy in Havana announced on Tuesday the departure of its Chargé de Negocios on the Island, Benjamin Ziff, who served as the main representative of the White House in the absence of an ambassador. In a video published by the headquarters, the diplomat reviewed the two years he served in the post. He was assigned in July 2022, a year after the Island-wide protests of 11 July 2021 (11J), a period in which the issuance of migrant visas was resumed, and “hard work was done to improve the conditions of the Cuban private sector.”
“During these years we have been able to recompose the Embassy, its staff and its activities; we have begun to expand our cultural and artistic relationship with the people, and we have resumed the issuance of migrant visas. We worked every day to expand legal and safe routes of migration. We also worked hard to improve opportunities for the private sector in Cuba. We trust that it is the solution for the prosperity and future of the Cuban people,” Ziff said in his farewell speech and added that, despite his departure from office, “the commitment of the United States so that Cuba and its people have a freer, more democratic and more prosperous future will go forward.”
Ziff, with a perfect command of Spanish and a cheerful personality, arrived in Cuba at a bleak time for the US Embassy. The 2016 acoustic attacks on Embassy personnel, which came to be referred to as “Havana Syndrome,” and the Covid pandemic that practically closed the country in2020 significantly reduced the number of diplomats sent by Washington. The Chargé d’Affaires not only had to relaunch consular services but also deal with imperatives such as the repair of the employees’ homes, plunged into deterioration and vandalized by remaining empty for many months.
The return of the festivities and cultural activities at Ziff’s residence and the programming of shows with American artists in several places in Havana were also part of the agenda of his team, made up largely of young people. However, despite his enthusiasm, the diplomat saw how the figures of Cuban culture who attended his gatherings, the number of activists in the celebrations for July 4 and the number of opponents and independent journalists he could visit in their homes diminished. Unlike other periods, this time the reason for such absences was not fear but because of the massive exodus that the Island was experiencing.
Ziff also was there during these years of galloping deterioration of the Cuban economy, the collapse of public transport, the fall in oil supply, the cut in the basic family basket of the rationing system and inflation. The crisis impacted the scope of his work and limited the Embassy’s contact with Cuban society.
However, the most bitter point of the time that Ziff spent in Cuba has been, without a doubt, the more than 1,000 political prisoners that the regime keeps in prison. When the diplomat landed in Havana, the popular protests of 11 July 2021 were still fresh, and the wounds of official repression were still open. In these years, with the exception of the prisoners of 11J who have served their sentences, the Regime has refused to release the detainees. Ziff, who withdraws from his exercise as a diplomat outside US borders, returns to Washington without having seen any sign of democratic openness in Cuba.
Ziff returns to Washington without having seen any sign of democratic openness in Cuba
The diplomat also received his scolding, when he was summoned by the Cuban authorities in March 2023 to answer for Washington’s decision to give asylum to the pilot who left the Island in October 2022 in a fumigation plane of the National Air Services Company (ENSA). Ziff had to listen to the “energetic protest” of Havana, which accused his government of being “accomplices and stimulators of piracy and air hijacking, crimes that, if tolerated and protected, could stimulate similar illegal acts with negative repercussions for the national security of both countries,” and they pointed out his “interventionist” behavior.
The long blackouts and shortages that have worsened on the Island in the last year also occupied part of Ziff’s agenda. The US Embassy had to suspend all services a week ago when the Cuban Energy System suffered a total breakdown.
According to his professional profile, published on the website of the diplomatic headquarters, Ziff led several working groups and departments involved in diplomatic relations in the Western Hemisphere. He was also deputy head of mission of the US embassies in Madrid (Spain) and Bogotá (Colombia); as well as a diplomat in Australia, Israel, Panama, Venezuela, Iraq, Italy and Peru. He was deputy director of the Office of Central American Affairs of the State Department.
Ziff, born in California, graduated in Political Science from California State University at Long Beach, obtained a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a master’s degree in National Security Studies from the National War College. He also received the Murrow Award for Public Diplomacy of the Department of State and the Presidential Rank Award.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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