About the Cuba Blockade

The Cuban government and much of the international community describe the regime as a blockade (Spanish bloqueo), emphasizing its comprehensive and extraterritorial reach. Official U.S. legal documents instead use embargo or sanctions.

This site uses blockade as its organizing term while faithfully reproducing the language of the legal instruments, so readers can find each document under the name that appears in the law itself.

The timeline begins with the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, the statutory authority later invoked for the embargo, and runs to the present. It covers federal laws, executive orders, presidential proclamations and memoranda, OFAC and Commerce regulations, and administrative designation actions.

Cuba's designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism is a separate sanctions layer from the trade blockade and is treated as such. The designation is documented on the timeline because it materially shapes the overall sanctions regime, but it is not presented as a blockade law.

Each entry states its date, authority, citation, and source. Where a primary legal document is available online, it is linked. 39 of 39 entries have been verified against a primary source.

Two labels matter. Proposed Legislation marks bills that have been introduced but not enacted — never presented as law. Needs verification marks any entry that could not be fully confirmed against a primary source; the project would rather say so than present unverified information silently.

The site is fully static and data-driven. The timeline is defined in a single typed dataset; pages are generated from it. This makes the archive auditable and allows it to be extended with new instruments as they are issued.

Dates are exact where the law specifies them. Regulatory amendments are recorded by the date of publication in the Federal Register.