The case of a small Cuban food establishment in Belfast is just an anecdotal—but revealing—example of how the US economic blockade against Cuba extends its effects far beyond US borders and the island itself.

According to the Irish newspaper The Irish Times , Carlos Arguelles, owner of Cuban Sandwich Factory, has been forced to suspend orders through the Deliveroo platform after payments stopped. The businessman claims that a US bank involved in the transactions has halted payments, resulting in a debt exceeding 7,000 pounds sterling.

Arguelles, who has lived in Northern Ireland since 1998 and runs his business in Belfast, attributes the situation to his Cuban nationality and the automatic activation of sanctions mechanisms whenever the word “Cuba” appears. “It seems there’s an automatic mechanism that activates as soon as the word ‘Cuba’ appears,” he told the newspaper.

The business owner explained that between 20 and 30% of his orders came from Deliveroo and that approximately half of his staff depended on those orders. The interruption of payments has therefore forced him to suspend the service and also cancel orders with suppliers, given the impossibility of guaranteeing continued payments and salaries.

Arguelles also pointed out that a similar situation occurred during Donald Trump’s first term, when a Deliveroo representative asked him to prove that he was a resident of the United Kingdom.

The case is particularly significant because it doesn’t involve a transaction carried out in Cuba, nor a US company based on the island. It’s a small business located in Belfast, outside US territory, that ends up suffering the consequences of Washington’s policies due to the intervention of a US bank in its operations.

Just an anecdotal example

Although the Cuban Sandwich Factory case is anecdotal in its scale, it illustrates a much broader mechanism: the extraterritorial nature of the US embargo. Companies, banks, and entities from third countries may be pressured to avoid transactions related to Cuba for fear of losing access to the US financial system or facing sanctions from Washington.

The blockade, therefore, is not limited to preventing Cuba from trading freely with US companies. Its reach also extends to third countries and companies that, as in this case, do not even maintain direct commercial activity with the island, but whose transactions can pass through US banks.

The result is a kind of financial “domino effect”: a decision made in Washington can end up affecting a small business in Belfast, its workers, its suppliers and, ultimately, any person or entity trying to maintain normal economic relations with Cuba.

“Mr. Trump is trying to make it very difficult for anyone or anything related to Cuba, even a small sandwich shop in Belfast,” Arguelles denounced.

This case demonstrates, albeit on a tiny scale compared to the enormous economic and social impact of the blockade, how the unilateral coercive measures of the United States seek to impose their effects beyond its own borders. What happened in this small Cuban café in Belfast is merely an anecdote compared to the magnitude of the problem, but precisely for that reason, it allows us to easily visualize the true scope of the policy of economic strangulation against Cuba.