Cuban Postal Delivery to US Halted

Yahoo! News reports an announcement from Cuba’s mail firm which declared it has stopped postal delivery to the US. Postal deliveries were originally suspended in 1963 following Cuba’s communist revolution led by Fidel Castro, but in 2009 Barack Obama negotiated a reinstatement of indirect mail delivery through countries such as Mexico and Canada.

The progress the Obama administration seemed to be making with the Cuban government halted when the Cuban postal company released a statement that “until further notice Cuban post offices cannot keep accepting any type of mail for the United States.”

However, the Cuban postal service claims that it is not their fault; the suspension results because in November the US applied stricter anti-terrorism measures to mail deliveries from many countries including Cuba. These restrictions have caused mail to be sent back to Cuba, which makes the service more costly for Cuba.

This announcement comes as a surprise, as Obama’s recent decision to renew mail delivery to and from Cuba, as well as his decision to ease travel restrictions to Cuba, were seen as reparation moves.