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| Sunday, 7 November 2004 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Cuba's dilemma : The 45 - year embargo The United Nation's General Assembly condemned the United States last week by supporting a Cuban resolution to end the 45 years of blockade. This was the 12th consecutive year the UNGA had condemned the USA for its embargo on Cuba.
by M.P. Muttiah Cuba, a small island in Latin America, successfully withstood the economic blockade of the Super Power, the United States, for the past 45 years. This is the longest blockade in history. Cuba has been under a US trade embargo since Fidel Castro defeated the CIA-backed assault at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Political scientists say the time has come for the United States to realise the reality and to end the embargo. Former US President Dwight D. Eisenhover introduced in 1958, a secret plan to overthrow the first socialist state that ushered in Latin America. The aim was also to terminate sugar purchases from Cuba, end oil deliveries and the organisation of a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles to invade the Island. In 1962, the Organisation of American States (OAS) voted to end political and economic sanctions against Cuba. This opened the way for the member-countries of the OAS to decide for themselves whether to have diplomatic and trade relations with it and many of them have established such relations. Soviet Union and other socialist countries helped Cuba to overcome the economic blockade of the United States. The increased influence of Cuba in the American continent, made President John Kennedy to request French journalist Jean Daniel to tell Cuban leader Fidel Castro that he was ready to negotiate normal relations and lift the embargo. According to former Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, If Kennedy had lived, I am confident that he would have negotiated that agreement and dropped the embargo, because he was upset with the way the Soviet Union was playing a strong role in Cuba and Latin America'. But, Kennedy administration itself prohibited travel to Cuba and made financial and commercial transactions with it illegal for US citizens. The embargo The origin of the blockade goes back to February 1959 when the US banks failed to return 424 million dollars that were in deposit. According to the blockade Cuba cannot engage in any sales with the US. For example, last year Cuba could have exported 604,000 tons of sugar amounting to 196.25 million US dollars. 35,000 tons of nickel worth of 450 million dollars, and 2,000 tons of cobalt worth 75 million dollars. Since, Cuba cannot import from the United States, the country sustained losses over 18 billion dollars. Cuba was allowed to import only foodstuffs by paying cash. The United States also banned its citizens to tour Cuba. Over the last five years, some 6.5 million American tourists failed to visit Cuba. That would have brought revenues of 4.225 billion dollars. Cuba cannot use the American dollars in its foreign transactions and has no access to international financial agencies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank. These institutions did not provide a single credit over the last 45 years. The Mack Amendment, prohibits all trade with Cuba by subsidiaries of US companies outside the US and proposes sanctions or cessation of aid to any country that buys sugar or other products from Cuba. All in all the cost of the blockade for Cuba in 44 years was 79.325 billion dollars, an average of 1.803 billion dollar per year. What would have Cuba done if there was no blockade? Cuba says, with one billion dollar a year, around 100,000 new houses would have been built and within five years around 2.5 million Cubans would have moved into new homes. It would have completed the supply of gas to 2.4 million households. It would have guaranteed a litre of milk for the 1.2 million children everyday. The damage caused by the blockade has also reached the fields of education, health, culture and sports.The incumbent Republican administration also imposed harsh measures against Cuba. What is the reality? The embargo continued under 10 US administrations. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the US for its embargo and urged US to lift it. But the voice of the international community was not heeded. The Cuban policy of successive administrations failed. No administration could strangle to death Cuba even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Warsaw Pact. Cuba was the only socialist country that survived from the imperialist tightening of embargo twice in the late 1990s. The Cuban-American lobby dominated by the Cuban-American National Foundation was funded by the US's most affluent Hispanic minority community. It controls a voting bloc concentrated in two politically important states, Florida and New Jersey. Florida has become another battlefield where some 500,000 Cubans are leaned towards Republicans. Even Democrat John Kerry gave up his long legacy of lifting embargo to woo the Cuban voters. The opposition to embargo continues to increase within the United States. Over, 135 US delegations, including Congressmen, visited Cuba last year. 85,000 Americans and 115,000 Cubans living in the US travelled to Cuba in the same year. Several amendments to the embargo had been passed in the House of Representatives and at the Senate with considerable majority. Although the Central government's embargo is in effect, the Vermont state does not follow suit. It takes its own decision. Vermont's relationship with Cuba continued to increase. It expects to send its first shipment of dairy cattle to Cuba at the beginning of next year. The move is part of a 7 million dollar deal. Cuba and the US are natural trading partners, and if the embargo is lifted, the amount of trade between them would be enormous. What is more, the support for such trade comes from an unlikely source: Republicans, who are putting pragmatics above politics. Farm-state Republicans have led the charge on this,' says William LeoGrande, Dean of School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington. Vermont's agricultural secretary, Steve Kerr, will travel to Cuba in early November to finalise selling 50 Holstein and 50 Jersey heifers. LeoGrande says, `Cuba is closer to the US than almost any other Latin American country. It is amazing that despite all these years of government-to-government hostility, there is such a closer relationship between people-to-people'. It is under this backdrop, that Cuba had submitted a draft resolution for the 12th time at the United Nations General Assembly calling for the lifting of embargo against it. Cuban Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon speaking at a meeting in Havana said, the embargo was a policy of genocide, aimed at causing suffering and hunger. Will the US administration heed the voice of the international community which endorsed overwhelmingly the Cuban resolution? |
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| Produced by Lake House |
One hundred and seventy eight countries supported the resolution.
Speaking after the vote, the Chinese Deputy Representative at the UN,
Zhang Yishan, said the sanction was illegal and inhuman. He added that
nearly 80 countries suffered from the US embargo.
