CUBA: All Shades of Blame for U.S. Embargo

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 8 2005 (IPS) - Seven out of 10 Cubans were born under the four-decade U.S. trade embargo – voted down again this year by the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday – although not all of them see the impact of the sanctions in the same light.

“The blockade only gives the government (of Fidel Castro) a justification for internal errors, which are the real reasons for our difficulties,” Lázaro Fernández told IPS. Fernández, 40, is a driver for a business which runs on European capital.

However, Kruskaia Massa, a 42-year-old teacher, does not hesitate to blame her day-to-day troubles on the hostile U.S. policy. “If we had normal relations with the US, we would have a better life,” she stated.

Washington officially put the embargo against Cuba in place on Feb. 3, 1962, although Cuba – which calls it a blockade – asserts that it actually began much earlier.

U.S. State Department documents date the start of the restrictions back to February 1959, when Washington refused Cuba’s new revolutionary government a “modest loan” to help ensure the stability of the Cuban peso.

“The blockade is not a lie, it exists and it creates a lot of problems, even for the United States. Look at how many businesspeople in the U.S. want to do business with us,” said Magdalena Rivero, 80.

To back up her assertion, Rivero showed IPS press cuttings about a trade fair which ended Nov. 5 in Havana, attended by 300 representatives of 171 U.S. firms.

A law passed by the U.S. Congress in 2000 allowed the sale of foodstuffs to Cuba. Castro began to take advantage of this loophole in 2001, after hurricane Michelle swept the island in November of that year.

The new legislation whetted the appetite of U.S. producers and businesspeople, who since then have signed contracts with Havana worth more than 1.4 billion dollars.

In turn, the shipments – which Cuba must pay for in cash before they leave U.S. ports – awakened enthusiasm among Cubans for “Made in USA” products, which had been absent from the market since the 1960s.

“If the blockade were lifted, there would be free trade. They have many products we need, but we can’t get them. Tourists would come. Everything would be different,” said Massa.

In her view, foodstuffs, health and transportation are the sectors that have been hit hardest by the restrictions, which have been tightened by the administration of George W. Bush.

“The blockade has been felt more heavily under this president, who is punishing us, the Cuban people,” complained the teacher.

New measures put into effect by the Bush administration in June 2004 restricted travel permits for Cuban immigrants wishing to visit this Caribbean island nation, and limited the amount of remittances – a major source of foreign exchange in Cuba – they can send home to their families.

“These things have really squeezed families,” said Manuel Méndez, a 44-year-old mechanic. “It’s a way to make people feel discouraged, desperate, so that something might happen here.”

A report that Cuba submitted to the U.N. General Assembly estimates the direct damages to Cuba’s 11.2 million citizens as a result of the embargo at 82 billion dollars.

The Helms-Burton Act, passed in 1996, tightened the embargo and authorised the financing of “subversive actions” against Cuba, says the report.

Four years earlier, the Torricelli Act cut off imports to Cuba from subsidiaries of U.S. companies in third countries, which had reached 718 million dollars in 1991, 91 percent of which involved purchases of foodstuffs and medicines. The law also bans ships that dock in Cuban ports from visiting U.S. ports in the following six months.

The Torricelli Act was put into effect with the aim of accentuating the impact of the break-up of the east European socialist bloc in the early 1990s, which cost Cuba 85 percent of its foreign trade, adds the report presented to the United Nations.

Young people who talked to IPS said they really became aware of the U.S. embargo with the arrival of the severe crisis triggered by the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, referred to by Cuba’s socialist government with the euphemism “special period”.

“I began to feel the blockade in the 1990s, because in the 1980s we lived well. My parents, both of whom are professionals, were able to feed and dress us without any problem. I remember that my brother and I even had nice toys,” said Leonardo González, 26.

But González is among those who believe the embargo is not the cause “of all of the country’s economic problems.”

“An end to the blockade would not be enough. Changes are also needed to fix things,” he argued.

The embargo bans trade between the United States and Cuba, with the abovementioned exceptions. Nor can this Caribbean nation receive U.S. tourists or use U.S. dollars for transactions abroad.

Experts say that if these restrictions were lifted, bilateral trade would soar to 20 billion dollars in just five years.

Havana also lacks access to credit, and cannot carry out transactions with regional or U.S. multilateral financial institutions. Nor can Cuban ships or airplanes enter U.S. territory.

An intense diplomatic campaign by the Cuban government culminated Tuesday in the approval of a U.N. resolution calling for the U.S. embargo to be repealed. In the vote, a record 182 nations urged the United States to lift the embargo.

The four votes against the resolution came from the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands. Micronesia abstained.

The international community has voted for the embargo’s repeal since 1992. (