End the embargo against Cuba!
2016Nick Baker 2016-11Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 4 →
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In this year’s annual United Nations vote on a resolu tion condemning the U.S. embargo of Cuba, the United States and Israel abstained for the first time in the 25year history of the vote, rather than cast the lone votes against the resolution. The U.S. press celebrated this ab stention as a major advance by Washington and an ac knowledgement of the need to end the embargo. Cuba gave its measured view of the matter in Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez’s statement, “A change in vote by the United States is a promising signal. We hope it will be reflected in reality.”
Cuba’s main priority in this process of renewed dip lomatic and economic relations with the U.S. remains ending the embargo, which has cost the Cuban economy over $800 billion during the past half-century—a num ber that is 10 times the country’s annual GDP. Mean while, the U.S. government has shown no intention of ending the embargo—despite President Obama’s rheto ric—and has only made the slightest tweaks in ways that primarily benefit American business or are symbolic of U.S. capital’s desires in Cuba.
Two weeks before the UN vote, President Obama lifted the $100 limit on the value of Cuban cigars and rum that returning tourists can bring back to the United States for personal use. Cuban cigars and rum still cannot be sold in the United States, due to the embargo.
In a Presidential Policy Directive released in October, President Obama outlined some of the methods the United States intends to pursue in its new tactic of push ing for neoliberal economic reforms in Cuba. In addition to its goal of “help[ing] U.S. businesses gain access to Cuban markets,” the document also frequently makes clear the U.S. desire to wipe away the Cuban Revolution because of the country’s status as an icon of the Latin American left, with references to “removing an irritant from our relationships with our allies and partners.”
The presidential directive lays out some of the United States’ array of tactics to achieve its 58-year goal of roll ing back the revolution. Among them is the desire to bring the full weight of international neoliberal institu tions to bear on Cuba by pressuring it to join U.S.-domi nated international groups, such as the Organization of American States (OAS). Cuba has been excluded from the OAS since 1962. That exclusion was overturned by a vote of member states in 2009, but Cuba declined the in vitation to rejoin, saying that the OAS is an “instrument of U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere.”
This systematic approach is typical of U.S. hegemony. The document uses the terms “rules-based order” and “international norms and globally accepted standards,” which are shorthand for making a country’s legal and financial system safe for U.S. business by imposing the rules, norms, and standards dictated by American capi talism throughout the world to promote its interests. investment that “uses clean energy and innovative ad vanced technology.”
Having been celebrated in the bourgeois press when their plans were announced, the company is now depict ed as a cautionary tale of an altruistic and idealistic en deavor by the United States that was scuttled by Cuban bureaucracy and economic backwardness. How unfair that an American company can’t do whatever it wants regardless of the wishes of the local people! Cuba’s planned economy ruined the plans of American capital.
As the unfettered economic access that American com panies want has not materialized, they have begun com plaining in the bourgeois press about the “slow pace of reform” in Cuba, as if it were Cuba that was refusing to lift its embargo on the United States!
These complaints come from a country that, having put Cuba under a vicious and destructive half-century economic blockade, and after 24 years of near-unan imous UN votes condemning the embargo, decides to abstain from voting on the 25th time and calls it a major accomplishment!
While Obama may indeed consider markets and com merce to be more effective ways of accomplishing the goals of American imperialism than the “outdated” em bargo, he knows that the embargo, which is a strangle hold on the Cuban economy, is a powerful weapon for him to use against Cuba. And the U.S. government will certainly not give it up for a pittance or unless it is forced to by mass action. In fact, in Obama’s declaration he states that, even if the embargo were “eased,” Cuba would not have the resources to purchase U.S. exports.
End the embargo! Long live the Cuban Revolution! n