End the U.S. Blockade on Cuba — FOREIGN AFFAIRS REVIEW

Feb 4

Feb 4 End the U.S. Blockade on Cuba

In July of 2021, hundreds of Cubans took to the streets to protest the worsening health conditions and famine risk posed by the increased spread of Covid-19. These were the largest anti-government protests since the 1990s, and despite being met with a wave of counterprotests and support for the revolutionary government, many in the West took them as an opportunity to affirm support for a “democratic” Cuba. Twitter was rife with #SOSCuba and the Biden administration strongly denounced the Cuban government’s response to the protests, putting sanctions on Cuban leaders for using “violence against peaceful protestors” (we are, of course, meant to ignore the US’s violent, extrajudicial responses to the Black Lives Matter protests). However, ignored in this discussion was El Bloqueo – the economic war the US has waged against Cuba for over sixty years. If America truly cares about the health and human rights of the Cuban people – not to mention things such as international law – it will lift these crippling sanctions, not use them to undermine a government that is widely supported by the Cuban people.

Since the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the island of Cuba had been dominated by the United States of America. The Platt Amendment, passed in 1901, made Cuba effectively a neo-colony of the US, allowing the latter to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it liked and eventually gave Americans special economic benefits in Cuba. The island became a sugar colony and a hub for gambling, prostitution, corruption, and organised crime. Additionally, the US leased the infamous naval base at Guantanamo Bay. While subsequent protests by the Cuban people led the US to renegotiate this relationship, the US-dominated Cuba until the Revolution led by Fidel Castro in 1958-59. The resistance to American dominance of the island should not have been a shock. And yet, as a result of it and the land reforms that followed, Cuba was embargoed by the American government. The expressed purpose of the embargo “was to create ‘hardship’ and “disenchantment” among the Cuban populace”, causing them to overthrow Castro. While the language used by the Americans has moderated over time, this remains El Bloqueo’s primary purpose.

Cuba was able to survive this onslaught for decades primarily due to the Soviet Union buying its sugar at generous prices and exporting capital, supplies, and weapons to the island. Despite the blockade, Cuba made strides in literacy, healthcare, and equality across the board. Yet, when the USSR collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its primary trading partner and a decade-long period of hardship began in the country. The US saw this as an opportunity to bring down the Cuban government, passing two major laws – the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (which its sponsor, Robert Torricelli, said was meant to “wreak havoc” on Cuba) and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. These further strengthened and codified the American embargo. In the face of all these challenges (which included, among other things, Cuba being unable to purchase replacement parts for agricultural supplies because the USSR no longer existed), Cuba was forced to open up its economy to private business, which increased racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequality.

The American blockade promotes hardship for the Cuban people through a variety of mechanisms. First, it makes it incredibly challenging for companies who trade with Cuba to also trade with the US (which, of course, is the largest economy in the world). For example, no boat or plane that arrives in Cuba can then enter the US in the next 6 months. Worse still, the Helms-Burton Act allows companies to get sued for “trafficking” “confiscated property” in Cuba, which means profiting off of property that the Cuban government nationalised after the Revolution. This nationalisation has resulted in Carnival Cruises reassessing their trips to Cuba since Havana's Harbour was technically “confiscated property” that Carnival Cruises was “trafficking”. These measures and others have made many companies choose between trading with Cuba and trading with the US – an obvious choice for most.

Second, the blockade makes it nearly impossible for Cubans to receive food or medical aid. While the Cuban Democracy Act technically exempts medical supplies from the embargo, in practice these supplies are almost impossible to import. To export those supplies from the US to Cuba, companies have to receive an export license from the US government, which is a deliberately slow process. Additionally, on-site inspections are required to ensure medical supplies are being used “correctly”, which is practically infeasible. Since many medical supply companies are based in the US, and those outside of the US are still subject to the aforementioned trade restrictions, the Cuban people simply cannot get medical supplies in a sufficient quantity. This was exemplified during the height of the Covid pandemic, when Cuba was developing its own vaccine – without outside help – but lacked syringes to carry out tests.

The third – and arguably most devastating long-term hindrance to Cuba caused by the blockade- is Cuba’s restricted access to US dollars. As the world’s reserve currency, almost all of the world’s transactions are done in US dollars, which are more or less controlled by the US Federal Reserve based on the transaction in question. Cuba, due to its status as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and US sanctions in general, struggles to use dollars in international transactions, which makes trading even more challenging. Additionally, Cubans struggle to deposit US dollars in any bank because of the “state sponsor” label, and since many Cubans have used US dollars in the past and receive much-needed remittance payments in US dollars, they have been even further crippled financially. And let us be clear – this embargo is widely denounced internationally as a violation of international law. For decades, the UN has voted to demand the US end its stifling sanctions on Cuba. In 2021, 184 countries voted for this demand. Only two voted against; Israel and, of course, the United States. But internal pressure, whether by Cuban Americans hurt by the revolution or anti-communist groups, as well as economic interest, has kept the blockade up for sixty years. It is time for it to end, for the sake of the Cuban people, whom the US government claim to care about.

It is incredibly hard to quantify the human cost of El Bloqueo, but its economic cost is much clearer – the UN estimates it has cost the Cuban government $130 billion. It has undermined Cuban growth, production, healthcare, nutrition (a serious and well-documented problem in Cuba), and equality. It is a marvel that Cuba has even been able to survive under the blockade, much less maintain its successful healthcare and education systems. Rather than looking to overthrow the government at every turn (the blockade is simply one part of this effort, as a US official noted), America should thaw relations with Cuba and allow them to develop according to their own model. President Obama made strides in this direction, but Trump reversed them, and Biden has kept up the pressure. The Cuban people have never been given a fair chance by the US, before or after the revolution, despite the revolutionary project’s overwhelming popularity and Cuban frustration with American intervention. If Americans claim to support freedom for Cubans, they can start by freeing them from the blockade.