( Spanish) – He January 1, 1959 A rebel army unit entered Havana, marking the triumph of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro and the overthrow of dictator Fulgencio Batista.
A little more than two years had passed since the arrival of the first revolutionaries to Cuba aboard the Granma yacht, after which an armed struggle began from the Sierra Maestra, and the victory generated confusion and concern throughout the region.
Relations between the new revolutionary government and the United States, however, have been extremely tense from the beginning, and have been especially marked by the embargo, or blockade—as they call it on the island—which the Cuban Government usually blames. because of their economic problems.
The US embargo remains, in fact, a key issue in international forums: on Wednesday the UN General Assembly approved a non-binding resolution in rejection of the historic measure against Cubawith 187 votes in favor, 2 against – USA. and Israel – and 1 abstention.
This vote even generated political tensions in Argentina, where the government of President Javier Milei removed its foreign minister, Diana Mondino, from office that same Wednesday, presumably because of Argentina’s vote in favor of the UN resolution. Milei’s government considers the US and Israel as two of its main allies, and spoke out against rejecting the embargo.
But what exactly does this embargo consist of?
In 1960 Cuba began a wave of nationalizations that affected US interests worth US$1 billionincluding land and sugar refineries on the island.
Consequently, the then president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, established that same year the first embargo on revolutionary Cuba: he prohibited exports from the United States to Cuba, except for medicines and some foods.
In February 1962, the government of John F. Kennedy expanded the embargo, extending restrictions on Cuban importsbased on the Foreign Assistance Act approved by Congress in 1961 and that allowed the president to impose these measures until the Cuban government made progress in compensating US citizens for nationalizations.
In October 1962, in the context of the Missile Crisis, the United States also applied a naval blockade on Cuba to prevent the arrival of more nuclear-capable ballistic missiles from the Soviet Union. But this blockade was lifted in November, after the end of the crisis.
The embargo, however, remained in force until today, although in recent decades it has been extended and partially eased on different occasions.
During the Bill Clinton administration, the Cuban Democracy Act (1992) and the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act (1996) reinforced the embargo.
This latest legislation, known as the law Helms-Burtonwas born with the main objective of limiting the commercial operations of other countries with Cuba and took the embargo to new levels. Specifically, it prevents the embargo on Cuba from being lifted without authorization from Congress; requires the mandatory blocking of visas for individuals who benefited from property confiscated by Cuba; and allows Americans born in Cuba to sue those who confiscated their property on the island.
It was approved at a time of high tensions between Washington and Havana after the downing of two civilian planes belonging to the anti-Castro group “Brothers to the Rescue” by the Cuban Air Force in 1996. Four people died, including three US citizens.
During the presidency of Barack Obama, relations between the United States and Cuba improved and there were measures to alleviate the situation: travel restrictions were removed, commercial flights between both countries were resumed, some sanctions were partially relaxed, Cuba was removed from the list of countries that support terrorism and in 2015 diplomatic relations were resumed with the reopening of the US embassy in Havana.
But after the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2017, most of these changes were reversed, reinforcing the embargo with sanctions between 2019 and 2021, again restricting travel and once again placing Cuba on the list of countries that support terrorism.
The US embargo on Cuba has been going on for almost 60 years and has generated intense debates since its implementation.
“The embargo as such at the end of the day has been a half or third embargo, extraordinarily porous. Even before the Helms-Burton law it was impossible to secure the extraterritorial parts of the embargo,” Eduardo Gamarra, professor of international politics at Florida International University, told .
As an example, he explained that “a large part of Cuba’s tourism boom has been thanks to Spanish investment.” “When you simply see the argument that the embargo has caused Cuba’s problems, that line is false.”
“Cuba was an economy completely subsidized by the Soviet Union until 1990, and when those subsidies ended, the real nature of the system was seen, with a state monopoly and little private initiative, and it was forced to open up at the end of the 90s” Gamarra considered.
“The embargo has been the way to justify the failure of the revolution. “Much of what is happening now is a product of access to the world of ordinary Cubans through communications,” he said.
For Frank Calzón, Cuban political scientist and human rights activist, “much of what the Cuban government calls the blockade is a lie, the US sells Cuba everything it needs, but demands that payment be in cash.” . Nobody believes the big lies of Castroism anymore.”
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While Sebastián Arcos, a graduate in International Relations and deputy director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, says that this is an “official narrative that has been going on for decades.” “Cubans no longer believe in that narrative, it is a simplistic explanation that does not reflect reality,” he said.
On the other hand, for Arturo Lopez Levy, professor of international relations at Holy Names University, “it is more correct” to talk about a blockade or siege than simply an embargo.
“Because the sanctions against Cuba are not simply a restriction on trade. The US Government sought to generate ‘hunger and desperation’ in the people to generate a change of government, as Lester Mallory’s memorandum points out,” he added, referring to the internal memo sent on April 6, 1960 by then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory to Roy Rubottom, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs.
“The effect in Cuba is that every financial transaction costs much more than normally. There are French banks, German banks, Mexican and Argentine companies, from all over the world that have been penalized by billions of dollars for financial operations that do not violate their internal or international laws,” he considered.
Regarding the recent protests in Cuba, Lopez Levy said that the pandemic and the economic blow it caused in Cuba were “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“The rest of the glass was full of water due to two factors: the economic policy errors of the Cuban government and the effects of the sanctions,” he stressed. “Sanctions have made a difficult problem like the pandemic particularly almost unmanageable.”
According to 2022 data from Economic Complexity Observatory of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, China is the main export destination of (39.9%), followed by Spain (13%), Germany (5.48%), Portugal (4.06%) and Switzerland (3. 88%).
While Cuba obtains its imports mainly from Spain (23.2%), China (11.5%), the United States (9.71%), Brazil (8.27%), the Netherlands (6.41%), inter alia.
Some of its main exports are tobacco, sugar, alcoholic beverages, nickel and zinc. While the main imports include chicken meat, wheat, corn and concentrated milk.
With information from Juan Pablo Elverdín and EFE.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on November 9, 2021 and has been updated.
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