Embargo of the United States against Cuba

The embargo of the United States against Cuba (described in Cuba by the term Spanish el bloqueo which means “the Blocus”) is a economic Embargo, commercial and financial imposed on Cuba by the the United States the February 7th 1962. In 2007, the embargo is always places from there, making this embargo the longest commercial embargo of the modern history. It remains a subject particularly discussed.

The controversy is in particular fed by the use of qualifiers such as “Blocus” or “Embargo”, according to the intentions of the authors. It should be noted that the General meeting of the United Nations used the term of “blockade” in several of her resolutions.

Before the embargo

The United States and Cuba have links geographical, economic and historical close. Cuba was a Spanish colony during 400 years, until the Spain concedes the control of the island in the United States after its defeat in December 1898 in the war between the two nations. The United States gave its independence to Cuba in 1902 then kept special relationships with the island while investing in the production of Sucre and Tabac, in the Tourisme like by conceding various preferences with the cuban imports.

The government of the United States initially supported the cuban Révolution, by recognizing the new government of Fidel Castro the January 7th 1959, after the escape of Batista on January 1st. However, the relations between the two states are very vites deteriorated. February 6th, 1959, a report/ratio of the National bank of Cuba consigns the deposit in North-American banks of 424 million stolen dollars according to it by batistiens leaders. Not only one centime was not restored by the US banks. The new government proceeded to a Nationalization on May 17th, 1959: the Land reform is issued. It touches 1 ' 200 ' 000 hectares belonging to citizens or North-American companies which were nationalized without compensation.

February 4th, 1960, the Soviet Union sign a trade agreement with Cuba. In May 1960, 3 refineries (2 American and 1 British) refuse to treat the imported oil of Soviet Union. Castro makes them seize.

June 24th, 1959, the State Department convenes a meeting to inform that it “belonged to the government of the United States to immediately assume a very firm position against the Law of Land reform and its implementation” and that “the best manner of reaching the result necessary was the economic pressure”. For the first time the suppression of the sugar quota is considered (see low).

April 6th, 1960, To ballast D. Mallory, under-secretary of State associated with the Inter-American Businesses affirmed that “the majority of the Cubans supported Castro” and that there “did not exist an effective political opposition”, by adding that “the only foreseeable means to reduce supports it intern passed by the disenchantment and the discouragement based on the dissatisfaction and the economic difficulties (…) Any means to weaken the economic life of Cuba must be used quickly (…) : to refuse to make credit and to supply Cuba to decrease the real and monetary wages with an aim of causing the hunger, the despair and the inversion of the government. ”

July 6th, 1960, the United States refuses to buy the remainder of the cuban sugar quota (70 000 tons of a food product traditionally sold on this market and vital for the cuban economy). The USSR becomes purchaser. After the failure of negotiations carried out with the mediation of Argentinian president Frondizi, Cuba nationalizes 36 sugar power stations, the refineries and the company of the telephones.

December 16th, 1960: Eisenhower completely removes the cuban sugar quota for the first three months of 1961. The March 31st 1963, new president Kennedy completely removes the cuban sugar quota on the North-American market for the year 1961 (3 million tons).

April 1961 is marked by an air raid against the airports of Havana and Santiago followed by the unloading of 1500 mercenaries to the Baie of the Pigs. The operation fails in 72 hours.

Embargo

The January 25th 1962, the Organization of the American States (OAS), by 14 vote against 6 (Argentina, Bolivia, Brésil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico), excludes Cuba. All the commercial relations, diplomatic and air between the island and the other countries of the continent are broken (except with the Mexico). The blockade is shared by the Western allies of the United States. Cuba is almost completely insulated. The Soviet Union increased its financial aid in Cuba then.

In answer to the bringing together of Cuba in the Soviet Union during the cold war, the president John F. Kennedy extended the sanctions by widening the field of the commercial restrictions. The February 3rd 1962, by the presidential executive Order 3447, is implemented formally the total “embargo” of the trade between the United States and Cuba. Kennedy imposed restrictions on the voyages towards the island. The March 24th 1962, the department of the North-American Treasury announces the prohibition of the entry on the North-American territory of very produced worked out, completely or partially, with products of cuban origin, even in a third country. In July 1963 between in force the payment for the control of the cuban credits which prohibits all the transactions with Cuba and orders the freezing of the assets of the cuban State in the United States. In May 1964, the department commercial establishes the total ban of the food boats bound for Cuba, although in practice those were not carried out already more.

The American embargo of 1962 was reinforced in October 1992 (law Torricelli) then in 1996 (the law Helms-Burton). Whereas the United States at that time sought to standardize their commercial relations with the other communist countries, such as the China and the Vietnam, an important lobbying of the Cubans exiled in the United States supported the maintenance and the extension of the sanctions.

The prohibition of the food sales was raised in the Year 2000. The amount of American exports to Cuba rises today to 500 million dollars per annum. In 2006, the the United States are the first suppliers of food products of Cuba, proof that the embargo is relative.

American law Helms-Burton

For the details of this law, to see the Law Helms-Burton of 1996

Motivations of the embargo

The government of the United States and the antiones justify the embargo against Cuba by saying that Cuba is a communist totalitarian State, that the cuban government contravenes freedom of worship by supporting the religious communities which are member of the Council of the Cuban Churches. They also reproach that these religious communities would not have free access to the press and that the not recorded groups would be in butts with various degrees of interferences and official repression. They also reproach Castro for controlling his government thanks to the control which he would exert on the army and to have repressed the opponents with the mode severely. According to the American State Department, the relations between Cuba and the USA worsened after the expropriation of the American properties and the embargo was imposed in October 1960. It is also reproached the cuban government for turning over its economy, and after a certain liberalization in the Nineties, to centralize it again. According to a study of Dario Moreno, international university of Miami, the exiled cuban ones of Miami are mainly favorable to the maintenance of the blockade and 60% of them still support the idea of an invasion of the island.

According to the American State Department, the violations of the human rights would be done in many fields in Cuba, but they would be difficult to document owing to the fact that no association can work in Cuba without being recognized by the government of the island. In March 2003, 75 people whom the State Department calls activists of the human rights were stopped. 14 of them were slackened at the end of 2004. In June 2004, of the members of the European Union restriction measures towards Cuba imposed. These restrictions were raised in January 2005 in an effort to re-enlist the mode to continue the European policy encouraging reform them while preparing the transition.

Let us underline however that according to " The black book of Communism, Editions Robert Laffont, 1997" , more than 100,000 Cubans since 1959 the camps and the prisons because of their opinions knew, and from 15,000 to 17,000 people were shot.

Effects of the embargo

The regulation of control on the cuban credits ( Cuban Assets Control Regulations ) imposes restrictions on the imports and exports between Cuba and the United States (gifts in kind or out of money included) and on the other transactions with Cuba or cuban nationals. It imposes a total assets gel cuban and financial affairs between the island and the United States. It restricts finally the voyage towards Cuba. In 2004, the restrictions are always places from there and are implemented by the Monitoring service of the foreign credits of the Treasury ( Office off Foreign Assets Control ). Custodial sentences of at more the ten years of reclusion are envisaged in the event of nonrespect of the embargo and the fine can reach a million dollars for the companies and 250.000 dollars for the private individuals.

In 1958, the United States accounted for 67% of cuban exports and 70% of its imports. On its side, Cuba accounted for 3% of American exports and 4% of its imports, placing the island in the seventh place for exports and the imports. As of the first years of the embargo, the official trade between the two countries was completely eliminated.

The cuban government evaluates the total effect of the embargo to 70 billion dollars reducing the growth, by taking of account the incomes resulting from lost exports, the additional costs of the imports (the island could have bought less expensive American products). On its side, the commission of the international business of the United States ( U.S. International Trade Commission ) considers a loss annual of 1,2 billion dollars for the exporters. Nevertheless, the embargo had an effect limited on Cuba during the first decades because the island profited from important subsidies on behalf of the Soviet Union and the countries of the CMEA which provided him fuel, consumer goods and subsidies. For the only year 1980, Cuba accepted approximately 6 billion. Cuba had also access to the markets of the Soviet countries to export its products (mainly the Sucre and the Nickel)

One of the most visible demonstrations of the embargo is it quasi absence of Automobile S in the streets of Havana, the capital.

The collapse of Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc in 1989 two years later led to an economic crisis in Cuba where the effect of the embargo increased because it prohibits the replacement of Soviet imports by the American equivalent products. Cuba consequently developed commercial relations with the rest of the world. In spite of the difficulties caused by the embargo in the years 1990, Cuba did not crumble, as certain predictions formulated at the time of the end of the Soviet Union announced it.

In 1999, American official exports to the island rise to 4,7 billion dollars, made up mainly of caritative medical assistance and other gifts. Cuba is 180e on 180 in the list of the importers of American agricultural produce in 2000. Following lightenings of the sanctions since 2000, Cuba is 138e in 2001,45e in 2002 and around the 33e place in 2003.

The number of American travellers visiting the island each year is estimated at 80.000, including 3000 visits of businesses. Around a billion dollar per annum is transferred by Cubans living to the United States. These travellers face the law of their own country because the laws of the United States prohibit to them to go to Cuba.

For the business men, the American law is even more Draconian. Thus Ry Cooder was condemned for its collaboration in the album of cuban music " Buena Vista Social Club " with 100 ' 000 dollars of fine to have enfreind the " America' S Trading With The Enemy Act" (American law on the trade with the enemy).

Currently trade between the two nations

May 30th, 2007, according to the managing director of Alimport (Cuban Food Imports Company), Pedro Alvarez, the total volume the commercial américano-Cuban reached 2,4 billion dollars and that the product imports agricultural reached 7,8 million ton S, including rice, beans, corn, cereals, eggs and chicken.

Criticisms and solidarity

Many voices in the international community protest against this embargo. Thus with the General meeting of UNO, of many resolutions were accepted with a very vast majority on the need for ceasing the blockade of the United States against Cuba.

Many intellectuals and personalities claim the abandonment of this embargo. Here some examples of this solidarity:

“The government of the United States is alone, defying the will of the nations of the world, in the implementation of this crime against humanity. It acts in the advantage of a handle of economic groups which want to adapt the richnesses of Cuba and to impoverish the cuban people whose revolution brought health, released them from misery and brought also a universal education shared with the poor of planet. Cease this shame. ” - Ramsey Clark (ex-minister of the Justice of the United States)

“Of this United States country inflated of material richnesses and intellectually poor wretch, where there are so many homeless people and famished, I could admire the fight of Cuba to share his thin resources so that each one can find its dignity. Cuba is admired in the whole world because the Cubans showed a love, an engagement and a direction of the sacrifice for all that - beings as planet - is oppressed, for all that suffers. Today, per hour when suffers in its Cuba turn, it is time to act. ” - Alice Walker ( Pastors for Peace - the USA)

“Badly named It law “Cuban Democracy Act” known as Torricelli (ndr) is questionable in its theory, cruel in its practical measures and wretched in the expeditious context in this election time… An influential minority of the community cubano-American claims with horns and cries the reinforcement of measurements against a wounded mode… There is finally something of indecent to see vociferating these exiled alive in safety in Miami and claiming even more pain for their poorer cousins…” - NewYork Times , leading article of June 15th, 1992.

“The examples of Cuba and Iraq make obvious the fact that the economic sanctions are, at the base, a war against the public health. Our ethics requires a defense of the public health. Then, as doctors, we have the moral duty to call at the end of the sanctions. Having discovered the cause, we must act to eliminate it. To make it possible our reason to sleep will produce more monsters. ” - Leading article of the New England Journal off Medicine , April 24th, 1997

“If it is in the world a country, or it is truly possible of human being, Cuba is this country. Although it passed by all kinds of upheavals, of circumstances implacably negative, since the colonial domination until harassings which it undergoes today, the cuban history keeps an intact root, which one cannot tear off and who always continues to flower. For this reason, I say that Cuba is a frame of mind. That one can be Cubain without being born in Cuba. And that in this direction, I am Cubain. ” - Jose Saramago, Nobel Prize of literature 1998.

Report/ratio for the general secretary of the United Nations on resolution 56/9 of the general meeting of UNO

The cuban government presented on November 4th, 2002 a report/ratio for the general secretary of the United Nations on resolution 56/9 (that of November 2001) of the general meeting of UNO. This report/ratio mentions clearly that, according to Cuba:

“the cuban people continues to be a victim of the blockade genocide which was imposed to him by the government of the United States of America with a its aim of weakening its attachment with the exercise of the free determination and its will of independence, social justice and equity. During more than 42 years, successive North-American administrations did not hesitate to try to cause the hunger and the diseases at the cuban people, like a resource to try to subject its spirit of resistance to the aggression and the annexation. (...)

“the economic war of the United States against Cuba lacks any legal base. In accordance with what establishes the subparagraph (c) of Article II of Geneva Convention for the Prevention and the repression of the crime of genocide of December 9th, 1948, it constitutes an act genocide and consequently, an offense of the International law. (...)

“How could one create throughout these years a system if meticulous person and infernal to prevent with a whole people the access to food and the essential drugs, produced in the main market of the world, with stronger reason if there are some who are single and can be offered at no price by another supplier?

“How could one admit that the access to technologies and the spare parts, medical equipment and scientific literature, essential for the full realization of the human right to health, continues to be refused with people?

“How could one justify these practices, not only from the point of view of the universal standards of the human rights and the humane, but even also seen in the light of the principles of economic liberalization and commercial international law promoted by the industrialized countries, including the United States, within the framework of the process of globalisation in progress? ”

The body of the report/ratio contains the detail of the attacks which causes this embargo with the cuban people like with the civil infrastructures and the economy of the island.

In the conclusions of the report, the cuban government affirms:

that the only economic losses caused by more than four decades of embargo exceeded 70 billion dollars;
that with its policy of blockade, the United States continues to affect the full realization of the basic rights of the man at the Cubans, such as the right to health and the food;
that it not objection on behalf of the administration states-unienne of the sale in Cuba of a quantity of food, cannot be interpreted like a flexibilisation of its policy of hostility with regard to the cuban people. The purchases had to be carried out under conditions of strict restrictions and by surmounting many obstacles;
that president Bush himself stated that the blockade continues to be in force without any modification and that it will be reinforced;
that the United States, through laws such as the Law Torricelli and the Law Helms-Burton, institutionalized and systematized the off-shore application of their blockade against Cuba to third country.

See too

History of Cuba
Crisis of the missiles of Cuba (1962)
Saving in Cuba

External bonds

American State Department, section of Cuba (English)
Historical of the blockade
Report/ratio of Cuba of November 4th, 2002 for the general secretary of the United Nations
Cuba: which reality? Or lower parts of a perfectly orchestrated misinformation campaign.
All on the blockade. Site of the cuban embassy in Lebanon on the blockade. Many references.
embargo, handicap or alibi

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