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The blockade provokes losses of more
than $1.8 billion every year
• Presented to the press,
Cuba’s report is to be put to the vote at the UN
General Assembly on October 28 under the title “The
need to end the economic, trade and financial
blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States of
America.”
BY ELSON CONCEPCION
PÉREZ —Granma
daily staff writer—
AN
exhaustive explanation – including information
dating back to February 6, 1959 when the United
States appropriated the $424 million stolen by
Batista’s cronies that was taken to the northern
nation, from where it never returned, up to the
latest measures adopted by the Bush administration
in its eagerness to destroy the Cuban Revolution –
was given by Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque
yesterday, when he presented to the national and
international press the report that Cuba has handed
to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as a basis for
the vote scheduled for October 28.
There were also contributions relating to the
effects of the blockade on our country from Culture
Minister Abel Prieto, artists, scientists, nickel
and oil workers and, particularly, two blind
children from the Abel Santamaría Special School,
who acknowledged that the Revolution has provided
everything for their education and for that reason,
they too are demanding an end to the blockade that
damages them and all Cuban people.
In
the face of the emotional words from just two of the
50,000 children with learning difficulties who
attend 428 special schools throughout the country,
the foreign minister affirmed that “they will never
be able to blockade hope.”
The
document – entitled “The need to end the economic,
trade and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the
United States of America” – brings together an
infinite number of elements corroborating the
genocidal nature of the laws that have been applied
by the last 10 U.S. administrations and that, today,
George W. Bush is making even more cruel, with the
sole objective of asphyxiating the Revolution and
reducing our people to starvation.
In
the sequence of events summarized by the Cuban
foreign minister, we can see that on June 24, 1959 –
just five months after the triumph of the Revolution
– the U.S. State Department convened a meeting to
direct that the U.S. government should immediately
assume a very firm position against the Agrarian
Reform Law and its implementation, and decided that
the best way to achieve the necessary result was by
using economic pressure.
On
April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, deputy secretary
of state for inter-American affairs, stated that the
majority of Cubans supported Castro and there was no
effective political opposition on the island. He
cynically announced that the only visible means of
alienating support was through disenchantment and
discouragement based on dissatisfaction and economic
need. He suggested that any conceivable means should
be employed to weaken the Cuban economy, refuse the
country money and supplies, in order to reduce wages
with the aim of causing hunger, desperation and the
defeat of the government.
In
this way, the criminal blockade officially came into
being, using the weapon of hunger and desperation as
objectives to defeat the Revolution.
Amongst other details, between 1960 and 1961, the
U.S. government suspended operations at the Nicaro
nickel plant, cancelled the sugar quota completely,
broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba and
organized, financed and directed the mercenary
invasion of the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961.
NEW
AND ADDITIONAL CRIMINAL ACTIONS
One
Yankee maneuver at the OAS in 1962 led to the
breaking of diplomatic relations between Cuba and
the majority of Latin American countries (with the
exception of Mexico).
On
March 24 of that same year, the U.S. Treasury
Department approved one of the measures that has
most damaged our country over the last 40 years:
prohibiting the entry onto U.S. territory of any
product totally or partially manufactured using raw
materials of Cuban origin, even from a third
country.
In
July 1963, the regulations relating to Cuban assets
came into force, preventing all transactions with
Cuba and freezing Cuban assets within the United
States. Of the money that was illegally confiscated,
$96 million was handed over to extreme right-wing
counterrevolutionaries in order to finance their
terrorist activities against the island.
Increasingly genocidal steps continued to be taken
and, in May 1964 the U.S. Department of Trade
implemented a total prohibition of food and medicine
exports, although nowadays this practice no longer
applies.
It
should be remembered that with the objective of
defeating the Revolution and imposing neocolonial
domination once again, the economic damage caused by
the blockade now exceeds $79.325 billion and has
meant that seven out of every ten Cubans was born
and has lived beneath this criminal policy, and has
had to suffer the shortages and limitations that it
imposes on the people.
Besides this, the blockade’s extraterritorial nature
– namely, forcing firms and citizens from other
countries to comply with U.S. laws – is a violation
of international law.
FURTHER EXAMPLES
The
document presented yesterday in MINREX detailed
eight prohibitions laid down by this cudgel policy.
Cuba cannot make any kind of sales to the U.S.
business sector. If that was a possibility, in 2003
it could have sold 604,00 tons of sugar worth
$196.25 million; 35,000 tons of nickel at more than
$450 million; 2,000 tons of cobalt worth a further
$75 million; and $118 million in twist and leaf
tobacco, representing just 35% of our total exports
in that sector.
Cuba
is likewise unable to import from the United States
and thus, having been forced to do so from more
distant countries, the island has suffered losses
totaling more than $18 billion up to 2003.
Our
country is prevented from receiving U.S. tourists.
Thus, using conservative calculations, around 6.5
million U.S. tourists have been unable to visit the
island in the last five years. That would have
signified an income of $4.225 billion.
In
the same context, U.S. regulations establish
sanctions for those who do travel to the island,
which can lead to 10 years’ imprisonment and fines
amounting to one million dollars for corporations
and up to $250,000 for individuals.
Just
one example of how these measures are being applied
is the recent fine of $100 million imposed on the
UBS Swiss banking agency for undertaking dollar
financial transactions with Cuba.
Moreover, Cuba is denied access to the international
financial agencies, prohibited from trading with
subsidiaries of U.S. companies in third countries,
and ships from third countries docking in Cuban
ports are sanctioned with a six-month ban from
entering U.S. ports.
WHAT COULD BE
DONE IF THE BLOCKADE DID NOT EXIST
The
administration of President George W. Bush has taken
the blockade legislation to such an extreme that it
has established a foreign assets control office with
five times more agents to pursue and investigate
those in violation of the laws than those dedicated
to the tracking down the funds of the Al Qaeda
terrorist network.
From
2000 to 2003, that office effected 93 investigations
into international terrorism and 10,683 linked to
U.S. travel to Cuba and while it penalized those
found guilty of terrorism to a total of $9,425,
persons who traveled to Cuba were fined to a total
of $8 million.
While passing such measures, Bush is also preventing
our country from receiving vaccines produced by U.S.
companies such as the Chiron Corporation, recently
fined $168,500 after one of its European
subsidiaries supplied us with two vaccines for Cuban
children. That is the largest fine paid this year by
a U.S.-based company.
Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque’s press
conference yesterday likewise cited examples of
certain things that Cuba could do if the blockade
did not exist.
He
affirmed that with one billion dollars per year
100,000 new houses could be built, 2,000 of them in
the capital, and within five years 2.5 million
Cubans, including 500,000 capital residents could
have moved into new homes.
$180
million could provide the investment needed to
supply 2.4 million family units lacking gas to be
able to cook with this fuel.
Among other examples the foreign minister observed
that with $51.8 million the chicken ration
distributed among the population could be doubled,
and $300 million would allow an investment in the
new electricity generation units needed to guarantee
a stable supply of energy and undertake the
maintenance required without having to impose power
cuts.
The
blockade has led to a conservative estimate of
$1.803 billion per year, he added.
I DON’T LOOK
LIKE A TERRORIST
Culture Minister Abel Prieto explained that every
sphere of culture has been affected by the blockade
and gave the examples of artistic teaching, the
cinema, the recording industry and others.
He
added that with Bush’s new measures trips by U.S.
students for art courses in our country have been
cancelled.
That
is a result of the U.S. president’s fear of an
interchange of ideas and dialogue, which likewise
affects our people-
The
prestigious musician Ibrahim Ferrer told those
present that the United States had denied him a visa
to travel to that country because it considers him
“a danger to U.S. national security.” ”Look at me
closely, I don’t look like a terrorist,” the artist
who has received various awards and who is well
known abroad, ironically exclaimed.
Eliades Acosta, director of the José Martí National
Library; Digna Guerra, director of the National
Choir; and filmmaker Rigoberto López gave various
examples of arbitrary measures that range from
refusing to grant visas to Cuban artists, the
cancellation of performances, and the suspension of
congresses involving U.S. and Cuban academics and
scientists.
For
his part, Dr. Pedro Kouri, director of the Institute
of the same name, spoke of the U.S. refusal to sell
Cuba retrovirals for AIDS sufferers and other
diagnostic means for certain illnesses, which
amounts to a form of genocide.
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