Looking at Change: U.S. and Cuba, blockade and revolution
S. E. Anderson
The U.S. blockade of Cuba is like the sun; neither will disappear soon. But different: the U.S. politicians and people are aware of the sun, but may have forgotten about the Cuba blockade. It’s persisted for almost 60 years, basically unchanged. The following is about change.
What doesn’t change is abuse handed out to anyone in public life who says nice things about Cuba. Recently presidential candidate Bernie Sanders tried to ward off attacks as he praised Cuba’s 1961 literacy campaign. But labelling Cuba’s leadership as “authoritarian” didn’t work. Senators Rubio and Menendez and other politicians, Democratic and Republican alike, lashed out. Democratic leaders in Florida joined in, conveying the idea that at election time in Florida, Cuba matters.
Once more, on February 25, President Donald Trump authorized continuation of the blockade by proclaiming a national emergency. Legislation passed in 1976 requires the president to periodically reconfirm the pressing nature of the Cuba emergency.
Regulations have long been in place that bar ships from entering U.S. ports for six months after leaving off or taking on cargo in Cuba. The U.S. Treasury Department has long penalized companies in third countries, or their affiliates anywhere, for marketing products in Cuba that contain even tiny U.S. components. Foreign banks, insurance companies, and international agencies have long paid big fines if they deal with Cuba directly or handle U.S. dollars in the course of someone else’s transactions with Cuba. Even now U. S. travelers to the island risk fines for violating this or that blockade rule. Slight easing of blockade regulations under the Carter and Obama administrations was short-lived.
The heirs of families whose properties were nationalized in Cuba benefit now from a 2019 presidential decree allowing them to bring suit in U.S. courts against individuals or companies anywhere who used or profited from their former properties. The U.S. government wants to frighten current or potential investors so they might give up on enterprises in Cuba.
The U.S. government has never strayed from cruel State Department recommendations in 1960 on how to defeat Cuba’s Revolution. The call was for creating shortages and suffering so that desperate Cubans would rise up in rebellion. According to official sources in Havana, cumulative losses and shortages over the decades have deprived Cuba of $922.6 billion, adjusted for inflation. .
The U.S. government is persistent too in its dedication to taking down other "objectionable" governments, as evidenced by regime change in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973), Grenada, (1983), Panama (1989), Nicaragua (1980s), Honduras (2009), and Bolivia (2019)–and by assaults on Venezuela.
Proponents of the blockade can choose among rationales at their disposal: the blockade solidifies the loyalty of right-wingers to this or that administration, expresses gratitude to Cuban-Americans for their political support, projects an image of state power, or might even finish off the Cuban Revolution. Justifications like these, with long half-lives, don’t require new thinking; U.S. policy-making on Cuba is on automatic pilot.
In Cuba it’s different. The revolutionary government has to respond to people’s needs, overcome the U.S. blockade, and build a socialist society. Clearly, decision-making amidst conflict and challenges is taxing on planners and leaders at every level. They presumably strategize, study, listen, calculate, analyze, persuade, compromise, and more. This kind of effort, with its rough edges, speaks to thought processes leading to change rather than to merely the same. In short, seeds of change germinate in soils rich with contradictions.
This is the context for Cubans who, following the lead of former President Fidel Castro, engage in what they call a battle of ideas. For instance, President Miguel Díaz–Canel, officials of the Ministry of Economics and Planning (MEP), and other government and Communist Party leaders met on February 24. They discussed economic planning as affected by the blockade. Referring to the MEP as a “ministry of thought,” the President called for prioritization of “administrative mechanisms over economics and finances,” a balancing of economic centralization and decentralization, planning that is “more open and less detailed,” and transparency in reporting “economic results, the good and the bad.”
Ethical and legal principles are asserted. On February 25 Chancellor Bruno Rodriguez presented Cuba’s case against the U.S. government before the United Nations Council on Human Rights. He cited “non-conventional wars …violations of international law … rights to peace and free determination … “the selflessness of more than 400,000 Cuban health care workers that in 56 years have fulfilled missions in 164 nations.” He denounced “infringement by neoliberalism of economic, social, and cultural rights” and a “lack of will to confront climate change.”
José Martí, Cuba’s national hero, figures into political discourse. Recalling sentiments on Marti that students had communicated on his website, President Díaz–Canel on February 24 mentioned Enrique who had carried the Cuban Flag to the Summit of Pico Turquino, Cuba’s highest mountain, “solely to honor Martí.” The President spoke of friends who, “good at memorizing,” frequently quote Martí to “demonstrate his ability to speak about any and all subjects and answer difficult questions.” For the President, Martí is the “most universal of Cubans.” It was Martí who, in preparing Cubans for their War of Independence of 1895-1898, famously advanced the idea of “With all, for the good of all.”
Ideas are put into practice. Recently Argentinian observer Atilio Boron reminded readers that there are no destitute, homeless children in Cuban streets. They are in school and well cared for. There are no homeless people. Health care and education are accessible to all, the latter extending from kindergarten to graduate school and beyond. Boron highlights U.S. deficiencies in these areas.
In summary: tension in Cuba from conflicting realities stimulates thinking that embraces change. Rather than leading to the consolidation of one or another set of existing realities, innovative thinking theoretically stimulates the formation of new ones. Goals set out along the way seem to have included effective state planning, attention to the common good, and unity.
Developments in Vietnam serve as a precedent to what may be happening in Cuba. There too, strategizing for the future took place amidst conflict and stress – the U.S. war in Vietnam. Somehow the context favored the realization of goals much like the ones suggested here as applying to Cuba.
Over three decades, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has averaged an annual 6.5 percent GDP rate (6.8 percent in 2019). Vietnam now ranks among the world’s top 25 nations for export income. The nation’s poverty rate fell from 75 percent to nine percent, unemployment remains at 3-4 percent, and literacy rose to 93 percent. Life expectancy at birth is 72 years. The entire population enjoys access to free health care, education, and comprehensive social services.
The current coronavirus pandemic tests the proposition that a prepared and unified people attending to the good of all will cope. How will Cuba’s response to the threat differ from that of the United States? Cuba’s health care system emphasizes both preventative and curative care; it’s a public health system, no more, no less.
The U.S. health care system reflects weak advocacy for preventative care and surrender to the market-based economy. The Harvard Health Policy Review headlined a 2018 article this way: “Increasing Mortality and Declining Health Status in the USA: Where is Public Health?”
s. e. anderson
author of The Black Holocaust for Beginners
www.blackeducator.org
www.blackeducator.blogspot.com
If WORK was good for you, the rich would leave none for the poor. (Haiti)
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