The Malecón
photograph © Maximiliana Henze
The origins of the United States government's bitter antagonism with Cuba date about as far back as the history of the island. The U.S. government's punitive trade policy with respect to Cuba - The Embargo - is world famous. Many of us have heard the anecdote of President Kennedy who, in 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis asked his press secretary to buy as many Cuban cigars as possible. Upon securing 1200 Petit Uppmans, Kennedy's preferred brand and cut, the President signed the document that ended all further trade with Cuba. However, few people really understand why the United States government blockades Cuba. Other nations, notably the Canadians, the French, and the Japanese, do have trade relations with Cuba, have come to terms with Castro and his fiercely independent Marxist regime, and do not condone our leaders' outrageous stance that the Cuban people must be starved into submission.
As Send A Piana To Havana is a project that ridicules the embargo and tries to act as a sort of piano enema for our blocked up Cuba policy, it is useful to discuss the history and the implications of the embargo.
In 1959, the Cuban Revolution ousted the Batista regime, and it ceased to be a pawn of the United States. Up to this point, the United States had major investments in Cuba, owning most of the land and controlling the assets of tobacco, petroleum, utilities, mining, and sugar. Fidel Castro, the leader of the revolution became the President. Almost immediately, the United States began its attempts to oust Castro and to reverse the revolution. An independent Cuba posed a threat to U.S. economic and national interests – as it had been so long under U.S. control, and was situated only 90 miles from Florida.
The revolution occurred at the height of the Cold War, and Cuba developed strong ties with the Soviet Union as early as 1960. Castro recognized that Cuba had to appeal to the Soviets in order to survive as a small independent nation at odds with the US. The Soviets regarded Cuba as the perfect strategic site. So Kruschev and Castro signed a pact. In fear of an American invasion, Castro began to militarize the peasants and to purchase arms. Soviet petroleum poured into the nation.
Soon the longstanding exchange of Cuban sugar for U.S. consumer goods was severed. In 1960, United States' President Eisenhower refused to honor a purchase agreement for Cuban sugar. The United States had been Cuba's biggest market, and sugar was one of the island's most important sources of income. In response, the Soviet Union purchased Cuba's entire sugar stock. Later in 1960, the Eisenhower administration banned exports to Cuba. In 1961, Kennedy extended the embargo to include Cuban imports. Cuba faced economic collapse.
During this period of intense and unremitting Cold War conflict, Cuba became increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union. Kennedy banned travel to Cuba for U.S. citizens in 1961. He broke diplomatic ties with Cuba on the grounds that the revolution was turned over to the communists, and he pressured Latin American governments to do the same. Except for Mexico, every country did. 1961 was also the year of the CIA-backed invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The United States' failure was a propaganda success for Cuba. The threat of an external invasion quelled internal dissent. The persecution of the tiny island nation by a superpower strengthened the reputation of the Revolution on the international scene. In December of 1961, Castro announced that Cuba was now a Marxist-Leninist state.
In 1962, the Cold War powers found themselves in a deadlock over the Cuban missile crises. Castro requested nuclear weapons to defend Cuba in the event of an invasion. The Soviets were pleased to provide personnel, MiG fighter bombers, and missiles. The embargo was even further extended to foreign products containing Cuban materials, and so began the United States trade embargo with Cuba as we know it.
In 1962, Cuba introduced rationing. The supply of imported goods and foreign currency reserves had run out. Raw materials could not be bought and the black market flourished. The sugar-based economy was abandoned in favor of industrialization, followed by stabs at returning to sugar and trying other products. By 1968 mismanagement of the sugar crop almost ruined Cuba, but the Soviets, again, came to the rescue. In 1976, Cuba joined COMECON the Soviet bloc's economic community. Cuba supplied sugar to European socialist nations in exchange for whatever they needed. The shortfalls in the Cuban economy were made up by the Eastern bloc. Cuba received half of all Soviet economic and military aid to the third world: oil consumer goods, and food were plentiful. Conditions improved.
With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, beginning with the tearing down of the Berlin wall in 1989, goods began to disappear from the Cuban stores-milk, butter, beer, soaps, detergents, deodorants, toilet paper, clothing-everything. Once again, Cuba found itself impoverished and in need. Castro in 1990 called this condition the Special Period in a Time of Peace. By the time Boris Yeltsin, an economic reformer, took power in 1991, subsidies and supplies to Cuba had ceased. In the same year General Noriega was ousted in Panama, Cuba's main source for Western goods.
Perceiving that Cuba was on the verge of collapse, the United States tightened its trade policies. In 1992, President Bush closed U.S. ports and airports to third country vessels suspected of carrying goods or passengers to Cuba. The Cuba Democracy Act (The Torricelli Act) was passed. It reduced economic assistance to countries that traded with Cuba, increased punitive action against individuals who violated the embargo and prohibited U.S. subsidiary companies abroad from trading with Cuba. The Torricelli act also prohibited the sale of food and medicine to Cuba.
In 1996 the Helms-Burton Bill became law, under the offensive title of The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. President Clinton may have opposed the Bill under pressure from U.S. businesses to lift the embargo, but after the 1996 shootdown by Cuba of two unarmed planes flown by followers of the provocateur group Brothers to the Rescue, Clinton retaliated by signing the bill into law. Helms steered the legislation through congress. The Bill stripped the President of the United States of the power to change U.S. policy with Cuba, as all changes would now require the approval of Congress. Further stipulations of the Helms-Burton law are: the embargo will remain in place until a transition government is in place in Cuba that meets U. S. criteria; funding is to be withdrawn from any international institution providing humanitarian aid to Cuba; a $50,000 civil fine may be charged to any U.S. citizen who travels to and "trades with " Cuba; entry into the U.S. territory is denied to anyone who has "trafficked" in or done business with people or businesses that have trafficked in property confiscated from American nationals; American banks are barred from loaning to these companies. Any American citizen whose property was confiscated after the Revolution is allowed to sue any foreign corporation that has "benefited" from the property or from its use. This holds true even if the claimant was not a U.S. citizen at the time of expropriation. The legislation has been dubbed by some as the Bacardi Rum Protection Law and was, indeed, drafted with input from lawyers representing Bacardi. The Helms-Burton law has been widely discussed in Cuba and has united Cubans behind their government..
