Although Obama has symbolically thawed relations, a restrictive blockade by the U.S. remains in place
Despite the Obama administration's reentry to diplomatic relations with Cuba on 17 December, 2014, a U.S. blockade on Cuba remains in place.
In a U.N. vote on 27 October, a record number of countries in the UN General Assembly voted against the blockade of Cuba. Every year since 1992, UNGA member countries have passed a resolution condemning the harsh embargo, declaring it to be in violation of international law. Human rights groups Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemns the blockade as well.
Only two countries supported the blockade in the U.N. vote last week, America and Israel. There was an initial discussion by the U.S. to abstain from the vote, but the call was muted.
191 U.N. member states voted against the blockade in the most recent vote.
The resolution was introduced by Cuba first in 1992 and every year since, which the U.S. sees as counter-productive. U.S. delegate Ronald Godard said, “we find it unfortunate that despite our bilateral progress, Cuba introduced a resolution nearly identical to those in years past."
But bilateral progress is an exceptional overstatement. The U.S. and Cuba have been negotiating terms for revision of the countries' economic relationship, but the Obama administration remains stoic. Godard reasoned, “the text falls short of reflecting the significant steps that have been taken and the spirit of engagement President [Barack] Obama has championed.”
Relaxing rules on travel, that Obama used executive authority to pass because Republicans in Congress remain firmly against even talks with Cuba, the current policy still bans free import and export of goods to and from Cuba to the U.S. Cuba is restricted from the largest market in the world, and is forced to incur much higher prices for shipping goods to foreign markets.
The U.N. Secretary General released a report on Cuba that calculates an estimated $833.75 billion in damages imposed on Cuba by the U.S.’s refusal to do business, since President Kennedy first imposed the embargo in 1960.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Cuba lost a large benefactor and trade partner. The communist countries--to varying degrees--maintained a positive and lucrative relationship. Today, the majority of Cubans work for the government on less than $300 a year.
The U.S., somewhat insidiously, last year approved the sale of licenses to Cuba for $300 million in medical supplies and $3 billion in agricultural exports, according to a Senior Commerce Department official. But actual trade requires Cuba to pay in cash, a severely limiting restriction which renders the licenses nearly useless.
Cuba today is a shell of the revolutionary communist state of previous decades, owing to both corruption of state officials, a worldwide policy of neoliberalism and the U.S. blockade.
Initially setup to tamp down the perceived communist threat from the south, the embargo was a means to weaken Cuba’s government. But the policy has spurned the Cuban people with high unemployment and lack of resources, while the government of Fidel Castro stayed in place for decades, finally abdicated to his brother Raul in 2008.
The people of Cuba are suffering. The American Association for World Health found that doctors in Cuba have access to less than %50 of the world market’s drugs. Food shortages have lead to a 33% drop in caloric intake between 1989 and 1993. The AAWH report found, "it is our expert medical opinion that the US embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba."
Meanwhile, American big business keeps an eye toward the developments, seeing Cuba as fertile offshore ground to build industry, employ cheap labor and use the abundant natural resources. A strong U.S. government policy of openness is the only effective means to keep unregulated corporations from destroying Cuba at their first chance.
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