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By Jaime Martínez Veloz

October 28, 2005

Original Article (Spanish)

Castro: Defiant After All These Years

On this coming November 8, the United Nations General Assembly will vote on a Cuban petition calling on the American Government to lift the criminal economic blockade that it has maintained against the island’s population for the last 43 years. Since 1992 when Havana began putting forth the petition, Cuba has obtained increasing levels of support. The international community is well aware that the embargo is a violation of international law, to say nothing of being economically irrational. 

Map of Cuba and the Surrounding Region

The blockade against the island is just one of many direct aggressions against the Cuban population, which is determined to defend itself. Along with other acts of terrorism, the blockade has the purpose of undermining the morale by weakening the population with hunger, and raising the cost of the Revolution so much, that Cuba will be forced to “get in line.” What is most unforgivable is that successive U.S. Administrations have enforced a policy that has turned the bad example of Cuba into a role model for underdeveloped societies, demonstrating that it is possible to sidestep the need to modernize for a generation.

The simple fact that the Latin American people have begun to demand a better life by imitating the Cuban model already constituted an intolerable challenge that the United States was determined to prevent. Long before Washington’s direct confrontation with the Cuban Revolution, senior American officials were well aware of the real threat that the island represented to U.S. imperial interests. 

Since the Kennedy Administration, senior U.S. advisors had ruled out that the "communist" identity of the Revolution constituted a real danger; the latent risk, the Cuban "threat," was the uncontrolled spread of the "subversive" idea among the people of the region that it was possible for them to take destiny into their own hands by following the Cuban model. 

In a very real way, the excuses for U.S. aggression against Cuba have come in stages: first it was the paranoia surrounding the "communist" danger in the region, characterized by brutally unfair societies; now the pretext for justifying the harassment of the new Roman empire against “the Revolution” is human rights and Washington’s sudden love for democracy in the region, an area that is still characterized by abysmal inequality.  The simple existence of the Cuban State, after being impeded for almost half a century by the application across the Caribbean of the politics of domination, sustained by the Monroe Doctrine, represents a challenge to the United States.

A Policy With a Long History: The Blockade Begins, 1961

 [Editor’s Note: The Monroe doctrine, first announced in 1823, decreed that the Americas should be closed to future European colonization and free from European interference].
READ More About the Monroe Doctrine

Prevented from an open attack on “the Revolution” by the failure at the Bay of Pigs, during the following two decades the U.S. government carried out what could be considered a permanent campaign of terror against a sovereign country.

From sanctuaries located on the territory of the United States, and operating out of official installations, commandos of saboteurs were sent out to do battle against the Revolution. The objectives included direct attacks against the life of Fidel, attacks that were sanctioned and approved by high level U.S. officials at the White House. The details of these foiled assassination attempts have been described by numerous U.S. Senate commissions. What would the reaction be if Cuba sent bands of hired assassins with Castro’s blessing make attempts on the lives of United States presidents?

On top of Washington’s aggressive armed attempt to economically strangle the island, Cuba has been charged with contemplating an attack with “weapons of mass destruction,” a term popularized by the U.S. government to demonize its enemies, even though most of these “enemies” have neither the capacity not the access to weapons of that nature. And of course, they are most often the victims of these weapons.

As for the consequences of the brutal economic blockade, enemies of the Revolution already admit the ineffectiveness of the strategy, although their admission does not derive from humane concerns over the havoc the policy has caused the population; it is rather a practical recognition that the blockade has fortified the Cuban State instead of weakening it. The dogmatists of the free market should accept that even Adam Smith would denounce their evil and aberrant blockade.  Although Smith would do for economic reasons what the Americans do for political ones, it is a shame that Washington dodges accusations that its aggressive embargo violates international law and the laws of compassion for humanity, which the empire has violated for over half a century to bring the Cuban population to its knees. 

NEWSREEL VIDEO: IN NEW YORK, CASTRO SPEAKS IN ENGLISH TO AMERICANS, 1960

Fidel Castro Arrives for U.N. Conference

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