As of this writing, nearly one-third of all countries in the world, and 60% of all poor countries in the world, are targeted by U.S. sanctions, as enumerated in a nearly 3,000-page document from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control. At the top of the list are countries like Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.
The people of Cuba, to take one particular example, have long suffered collective punishment, considered a war crime under international law, at the hands of U.S. imperialism for daring to challenge the omnipresent rule of capital. The U.S. blockade, which is one of the harshest sanctions regimes currently in effect, prevents the small island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida from accessing medication, fuel, food, and opportunities for investment and development.
Though the blockade is commonly understood to be a response to the triumph of the Cuban Revolution of 1959 and the wave of nationalizations that followed which directly affected U.S. investments and business interests on the island, it began in a less comprehensive form in 1958 as an arms embargo on the U.S.-backed Batista regime, which was starting to become a media embarrassment for Washington.
The Eisenhower administration had decided that it was time to tighten the leash on its man in Havana, whose government would slaughter over 20,000 innocent civilians by the time it was sacked on Jan. 1, 1959, when the July 26th movement took the city of Santa Clara.
The blockade is legally rooted in the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, which, on the surface, gives the president the power to oversee trade in times of war. Eisenhower invoked this law to justify severing all ties with Cuba when the new socialist government began its policy of agrarian reform, which repatriated land to the peasants. It is important to note that at this point, nearly 70% of cultivated land in Cuba was owned by U.S. businesses.
Before analyzing the events of the 20th and 21st centuries, it is important to understand the history, in broad strokes, of the relationship between the United States and Cuba. In short, it is defined by the trade of one commodity: sugar.
Sugar empire
The history of sugar cultivation and the global plantation complex in the Caribbean is far too complex to dissect in this article. Still, it is important to understand that the colonial powers, including Britain, Spain, and later, the United States, shaped Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic into monocropping outposts dedicated entirely to the production and export of raw sugar.
Through a century of slavery, occupation, and unequal exchange, the United States in particular had come to hold a monopoly on the sugar trade. As a result, the island nations of the Caribbean were intentionally underdeveloped, deprived of access to emergent technologies, and made subservient to the interests of capital. (For further reading on this history, and the history of colonialism in Latin America more broadly, refer to Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano.)
By the 1950s, U.S. capitalists controlled not only the railways, electricity, telephone lines, and infrastructure investment in the country but also the flow of consumer goods to which the Cuban population (at least those with money) had grown accustomed. The figureheads of prominent brands such as Bacardi Rum and Domino Sugar were among the elites who fled the island when the revolution triumphed and the blockade was instated.
The new Cuban government began nationalizing industry and expropriating foreign businesses back into the hands of the Cuban people in a sweeping wave of reforms that directly threatened U.S. capital on the island. At this point, however, Fidel Castro had not yet declared the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution.
Washington had been here before. Five years earlier, President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala had attempted to enact similar nationalizations and social reforms. Though Arbenz was not a declared socialist, his reforms, most notably his program of agrarian reform, which sought to repatriate idle land to the landless peasants, reeked of socialism to the suits on Capitol Hill.
Most of the land in Guatemala was owned by the infamous United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, whose interests were strongly represented in the highest offices of the U.S. government: CIA Director Allen Dulles also sat on the board of UFCO and would not let some Central American interloper cut into his bottom line with pesky social reforms.
Amid the fervor of the Cold War’s vicious anti-communism, anything that even remotely resembled socialism had to be crushed. Arbenz had to go because his policy of agrarian reform directly challenged U.S. business interests—would peasants choose to work for UFCO for pennies on the dollar in a scenario where they have agency over their own land?
When Cuba began a similar program of reforms five years later, Washington recognized which way the wind was blowing.
Cuba stands up
Though the new Cuban government began nationalizing industry and expropriating foreign businesses, its leadership would not declare the socialist nature of the revolution until 1961, when Castro reaffirmed the nation’s sovereignty as it faced the impending CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
The U.S. government did not place all its bets on the amphibious military invasion, which is one of the most difficult maneuvers to execute successfully. The invasion failed not only due to a lack of preparation and U.S. hubris but largely, and more decisively, due to the tenacity of the Cuban people, who rapidly mobilized to defend their country.
In an internal document which has since been declassified, the State Department iterated its goals regarding its Cuba policy. On April 6, 1960, a memo entitled “The Decline and Fall of Castro” made its rounds among the appropriate D.C. bigwigs. It said:
“[E]very possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
Such has been U.S. policy toward Cuba ever since. Though the U.S. government has categorically failed to force the collapse of Cuba through 65 years and counting of the harshest sanctions regime in human history, the situation on the ground is dire.
Throughout the latter portion of the 20th century and into the 21st, the U.S. steadily continued its efforts to destabilize the Cuban Revolution, including a terrorist attack against a Cubana de Aviación (the country’s state airline) flight carrying 78 passengers from Barbados to Jamaica, various instances of biological terrorism against livestock and crops meant to harm the food supply and foment popular uprising, and the furthering of legislation restricting international trade.
In the period of Balkanization and neoliberal shock therapy that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress took advantage of the opportunity to pass the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which further penalized foreign companies by banning them from doing business in the United States if they also had dealings with Cuba.
To this day, if a commercial ship docks in Cuba, it cannot dock in the United States for 180 days. Following the (supposed) laws of the market, why would a business choose to work with an embattled and impoverished Cuba when it could simply sail 90 miles north and engage with the largest economy in the world?
Surviving despite the blockade
It is important to note that the blockade also harms Americans. Not only is it exceptionally difficult for Cuban expatriates to visit their families, but the financial hegemony of the United States makes it difficult for them to send remittances to their relatives on the island.
The American people more broadly also would stand to benefit from Cuban medical advancements, such as a lung cancer vaccine and a unique treatment for diabetes. Due to the blockade, however, there are a plethora of roadblocks to making these treatments available to U.S. citizens.
A layer beneath the surface of the economic blockade lies the complex reality of academic and scientific interchange, most of which is also limited by the blockade. Since mega-publishers like Taylor and Francis and Jstor are registered in the United States, Cubans and people in many other countries targeted by sanctions cannot access academic literature as punishment for the crime of being born outside the imperial core.
What could we accomplish if we were able to freely engage with doctors, scientists, professors, artists, and all workers in a truly internationalist way, unhindered by paywalls and sanctions? Imagine what would be possible if Cuba were able to manufacture and distribute its lung cancer vaccines at scale.
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the first successful socialist revolution in Latin America, was not simply a victory for the Cuban people but for all the peoples of the underdeveloped continent. Cuba not only became a shining example of the real possibility of self-determination, it also established an internationalist program of support for humanitarian causes and decolonial liberation struggles around the world.
International solidarity is essential to any movement or political party with truly socialist characteristics, and the Cuban people have demonstrated their commitment to this pillar of the struggle through their support over the decades of Palestine, Vietnam, Angola, the Congo, South Africa, Algeria, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and Chile.
Current examples of adherence to international solidarity include support for a massive literacy campaign in Honduras, the deployment of 500 medical professionals to Calabria, Italy, during a labor shortage, and the deployment of 4,000 medical professionals during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. attempts to invoke regime change continue to this day. In July 2021, at the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown, Cubans took to the streets to protest harsh curfews and economic hardship, as is their right under the constitution. The Western media apparatus, however, saw an opportunity and ran headlines such as “Cuba: Crackdown on Protests Creates Rights Crisis” and “They dared to protest last July. Now these Cubans are facing years in jail,” pushing a narrative designed to stir up outrage toward the Cuban government.
While President Miguel Díaz-Canel—like every other world leader—certainly isn’t immune to criticism, one should examine the United States, which itself has the largest incarcerated population in the world, which violently cracked down on the BLM protests of 2020 (and the Palestine solidarity movement on college campuses in the spring of last year, which and gravely mismanaged its response to the pandemic, resulting in the deaths of over one million people.
Six days before he left office, President Joe Biden ordered Cuba’s removal from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, where it sat alongside North Korea, Syria, and Iran, in exchange for the release of 533 prisoners detained amidst the July 2021 protests on the island. The move was quickly reversed by President Donald Trump in a wave of executive orders that crossed his desk shortly after his second inauguration.
Had Biden’s too-little, too-late policy remained in effect, it could have created some breathing room for a Cuba that has been strangled by heavy-handed U.S. interventionist policy since the Cold War. After all, the island never should have been on the list in the first place. In a post-9/11 world, we know now that “terrorism” is sometimes a pretext manufactured by those in the halls of power who stand to gain from instability, chaos, and human suffering—just look at Dick Cheney’s stock portfolio before and after the Iraq War.
The economic blockade on Cuba functions as an apparatus of sanctions that prevents its people from openly trading on the international market, making foreign investment in the country’s economic development, infrastructure, and tourism nearly impossible.
Now, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as Trump’s Secretary of State, the new administration will likely unleash a policy program tailored to exacerbate the dire conditions of an already-suffering Cuba. It’s no surprise, then, that the island nation has sought alternative pathways to development, including seeking a path to BRICS membership.
The alternative economic bloc now encompasses more than 50% of the world’s population, and its growth is a sign of the emergence of a multipolar world. Multipolarity itself is not necessarily an objectively positive development, but the realignment of global geopolitical hegemony represents a hopeful future for countries like Cuba, which have long suffered at the hands of U.S. imperialism.
As with all op-ed and news-analysis articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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