The Economic War against Cuba by Salim Lamrani
Monthly Review Press 2013
When French intellectual Salim Lamrani was denied US entry, in the spring of 2013, to attend the 2nd Annual Five Days for the Cuban 5 event in Washington DC, organizers were disappointed. Only days later, at a book launch for distinguished authors, eyebrows were raised with the announcement that Professor Lamrani could not participate in a panel to debut his book, Economic War against Cuba. What led to this determination may never be known. One thing is certain. Nothing that happens in Cuba gets overlooked by Cuban specialists and independent journalists seeking to bolster an obscure reputation to earn a quick buck in the business of political sensationalism. Hopefully, this situation will change following President Obama's decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba. Lamrani gives us a much needed look at the history.
Economic warfare by Washington is the result of both legislative and executive action declared at the height of Cold War tension with the Soviet Union. In this important book Americans can find a trove of information that should be well known but that has for long been accessible only to the most diligent researchers. The US Code contains a rich file history of laws, extensively documented by Lamrani, that demonstrate the continuity of U.S. hostility toward the Cuban revolution. For example, the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the Cuban Assets Control Regulations of 1963, the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, the Torricelli Act of 1992, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, the Trade Sanction Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 and the U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba of 2004 and 2006.
"Extraterritorial Applications of Economic Sanctions", the title of Chapter 5, had already begun years earlier on January 3, 1961 with the breaking of US diplomatic relations by the Department of State ... to subvert the established order in Cuba.
The author strips bare all US pretext for economic sanctions by exposing the hidden reality behind blockade legislation. As early as June 24, 1959, Washington began to extend hostile responses toward Cuba in retaliation for legal measures taken by the Castro government to recover Cuban patrimony when corrupt Batista officials "emptied the coffers of the Central Bank and fled the island with $424 million" for safe haven elsewhere. The groundless accusations hurled upon Cuba through frivolous amendments attached to Congressional legislation serve only to protect the interests of anti-Cuban counterrevolutionaries and corrupt officials who sought refuge in South Florida from justice.
One example cited by Lamrani serves to illustrate the nature of the US economic siege concerning a case that came before the courts, Banco Nacional de Cuba vs. Sabbatino, 376 US 398 (1964). On August 1960, a New York sugar-brokerage agency named Farr, Whitlock and Company managed a contract with a Cuban subsidiary of an American-owned sugar company to buy sugar, account payable to the Bank of Cuba. The brokerage firm did not transfer the sum to its creditor (subsequent to a decision by the Eisenhower administration to reduce Cuba's sugar quota in July 1960) which resulted in a New York State Supreme Court action to freeze $175,250.69 USD and place the funds in trusteeship with a Peter L.F. Sabbatino. After prolonged litigation, on March 23, 1964 the US Supreme Court voted 8 to 1 in favor of Cuba. However, this decision was overruled by the Hickenlooper Amendment (October 1964) that denied the right of a legally recognized government (Cuba) to act in the best interest of its people. Several years later, in response to US interference in the internal affairs of sovereign, independent States, the United Nations Resolution 3201 adopted the Act of State doctrine which recognized the legitimacy of the Cuban government to nationalize foreign assets that "reside on their territory".
For 55 years, the Cuban people have had to defend themselves from pirate attacks, terrorist bombings, propaganda campaigns and military invasion. In the 1990's the Cuban government sent agents undercover to monitor and report terrorist activity emanating from US soil. The risks undertaken by the Cuban 5 were supported by concepts of international law, Constitutional law and common law that recognize the right to self-determination, self-defense and peaceful co-existence with others. Yet, failure by Congress to respond more favorably to changing thought patterns may be due to a structural defect inherent in a capitalist system stifled by a gridlocked bureaucracy that lacks the political will to address new realities. Repeal of the obnoxious Helms-Burton Act will be an ongoing challenge.
The inability of the neo-liberal variant of capitalism to recognize the contradictions inherent in State Department maintenance of Cuba on a fraudulent list of nations that support terrorism is a factor blocking the path to fruitful negotiations. The right of every sovereign state to safeguard and dispose of their wealth and natural resources without undue economic or political coercion and intervention in their internal affairs is a juridical principle of international law. This is recognized in UN Resolution 2625 (October 24, 1970) which holds that the illegal nature of U.S. policy rests upon failure to recognize a legally constituted, sovereign and independent government supported by the Cuban people. As Professor Lamrani emphasizes, the US economic blockade policy against Cuba has been one of unilateral aggression and coercion toward a neighboring country posing no threat to US interests. Any strategy that ignores "just cause" in the course of history is a prescription that has led eleven consecutive residents of the White House at their own peril to continue a mistaken policy doomed to fail.
Throwing off the yoke of imperialist aggression by the Rebel army in 1959 was in the best revolutionary tradition that began October 10, 1868 and carried over from Cuba's long struggle against 19th century colonialism. It changed forever the political dynamic of US dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The latifundia system of farmworker bondage to the land was broken. Property expropriated by the Cuban government ended US corporate ownership of the best farm land. US monopoly control of Cuban telephone and electricity companies including transportation, mining and agricultural industry terminated when social relations of production transferred from private to public ownership. In addition, passage of the Agrarian Reform Law of May 17, 1959, authorized, subject to compensation, expropriation for the public good. See UN Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of State (Resolution No. 3281) adopted December 12, 1974.
The Economic War against Cuba should be required-reading to understand the convoluted politics that impact countless peoples' lives from every corner of the world. It describes man's inhumanity to man predicated on the basis of monetary gain for a tiny extremist faction clinging to the shirt tails of power found in the Washington DC-Miami connection. A lack of credible information about Cuba available to the public should no longer hinder US people intimidated by an indifferent government bureaucracy.
To quote Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban Parliament, "Obama showed wisdom and determination when he faced with courage the basic problems rather than limiting himself to free one person".
Salim Lamrani presents little known details about the Cuban reality and backs them up with facts. By describing the harmful impact of US sanctions in the field of Cuban healthcare, he does a service to humankind in solidarity with Cuba. He succeeds in exposing the lies that underpin US policy toward Cuba that have failed their intended purpose to destroy a revolution of the people, by the people and for the people. The belief that socialism is an inevitable outcome on the evolutionary scale of higher human development does not detract from the conscious, self-determination of the Cuban people to build a better world.
A consensus exists within US society that favors a return to a normalized relationship. After the agreement by President Obama and President Raul Castro to initiate a policy shift, there is little need for future US administrations to hesitate to change economic, commercial and financial relations mired in a distant era. When 188 nations vote overwhelmingly for a United Nations resolution calling for an end to "worn-out", repetitious sophistry by self-serving US functionaries unaware of the double standard of doctrinaire policy against Cuba, it is time to reaffirm without further delay our faith in our human ability to forgive and grant recognition to the government of the Republic of Cuba. No justice, no peace.
Cartoon: Google images/CC
