Unblocked / Unembargoed?

By Martin Guevara

HAVANA TIMES – When the Revolution triumphed in Cuba, a blockade was the least that was expected. In fact, once the socialist nature of the Revolution had been announced, a furious attack was the great expectation. Nobody thought about complaining about owners of companies, banks, money, hotels, all kinds of confiscated businesses, or speaking out against the Revolution in some way or another.

Everybody would have signed on the dotted line too, because it was just a blockade without an invasion or bombings. The Revolution had overthrown Batista in the beginning, then Capitalism, and Imperialism in its superior phase, just 90 miles away, its currency being its representative and symbolic blazon: the dollar. It was crystal clear that they weren’t going to give every Comandante a Cadillac, after such a slap in the face.

The idea was to industrialize the nation and not depend upon the inflow of goods and currency from either of the two superpowers. However, amid all of this, they got used to being aligned with the Socialist Bloc, under the USSR’s command. The reality was it was too good an offer, an offer like Don Vito would make, an offer you couldn’t refuse. Oil, arms, food, consultants, all kinds of supplies, in exchange for only total acceptance of “recommendations ordered” from aunt Moscow.

Over the decades that Fidel Castro lived, hidden strategies and politics for little exchanges were interwoven. There were non-aggression pacts and one or two more details, with the Capitalist bloc.

Ironically, a country that never cut trade and diplomatic ties with the island was Francisco Franco’s fascist and genocidal Spain. Mexico was always its greatest support, as were Japan and some other European countries. However, every time that easing trade relations with the US seemed like it could be put on the negotiations table, something would always happen, by chance, that would force the US to tighten the embargo even further.

Like when Bill Clinton had worked on a proposal to put to Congress, so that relations would be civilized. But when two private planes were shot down by Cuban jets, he was forced to apply the Helms-Burton Act which the Republican wing of Congress demanded, wanting to make the siege of the Cuban economy an international practice, and he couldn’t oppose it.

The elite on both shores of the Florida Strait benefitted from that climate of threats and surface-level hostility, without going any further and resulting in any concrete attacks. It served to whip up their bases with gut-level arguments.  

Insisting on keeping the island under economic siege is a crime. Howeverr, lifting the embargo without any kind of negotiation (even if it would always be better for the Cuban people) would also be foolish. This is because if the Cuban people are to directly benefit from this, they can’t be stuck in the super-structure. Well-oiled mechanisms need to be put into place to allow independent workers, entrepreneurs to develop.

Likewise, giving Cubans freedom of movement, without neglecting attention to the poorest and least-prepared groups in society to take on a new model of society. This has to be a priority because if the country is to make progress at a dizzying rate, they will sink into the deepest misery. Humanist principles derived from socialism should be held onto tightly, offering protection to the weakest, to the least adapted.

Something seems to have changed today. No matter how you want to see Fidel Castro, one thing we’ll always have to say is that he was anti-US imperialism until the day he died. He got serious with his brother for having such a good time with Obama, in his article “The US brother” published in Granma.

However, there’s time even for mammoths. Different groups within the new leadership are still using the same slogans, but they don’t have the same interests and are seeking closer relations with the US more and more.

Cuba is bleeding dry between an economy that is subject more to Yoruba’s pantheon of saints than any concrete economic plan. And a blockade that doesn’t make any sense in a world with freely-moving capital, as well as COVID-19 and a stubborness that has got the country tangled up in the algae on the seafloor.

A solution needs to be found, one that doesn’t compromise the country’s sovereignty, or its people, who are being suffocated more every day.

Ironically, the blockade/embargo is the furthest thing from a capitalist market economy. It’s a State intervening in the natural development of business at any level. Its spirit is more in line and closer to the protectionism in Communist 5-year plans, than the free market.

So, both parties competing for the US blockade/embargo against Cuba, is justifying the opposite of the principles they both supposedly defend.

The Cuban government has asked the US to remember its capitalist and liberal essence and nature. It is begging for the Empire’s raw materials and foreign currency, which refuses it with less and less convincing arguments, it must be said.

Meanwhile, the GOP and Cuban community in Miami demand greater State intervention in the free movement of capital and people, just like true closed centralized Communist models.

Read more from Martin Guevara here on Havana Times.