Home Page |
Home Page for Mobile
africafocus by e-mail - analysis that goes beyond the news
africafocus.org - your first stop for Africa policy issues on the web
http://www.africafocus.org/docs21/uscuba2107.php
AfricaFocus Bulletin
The Biden administration has now been in office for six months,
along with a narrow Democratic majority in Congress. So it seems an
appropriate time for a report card. I offered my evaluation in another AfricaFocus Bulletin sent out today, entitled “Building Back Better? Or Not?” But as I was finalizing that Bulletin, I realized that the rising U.S. attacks on Cuba are a key indicator of how things are going.
They show that the United States is headed toward “Build Back Worse”
– a sharp bipartisan reversion to simplistic Cold War policies and
the “bad neighbor” policy toward Caribbean countries. And yet the
“mainstream media” (for me, the daily Washington Post and New York
Times) contained at best only a few hints of dissent from this
policy consensus.
I began accumulating links on the Cuba situation to include in the
Bulletin, and they grew beyond the space available there. Hence the
need for a separate treatment. This Bulletin contains an open letter
published in the New York Times on Friday, July 25, as well as
excerpts and links to sources that provide a fuller picture.
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on USA/Africa relations, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/country/usa-africa.php
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dear President Joe Biden,
It is time to take a new path forward in U.S.-Cuban relations. We,
the undersigned, are making this urgent, public appeal to you to
reject the cruel policies put into place by the Trump White House
that have created so much suffering among the Cuban people.
Cuba – a country of eleven million people – is living through a
difficult crisis due to the growing scarcity of food and medicine.
Recent protests have drawn the world’s attention to this. While the
Covid-19 pandemic has proven challenging for all countries, it has
been even more so for a small island under the heavy weight of an
economic embargo.
We find it unconscionable, especially during a pandemic, to
intentionally block remittances and Cuba’s use of global financial
institutions, given that access to dollars is necessary for the
importation of food and medicine.
As the pandemic struck the island, its people – and their government
– lost billions in revenue from international tourism that would
normally go to their public health care system, food distribution
and economic relief.
During the pandemic, Donald Trump’s administration tightened the
embargo, pushed aside the Obama opening, and put in place 243
“coercive measures” that have intentionally throttled life on the
island and created more suffering.
The prohibition on remittances and the end of direct commercial
flights between the U.S. and Cuba are impediments to the wellbeing
of a majority of Cuban families.
“We stand with the Cuban people,” you wrote on July 12. If that is
the case, we ask you to immediately sign an executive order and
annul Trump’s 243 “coercive measures.”
There is no reason to maintain the Cold War politics that required
the U.S. to treat Cuba as an existential enemy rather than a
neighbor. Instead of maintaining the path set by Trump in his
efforts to undo President Obama’s opening to Cuba, we call on you to
move forward. Resume the opening and begin the process of ending the
embargo. Ending the severe shortages in food and medicine must be
the top priority.
On 23 June, most of the member states of the United Nations voted to
ask the U.S. to end the embargo. For the past 30 years this has been
the consistent position of a majority of member states. In addition,
seven UN Special Rapporteurs wrote a letter to the U.S. government
in April 2020 regarding the sanctions on Cuba. “In the pandemic
emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to
suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of suffering in Cuba.”
We ask you to end the Trump “coercive measures” and return to the
Obama opening or, even better, begin the process of ending the
embargo and fully normalizing relations between the United States
and Cuba.
Signatories available at https://www.letcubalive.com/.
*******************************************************************
For anyone wanting to understand the role of Cuba in African
liberation struggles, and the parallel U.S. opposition to those
struggles, the case study of Angola is essential.
These two books, by Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor Piero Gleijeses, are the
key scholarly works on this history, based on multiple archival and
oral sources from the United States, Cuba, Angola, and other
countries.
See his CV here.
https://bookshop.org/a/709/9780807854648
Whether simply out of political calculation or a return to the worst
of U.S. Cold War thinking, the Biden administration, with political
support from both parties, is doubling down on destructive policies
against the Cuban people. Yes, Cuba does need reform, and uncritical
support of the Cuban government disregards current realities.
But U.S. sanctions, aimed at punishing the Cuban people as a means to bring down the government, build on a history of U.S. occupation of Cuba at the beginning of the 20th century, imposing a highly limited “independence” after defeating Spain in the Spanish American War. Shortly after Cuban revolutionaries overthrew the latest U.S.-dependent government in 1959, hostility between the United States and Cuba mounted rapidly, culminating in the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and economic sanctions in 1962, almost 60 years ago. Sanctions were somewhat relaxed during the Obama administration, then strengthened again under Trump.
In Cuba policy, therefore, President Biden is continuing the Trump
policies and even threatening to escalate. This is not “building
back better” but doubling down on the worst. No rethinking of past
policies at all!
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/7/27/cuba_protests_pandemic_conditions
https://novaramedia.com/2021/07/20/whats-actually-going-on-in-cuba/ by Helen Yaffe.
See also https://www.facebook.com/helen.yaffe.9/ and https://www.facebook.com/100007628650696/videos/pcb.2929945513936375/498584691215357
Yaffe is in Cuba now, and her Facebook page contains videos such as those at the second link above.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/07/19/ending-forever-wars-must-include-economic-warfare/ - by Assal Rad
Philip Brenner, one of the leading U.S. experts on Cuba, based at American University in Washington, DC, has been quoted extensively in the Spanish newspaper El Diario, as well as in the Spanish-language edition of the Los Angeles Times, but apparently not yet in English-language media included in Google News.
https://thegrio.com/2021/07/19/will-protests-lead-to-lasting-change-in-cuba/
https://thegrio.com/2021/07/22/black-americans-haiti-cuba-opinion/ - by Blue Telusma,
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/cuba-airstrikes/ - by Aída Chávez, July 20, 2021
https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-time-for-biden-to-choose-between-starving-cubans-and-votes-in-florida by William LeoGrande, July 15, 2021
https://www.organizingupgrade.com/can-coronavirus-be-a-catalyst-for-thinking-globally/ - by William Minter and Imani Countess, March 25, 2020
“Don't Be Afraid to Dream
https://democracynow.cachefly.net/democracynow/360/dn2020-0324.mp4?start=2547.0&end=3237.0 https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/24/cuba_medical_diplomacy_italy_coronavirus https://www.aljazeera.com/videos/2020/3/22/cuban-doctors-head-to-italy-to-fight-coronavirus AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter. For an archive of previous Bulletins, see http://www.africafocus.org, Current links to books on AfricaFocus go to the non-profit bookshop.org, which supports independent bookshores and also provides commissions to affiliates such as AfricaFocus. AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please write to this address to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about reposted material, please contact directly the original source mentioned. To subscribe to receive future bulletins by email, click here. |