Robert Naiman
There’s
great consternation in Cuba and Florida over the fate of Elian Gonzalez. If he
were from any other country, he would already be home with his father. Yet only
a handful of the media reports mention the extreme U.S. embargo that led to the
current situation, and nowhere are the real motivations for these policies
explored.
For
40 years the U.S. has imposed an economic blockade against Cuba to punish it for
having an independent economic policy for the majority rather than for the
profit of foreign corporations and investors. When the embargo was imposed, it
was said that we had to "contain communism" in order to defend the
United States. A Mexican diplomat explained that Mexico could not support the
Kennedy Administration’s anti-Cuba policy: "If we publicly declare that
Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die
laughing." Today most Americans find the idea of Cuba as a threat no less
ridiculous than Mexicans did then. So the embargo is now justified in terms of
"punishing Castro" for "violations of human rights."
But
the claim that U.S. policy towards Cuba is motivated by concern for human rights
is as absurd as the previous claim that Cuba was a threat to U.S. national
security.
While
the U.S. maintains an economic embargo against Cuba, the Clinton Administration
and big business push to bring China into the World Trade Organization. This is
despite the widespread repression of dissent in China, and despite – or perhaps
because of – the near-slavery conditions in Chinese factories where workers
produce consumer goods for U.S.-based multinational corporations.
Absurd
as it may sound, the folks that run U.S. foreign policy really have been afraid
of Cuba. Not because Cuba was ever in any position to invade anything, but
because our policymakers were convinced that if present economic arrangements in
Latin America were to be maintained – domination of economic policy by the
United States and a focus on exports and attracting foreign investment rather
than on raising living standards and domestic consumption – then people in the
region must be convinced that there was no alternative. If Cuba were allowed to
get away with different economic policies, people in other countries might get
funny ideas.
The
historian Arthur Schlesinger, then an official in the Kennedy Administration,
put it this way: what the U.S. had to fear was "the spread of the Castro
idea of taking matters into one’s own hands," since in Latin America,
"the distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors
the propertied classes… the poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the
example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent
living."
Today,
according to U.S. government statistics, Cuba has a life expectancy of 73 years
for men and 78 years for women, adult literacy of 96%, and infant mortality of 8
deaths per 1,000 live births. El Salvador, which we "saved from
communism" by killing tens of thousands of its citizens in a
counterinsurgency war and pouring in "aid" money, has a life
expectancy of 66 years for men and 73 years for women, 72% literacy and infant
mortality of 29 deaths per 1000 live births. Haiti, after decades of U.S. aid
and economic policies dictated by Washington, the IMF and the World Bank, has a
life expectancy of 49 years for men and 53 years for women, 45% literacy, and
infant mortality of 99 deaths per 1000 live births.
Human
rights abuses in Cuba pale compared to regimes supported by the United States.
The State Department decries that "hundreds of political prisoners remain
in Cuban jails," while the U.S. plans to increase military aid to Colombia,
where human rights activists are routinely murdered and more trade unionists are
killed than in any other country.
Citizens
in the U.S. and elsewhere increasingly support the very economic policies that
Cuba has been punished for: a focus on human needs and production for the
domestic economy. The deep public opposition to the agenda of corporate
globalization was revealed by the protests at the World Trade Organization
meetings in Seattle. People are already organizing around the country to protest
at the April 16 meetings of the IMF and the World Bank in Washington, to cut the
funding of these institutions and to boycott World Bank bonds.
As
these movements grow in strength, our government will no longer be able to
punish countries that act in the interests of their own citizens, and little
boys will no longer be the victims of our embargoes against economic
independence.
Robert
Naiman
Senior Researcher
Center for Economic and Policy Research
1737 21st NW
Washington, DC 20009
