US plans second war against Cuba
WORKERS, JUNE 2004 ISSUE
On 6 May, the United States government announced plans to overthrow the Cuban government and effectively turn the island into a US colony. For the past 42 years, the American blockade has made it impossible for Cuba to trade with the US, imposed penalties on third countries trading or shipping with it, prohibited the country from using US dollars in foreign trade, barred it from world financial institutions, prevented it from buying medicine and food from US subsidiaries, blacklisted ships visiting Cuban ports and generally imposed a stranglehold on trade with the island. Now, the US is to impose new measures geared specifically to overthrow the revolutionary government and replace it with a US-controlled regime. The highly trained and educated Cuban population would provide cheap labour for US companies.
The new measures include:
- Cubans living in the US to be prevented from sending dollar remittances to families and friends in Cuba, and from visiting their families more frequently than every three years
- restriction on hard currency they can take with them to their families
- limitation on the definition of a Cuban family
- a scholarship funded by the US to train counter revolutionary cadres in Latin American universities
- programmes to support "democracy building" by youth, women and Afro-Cubans from the country that brought you the Ku Klux Klan
- a ban on US citizens from visiting Cuba unless they are involved in pursuing US policy on approved visits
- extraterritorial action against foreign companies investing in Cuba
- increased funding of $59 million to counter revolutionaries on the island
- harassment of tourism
- stopping Venezuelan oil from reaching Cuba
- setting up US-controlled trade unions
- pressure on other governments and NGOs to join the US in overthrowing the Cuban government
- seizure of assets of Cuban companies working in the export sector.
The US then goes on to describe its proposed privatisation of the Cuban economy, "professionalisation" and privatisation of the police and army, moves to keep all children and teenagers off the streets by keeping schools open, changing the school syllabus, empowering Cuban churches and small businesses to control distribution of food, dismantling the existing political institutions, sacking all judges, putting the existing government on trial, and so the list goes on. They even intend to vaccinate all Cuban children despite the fact that all Cubans are currently vaccinated against all appropriate conditions, in a country that has higher health indicators that the US itself!
Outrage
The policy is intended to turn Cuba into a US colony as it was for nearly 60 years after the US replaced Spain as the colonial power, until the success of the Cuban revolution in 1959. Cubans will respond to this policy with outrage, vigilance and a stronger determination to defend the gains of the revolution.
The Cuban Communist Party has said that Bush is driven mad by the reality of the enormous human capital created by the people, by its ability to send tens of thousands of doctors to the most remote places in the Third World (greater than the ability of all the advanced countries put together) and by its progress in education, health and culture that will soon put Cuba in the first place among all countries in the world.
Bush and those who share his ideology want to wipe out Cuba's example. They want to destroy all that a heroic people have built with incredible love. Cuba will never return to the horrible, wretched and inhuman condition of a US colony.
Cubans playing dominoes: the quiet humanity of the Cuban people continues to enrage the US
What will be the response of the British government to this threat against a sovereign country? Will Blair or Straw condemn the US? Of course not — but not simply because of their blind support for Bush. They will not utter a word because they no longer determine British foreign policy on this issue. Policy towards Cuba is determined by the EU Common Position. This in turn is determined by the country that has the most hostile position towards Cuba.
The current hostile EU Common Position was determined by Aznar's Spain. Aznar, an admirer of Franco, steered EU policy to a position as hostile as the US policy on Cuba. He has been thrown out by Spanish workers, but the US is confident it can rely on Italy's Berlusconi, or those new Europeans from eastern Europe. Maybe the Czech Republic or Latvia will oblige. And Jack Straw still pretends that foreign policy is one of his red lines that Britain will not give up for the EU constitution.
It is up to British workers to determine our working class foreign policy as it has done over Iraq. The British TUC took a big step in this direction at last year's congress when it passed motion 83 pledging support for Cuba. Yet the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, a relic from the Cold War to which the British TUC is still shamefully affiliated, carries out the will of the US government by trying to get the International Labour Organisation to condemn Cuba and by pressurising our TUC.
But more and more British trade unionists have developed links with Cuban trade unions and know the truth. Workers understand workers — it's very simple.