Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tyrone Shaw, a professor of journalism at Johnson State College.
Shirley Jackson’s infamous short story “The Lottery” remains an iconic commentary on destructive toxic legacies, in this particular case an annual June lottery in a quaint New England village. This was in no way a lottery anyone would wish to win, the prize being the privilege of getting stoned to death by fellow residents. Yet it persisted through the decades although its purpose had been long forgotten.
An absurd premise, you say? Not really.
Last fall, for the 22nd straight year, the United Nations condemned once again the United States’ trade embargo against Cuba, this time by a vote of 188 to 2 – those two being the United States and Israel. Who, you ask, would dare condemn our righteous stand against the enemy of all we hold sacred? Well, we can start with the entire European Union and NATO, but space, alas, is limited. Mendacity is not.
More recently, in a Feb. 14 appearance on VPR’s “Vermont Edition,” Sen. Patrick Leahy argued once again for repeal of this persistent idiocy. Imposed initially in 1959 after Fidel Castro overthrew the notably corrupt and brutal regime of Fulgencio Batista and nationalized a number of American corporate holdings, the Cuba Democracy Act remains a national embarrassment. It is one of the most obscenely hypocritical laws ever inflicted upon the American public.
An unfortunate legacy of the Kennedy presidency, the embargo’s ostensible purpose was to force the new Cuban government into free and transparent elections and observance of basic human rights, something obviously not demanded of Castro’s predecessor, who kept Cuba safe for United Fruit and the American Mafia.
Now administered by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), the law effectively prohibits most American corporations and private citizens from trade with Cuba, and excepting specific, limited cases, travel by Americans to that island nation just 90 miles from our shore.
During the intervening half-century, Cuba has nevertheless built a multi-billion dollar tourist industry through joint ventures with an assortment of politically suspect nations including Mexico, Spain, Holland, France, Canada and Germany. That said, American pressure on institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have made credit difficult and expensive for Cuba, which despite these obstructions, continues on its own albeit increasingly creaky socialist path.
According to the CIA, which brought us the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco in which a group of American-supported Cuban exiles attempted to invade Cuba and overthrow the Castro government, Cuba ranks fifth in the world in literacy, ahead of the U.S., which ranks ninth. Despite its dreaded socialized medicine, it has a lower infant mortality rate (4.6 per 100,000) than the United States (5.9 per 100,000). It ranks 38th in life expectancy, just below the U.S.
“It’s always been nonsensical to me about this argument, ‘Well, it’s a communist country, it’s a communist regime.’ What do people think Vietnam is? Or the People’s Republic of China? Both those countries are WTO members. We trade with them.”
To better understand the logic of those in Congress who continue to support and enforce this absurdity, we can turn to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, U.S. representative (R-Fla.), who to her credit managed to keep a straight face when issuing the following statement, titled “Fifty Years Later, Cuban Embargo Demonstrates U.S. Solidarity with Cuban People” in 2012. For those who desire more than a taste, a full text of this gaseous eruption can be found on the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ website.
Rep. Ros-Lehtinen opines: “In addition to imposing economic pressure on the Castro regime and holding it accountable for actions against U.S. interests, the embargo is a moral stance against the brutal dictatorship. Over the last 50 years, the embargo has served as a constant form of solidarity with the Cuban people. I am ever hopeful that a Cuban Spring will arrive as long as we maintain and enforce policies which support the freedom-loving will of the Cuban people. The embargo will remain in place until free, fair and transparent elections are scheduled, political prisoners are released, and freedom of expression and the press are established.”
Ever tuned to the sensibilities of her Cuban ex-pat constituents, she conveniently neglects a long history of America’s meddling in the affairs of its neighbors in the Caribbean, Central and South America. That history includes its role in the overthrow of lawfully elected leftist governments in Guatemala, Chile, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua to name but a few. In their place, the United States installed such human rights champions as Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza, about whom President Richard Nixon said, “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Other stalwarts included Guatemala’s genocidal maniac Efraín Ríos Montt and Chile’s fascist el supremo, Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Let their records speak for themselves. The tens of thousands murdered by their death squads cannot.
Following Ros-Lehtinen’s logic, we should extend the embargo to scores of nations with whom we now maintain normal diplomatic and economic relations, nations demonstrating pervasive human rights abuses that include unlawful detention, fraudulent elections, imprisonment of political dissidents, and persecution of journalists. They would include Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, China, Jordan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan, Iraq and Egypt, to name but a few.
Despite OFAC’s denial of our basic human right to travel freely, the embargo is beginning to unravel. In Vermont, we see increasing commerce with Cuba, both intellectual and economic. Burlington College has long provided academic programs in Cuba in cooperation with the University of Havana, and more recently Johnson State College, through its Art and Culture of Cuba course, provides the opportunity for students to see that country firsthand. For both institutions, travel to Cuba is possible in part because of modest relaxations in trade and travel sanctions introduced by President Obama in 2010.
Former Vermont Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie, not exactly a pinko firebrand and Castro apologist, has championed the export of Vermont heifers to Cuba to help rebuild its moribund dairy industry (and to help ours), something that is a plus for both Vermont and Cuba.
Nationally, United States Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, a former U.S. Republican senator from Nebraska, advocated the end of this half-century perversion when he noted: “On Cuba, I’ve said that we have an outdated, unrealistic, irrelevant policy … It’s always been nonsensical to me about this argument, ‘Well, it’s a communist country, it’s a communist regime.’ What do people think Vietnam is? Or the People’s Republic of China? Both those countries are WTO members. We trade with them. We have relations. Great powers engage … Great powers are not afraid. Great powers trade.'”
Agreed, Mr. Hagel. So, borrowing a phrase from former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, a firm supporter of the Cuba Democracy Act, I say, “Tear down this wall.” After all, what’s stopping us?
The answer, my friend, is not blowing in the wind. The answer is in the swing state of Florida, home to a very rich anti-Castro lobby. And thereby hangs a chad.
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