Translated “Avante!” article by Ângelo Alves, member of the PCP Political Committee and member of the International Department
When this text reaches the reader, the United Nations General Assembly ought to have voted the Cuban proposal of resolution on the “need to stop the economic, financial and trade blockade, of the USA against Cuba”. It all indicates that, for the 25th time , and a smashing majority, the UN General-Assembly ought to condemn the blockade to Cuba and pronounce its ending.
The USA and Israel will be , once more, isolated, on defending the blockade, a position that is contrary to the president of the USA when he stated to work in order to eliminate the blockade, considering it “ obsolete”, in December 2014.
As highlighted by the Cuban minister of Foreign Affairs, during this years’ report presentation, Obama never recognized that the blockade was illegal, by violating the International Law and the people of Cuba’s human rights, being immoral, violating ethics, cruel, affecting direct or indirectly the people’s basic rights as health or food.
Nothing of this is surprising. The reason for which the USA ought to admit to abandon this form of economic war against Cuba and its people, in the future, regards, not its concern towards rights or international legality, but otherwise, the recognition – stated by the president of the USA himself – that the blockade, for over half a century, was not able to achieve the objective of submitting Cuba, its people and socialist revolution, along with subverting its constitutional order.
But the fact is that this did not convince the USA to abandon or even truly slow down the blockade to Cuba. Obama ought to leave the White house and the blockade shall remain. Contrarily to propaganda and misinformation, which has been at the centre of the normalizing of the relations between the two states, the truth is that it is still in force. Only between April 2015 and March 2016, the direct economic losses, in consequence of the blockade, achieved 4680 million dollars , the total of the losses being currently up to 125 873 million of dollars, at current prices. In spite of the recent Obama’s presidential decree, contradictory in itself, the blockade “legal” basis remains intact. The Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws carry on in force, as well as the Trade Enemy Law, from 1917, which but applies only against Cuba, renovated by Obama, for another year, on September 14th.
If it is known that Cuba and the USA proceed a normalization process in their relations , and if it is true that there existed other “drop” measures, which apparently are in a’ positive direction, ( but, in reality answer the North-American interests and its non-abandoned intention of interference in the Cuban internal issues), it is also true that the blockade structure is intact. The trade prohibition between the USA and Cuba; the blockade extraterritorial nature; the impediment of other countries’ banks to work with the Cuban state( a fact that had as consequence the payment of “fines” up to 14 billion dollars to European and Asian banks, last year) and the forbidding of using the dollar in international Cuban transactions.
The blockade to Cuba is the main obstacle within the process of normalization between the two states, as well as: the necessary repair of the caused damages unto the people of Cuba, for more than half a century blockade; the handing over of Guantanamo to Cuba; the end of interference and conspiring actions, that currently carry on. These are the objective steps, along with the end of the European Union common position regarding Cuba, and that the Portuguese president of the republic, in the accomplishment of his duty and the defence of the Republic Constitution, ought to affirm during his visit to Cuba, in order to represent a positive step towards the desirable deepening of the relationship between Portugal and Cuba.