Thirty years of Fidel Castro claiming U.S sanctions were unimportant
Havana claims that the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba over the past sixty two years has cost the Cuban dictatorship $1.499 trillion, but that was not what the regime, and their maximum leader, said during the first 30 years of the Cuban dictatorship. Here are some of the statements made by Fidel Castro between the 1964 through 2000 related to the economic embargo.
“We are going to have, within ten years, a milk production higher than the Netherlands and a cheese production higher than France. That is the great goal that we propose to achieve. By that date we think that the amount of 30 million liters of milk will be exceeded. So there will be to export … you can imagine.” said Fidel Castro, in an interview with Eddy Martin from the official Hoy newspaper on March 2, 1964.
“The great battle of the eggs has been won. From now on the people will be able to have sixty million eggs each month,” said Fidel Castro in a speech on January 2, 1965.
“In 1970 the Island will have 5,000 experts in the cattle industry and around 8 million cows and calves that will be good milk producers” …. “There will be so much milk that the Bay of Havana will be able to be filled with milk,” said Fidel Castro in his December 1966 speech during the Assembly of the Federation of Cuban Women, a mass organization of the dictatorship.
Fidel Castro, speaking at the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in December 1975 bragged about the unimportance of economic sanctions saying,“at first (the United States) their cancellations were quite annoying … but when luckily, we did not depend on them for anything, neither in trade, nor in supplies, nor in anything. If we are already victorious now, after victory, what can they threaten us with? With canceling what … what? ”
“The United States has less and less to offer Cuba. If we could export our products to the United States, we would have to start making plans for new production lines … because everything that we produce now and everything that we are going to produce in the next five years has already been sold to other markets. We should deprive other socialist countries of these products in order to sell them to the United States. But the socialist countries pay us much better prices and have much better relations with us than we have with the United States. There is a popular saying that goes: ‘Don’t trade a cow for a goat.’” said Fidel Castro in his interview with Playboy published in April 1985
“Cuba will not buy an aspirin or a grain of rice. They have put a lot of restrictions (on the permission to sell food and medicine) that make it humiliating for the country, but also make it impossible in practice,” said Fidel Castro, in front of the United States Interests Office, in Havana, Cuba on October 18, 2000.
The Castro regime would go on to purchase billions in American agricultural products between 2000 and the present, but to do so they defaulted on what they owed to others. The peak year of trade between Cuba and the United States was in 2008, the last full year of the George W. Bush Administration. Press accounts of the U.S. Embargo on Cuba do not mention how it saved American taxpayers from billions in bad debt by the Cuban government. Nor do they discuss the circumstances that drove the United States to impose an embargo on the Castro regime.
How the U.S. Embargo has saved U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars
Cuba scholar Jaime Suchlicki at the Cuban Studies Institute on April 10, 2023 published an important analysis titled “The Folly of Investing in Cuba” that outlines a number of pitfalls both economic and moral to doing business with the Castro dictatorship that is a must read.
Existing U.S. sanctions have protected American taxpayers from having to shell out billions of dollars to subsidize the Castro dictatorship.
Others have not had the benefit of this policy.
China canceled $6 billion dollars in Cuban debt in 2011,
On November 1, 2013 the government of Mexico announced that it was ready to waive 70 percent of a debt worth nearly $500 million that Cuba owes it. The former president of Mexico Vicente Fox protested the move stating: “Let the Cubans get to work and generate their own money…They’re normally like chupacabras. The only thing they’re looking for is someone to give them money for free.”
In December of 2013, Russia and Cuba quietly signed an agreement to write off $32 billion of Cuba’s debt to the former superpower. Western governments pursued Cuban maritime debts seizing Cuban vessels and negotiating payment through Canadian courts.
In December 2015 it was announced that Spain would forgive $1.7 billion that the Castro regime owes it.
The 2015 debt restructuring accord between Cuba and the Paris Club, according to Reuters, “forgave $8.5 billion of $11.1 billion, representing debt Cuba defaulted on in 1986, plus charges.”
The 19-member Paris Club comprises Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland is owed money by Cuba Companies, with the exception of U.S. companies, doing business with Cuba when they are not paid pass the costs off to their respective governments, who in turn pass the costs off to taxpayers.
This is something to consider when the Agricultural lobby and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argue that U.S. laws should be changed and the United States should join the long line of governments seeking to collect from the Castro regime, a deadbeat dictatorship.
Lastly, and most importantly is the question of food security in Cuba, and the prospect of a food crisis. There is a food crisis in Cuba, and it has been going on for some time.
How tourism to Communist Cuba undermines food security
The Obama 2014-2017 opening did not improve food security, but worsened it due to increased tourism from the United States. The New York Times reported on December 8, 2016 in the article “Cuba’s Surge in Tourism Keeps Food Off Residents’ Plates” that more U.S. tourists have translated into less food for everyday Cubans thanks to continued central planning by the communist regime. “The government has consistently failed to invest properly in the agriculture sector,” said Juan Alejandro Triana, an economist at the University of Havana. “We don’t just have to feed 11 million people anymore. We have to feed more than 14 million.”
Over six decades to the present day, between 70% and 80% of Cuba’s food has and continues to be imported. This included the years when Cuba was heavily subsidized by the Soviet Union, and was part of the East Bloc. Since 2000, much of the food purchased by Havana has been imported from the United States. Despite this, rationing continued during the peak years (2011 – 2014) when the Cuban government received massive amounts of assistance from Venezuela’s Chavez regime. What about Cuba’s domestic agricultural production? Diario de Cuba in their February 7, 2022 article, “Cubans go hungry and Acopio leaves 22 tons of tomatoes to rot, farmers denounce,” cites Cuban agronomist Fernando Funes-Monzote who stated that “Cuban agriculture does not need to produce more food,” because “50% of what is grown today is lost before reaching the consumer.”
Communist central planning and the internal blockade
This is part of the “internal blockade” that thousands of Cubans have referred to, and signed a petition calling for its end.
Prior to the 1959 communist revolution in Cuba, Cuban farmers were able to produce enough food to feed the entire Cuban populace. The Cuban Studies Institute found that between 1952-1958 there was “a successful nationalistic trend aimed to reach agricultural self-sufficiency to supply the people’s market demand for food.” Despite the efforts to violently overthrow the Batista regime in the 1950s, “the Cuban food supply grew steadily to provide a highly productive system that, in daily calories consumption, ranked Cuba third in Latin America.”
This ended when the Castro dictatorship seized and collectivized properties, and prohibited farmers selling their crops to non-state entities, in the early years of the revolution. Farmers no longer decided how much to produce, or what price to sell. The communist regime established production quotas and farmers were (and are) obligated to sell to the state collection agency, called Acopio.
Havana calls the United States economic embargo a “blockade.” This is not true as the State Department (and U.S. – Cuba trade statistics over the past 20 years) demonstrate. A meme appeared on social media in Spanish that outlines the reality of the Castro regime’s internal blockade, and Cuban scholar and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner on July 15, 2021 gave a commentary on this. Below is a translation to English of this meme.
“The blockade does not prohibit fishermen in Cuba from fishing, the dictatorship does;
The blockade does not confiscate what farmers harvest, the dictatorship does;
The blockade does not prohibit Cubans on the island from doing business freely, the dictatorship does;
The blockade did not destroy every sugar mill, textile factory, shoe store, canning factory, the dictatorship did;
The blockade is not responsible for Cubans being paid with worthless pesos and stores sell you products with American dollars; the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible that Cubans are beaten and imprisoned for thinking differently, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible that there are hundreds of Cuban political prisoners who have not committed any crime, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for sending Cubans US dollars that they give to you in worthless pesos in the Western Union, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for the dictatorship building hotels and the roofs that fall on Cubans’ heads, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for hospitals in Cuba that are disgusting, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for not having water in homes, for not maintaining the aqueduct system, the dictatorship is;”
The United States does not have a “blockade” on Cuba, but porous economic sanctions with a focus on cutting off funds to the military that controls most of the Cuban economy. What the meme does reveal is the full extent of the “internal blockade” on Cubans imposed by the Castro dictatorship. Remittances continue to flood Cuba from the exile community in South Florida.
It is the Castro regime that must end the “internal blockade” it imposed on Cubans over 65 years ago.
How the U.S. embargo on Cuba came to be first imposed
U.S. policy towards Cuba has not been static since January 1, 1959 but has been changing and driven by various interests, including U.S. national interests. There is a lot of disinformation about how the U.S. Embargo was first imposed on Cuba, and how and why the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Havana. Here is a brief breakdown of what happened between January 1, 1959 and January 3, 1960.
Fidel Castro overthrew the Fulgencio Batista regime on January 1, 1959 following a U.S. arms embargo being imposed on the military dictator in the spring of 1958. The United States had actively pressured Batista to leave office since 1958. On January 7, 1959 the United States recognized the new Cuban government ushered in by the Castro brothers. It took just seven days to recognize the new regime.
In comparison it had taken the United States 17 days to recognize the government of Fulgencio Batista following his March 10, 1952 coup. The United States had not been consulted ahead of time about Batista’s plans and this led to the delay in recognition.
In April 1959 Fidel Castro visited the United States on an eleven day trip that concluded with a three hour meeting with Vice President Richard Nixon on April 19, 1959.
Within three months of U.S. recognition of the revolutionary government in Cuba the new regime began targeting American interests on the island and allying itself with the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and plotting the overthrow of several Latin American governments. It is important to revisit why the embargo was first imposed, and why it remains relevant today.
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Fidel Castro visits Caracas on January 23, 1959 and meets with Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, a social democrat, “to enlist cooperation and financial backing for ‘the master plan against the gringos.’”
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On March 3, 1959 the Castro regime expropriates properties belonging to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and took over its affiliate, the Cuban Telephone Company.
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On May 17, 1959 the government expropriated farm lands over 1,000 acres and banned land ownership by foreigners.
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Havana beginning in 1959 sent armed expeditions to Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to overthrow their governments.
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On February 6, 1960 talks began publicly between the U.S.S.R and Fidel Castro. The Soviet Union agreed to buy five million tons of sugar over five years. They also agreed to support Cuba with oil, grain, and credit.
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On July 6, 1960 the Castro regime passed a nationalization law authorizing nationalization of U.S.- owned property through expropriation. Texaco, Esso, and Shell oil refineries were taken.
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In September 1960 the Cuban government diplomatically recognized the People’s Republic of China.
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On November 19, 1960 Ernesto “Che” Guevara heading a Cuban delegation in Beijing met with Mao Zedong between 4:20pm and 6:30pm and discussed revolutionary objectives in Latin America.
The Eisenhower State Department in response to the above actions imposed the first trade embargo on Cuba on October 19, 1960, and it “covered all U.S. exports to Cuba except for medicine and some foods.”
On February 3, 1962 President John F. Kennedy declared in Proclamation 3447 an “Embargo on All Trade with Cuba” in which it was “resolved that the present Government of Cuba is incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system; and, in light of the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet Communism with which the Government of Cuba is publicly aligned, urged the member states to take those steps that they may consider appropriate for their individual and collective self-defense.”
To understand the US embargo, it is important to understand the internal blockade
Afro-Cuban American scholar, Amalia Dache, an associate professor in the Higher Education Division at the University of Pennsylvania who “engages in research within contested urban geographies, including Havana, Cuba; Cape Town, South Africa; and Ferguson, Missouri” explained in July 21, 2021 the reality of the US embargo and the Castro regime’s internal blockade.
“No. It’s very hard for me to say that as someone who still has family living in Cuba. But lifting the embargo would not magically improve their lives. Here’s why: To understand the US embargo, it’s important to know about the internal blockade the Cuban government imposes on its own people. For example, the US embargo does still allow for food and medicine sales to Cuba. The Cuban government buys $100 million worth of chicken from producers in the United States annually. It sells that chicken to the Cuban people at a marked-up rate, sometimes at double the cost, and uses the profit to fund the regime. Other countries trade freely with Cuba, but because the government is heavily involved, the internal blockade keeps those profits from reaching the Cuban people. Poor neighborhoods — Afro Cuban neighborhoods — get the worst of the shortages. The police and military get money for new cars and surveillance technology.”
Argentina’s Milei fires foreign minister over vote to end US embargo on Cuba
Argentina’s President Javier Milei dismissed Foreign Minister Diana Mondino after Argentina supported a UN resolution to lift the US embargo on Cuba. This marks the first time under Milei’s leadership that Argentina diverged from US and Israeli positions, with only these two nations who opposed the resolution.
President Javier Milei on Wednesday sacked Argentina’s Foreign Minister Diana Mondino after the country voted at the UN in favor of lifting the six-decade US embargo on Cuba, the presidency said.
“The new foreign minister of Argentina is Mr. Gerardo Werthein,” presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni wrote on X, hours after Argentina joined 186 other UN members who voted in favor of lifting the embargo imposed on communist-run Cuba since 1962.
Explanation of Vote After the Vote on a UN General Assembly Resolution on the Cuba Embargo
Ambassador Paul Folmsbee
Senior Advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs
New York, New York
October 30, 2024
AS DELIVERED
Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you members of the General Assembly.
The United States stands with the Cuban people. We strongly support their pursuit of a future with respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Approximately 1,000 unjustly detained political prisoners remain behind bars in Cuba – more than at any point in Cuba’s recent history. Nearly 700 of those detentions are connected to the July 11, 2021, historic protests. These people have languished in horrible conditions in Cuban jails for exercising their freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly to demand better living conditions from their government.
Despite Cuba’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council, the Cuban government has delayed responding to several requests by special procedures that mandate holders of the UN Human Rights Council send independent experts to Cuba, who would help advance respect for human rights, including freedom of expression, freedom of religion or belief, and the freedom of peaceful assembly. Some of these requests have remained pending for more than 10 years.
Sanctions are one element of our broader effort to advance democracy and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cuba. We therefore oppose this resolution.
That said, we recognize the challenges the Cuban people face. That is why U.S. sanctions include exemptions and authorizations relating to exports of food, medicine, and other basic goods to Cuba.
The United States remains a significant source of basic goods to the Cuban people. In 2023, the United States exported nearly $336 million in agricultural products and authorized another $100 billion in humanitarian exports, demonstrating America’s desire to help the Cuban people.
We encourage this body to urge the Cuban government to adhere to its human rights obligations and listen to the Cuban people and their aspirations to determine their own future. Thank you.
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14ymedio, April 14, 2023
Cuba’s 2022 Accounts Confirm That the Country Spends 16 Times More on Building Hotels than on Healthcare
Posted on April 14, 2023
Categories 14ymedio, Translator: Silvia Suárez
14ymedio, Havana, 13 April 2023 — The two sectors on which the Cuban regime has founded its popularity since 1959, health and education, combined received in 2022 one tenth the budget dedicated to business services and real estate and rentals. The area, considered a mixed bag that includes tourism, received 33% of the budget last year (23.360 billion pesos, almost one billion dollars at the official exchange rate), compared with the other two, which taken together barely received 3.3%.
The accounts are even worse if these two areas are separated. The health and public services received 2.1% of the budget (1.520 billion pesos or 63.4 million dollars), education received 1.2% (820 million pesos or 34 million dollars), that is 16 and 27 times, respectively, less than the so-called “business and real estate services.”
The poor investment in health contrasts with the gigantic income the Cuban state obtains from exporting medical services, the country’s main source of hard currency. According to official data, collected from annual statistics published by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), in 2021, they collected 4.349 billion dollars from the export of health services, although between 2011 and 2015 they were able to obtain more than 11.500 billion, according to the information provided by the former Minister of Economy José Luis Rodríguez.
That imbalance in the budget for that sector, which is diverse and non-specific but associated with hotel construction, has been going on for many years; in 2021 the pinch was even greater, it received 35% of the total budget, though the total amount was smaller.
The only area that dares to approach it, although still far behind, is the manufacturing industry, which receives 17.3% of the budget, totaling 12.304 billion pesos. The sugar industry is excluded from that, with its own budget line which allows us to see the ruinous budget assigned to that notable product of Cuban industry — barely 0.6%, with 410 million pesos.
With a percentage in the double digits, the transportation, food and communications sector received 10.3% (7.316 billion pesos).
In fourth place, though barely noticeable to Cubans, was the provision of water, electricity and gas, which received 6.988 billion or 9.8.% of the total budget. Although the figure seems padded when compared to some of those already mentioned, it continues to be less than one third of what was budgeted for real estate.
Two other sectors that fared well were mining and quarries, an area in which the government has placed a lot of hope for the supposed benefits of exporting nickel, among other minerals. Those rceived 5.066 billion pesos. Hotels and restaurants — the portion of tourism not related to real estate — received 3.226 billion pesos, and commerce and repair of personal effects received 2.506 million pesos, ahead of what should be a priviledged sector, agricultural production.
To this area, specifically designated by the government as a “priority”, a mere 1.855 billion pesos were budgeted, only 2.6% of the total budget. “Amid a situation of food insecurity, it is worrisome that the relative weight of investment in agriculture remains stagnant at a leven which is 12 times lower than the relative weight of investment in business services and real estate,” stated Cuban economist Pedro Monreal on his Twitter account Wednesday.
The expert reminds us that the agriculture sector employs more than 17% of Cubans, the sector with the most employment, but the low level of investment makes it a beacon of low productivity that weighs down economic growth for the entire country.
“It is probably understood, but worth repeating — without a major investment in agriculture it will not be possible to overcome food insecurity in Cuba, nor to mitigate inflation, nor poverty, nor will there be national development. The slogans they come up with matter very little,” he said.
The data provided by the National Statistics and Information Office (Onei), which are for last year, lay bare not only the (now) old evidence that tourist construction is disproportionate compared to other sectors at a time when it is not on par with profits. It also reflects the constant contradiction of the government discourse that stops investing in pillars of social justice such as food (fishing uses 0.7% of total investment) health or education, to capture foreign currency which, to make matters worse, does not arrive.
The small amount budgeted for the agriculture sector, moreover, serves to bring down tourism. As the reproaches come from the ranks of officialdom itself, tourists spend more on food when they come to Cuba than on paying for hotel accommodations, but if there is no food, the country loses out on that income as well and informed travelers lose the incentive to come.
Translated by: Silvia Suárez