TRICKERY: A WEAPON INSEPARABLE FROM IMPERIALIST AGGRESSION Remarks by Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
at the Second World Meeting of
Friendship and Solidarity with Cuba
10 November, 2000
A POLICY'S SECRET
lf one were to believe what some of the media say, one might come to the conclusion that not only the blockade against Cuba does not exist but that Cuba is blockading the United States.
For some weeks now there have been stories floating around about the supposed steps taken by Washington to "relax" the blockade and, specifically, to allow the sale of food and medicines to Cuba. Meanwhile, they avoid showing any proof, analyzing the facts, reasoning. However, they repeatedly voice, as if thev were proven facts, what are nothing short of deliberately invented and propagated untruths.
This is not the first time this has happened. Neither is it fortuitous: It is a reflection of the workings of the disinformation apparatus which is an organic part of the system that dominates today's world. Thirty years ago, when the current technological revolution had only just begun, before he was appointed National Security Advisor, Brzezinski pointed out the advantages of the new media for making it possible to "manipulate the emotions and control the thinking by effectively exploiting the latest communications techniques."(1) Nobody had met Dolly the sheep yet but imperialism's theoreticians were dreaming of cloning thought and of turning human beings into robots.
At given intervals, and with unfailing regularity, similar machinations are heard about U.S. behavior. Throughout the last decade they have never stopped inventing lies while, in fact, all along they haye been passing laws like Torricelli and Helms-Burton and other measures which tighten the blockade and apply it with greater stringency. They are two sides of the same coin. Continuing the aggression against Cuba entails spreading confusion to divide and weaken public opinion which rejects this aggression.
The struggle against lies is an essential component of solidarity with Cuba. Hiding the truth, distorting it, falsifying facts and language have been an integral part of U.S. aggression.
The above in no way implies any criticism of the people of the United States. Quite the contrary. Throughout history, Cuba's enemies in that country have made untruth one of their essential tools, precisely because they know that the U.S. population is not prepared to allow their country to be turned into a synonym for evil and injustice. The Vietnam war will always serve as irrefutable proof that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time" and that when the moment of truth arrives, there is no force that can overcome the power of the people.
The complexity of the Cuban case originates in the depth of its roots and in the fact that it has been such a long conflict whose origins go back to the time when both nations were born, and which continues down to this era where the powerful have the most sophisticated media to control people's hearts and minds. As early as 1805, when Florida still belonged to Spain, Jefferson came up with the idea of making Cuba a part of the United States. From then on, the behavior of U.S. leaders towards our struggle for independence was guided by a hidden motive which Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Father of our Homeland, revealed in 1870: "To gain control over Cuba the secret of its policy."
Every now and again they deplored the "excesses" committed by the colonialists while allowing them to build and arm their war ships and obtain arms and war supplies in North America. They also strove to prevent other nations -- not only their European rivals but Bolivar and the sister republics on this continent as well -- from intervening in the conflict and cruelly hounded patriotic émigrés. It was a cold and calculating policy whose evil intent was denounced with great clarity by José Martí.
In 1989, the Liberating Army had already spread the war across the whole island and a Spanish defeat was imminent. Then, the United States decided to intervene. Then Congress passed the Joint Resolution in which it affirmed that "the people of Cuba are and by right must be free and independent." This document is the paradigm of a way of doing politics, of a style of managing relations with Cuba which is still in effect today. These words deceived many Cubans of the time and they have led several generations of U.S. citizens to believe that their government played a noble and selfless role in the Republic of Cuba's creation. In fact, it has been just the opposite.
The United States had ambitions of taking possession of Cuba, and to achieve that aim pressured the American nations not to spread either there or to Puerto Rico the emancipation movement which had liberated the rest of the continent. On several occasions they offered to buy Cuba from Spain. They maneuvered with European powers to prevent them snatching her from Spain and proclaimed the Monroe Doctrine. They refused to recognize the belligerence of the Cubans and for thirty years persecuted anyone who tried to help them. The decision to intervene in our war of independence in 1898 was simply the culmination of this policy -- whose essence was in fact to deny Cuba its right to freedom -- and the Joint Resolution is its cynical and dishonest expression.
The military occupation, the imposition of the Platt Amendment, the appropriation of Cuba's most important natural and economic resources, the successive interventions and the creation of a corrupt, vassal state which included several periods of bloody tyranny, were the real goals behind that Resolution. But it still shows up in many U.S. texts and in the rhetoric of its politicians and that of its annexationist spokesmen as evidence of its generous solidarity.
That perverse distortion of fact, that deliberate manipulation of language, that unseemly cult of the lie, has always been the guiding force behind the empire's policies.
AN INDISSOLUBLE CONSPIRACY
Official U.S. documents, partially and selectively released in 1991, reveal how and when the current clash between Washington and the Cuban Revolution began. They prove the utter falseness of the varied and changing excuses that U.S. diplomacy has employed over the course of four decades to try to justify its animosity towards Cuba (2).
In them the reader can find irrefutable evidence that this hostility predated any radical measure adopted by the Revolutionary Government. Strictly speaking, it began to rear its head when the popular movement led by Fidel Castro was still fightinq to gain power.
The Eisenhower administration made not a few attempts to prop up Batista's dictatorship to the end, to cheat the people of their victory and to protect the dictatorship's henchmen, including its worst criminals. As 1958 progressed, the attention paid to the Cuban situation by the United States National Security Council increased. lts meetings were held more often until, in the last week of December, they were a daily occurrence. On the 23rd, when the Batista regime was at the point of collapse, U.S. leaders were striving to find some formula that would derail the imminent popular victory. The then-head of the CIA summed up the discussion in these words: "We must prevent Castro's victory." Significantly, three days later this official would receive instructions from President Eisenhower not to show -- not even to the National Security Council -- any secret reports concerning Cuba.
The confidential messages sent by its Embassy in Havana on January 1, 1959 and on the following days show Washington's determination to help the agents of the defeated tyranny to escape. Shortly afterwards, anti-Cuban propagandists spent all their time vilifying the legal proceedings that the Revolution had started against those assassins and torturers who had been unable to escape. Torrents of lies were poured forth in defense of these executioners by the same media that had maintained complete silence in the face of their atrocities.
In the last years of the century, Washington has made a big show of an imaginary fondness for human rights -- outside its frontiers, of course -- and uses the theme as part of its arsenal of slanders against Cuba. The historical truth is that this question was the origin of the first dispute between the two countries when the Cuban government was still predominately composed of moderates and conservatives, many of whom figured later and prominently in the counterrevolutionary organizations created by the CIA. But the United States continued on the side of Batista and his band of criminals and against the Cuban Revolution, with the masterminds of the worst crimes and against their victims. Washington rejected all the requests for extradition which were sent by the government led by Miró Cardona -- the same character who two years later would chair the "Council of Government" which the CIA intended to set up at the Bay of Pigs -- and led to the removal, in fact, of the bilateral extradition treaty which existed at that time.
The alliance commitment to Batista and his henchmen was a central aspect of U.S. policy. It was so firmly rooted that it still persists four decades later. Today these Batista henchmen, their allies and their descendents are the backbone of the counterrevolutionary exile comunity, as is so tellingly demonstrated by the list of the heads of the so-called "Cuban American National Foundation."
Today still, the two legislative regulations which are the definitive tools of anti-Cuban policy are, in their origin, content and aim, of an unmistakably and definitely Batistian character: the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Law and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. The key element of both of them is a date: the first of January, 1959. The former provides for special conditions for Cubans who reached U.S. territory -- but only if they arrived on or after that day. lts subversive and destabilizing intent is obvious. The law seeks to encourage risky, illegal and disorderly emigration from Cuba in order to slander and distort her image. However, it is also an obvious fact that, more than anything else, it granted an exclusive advantage to Batista's followers at a time when it discriminated against Cuban émigrés who were until 1958 the second-biggest group of immigrants from Latin America, surpassed at that time only by Mexico.
The Helms-Burton Act, in its turn, shows how in 1996 Bastistian revanchism continues to be the basis of and motivation for anti-Cuban policy. The return of property lost on the first day of January, 1959 to its previous owners -- it harps on this insistently, it is the sine qua non for ending the blockade and the political and economic war against Cuba. lt is hard to imagine better proof of the endurance of the Batista-Washington conspiracy.
DISTORTING LANGUAGE
The first chapter in the unending economic aggression against Cuba happened long before is generally said to have happened -- and it is indissolubly linked to the Batista tyranny and the support that Washington continued to give him long after the date of his overthrow.
Before taking off for the North, the murderers and embezzlers, in what was truly an act of armed robbery, stole 424 million dollars worth of the gold and dollars which the National Bank kept to ensure the stability of our currency. Not one cent was given back. That brutal, absolutely inexcusable plundering -- it was one of the hardest blows to the Cuban economy -- happened before the government which replaced the tyranny had been installed in Havana, and it took place with the connivance or the cooperation of the U.S. authorities. They helped the thieves to flee and welcomed them to their country. The worst violators of human rights, the most hardened criminals Cuba has endured, have remained in the United States and nobody has ever bothered them. And the resources and wealth produced by the Cuban people by dint of their many years of labor and sacrifice ended up in U.S. banks and are still there today. This was, incidentally, the foundation of many fortunes, which grew even greater afterwards, fed by the uncountable benefits they have extracted from U.S. taxpayers through the federal budget and from the secret funds of the CIA -- which the empire's propaganda holds up as proof of the "ingenuity" and the "enterprising skills" of the so-called "Míami Cubans."
In the face of this unheard-of looting, the most conservative elements in the provisional government reacted with the greatest restraint and trusted in Washington's understanding. They limited themselves to asking for a loan to save the Cuban peso from its inevitable collapse. They sent delegations to ask for help from their friends. A book published in 1991 by the Department of State tells what happened. In February 1959, the U.S. National Security Council reviewed the affair. The veredict was very simple: listen to the Cubans but give them and promise them absolutely nothing.
When, several months later, in May 1959 the Revolutionary Government established the only possible compensation for the former landowners by passing the Agrarian Reform Law -- more generous, incidentally, than that imposed by General MacArthur on occupied Japan after the World War Two -- even the United States' own ambassador in Havana recognized, and he communicated this to his government, that in those circumstances Cuba had no alternative.
The elimination of large landholdings and distributing the land to the peasants was the event that led to the U.S. deploying economic aggression and to Washington's decision to launch a military attack as well. It was a necessary measure, essential for the country's development, an elemental fair measure which had the backing of all of society and was also a mandate of the 1940 Constitution, which had not been complied with up to that time. It was also something that rested exclusively with our sovereignty. The United States, with no right whatsoever to do so, demanded full immediate, cash payment for the land expropriated, aware of the fact that it was arbitrary, unreasonable and impossible because of Cuba's financial situation for which, to top it off, U.S. authorities were responsible because they had appropriated the money stolen from Cuba.
With the passage of time they have invented, one after the other, the most varied explanations for their inexcusable behavior. All are untrue. It was not differences over ideology, political systems or international positions which started the overt aggression against Cuba. Neither was it the cynical and fraudulent rhetoric about "democracy" and "human rights" -- terms which at the time were considered to be swear words -- that motivated them to attack Cuba with the servile complicity of the worst puppet states in the Americas. The basis of the conflict unleashed in 1959 was imperial arrogance and the foolishness to believe that they could easily impose their aggression. The same arrogance and similar foolishness explain the conflict forty two years later.
Once the Agrarian Reform Law was passed, they began to plan other hostile acts, including the removal of the Cuban sugar quota. On June 24, 1959 in a memorandum sent to Eisenhower, the Secretary of State, Christian Herter, voiced his concerns regarding this because, in his own words, it would constitute a measure of "economic warfare."
Of course, our sugar quota was completely eliminated and this decision was followed by uncounted attacks of an economic, trade and financial nature. They have not stopped up to this day. That slap in the face, so accurately describes by Mr. Herter, is now something long past, one of the first steps in an all-out, total war against the Cuban economy whose length and intensity is without precedent. Official propaganda refers to it simply as an "embargo" -- a hypocritical, false word used with malice aforethought to mask reality. It is an obvious case of an institutionalized lie, deliberately and carefully used by a government with the obvious aim of leading people into error and which has been echoed by not a few journalists, academics and politicians.
THE FABRICATED "OPPOSITION"
Along with the economic war, the United States unleashed political aggression and propaganda which is also without precedent. From the first year they also began preparations for something they called the "Cuba Program" which would lead, first off, to the mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs but which went far beyond that and which is still in effect today.
A CIA document dated October, 1961 was declassified in February, 1998. Its author was Mr. Kirkpatrick, the Agency's Inspector General. Its topic: to evaluate something that under the name "A program of covert action against the Castro regime" had been officially approved by Eisenhower on March 17, 1960. Kept secret for more than 26 years, the document published at last turns out to be interesting, even though some information is left out and some questions are still left in the shadows. At times it displays a kind of revealing eloquence.
On the very first page, the Inspector General makes it clear that "The history of the Cuban project begins in 1959" and reminds the reader of its crucial elements: a) the creation of a Cuban exile organization ... to direct the opposition activities and to provide cover for the agency's operations; b) a propaganda offensive on behalf of the opposition; c) the creation inside Cuba of a clandestine apparatus for action and intelligence-gathering. This would be responsible to the leadership of the exile organization; d) developing a small paramilitary force outside Cuba and then sneaking it into Cuba to organize, train and lead the resistance groups."
To sum up, this meant deliberately fabricating, organizing, financing and leading the Cuban so-called "opposition." According to Kirkpatrick, "the concept was classic." Although naturally, as the Inspector General noted, "the hand of the United States government was nowhere to be seen."
But it was a generous hand. In just a few months it spent more than 46 million dollars. A large part of this went to prepare for the invasion that was defeated at the Bay of Pigs, but some of it was also used to set up and finance newspapers and magazines and radio and television programs and to carry out anti-Cuban propaganda tours by lecturers who were their employees. The Inspector General supplies some specific facts. The heads of the exile counterrevolutionary organizations asked for a budget of half a million dollars per month, although the CIA agreed to pay them only $131 thousand, for salaries and personal expenses. This did not include, of course, the cost of paramilitary activities. The magazine called "Bohemia Libre" cost the CIA 35 thousand dollars a week. The radio station Radio Swan, set up by the Agency, reached a point where it was broadcasting 55 hours a day on medium wave and 26 hours per day on short wave, using 14 frequencies.
But the CIA was not content to organize, finance and lead the operation down to the last detail to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. Driven by unbounded optimism it went way beyond that. Apart from the mercenary forces and the countless operatives, it had "carefully chosen" and thoroughly trained 239 individuals whom it intended to use to organize the intelligence and security services of the regime which it would impose in Cuba. It took the trouble to itemize which of them should begin this work inmediately and which of them would form a back-up group. No one should be amazed. Similarly, the Agency had chosen the people to form the future Cuban government and had also drawn up five lists of minor officials.
There is nothing strange about the fact that information of this kind may now be public knowledge. It does not mean that a spirit of openness and "transparency" has taken up residence in the official dispatches from Washington, nor have they penetrated deep into the secret vaults of Langley. On the one hand, there have been not a few efforts made by U.S. institutions and private citizens to obtain, even to a limited degree, some level of freedom of information. On the other hand, what is released is always controlled, restricted, is only part of the truth and this is only allowed when quite a few years -- sometimes decades -- have gone by, as is the case with the material mentioned above. It is perfectly natural that, within the usual limitations, the United States should admit that it devoted time to fabricate the "Cuban opposition" in exile and inside Cuba. Because what they previously did in secret is now something they publicly and openly proclaim and even declare it, with legal force, in the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts. One can read every now and again in reports from AID, for example, what they have given to small counterrevolutionary groups on one side or the other of the Florida Strait. Of course, we will have to wait until the 21st century is a bit further along to learn what the CIA is doing now. But it is at least known that AID paid out more than 8 million dollars between 1996 and 2000 for these purposes and to date has promised another $5 million for 2001.
Neither the CIA nor other tools in Washington's service have ever let up in their aggression against Cuba. Operation Mongoose and the revelations of the Church Commission are notorious, as are others that have come to light. Others, many more, are kept secret. The United States has spent many millions of dollars over the last 42 years to fabricate a counterrevolutionary opposition both inside and outside Cuba, to set up radio and television stations, to publish books, magazines and newspapers, to promote international meetings and tours, to buy politicians, academicians and journalists -- to hurl at Cuba what is, all in all, the biggest, most intense and all-encompassing aggression in the field of ideas and propaganda.
Official yankee discourse is the source of much anger when, with great effrontery, it claims that its policy is inspired by a desire to promote "human rights" and "democracy."
Those who govern the United States have been and are responsible for the worst crimes against and the grossest and most systematic violations of the human rights of every single Cuban. They have a moral debt that they cannot pay. They are guilty of genocide against an entire nation, one they have always tried to annihilate.
And when it comes to democracy, Washington is not fit to give lessons to anybody. There would not be the time nor the space to even mention the irrefutable facts which prove how the U.S. plutocracy, from the initial expansion of the Thirteen colonies down to the present day, and both within its own borders and out to the furthest ends of the Earth, has been and is the greatest enemy of freedom and justice, the main opponent of the very idea of government by the people.
In 1958 they tried to choose those who would replace Batista. From 1959 on they have devoted their efforts to recruiting, choosing and training those they seek to impose as the rulers of Cuba, their officials, their employees, and even their executioners. This has been and continues to be the essence of the policy towards Cuba -- treating her like one of their colonies, a colony under a tyranny: imposing an imported tyranny on her, one fabricated created by them and for them. That would be the old annexationist dream come true and the absolute, final and everlasting denial of any notion of democracy. Cuba would have no government of its own because our native land would have ceased to exist.
A TRUCELESS WAR
After stripping her of her financial reserves, then depriving her of petroleum supplies and abolishing her sugar quota, all of which measures constitute an economic war, the United States totally eliminated trade with Cuba through a decision taken by President Kennedy on February 3, 1962. They say doing that is just a "trade embargo" when it is, in fact, a blockade and not just a trade blockade but an econornic and financial one and one that is part of the economic war that had been going on since 1959.
After the presidential order, Washington laid down a series of rules and regulations contained in Part 515 of Title 3l of the Federal Regulations Code. These completely abolish any kind of exchange between Cuba and the United States. But they were never limited to direct bilateral trade between the two. From the very first moment and in a detailed and specific way they have included any product which might have any part made in or coming from one of the two countries, even though it might now be a part of something belonging to a third country. They have extended its application to any natural or legal person from the U.S. or who has connections with the U.S., even though that person lives in another part of the world. They also forbid Cuba to use the dollar in its dealings with others.
Not a few commentators have made allusions to the extraterritoriality of the actions taken by the United States, as if this had sprung from the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, ignoring the fact that the previous regulations had always had that characteristic. It is true that both laws intensified this unacceptable violation of international law and they made it worse when they are given the parliamentary seal and presidential approval. But the provisions which preceded these two laws and their application had always entailed infringing the sovereignty of other countries.
The United States has used unceasing and numerous types of threats and blackmail against other countries, their companies and their citizens -- even though they have no relationship to U.S. capital, products or services -- to prevent or frustrate their ties with Cuba. To put it another way, Washington has done everything possible so that other countries also put an end to all trade with Cuba. To achieve this aim, it has not only used legal regulations but has also had recourse to all kinds of methods, including extortion and reprisals. Year after year at the United Nations, Cuba, armed with incontrovertible proof, has denounced these illegal acts which take up a great deal of the time of U.S. diplomats and other agents all over the world.
But the conduct of the United States has been extraterritorial since the first day, and every day and every night of these 42 years. Crudely and criminally extraterritorial, since its whole purpose is to subjugate Cuba, a country that does not belong to it and which it will never be able to enslave.
There were not a few occasions when other governments rejected the U.S. attempts to impose its will on activities carried out in territories that were under another's jurisdiction. Some parliaments and governments of countries affected passed laws specifically designed to counteract yankee interference. What was at that time called the European Economic Community -- forerunner of what is now the European Union -- protested more than once.
The disagreements with some states became bitter. The question was discussed even in the Organization of American States and on July 29, 1975 a resolution was passed by the majority -- without Washington's vote -- which gave its members a free hand when it came to relationships with Cuba.
It was in this context and as a result of international protests that the United States found itself obliged to modify the provision which forbade the so-called U.S. subsidiaries located abroad to do business with Cuba. From August 21, 1975 on, they could do so if they obtained a special license from Washington.
Although arrogating the power to grant or deny permission to trade with Cuba to companies located outside their jurisdiction was, obviously, objected to by other states, at least this decision allowed trade, mostly in food and medicines, to develop. In 1991 it amounted to 700 million dollars.
But in 1992 the Torricelli Act brought it to halt. Washington no longer authorized these sales, thus obliging companies incorporated in other countries to respect the U.S. "embargo" and to ignore the laws of the states where they were located. It also imposed a new and serious punishment: ships which carried Cuban goods or third-country goods to or from Cuba could not enter U.S. ports for six months after they had been in Cuban ports (previously they had been forbidden to unload or load goods in the United States; now they were not even allowed to enter the United States, for any reason whatsoever, even in a case of an emergency arrival, and that constitutes a brutal attack on the laws of navigation).
The Torricelli Act closed off any possibility for Cuba to acquire food and medicines, no matter in which country of the world they were made, if there was a U.S. citizen connected with the company that produced them.
In spite of that, from 1992 on, U.S. propaganda has pointed to this law as one which authorizes exporting medicines to Cuba from the United States. Neither more nor less. They have shamelessly repeated this tactless lie for eight years. And some politicians, academicians and journalists have echoed this lie, without even blushing.
The other ingredient of the Torricelli Law is something called Track Two, in which they openly declare rendering financial, material or any other kind of assistance to the so-called members of the "Cuban opposition." In this way they formalize in the wording of a law what they had been doing, in a more or less hidden way, since 1959.
It is hard to find another such example of interfering insolence. Washington has taken upon itself the supposed right to do something in Cuba that is illegal in the United States. One of the loudest outcries stirred up by that display of bad taste and stupidity which they call an electoral campaign over there is, in fact, the allegation that some candidates accepted contributions of foreign money.
They gave the name "Cuban Democracy Law" to this outrage against international law. Encouraged by then-candidate Bill Clinton, president Bush signed the document that had been sponsored by the Democrat Torricelli with the backing of the Republican right and the annexationist mob. All together, rolling round in the same dunghill.
In yet another example of the boundless cult of the lie, U.S. propaganda machine coined a new phrase in 1992 which it repeats everywhere. They call their crime "a people-to-people policy." As well as depriving Cubans of food and medicines, they also want to snatch their independence away from them. And while they add to their lack of respect for other countries, they are also insulting human intelligence. Do they really think that there is as much ignorance in the world as that stored up and poured out by U.S. politicians?
That law was inspired by the slimiest opportunism. Now that the socialist camp had disappeared, now that Cuba was facing the most difficult and complex period in her history, having lost her main markets, all her credits and essential supplies in one fell swoop, and now she was standing all alone with no allies, the imperialists thought that the hour had come to bring about the downfall of the Revolution by means of hunger and disease, by spreading pain and suffering, through genocide.
Our heroic people was able to hold out against these tremendous trials and tribulations. Solidarity grew and international rejection of yankee overbearing increased. On four consecutive occasions between 1992 and 1995, and with an overwhelming majority that has continued to grow since then, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the blockade and completely isolated Washington.
How did it respond to this outcry from the entire world? By intensifying its aggression, by multiplying the outrage, by falling into a frenzy of overbearing. They passed what Helms and Burton christened, no more and no less: the 1996 Law for Cuban Democratic Freedom and Solidarity (Freedom Law). It was sponsored by the ultra-right and president Clinton signed it, using as an excuse the distortion of the events which took place on February 24 of that year -- lying, without blinking, about the unceasing provocations against Cuba for which Washington alone was responsible.
THE FESTIVAL OF TRICKERY
By passing that law Washington gave itself over to a systematic campaign of lies which knows of no limits and has no equal. They have lied about every part of it, from the reasons it was signed to the contents of its wording and the steps they have taken for its painstaking application.
That document has only been widely published in Cuba. In the rest of the world, including the United States, people are only allowed to learn about a dishonestly toned-down version.
Thus they have led many to believe that the Helms-Burton Act consists of only two titles, one of which is suspended and the other which only functions at half measures. Nothing could be less true. lt consists of four titles, all of which have been in force since August 1, 1996 and which can only be repealed or modified by another law and this has never been contemplated.
The first title deals with strengthening what they call "sanctions" against Cuba. In essence, it broadens and reinforces all the blockade's measures contained in the Federal Regulations Code, lays down additional ones and gives the force of law to all of them, codifies them in such a way that they cannot be changed or abolished except by a legislative act.
Title two clearly lays down that the blockade and the economic war will -- continue even if they manage to destroy the Revolution -- until all the -- property under public ownership or belonging to the Cuban workers and peasants has been returned or paid for in full. And as if that were not enough, it describes in detail the plan to take over Cuba, not forgetting to mention the control mechanisms which will ensure the total subjection to Washington of a country which, to all intents and purposes, would have ceased to be independent.
The third title is the one most talked about. Its usefulness is that every six months, like someone observing an obligatory ritual, it makes people believe that the Helms-Burton Act does not exist. The essential part of this title is to establish some supposed "rights" for the former owners and a "legal responsibility," enforceable in yankee courts, for those who are the present and real owners. That "right" has been granted equally to the whole mob of thieves and exploiters of Cuban origin and that "responsibility," according to this law, has been taken on by those who make use of or have made use of these properties in any way whatsoever -- in other words, not only foreign investors and the Cuban State, but also each and everyone of the inhabitants of the Republic of Cuba. This monstrosity has been in effect since August 1, 1996 and will not cease to be so until a contradictory law decides otherwise.
President Clinton could have postponed the application of title three but he did not do so. The deadline for doing so was July 16, 1996. On that day the National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, announced that the President had decided not to use this prerogative and that, as a result, the title would come into effect and no executive order could suspend it. The President limited himself to using an additional power it gave him, that of imposing a six-month suspension on initiating any court proceedings.
But this in no way changes the essential part of what is operational, effective cumulatively since August 1, 1996. Every time the President imposes a six-month suspension on starting court proceedings, he is in fact confirming that the Law, and specifically its Title Three, remainS in effect, since it is the law itself that is the source of his twice-yearly power. And he has used it only and exclusively to avoid the chaos that would ensue if the annexationist mob were to invade the federal courts with lawsuits for that which they have been given a "right," which is confirmed twice a year. What will happen if at a given moment it occurs to another President not to do it? Who guarantees that such a thing will not happen some day? What will be the consequences, if as some people have already suggested, Congress decides to take this prerogative away from the President?
Title Four is confined to denying U.S. entry visas to people who invest in Cuba and to their relatives. This reprisal has been used several times, and the State Department has set up a special administrative unit whose job is to seek out and collect information to make it easier to apply this measure.
When the Helms-Burton Act was passed it caused a few diplomatic setbacks which Washington has been able to smooth over with a combination of pressure and wiliness and with the docile assistance it has received from some foreign officials. Thus, the initial steps taken by the European Union to take the problem to the appropriate bodies of the World Trade Organization led to an "understanding" which was announced with great display of pomp and which one of the parties complied with and the other completely ignored.
Europe committed itself to suspending its case with the WTO and it met its commitment. In exchange, the United States promised to take the necessary steps to make just minor changes to Titles Three and Four -- the other two were not even mentioned -- but has done absolutely nothing. The Administration has taken no steps in this direction. They have not done so, in spite of the fact that since then, they have passed other pieces of legislation which extend the blockade and affect European interests. The most recent of these, section 211 of the 1999 Budget Law, is in violation of international agreements on trademarks and patents and is aimed at prejudicing the interests of a Cuban-French joint venture.
Meanwhile, the United States government has been careful to stick to the letter of the Helms-Burton Act in all its ramifications. Its officials give regular account to the Congressional committees, either openly or confidentially, as the case may be, of the measures implemented. These include the reprisals against foreign companies or citizens, supplying financial and material resources to the small counterrevolutionary groups and using illegal methods to gather information about Cuba's economic and trade activities. As proof of the decisive importance which, for legal purposes, the return of confiscated property has, the Department of State is developing a special program to organize and support émigrés who used to own land, housing, factories or any other property which they hope to repossess at the point of Yankee bayonets.
In January, 1997, in strict compliance with the provisions of the Helms-Burton Act, the United States government launched a noisy publicity campaign around what it presents as a supposed offer of economic aid to bring about what it referred to as a "democratic transition" in Cuba. Its spokespeople promoted it as if it were an alternative to the economic war and were something other than the evil intent of that law. A reading of this plan, which we published and explained in full here in Cuba, made it obvious that this crude machination was, moreover, an insult to all Cubans whom they thought they could bribe with this nasty trickery.
Suffice it to read Title Two of this odious legislative provision. There, as clearly as is possible, it prohibits any kind of assistance to Cuba until the Revolution is crushed and it even makes any fake economic cooperation afterwards conditional on the return of their property to the Miami mob and the ex-exploiters.
What happens is that the text of the law itself, more exactly in clause f) of section 202, entrusts the President with carrying out this lying maneuver. Lying on the law's command. Do you want a better example of a lack of morality and cynicism?
The answer, as always, must be sought in Washington. In its eagerness to obey the plans of Helms and the annexationist mob they have turned deceit into their permanent mode of conduct. Similar announcements were made in March of 1998 and in January of 1999. Our people is perfectly well aware of the obscenely false nature and the bottomless evil of these repeated maneuvers.
Once again, now that the Agriculture Law has just been passed by the U.S. Congressm they are talking about "authorizing the sale of food and medicine" to Cuba. The first thing that must be said is that if the senators and representatives contemplated the possibility of removing the prohibition on the sale of food and medicines to Cuba it is, quite simply, because they know better than anyone that this kind of trade had been totally banned and that what the government had been saying all these years was a complete lie. But no one has explained how all that will change now, as long as the bulky tangle of prohibitions and restrictions, which for years has made any trading relationship between the two countries impossible, remains in effect.
It is surprising that anyone could wrongly interpret the latest legislative monster, since in the text itself, in the most explicit manner possible, it puts it on record, more than once, that all anti-Cuban legislation remains intact. All you have to do is read paragraph 2 of section 908, significantly entitled "rules of interpretation," where it states that "nothing ... is to be interpreted as if it alters, modifies or in any other way affects... any other legal provisions concerning Cuba.'
So there is no change whatsoever in the strict regulations which today ban financial, economic or trade flows and transport between the two countries, as well as other activities universally associated with any negotiations for exchanging goods and services. Just recently a federal grand jury began proceedings against several U.S. businessmen accused of trying to violate these prohibitions.
Can it be conceived that, while all this is going on, direct sales from the United States to Cuba might exist? If only that were the case, why do they persist in persecuting Cuban trade all over the world, violating the sovereignty of other countries? Why do they keep on punishing U.S. citizens, accusing them of carrying on, through the offices of third parties, something that they make believe can be carried on directly?
The hypothetical sales to Cuba would have to be authorized, one by one, with specific licenses, subject to rigorous congressional monitoring. Payments would have to be made in cash and in advance. No U.S. public or private financing would be allowed, nor any by foreigners living in the United States, nor by U.S. subsidiaries or branches abroad. Anyone violating these provisions would be punished by the penalties already in force (up to 10 years in prison and one million dollars fine for each violation.)
Since all of the parts of the blockade are still being applied, exporters should also verify the "end use" of every medicine or medical product. Not satisfied with these additional restrictions on trade, they have turned the prohibition on travel to Cuba into a law, in a clear violation of the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.
It is obvious that, in practice, Cuba could not purchase any good in the U.S. market nor any that originates directly or indirectly from the United States.
But there is something even worse. It should not be forgotten that now that the new law has been passed, all other unilateral sanctions have been eliminated and new rules have been established to regulate and control future sanctions, in the event that some time in the future Congress should decide to impose them on some other country. The United States is entering then, as they say, a new era, in which it has stopped acting on its own against countries which it wants to punish. At the same time, however, it is ratifying the blockade against Cuba and extending it.
Cuba is left as a case apart, the only exception, as if it were not part of this world. Any attempt anyone wanted to make to sell something under such conditions would be useless. And that is how it has been with the many fruitless efforts made by Cuba to buy medicines, or even essential parts for equipment for surgery on children, after President Clinton, in March of 1998, promised to "give up" the procedures which supposedly would allow us to buy them.
Any attempt made now, apart from being completely useless, would have serious legal consequences. It would imply accepting the fact that Cuba belongs to another planet, that special, totally discriminatory rules have to apply to her. This would mean acknowledging that this treatment is quite normal and would make the blockade eternal. Those who drafted such odious legislation did it knowing that Cuba, like any other self-respecting state, would never accept anything of the kind. And as if that were not enough, to demonstrate that they were not at all interested in relaxing the blockade, Congress simultaneously passed, as part of another law, an amendment which strips Cuba of the funds arbitrarily frozen in the United States as a result of the blockade. The theft of these resources and their delivery to the annexationist mob in Miami rips to shreds the lie about the alleged "relaxation." Who would dare to send cash, with no guarantee whatsoever to a country whose government is capable of appropriating what does not belong to it and sharing it out among its cronics?
It is really shocking that some people are determined to describe what happened as a step towards softening the U.S. economic war against Cuba. The truth is that the blockade, now harsher than ever, is still untouchable.
All of this after the Senate had twice -- once in 1999 and then again this -- year passed a Law which removed those sanctions against all countries, including Cuba, and then the House Appropriations Committee passed an identical Law and overturned the proposal to exclude Cuba and then later, in a full session of the same House, with 301 votes in favor, they declared themselves in favor of removing the mechanisms which prevent us from buying food and medicines in the United States. These proceedings will go down in history as a telling example of the corrupt and anti-democratic nature of the U.S. political system.
The final wording of the Agricultural Law contradicts the opinion clearly expressed over and over by the majority of the legislators. Far from following the original intentions of those who sought a rapprochement with the Cuban market, it denatures them in such an indecent way as to reduce them to some kind of macabre jest.
As of now, the Cuban people will be the only one which is still denied access to food and medicines by the U.S. government that will continue to commit the crime of genocide. Since this is a terrible crime, abhorred by all decent people, Washington also finds itself obliged to deploy all of its powerful disinformation machine to hide the truth and to spread confusion.
Deceit and lies, the main products exported by the United States, will continue to flood the planet. But there will be fewer and fewer people who let the wool be pulled over their eyes.
Trick will be defeated. Those who try to turn people into tame machines will fail. Evil and injustice cannot be imposed forever.
Cuba shall prevail. We Cubans know how to hold our ground, we shall save our homeland and we shall turn it into an even freer, more beautiful and more just homeland. Anyone who is struggling in the world to win the future can count on Cuba's solidarity and friendship, ever onward until victory.
Notes: (1) Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era," Viking Press, New York, 1970.
(2) Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958 - 1960, Volume V: Cuba. United States Government Printing Office, Washington 1991.
(3) Inspector General's Survey of the Cuban Operation, October 1961, National Security Archive, The New Press, New York 1998.