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In the last couple of weeks there were lots of wire-service and U.S. newspapers stories which in their headlines and leads proclaimed the U.S. Congress, in allowing for the sale of medicines and food to Cuba, had opened a remarkable gap in the trade embargo imposed on the Fidel Castro regime in 1992. Here are some examples:
“Congress negotiators agreed to allow the sale of food to Cuba, which would be a significative fissure in the embargo . . .” (Associated Press); “Lawmakers agreed to allow the sale of food an medicines to Cuba, opening the way for a historic final vote on alleviating the four-decade-old embargo imposed on Havana . . .” (Reuters); “Republican negotiators in the House and in the Senate reached an agreement on a plan to allow for the first time in almost four decades the sale of food to Cuba, an action, they say, that would open the way for the lessening of sanctions . . .” (Washington Post); “The leadership in the House and Senate approved an agreement to allow the sale of food products to Cuba, opening the way for the most significative rollback in four decades in U.S. sanctions . . .” (New York Times).
Granma, which bills itself as “The Official Newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba,” is not usually a source of the truth, but this time anybody who could have read its story on the action taken by the U.S. Congress would have been better informed about what really happened.
Relieved of its guerrilla adjectives and its most paranoid assumptions, the “Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Cuba” that Granma transcribed was a version much closer to the facts than the one produced by the superficial approach of the U.S. media to the Congress decision that, as frequently happens, was so thoroughly conditioned that a careful reading leads to the conclusion that little or nothing of what is proclaims as its main intention remains.
Here is what the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Cuba had to say:
“Wire services and press media have reported a supposed agreement in the U.S. Congress to allow for the sale of medicines and food to Cuba, which they present as a substantial change in the blockade, when in reality it is not.
“It is a proposal that could be included in the appropriation bill for agriculture, whose versions are now being reconciled in a conference committee. This proposal has nothing to do with the constructive amendments to allow the sale of U.S. medicines and food to Cuba which were promoted with wide support in Congress as a result of the efforts of farmers and other American sectors which, increasingly, question their country’s sanctions against Cuba.
“Not having enough support to defeat those amendments, the Cuban-American members of Congress and the Republican leadership have violated the legislative process to impose, through dirty and anti-democratic tactics, a version that annuls the positive effect of the original amendments. The version they are trying to have approved demands that the companies obtain a special license of the U.S. government to authorize the sales of medicines and food. It doesn’t matter whether it is a gram of rice or one aspirin.
Excluded also is seeking in the U.S. any public or private financing to carry out these transactions.
“Even worse, this repulsive measure would turn into law the violation of the constitutional rights of Americans to travel freely, thus perpetuating the prohibition of travel to Cuba for U.S. citizens.”
What could be read in Granma is substantially true. The House and the Senate are set to vote on the plan which, even though it opens the door slightly to the sale of food and medicines to Cuba, makes them very difficult because it forbids their public or private financing by the U.S, and at the same time maintains the prohibition on importing products from Cuba. It also turns into law the restrictions of tourism from the U.S to Cuba—which forbid Americans from traveling to Cuba unless they obtain a special permit or are invited by a non-American group that pays their expenses—and which now are only administrative orders and can be revoked by the Executive at any time.
This is why Cuban exiles in the U.S. finds that, on balance, they like what Congress has agreed upon. Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart, the Florida Republican whose family fled from Cuba, calls this “the most important victory,” because it stops the Cuba regime from increasing its revenues with U.S. tourism.
On the same day on which Granma published the Cuban view on the plan agreed upon by U.S. lawmakers, in a more aseptic language president Bill Clinton was offering a very similar opinion on the stew cooked by Congress, saying that its proposal for the sale of food end medicines to Cuba would result in few transactions and would impose “unjustifiable” restrictions on travel from the U.S. to the island, which would be an “unwarranted” intrusion in his authority to conduct foreign policy.
However, being between a rock and a hard place, Clinton will not veto the plan as will be passed by Congress, because it is an amendment to a bill which provides $75 billion to the agricultural sector—a measure that is sacred for the Democratic Party in an election year.
One can agree or not with the restrictions on trade with Cuba and American tourism to the island, but it should be known that the plan is not, as has been said in the U.S. media, “a significative fissure in the embargo” nor does it open “the way for a historic final vote on alleviating the four-decade-old embargo” imposed on Havana.”
This time Granma is right and the U.S. media are wrong.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com