Cuba’s alleged sponsorship of terrorism
Cuba’s alleged sponsorship of terrorism
The standard rhetoric against bogus lists obscures Cuba’s true achievement
On September 11, 2024, thirty-five former presidents and prime ministers of the world (twenty-six from Latin America and the Caribbean, two from Europe, five from Africa, and two from Asia) emitted an open letter to U.S. President Joseph Biden requesting that Cuba be removed from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. The former heads of state are from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Jamaica, Spain, Ghana, Mozambique, and Malaysia, among others.
The letter praised the easing of sanctions that occurred during the Obama Administration. It noted that normal relations of mutual cooperation should not be blocked when nations have political systems with different ideological inspiration. In fact, they argue, since the founding of the United Nations System and its establishment of the principles of the sovereignty and self-determination of nations as fundamental pillars of world governance, there has existed no norm stipulating that relations among states ought to be conditioned on their level of ideological alignment.
The letter noted that in May of this year the State Department removed Cuba from the list of countries that are not cooperating fully against terrorism (a separate bogus list). In light of this action by the U.S. government, the former presidents and prime ministers find it contradictory that Cuba remains on the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
The accusation against Cuba, they declared, is without any evidence, and in fact, Cuba has a demonstrated policy of fighting against terrorism. Cuba actively participated in the construction of the Peace Accord signed in Havana in 2016 between the government of Colombia and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), and Cuba recently has served as a guarantor country in the peace dialogue between the government of Colombia and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), which demonstrate the will for peace of the Cuban government. The former heads of state expressed their “profound conviction that the Cuban government is seriously committed against terrorism and promoting peace in the region and the world.”
The former heads of state asserted that the inclusion of Cuba on said list has adversely affected the most vulnerable sectors of the Cuban population and has permanently destabilized its economy, provoking an unprecedented wave of Cuban migrants to the United States. They declare that they are making a “humanitarian appeal aimed at alleviating the situation of millions of innocent people.”
On September 12, Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations Bruno Rodríguez held a press conference, in which he presented an update of the Cuban report on the impact of the U.S. blockade. He noted that from March 1, 2023, to February 29, 2024, the blockade caused damages to the Cuban economy estimated to be 5.568 billion U.S. dollars, which was an increase of 189.8 million over the previous year. The Minister noted that during the past year, U.S. actions have focused on identifying and blocking the principal sources of income of the Cuban economy, through the strict application of Helms-Burton Law Title III, which pertains to companies and banks in third countries.
The Minister also reported that the accumulated damage during more than six decades of the blockade has been 164 billion dollars. He asserted that there is no sector of the Cuban economy that is not affected by the blockade.
The press conference is a prelude to the consideration of the General Assembly of the United Nations of the Cuban resolution, “The need to put an end to the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” which will take place on October 29-30. Cuba has presented the resolution to the General Assembly every year since 1992. In the most recent vote, held on November 2, 2023, there were 187 votes in favor of the resolution, two opposed (the United States and Israel), and one abstention (Ukraine).
The Minister noted that the removal of Cuba in May 2024 from the list of countries not fully cooperating with U.S. anti-terrorist efforts has been without practical impact, because Cuba remains on the list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism. The unilateral measures of the blockade remain in place, with the objective of fragmenting Cuban society. The slanderous campaign has included an offensive against Cuban tourism, maintaining that the country is not safe, with the intention of impeding the entrance into the country of income that is necessary for attending to the needs of the population.
Rodríguez noted that between January 2021 and February 2024 there were a total of 1,064 actions by foreign banks, denying the lending of services to Cuban entities, including transfers for the purchase of food, medicine, fuel, parts for the National Energy System, and consumer goods essential for the population. In the last four years, he noted, surgeries have decreased considerably in the country, provoking an accumulated demand for surgical services, with a waiting list of 86,141 patients at the end of February 2024. During the past year, the UN Organization for Food and Agriculture attempted to buy tractors for small producers from a provider in Puerto Rico, but the manufacturer decided to not assume the risk of selling to Cuba. The majority of software systems are blocked from Cuba, which affects significantly Cuban private small entrepreneurs.
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Previously, on June 26, 2024, 123 countries of the world emitted in Geneva a statement demanding the exclusion of Cuba from the U.S. unilateral list of states that allegedly sponsor terrorism. The statement expresses reservations about the list itself: “The List of States Allegedly Sponsoring Terrorism goes against the fundamental principles and peremptory norms of international law, including international solidarity. The process through which the designation is made is unclear and non-transparent. It negatively affects the realization and enjoyment of fundamental human rights, including the rights to food, health, education, economic and social rights, the right to life and right to development.” With respect to Cuba, the statement asserts that “the permanence of Cuba on that list causes extraordinary negative consequences on the Cuban economy, due to its intimidating effect and the hindering of economic-financial operations of third parties with Cuba, for fear of being fined. It hinders the country's possibilities of accessing food, medicines, fuel, medical equipment and other basic goods, which impacts the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.”
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Chronicle of a blockade intensified and a bogus list
In an interview by the Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet on May 14, 2024, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel explained that up to the first half of 2019, Cuba had lower levels of development than what would have been possible were it not for the blockade of six decades. However, Cuba had a certain level of development, as was indicated by its expanding sector of international tourism, its access to credit from a variety of financial institutions, its stable supply of fuel, and its capacity to supply inputs necessary for its transportation, energy, and production systems. But during the second half of 2019, the Trump administration applied more than 240 measures, which constituted an intensification of the six-decade blockade. Among the measures was the application for the first time of Title III of the Helms-Burton Law, which enabled the U.S. government to apply pressure on present and potential foreign investors in third countries, threatening to accuse them of engaging in commercial activities with enterprises that had been “confiscated” by the Cuban Revolutionary Government. And the measures included the placing of Cuba on the List of Countries that sponsor terrorism, giving a degree of apparent legal validity to the pressure applied on companies and banks in third countries.
Thus, beginning in 2019, Díaz-Canel reported, with the support of these new measures, “an enormous energetical and financial persecution” was initiated, with the consequence that “all our sources of foreign exchange income were cut off,” creating deficits in foreign currency and fuel, and creating instability in the supplying of energy and the systems of production. These measures of intensification have been kept in place, and the application of pressure continues, the Cuban president noted, during the Biden administration.
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On democracy versus authoritarianism
In the nearly universal international criticism of inclusion of Cuba in an arbitrary list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism, and in the widespread international condemnation of the U.S. blockade against Cuba, reasonable arguments are generally put forth, to the effect that U.S. policy violates post-World War II international norms and has inhumane consequences for the people of Cuba. However, such criticisms fail to address the false premise that serves as pretext for the U.S. hostile policy toward Cuba, namely, the assumption that Cuba has an undemocratic and authoritarian government.
The widespread acceptance of the false premise of Cuban authoritarianism prevents the West from appreciating that the Cuban Revolution has developed a political system that overcomes the fundamental political dilemmas inherent in the neocolonial situation. And what is especially significant, the Cuban Revolution has accomplished the attainment of political legitimacy in a historic moment in which the representative democracies of the West have fallen into legitimation crises. These dynamics ought to provoke reflection on the theory and practice of democracy, which should not be obscured by the clamour of habitual slogans against the blockade and spurious lists.
Although largely unseen by Western commentators, Cuba has developed a political system of people’s democracy, characterized by direct and indirect elections of delegates and deputies to municipal, provincial, and national assemblies, without the participation of political parties. Said people’s assemblies form the governing powers, the exercise of which includes the election of the President of the Republic by the National Assembly of People’s Power. The system of people’s power is interconnected with mass organizations of workers (including professionals), women, students, small independent farmers, agricultural cooperativists, and neighborhoods, with very high levels of participation by world standards. At the same time, the Communist Party of Cuba is constantly present in the Cuban political process—educating, guiding, and exhorting the people—but without political authority to decide.
The construction of a politically effective alternative to representative democracy, a central political fact not widely understood outside of Cuba, is the key to the capacity of Cuba to resist the persistent imperialist aggressions. Inasmuch as all citizens of the nations of the world have the obligation to study political processes in other lands as they seek to construct their own system in their own nation, the citizens of the West ought to know more concerning the Cuban political process of people’s democracy, which has attained political legitimacy in an age of legitimation crises.
People’s Democracy in Cuba: A vanguard political-economic system
In addition, the standard rhetoric against the U.S. blockade and its creation of spurious lists obscures the widespread belief among Party members that Cuba is going to overcome the blockade without it being ended. Ever since the times of Che Guevara, Cuban political culture has taken as given that imperialism will always be imperialism, and therefore, anti-imperialist nations have to develop structures that enable them to overcome the obstacles imposed by the imperialist policies of the world powers. The concept dates to the Bandung conference of 1955, when leaders of nations in the neocolonial situation, observing the imperialist maneuvers of the Western colonial powers, began to advocate such policies as South-South cooperation, calling upon the nations of the Third World to construct among themselves the mutually beneficial commerce necessary for their common development, thus circumventing the imperialist maneuvers of Western powers in decadence.
In this spirit, when a Western bank denies to Cuba the standard sixty-day credit note used to guarantee international commercial transactions, the reaction of the Cuban Revolutionary Government is to begin searching for a bank that will emit the standard credit note. And Cuba is not alone in this. Many nations of the world are sanctioned by the USA in one form or another, including China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, among others. Rejecting the U.S. practice of using financial and commercial structures to impose politically inspired measures, the nations of the Global South and East, such as the nations of BRICS and of CELAC, are actively engaged in looking for alternative structures for financial and commercial transactions, including the use of alternatives to the U.S. dollar in commercial exchanges. This is a dimension of the struggle of the nations of the Global South and East for the construction of a world that respects the sovereignty and self-determination of all nations, as the basis for a world of peace and security sustained by mutually beneficial commerce. This worldwide struggle is advancing and maturing.
Cuba continually calls for an end to the U.S. blockade, because it would facilitate her economic and socialist development. At the same time, aided by the development of mutually cooperative relations with sister nations of the global South and East, Cuba intends to construct a more prosperous and just socialism, with or without the cooperation of the USA.
Cuba, therefore, without announcing it, intends to overcome the blockade without ending it. In my view, the march of history is on Cuba’s side, because human progress is based on the construction of a more developed world from the structures of domination imposed by a conquering power.
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