The world is with Cuba
The UN General Assembly again votes for an end to the US blockade
On October 29-30, 2024, the General Assembly of the United Nations debated the Cuban resolution, “The need to end the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
The October 29 session began with addresses to the General Assembly by seven political and regional groups of nations: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), consisting of ten countries; the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), 57 nations on four continents; the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations, 18 member States; the African Group, 55 member States; the Community of Latin American States (CELAC), 33 member states; the Caribbean Community (Caricom), 15 member states; the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 120 member states; and the G77 and China, 134 member States. In addition, thirty-one nations took the podium to address the question. All spoke clearly in support of the resolution, and many condemned the arbitrary inclusion of Cuba on a spurious list of nations that supposedly sponsor terrorism.
On October 30, 187 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with two opposed (United States and Israel). The small central-eastern European country of Moldavia abstained.
Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla addressed the General Assembly in presentation of the resolution. He began with a powerful example of the impact of the U.S. blockade on Cuban society.
For five days, from Friday, October 18 to Wednesday, October 23, Cuban families were deprived, except for a few hours, of electricity, with anxiety that food would spoil, and it would not be possible or very expensive to replace it, and many lacked running water. Hospitals operated under emergency conditions, and schools and universities suspended classes. Political, economic, and cultural activities were closed, and only vital institutions remained open. The economy came to a halt.
During the blackout, beginning October 20, Hurricane Oscar hit the eastern part of the country, devastating Holguín and especially Guantánamo, a province where a U.S. naval base usurps our territory. Despite the strenuous and effective efforts of the internationally recognized Cuban Civil Defense, eight people died, including a five-year-old girl, and two are missing. The municipalities of Imías, San Antonio del Sur, Maisí and Baracoa suffered extensive damage. Satellite photos showed the country in blackout and, in addition, subjected to heavy rain and winds.
The serenity, understanding, confidence, awareness and mobilization of the entire people in solidarity support for their neighbors and for those in need was impressive. Some 52,000 self-sacrificing and heroic electrical workers, far from their families, worked without rest. They were the stars in a true feat, together with our Party, government, the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior, and the organs of People's Power.
The primary cause of the failure of the National Electric System was the lack of fuel (affecting the generation of electricity) combined with instability due to the precarious state of our plants. Both are direct consequences of the extreme measures of economic warfare applied by the U.S. government since 2019, specifically designed to prevent the delivery of fuel and parts for technical maintenance of our plants and electrical installations, and hindering investment and access to financing.
We have overcome the serious electricity emergency, but the norm for Cubans includes prolonged and frequent blackouts that affect homes and fundamental services.
Electricity generation in our nation is highly dependent on imported fuels. As is known, the U.S. government has applied a policy of maximum pressure, in violation of international law, aimed at depriving Cuba of fuel supplies from third countries, through sanctions and intimidation against producers, suppliers, transporters, and insurers. In just one year, the previous U.S. administration sanctioned fifty-three ships and twenty-seven companies associated with shipments to Cuba.
Rodríguez declared that the Cuban economy in recent years has experienced difficulties without precedent, in spite of the fact that the government works tirelessly to find solutions. There are various causes of this situation, he noted, but the most outstanding factor is the deliberate intention of the United States to suffocate and sabotage our national economy, placing significant obstacles to impede our growth and development.
The U.S. government knows very well, Rodríguez maintained, that the blockade violates the UN Charter and international norms, and that it has a direct and indirect effect on the Cuban system of health and the general wellbeing of the people. The U.S. policy deliberately intends to impoverish the people and provoke shortages, as the centerpiece of a multidimensional unconventional war against Cuba, with the intention of provoking the collapse of the Cuban Revolutionary Government. Even though the blockade has not provoked political instability in Cuba, it functions as a message of warning to the entire world that there is a price to be paid for rebellion.
The Minister noted that the strengthening and intensification of the blockade was initiated by the Trump Administration in the period 2017 to 2019, and the new measures have been maintained by the Biden Administration. These measures have included pressures and threats directed against companies and banks in third countries that have commercial and financial relations with Cuba. A dimension of this is the inclusion of Cuba on a spurious list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism, which, in spite of its absurdity, enables the government of the United States to threaten and penalize companies and banks in third countries. It thus functions as a key element of economic coercion in the unconventional war against Cuba. In addition, the recent measures have included the blocking of an expedited visa for European citizens to travel to the United States, if they have previously made a trip to Cuba, thus damaging Cuban tourism, the nation’s principal source of international currency.
The surprising fact, Rodríguez declared, is that Cuba, during six decades of the blockade, was able to construct a social project that attended to the fundamental needs of the people with respect to nutrition, housing, education, health, and transportation; and that Cuba persists with the support of the people and with political stability in the current stage of the intensified blockade. As result, Cuba enjoys great prestige in the world today.
The U.S. reply in the General Assembly debate
The rules of the General Assembly grant the right to the United Sates to reply to the resolution, and a solitary representative of the U.S. diplomatic corps assumed the responsibility. Cuban diplomats frequently express sympathy for their professional diplomatic colleagues of the U.S. diplomatic corps in this situation, because they are placed in a situation where they must defend the indefensible before the clear condemnation of the representatives of the world. In this case, the U.S. representative began with his best pitch: he declared that the sanctions are part of U.S. global efforts "to promote democracy and promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cuba."
In an editorial on October 30 in Granma, Carmen Maturell Senon and Claudia Thalía Suárez Fernández point out that the UN Charter and international norms do not grant the United States the legal authority to judge the political practices of other nations. Moreover, as is commonly argued in Cuba, the United States does not have the moral authority to judge the political practices of other nations from a democratic perspective, taking into account numerous undemocratic situations and practices, frequently cited, provided by critical currents within the United States.
Although such Cuban counterarguments against the U.S. charge of undemocratic practices in Cuba are valid, I have never been entirely satisfied with such a response. The accusation that Cuba has an authoritarian government that violates human rights is widely believed, at least in part, among the people of the United States. And there is an international norm in favor of democracy and against totalitarian or authoritarian governments. The accusation of authoritarian practices by Cuba has credibility, because there is lack of understanding of the actual functioning of the Cuban political process of people’s democracy, which has structures different from representative democracy.
The Cuban political system does not provide freedom of choice of competing political parties, as in representative democracies; rather, it provides alternative mechanisms for the voice and political participation of the people, in the form of people’s assemblies with true political power and mass organizations of workers, farmers, students, women, and neighborhoods, which are constitutionally integrated into the Cuban political process. Cuba developed this alternative approach to democracy during the 1960s and 1970s, in the aftermath of the delegitimation of the political parties and the system of representative democracy in Cuba during the 1940s and 1950s.
Therefore, I maintain that, in debates about the U.S. blockade, we who defend Cuba should explain how Cuba’s system of people’s democracy works, so that the imperialist claim that it is promoting democracy in Cuba can be dismissed, on the grounds that Cuba has democracy of a different form, rooted in its history of having struggled for democracy in the context of a neocolonial situation. The Cuban democratic process is designed to grant power to the people and to block the usurping of power by an elite that represents its interests and those of a foreign power.
People’s Democracy in Cuba: A vanguard political-economic system
Aside from his myopic approach to democracy, the U.S. representative was guilty of a couple of misrepresentations. First, he mentioned 1,000 supposed political prisoners that were detained illegally in Cuba, stemming from the events of July 21, 2021. In fact, as Maturell and Suárez point out, 177 citizens were detained during the events of July 11 for serious offenses, with 790 detained with lesser charges. They were accused of vandalism, attacks on persons, and destruction of public property. In legal processes characterized by respect for due process, proof of violence was provided by statements of witnesses and victims as well as expert witnesses who examined videos published in different media, which allowed the identification of the accused in such criminal acts as public disorder, instigation to commit crimes, damage to property, robberies with force and violence, attacks of persons, sabotage, and sedition. The great majority of the persons accused are no longer detained, having been acquitted of the charges, paid their fines, or completed their sentences. (Description of the events of July 11 can be found in Chapter Five, People’s Democracy in Cuba).
In addition, the US representative asserted that U.S. regulations with respect to Cuba permit the exportation of food and medicine to Cuba. In fact, the conditions stipulated for such commerce are onerous and costly, and the authorization is bureaucratically complex, such that it is not a workable option in practice. Cuban entities have attempted to use it, and they have found that it appears to function as a mechanism to justify the U.S. claim that food and medicine are being sold to Cuba. In the recently held Forum of Cuban Civil Society against the Blockade, the shortages of medical equipment and supplies and medicines in the Cuban health system were described by Cuban doctors, including Dr. Jorge Juan Marinello, president of the Cuban Society of Oncology, Radiotherapy and Nuclear Medicine; Dr. Albia Pozo Alonso, director of the Cuban Journal of Pediatrics; Olga Agramonte Llanes, president of the Cuban Society of Hematology; and Eugenio Selman-Houssein, director of the William Soler Cardiological Center.
Moreover, the U.S. representative did not say a single word with respect to the inclusion of Cuba on the list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism. It is widely recognized throughout the world that this is an entirely baseless accusation against Cuba. Yet the inclusion of Cuba on the spurious list is a central mechanism of the intensification of the blockade since 2019, because it provides a legal mechanism for the blocking of commercial and financial transactions with Cuba by companies and banks in third countries. The arbitrary inclusion of Cuba on the list was rejected by many of the delegations that took to the podium to express their country’s call for the end of the blockade.
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Further Considerations
To state the obvious, the U.S. blockade of Cuba violates the sovereign right of Cuba to determine its own political-economic system, in accordance with its national characteristics and history. And it violates the sovereign right of third countries to regulate the economic relations of their corporations and citizens. As such, it violates the UN Charter and international norms. Moreover, it violates the economic rights of U.S. citizens and residents. This is well understood in the world.
Cuba has become a symbol in what some leaders and intellectuals of the Global South have called World War III, a multidimensional unconventional war between Western imperialist nations, led by the United States, and nations of the Global South and East that are leading an anti-imperialist process of construction of an alternative world order based in mutually beneficial commerce and cooperation. At the current time, the power elites and the people of the United States are not ideologically prepared to discern that their best interests in the long term would be served by cooperation with the emerging process of alternative construction.
Regardless of the obstacles placed in their path, the nations of the Global South and East will continue on the road of developing in practice a world order characterized by cooperation and respect for the sovereignty of all nations. Their persistence will increase the probability that either the American power elite or the American people will awaken to enlightened consciousness, through which it would be discerned that the rise of China and the Global South and the persistence of Cuba are not threats to the United States. Rather, these world dynamics provide the USA with the opportunity to adjust course in foreign policy and find an anti-imperialist road, which would provide the key to the fulfillment of the American promise of democracy, inherent in the nation’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
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