Dear Editor,
Fidel Castro has marked his 89th birthday with a newspaper column repeating assertions that the US owes socialist Cuba numerous millions of dollars in damages caused by its decades-long embargo.
What Fidel says should be taken seriously; the United States should indeed be held responsible for some of the negative effects of the embargo, because it could not punish the then USSR directly, so sought to punish the Cuban government and predictably the people.
But with the increasing prospect of a future United Sates administration and Houses of Congress dominated by members still suspicious about the Havana-based administration, I doubt if the political thaw will continue. Cuba is better securing firm economic relations with powerful nations like China than seemingly unpredictable United States administrations. Castro came to power in 1959 following a revolution. Relations with the United States were broken in 1961 as Castro led Cuba rapidly into a socialist model allied with the Soviet Union. An economic embargo or sanctions hurts the masses of the people in a country, never its political classes. It is designed to weaken a government, forcing it to negotiate, surrender or to cause it to be overthrown from within.
The United States embargo was a cruel, decades long policy to deliberately impoverish the Cuban people in the hope it would destabilize the government. It wasn’t a ‘war crime’ because no official war existed. But it was a crime against a whole people. If the US wants others to answer for their crimes, it should first answer to its own.
Yours faithfully
Rooplall Dudhnath
