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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/the-cuban-nationalization-of-us-property-in-1960-the-historical-and-global-context/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/29/the-cuban-nationalization-of-us-property-in-1960-the-historical-and-global-context/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Cuban Nationalization of US
Property in 1960: the Historical and Global Context</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/charles-mckelvey/"
rel="nofollow">Charles McKelvey</a> - March 29, 2019</span></div>
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<div id="attachment_110440" class="wp-caption"><font
size="-1"><i><b>(Keep in mind - the US still illegally
occupies a base in Guantanamo, Cuba - site of a US
prison/torture center</b></i><i><b> and a constant
reminder of US imperialism in the Caribbean - ed)
</b></i></font></div>
<p>In moving toward at least partial implementation of
Title III of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, the Trump
administration has resurrected the issue of Cuban
nationalization of U.S. properties in Cuba in 1960.</p>
<p>The conflict between the United States and Cuba over
the nationalized U.S. properties is a particular case in
a historic and still unfolding global conflict between
the global powers and the Third World. The conflict
became manifest in 1955, when leaders of twenty-three
newly independent Asian and African nations met in
Bandung, Indonesia. They sought to restructure the
global economic patterns established during European
colonial domination, and to this end, they advocated
unity and economic cooperation among the newly
independent nations, among other strategies.</p>
<p>The leaders of the emerging Third World project met in
1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where they founded the
Non-Aligned Movement. Among the founders were the giants
of the era: Tito, Sukarno, Nasser, Zhou En-lai, Nkrumah,
and Ben Youssef. Cuba was among the founders,
represented by the President of the Revolutionary
Government, Osvaldo Dorticós. Revolutionary Cuba and
Latin American movements, reflecting on their historical
semi-colonial and contemporary neocolonial situation,
were forging a perspective similar to the newly
independent nations of Africa and Asia.</p>
<p>The Non-Aligned Movement drew from the principals of
the UN Charter, including the “equal rights and
self-determination of peoples” and “the sovereign
equality of all” nations. And the Third Word project
took seriously the Charter declaration that “the United
Nations shall promote higher standards of living . . .
and conditions of economic and social progress and
development.”</p>
<p>At the same time, the Third World project discerned the
need to formulate principles from the perspective of the
neocolonized peoples, and accordingly, it developed a
proposal for an alternative world-system not built on a
colonial foundation. The “Declaration on the
Establishment of a New International Economic Order,”
adopted by the UN General Assembly on May 1, 1974,
expressed twenty principles on which the new
international economic order should be founded.</p>
<p>The principles affirmed by the “New International
Economic Order” included the right of states to
nationalize properties, necessary for newly independent
nations, if they are to exercise sovereignty over their
natural resources and to promote economic and social
development. The document further maintained that no
nation should be subjected to coercion in order to
prevent it from exercising this right.</p>
<p>The political, economic, and social situation in Cuba
in 1959 demanded that the Revolutionary Government
exercise its right to nationalize. More than half of
agricultural land was in foreign hands, and eighty-five
percent of peasants worked land they did not own.
Agrarian Reform had been an article of the 1940 Cuban
Constitution, but it was not implemented by subsequent
governments. In his October 16, 1953 self-defense,
known as “History Will Absolve Me,” Fidel Castro
revealed a revolutionary program that included an
initial redistribution of land to tenant farmers and
sharecroppers, with compensation to the owners; and a
subsequent agrarian reform law, based on further
study. On October 10, 1958, the Rebel Army in the <em>Sierra
Maestra</em>emitted a law giving ownership to small
peasants of the land on which they worked. When the
Revolution came to power, the revolutionary leadership
considered agrarian reform an essential economic
measure, necessary for the social and economic
development of the nation; and it found overwhelming
support for it among the people.</p>
<p>The Agrarian Reform Law was emitted by the
Revolutionary Government on May 17, 1959. The Law set
the maximum quantity of land per proprietor at 406
hectares. It recognized the constitutional right of the
proprietors to compensation, and it put the value of the
compensation at what owners had declared in tax
reports. It established payment in the form of
“Agrarian Reform Bonds,” which were to accumulate at an
annual interest of no more than 4.5%, and they would be
redeemable in twenty years.</p>
<p>The Agrarian Reform Law struck at the heart of the
economic relation between Cuba and the United States,
and it defined the anti-neocolonial character of the
Revolution. The U.S. government immediately launched an
ideological campaign against the Cuban Revolutionary
Government, invoking the phantom of communism. On March
17, 1960, the Eisenhower Administrated initiated the
planning of a U.S.-backed military invasion carried out
by Cuban counterrevolutionaries based in Miami. On July
2, 1960, the U.S. Congress authorized the President to
amend the U.S.-Cuba sugar quota; and on July 6,
President Dwight Eisenhower reduced the U.S. sugar
purchase to 23% below the quota, seeking to provoke
economic difficulties in Cuba. Following the failure of
the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 17, 1961, the U.S.
government turned to an embargo on trade with Cuba and
to support of terrorist activities on the island,
supporting counterrevolutionary terrorist organizations
based in Miami. The goal of U.S. policy was what we
today call regime change, seeking to reestablish a
government subordinate to U.S. interests, in accordance
with the requirements of the neocolonial world order.</p>
<p>The Cuban Revolution did not want conflict with the
United States; it wanted cooperation on a foundation of
respect for its sovereignty. The Cuban perspective is
evident in Law 851, emitted by the Revolutionary
Government on July 6, 1960. The Law authorized the
President and the Prime Minister of Cuba to nationalize
U.S. properties by means of a Joint Resolution. It
established compensation for the nationalized properties
through government bonds at 2% annual interest, with
payment to begin in a period of no less than thirty
years. The Law mandated the National Bank of Cuba to
create a fund that would be fed by Cuban government
deposits in an amount equal to 25% of the value of the
U.S. purchase of Cuban sugar in excess of the sugar
quota. The Law, therefore, proposed a mutually
beneficial resolution, linking compensation for
nationalized properties to the U.S.-Cuban sugar
trade. By means of a higher U.S. sugar purchase and
Cuban use of the additional income to finance
compensation and invest in industrial development, Law
851 pointed to the transformation of core-peripheral
exploitation into North-South cooperation. The Cuban
proposal, however, was rendered impractical by the
simultaneous reduction of U.S. purchases below the sugar
quota (announced on the same day, July 6), and by its
subsequent policy of regime change. Nevertheless,
thirty days later, in the announcement of Joint
Resolution #1, Fidel appears to remain hopeful that the
U.S. government will accept the proposal of compensation
through U.S. purchase above the sugar quota.</p>
<p>Joint Resolution #1 was announced on August 6,
1960. The Resolution declared the compulsory purchase of
twenty-six U.S. companies, including twenty-one sugar
companies. The Resolution explained the historical
context and the necessity of the expropriation of U.S.
owned sugar lands, noting that “the Sugar Companies
seized the best lands of our country” in the first
decades of the twentieth century, during an invasion of
“insatiable and unscrupulous” foreign capitalists, who
“have recuperated many times the value of what they
invested;” and noting that “it is the duty of the
peoples of Latin America to be inclined toward the
recuperation of its national riches, taking them away
from the control of the monopolies and foreign interests
that impede the progress of the peoples, promote
political interference, and infringe upon the
sovereignty of the underdeveloped peoples of America.”
In accordance with the Agrarian Reform Law of 1959, the
expropriated land was used to develop state-managed
agricultural enterprises; or it was distributed without
charge to peasants who worked on land they did not own,
each receiving a “vital minimum” of 26.85 hectares, and
all encouraged to form voluntary agricultural
cooperatives.</p>
<p>Joint Resolution #1 also nationalized a U.S.-owned
electricity company and a U.S.-owned telephone company,
both of which charged notoriously high rates, the
reduction of which had been a popular demand prior to
the triumph of the revolution. In addition, the Joint
Resolution nationalized three oil refineries, which
historically had set a higher price for Cuban
distributors; and which recently had refused to process
Soviet crude that had been purchased at a favorable
price by the Cuban government, compelling the government
to invoke a 1938 agreement and order the refining of the
oil. Under state ownership, electricity and telephone
rates and gasoline prices were significantly reduced.</p>
<p>Joint Resolution #2 of September 17, 1960 nationalized
the three U.S. banks in Cuba. Historically, the
crediting policies of the U.S. banks had favored Cuban
exportation of raw materials and importation of U.S.
manufactured goods, thus restricting Cuban industrial
development. Since the triumph of the Revolution, the
banks had adopted policies designed to reduce U.S.-Cuban
commerce, supporting the efforts of the U.S. government
to suffocate the Cuban economy.</p>
<p>Joint Resolution #3, issued by the Revolutionary
Government on October 24, 1960, authorized the
nationalization of the remaining 166 U.S. properties in
Cuba. They included 28 insurance companies, 18 chemical
companies, 18 mining companies, 15 machines importing
companies, 11 hotels and bars, and 7 metallurgical
companies. These nationalizations were a response to
the continuing aggressiveness of the U.S. government
toward the Cuban Revolution, including its October 19
prohibition of the export of U.S. merchandise to Cuba.</p>
<p>The government of Cuba repeatedly declared its
disposition to negotiate with the government of the
United States any demands that might emerge from U.S.
proprietors adversely affected by the nationalizations.
Consistent with this disposition, the government of Cuba
negotiated agreements with five nations, settling the
demands of their citizens resulting from the Cuban
nationalizations: France (agreement of March 16, 1967);
Switzerland (March 2, 1967); United Kingdom (October 18,
1978); Canada (November 7, 1980); and Spain (January 26,
1988).</p>
<p>Lacking support from the U.S. side for cooperation,
revolutionary Cuba continued on its sovereign road,
which included the proclamation of the socialist
character of its revolution; and the development of
popular democracy, with mass organizations, mass
assemblies, neighborhood nomination assemblies, and
assemblies of popular power, alternatives to the
structures of representative democracy. The United
States, meanwhile, continued with its policy of regime
change, maintaining a prohibition of economic,
commercial, and financial transactions with Cuba. The
Helms-Burton Act of 1996 grants the U.S. government the
right to continue with coercive economic measures until
Cuba replaces its structures of popular democracy with
those of representative democracy.</p>
<p>The Cuba-USA conflict continues unresolved because the
North-South global conflict, to which it pertains, also
remains unresolved. The neocolonial global powers
ignored the adoption by the UN General Assembly of the
New International Economic Order. Moving in the
opposite direction, they imposed neoliberal economic
policies on the neocolonies of the world; and
subsequently, with the expansion of a new form of
terrorism as a pretext, they launched wars of aggression
in the Middle East.</p>
<p>Just as revolutionary Cuba persisted in its sovereign
road, the governments of the Third World have persisted
in their proposal for a new international economic
order. The persistence of the Third World project is
evident in the evolution of the Non-Aligned Movement,
which has grown to 120 member-nations today. The
Movement was highjacked by accommodationists to
neoliberalism from 1982 to 2006, but since 2006, when
Cuba assumed the presidency for the second time, the
Movement has retaken the principles of the period 1955
to 1982. At the same time, during the last twenty
years, Latin America and the Caribbean have developed
regional associations, putting into practice the Bandung
call for unity and economic cooperation. These regional
associations and the progressive governments of the
region have been developing economic cooperation and
political alliances with China, Russia, Vietnam, and
Iran, whose leaders invoke the discourse and the spirit
of Bandung.</p>
<p>In the context of the sustained structural crisis of
the world-system and the relative economic decline of
the United States, U.S. imperialist policies toward
Latin America are no longer viable. The Trump policy of
aggression toward Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua has
even less possibilities, inasmuch as greater militarism
and economic aggressiveness accelerate the U.S. economic
and commercial decline, and they exacerbate the
structural contradictions of the world-system. A
world-system founded on cooperation and mutually
beneficial trade, persistently proposed by the
neocolonized peoples, is the necessary road for
humanity.</p>
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<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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