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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://resumen-english.org/2023/08/cuba-truths-they-want-to-hide/">resumen-english.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Cuba: Truths They Want to Hide</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits"></div>By Arthur Gonzalez on August 17, 2023</div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-wrapper2">
<div id="gmail-attachment_24313" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-24313" src="https://i0.wp.com/resumen-english.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/IMG_5309.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1" alt="" width="300" height="225" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-24313" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><font size="1">Like the virus the US blockade isolates. photo: Bill Hackwell</font></p></div>
<p>The United States tries to minimize its economic, commercial and
financial war established against Cuba since 1959, and with its powerful
propaganda machine to make the world and especially the Cuban people
believe that the socialist system is the only one responsible for the
difficulties and hardships it suffers, hiding the jumble of laws and
sanctions applied against the Revolution.<span id="gmail-more-24312"></span></p>
<p>There is no denying the errors committed throughout these 60 years in
the management of the Cuban economy, many of them perhaps induced,
although if the Yankee laws passed by presidents and Congress were not
harmful, they would have been repealed, but in reality they reinforce
them with the unhealthy intention of provoking the wear and tear and
irritation of the population and stimulating street disturbances that
would bring the revolutionary process to a halt.</p>
<p>Cuba calls this inhumane process a blockade, but in reality its
actions constitute a real war, given its scope, magnitude and objectives
to be achieved. The laws passed reaffirm this and a deficiency has been
the failure to include in the Cuban educational system the study of
these laws and the sanctions applied, so that all Cubans may master the
true dimension of the cruel and merciless U.S. policy.</p>
<p>A few days after January 3, 1961, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower
broke diplomatic relations with Cuba, he also suspended trade, through
the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act, (TWEA), passed in
1917 to impose economic sanctions against foreign nations, by
prohibiting, limiting or regulating commercial and financial
transactions with hostile countries in times of war.</p>
<p>Since 1978, all Yankee presidents have issued memoranda or
presidential determinations extending the TWEA for one year, considering
Cuba a situation of “national emergency” and qualifying it as an
interest of the United States”, being the only country in the world to
which this law is applied.</p>
<p>In its unhealthy obsession to overthrow the Cuban Revolution, in 1961
the US Congress passed the International Cooperation Act, Section
620.A, which prohibits all aid to any communist country, including Cuba,
and to any other country that provides aid to the island. It authorizes
the president to establish and maintain a total “embargo” on all trade
between the United States and Cuba.</p>
<p>On February 3, 1962, under the authority granted to him by the
International Cooperation Act, President John F. Kennedy suspended all
trade with Cuba and by means of Presidential Proclamation 3447, imposed
an “embargo” prohibiting the importation into the United States of all
goods of Cuban origin and goods imported from or through Cuba and all
exports from the United States to the Island.</p>
<p>Said proclamation does not establish time limits or conditions for
its lifting and since that date the so-called “embargo” became law,
expanding with more regulations and new laws.</p>
<p>At the same time, in January 1962, President Kennedy organized the
Expanded Task Force of the National Security Council, which designed the
well-known Operation Mongoose, containing a variety of political,
diplomatic, economic, psychological, propaganda, espionage, terrorist
acts and the encouragement and logistical support to
counterrevolutionary armed bands.</p>
<p>This Operation was aimed at provoking a rebellion by the Cuban
people, which would provide the justification for a direct military
intervention by the U.S. armed forces.</p>
<p>It contains 32 tasks, 13 of them economic, stating: “Political action
will be supported by an economic war that will induce the communist
regime to fail in its effort to satisfy the needs of the country….”</p>
<p>Its extraterritoriality is manifested by stating:</p>
<p>“Collaboration with other OAS nations, particularly Canada and
Mexico, will be explored by the State Department. The Department of
State, with the Department of Commerce and others involved, will compile
a positive list of items from Latin America that will be subject to the
same licensing procedures applied elsewhere in the free world to such
shipments. The State Department will report on the status of plans to
gain the cooperation of NATO allies (bilaterally or in the NATO forum,
whichever is more appropriate) The goal is to convince those nations to
take steps to isolate Cuba from the West.”</p>
<p>“The State Department will work on the status of actions taken with
Japan, who has comparatively significant trade with Cuba, which are
similar to those taken with NATO nations.”</p>
<p>Is it possible to hide the real objective and make the world believe
that the hardships suffered by Cubans are due to a failed system?</p>
<p>In 1963, the U.S. government issued the Cuban Assets Control
Regulations (CACR) under section 5.b of the Trading with the Enemy Act
of 1917.</p>
<p>The express purpose of the sanctions contemplated in these
regulations is: “to isolate the Cuban government economically and
deprive it of U.S. dollars.</p>
<p>Such sanctions freeze all Cuban assets in the United States and the
Treasury Department was charged with regulating all commercial
transactions with Cuba, including authorized travel to Cuba by U.S.
citizens.</p>
<p>The CACR prohibits the direct or indirect export of U.S. goods,
services and technology to Cuba. The Treasury Department’s Office of
Foreign Assets Control was charged with interpreting and enforcing the
provisions of the “embargo” through a set of regulations.</p>
<p>For those who violate the sanctions, criminal penalties ranging from
10 years imprisonment, corporate fines of up to US$1 million, individual
fines of up to US$250,000 and civil penalties of up to US$55,000 may be
imposed.</p>
<p>After the disintegration of the USSR and to further aggravate the
internal Cuban economic situation, dreaming of achieving “a peaceful
transition to democracy”, President George H. Bush passed the Cuban
Democracy Act (Torricelli Act), which prohibits subsidiaries of US
companies from establishing commercial relations with Cuba; prohibits US
citizens from traveling to Cuba and prohibits sending money remittances
to the country.</p>
<p>The 1992 Torricelli Act “encourages the governments of other
countries that maintain commercial relations with Cuba to restrict their
trade and credit activities, and imposes sanctions on any country that
provides aid to Cuba, including ending U.S. aid to those countries,
declaring them ineligible to benefit from any debt reduction or
forgiveness program they maintain with the United States”.</p>
<p>In the face of the stoic resistance of the Cuban people, in March
1996, the U.S. Congress passed new legislation aimed at strengthening
the enforcement of the “embargo” against Cuba, called the Cuban Liberty
and Democratic Solidarity Act, better known as the Helms-Burton Act.</p>
<p>President Bill Clinton signed it into effect and sanctions against
Cuba were strengthened. This law seeks to “strengthen international
sanctions against the Castro government and to plan support for an
elected transitional government to lead a democratic government on the
island”. With it, the economic, commercial and financial war against
Cuba took on a greater dimension and it is only possible to lift it with
the approval of Congress.</p>
<p>Can public opinion be deceived that the “embargo” is not the fundamental factor in Cuba’s economic problems?</p>
<p>It is vital that these laws be studied in Cuban schools at all
levels, because unfortunately many, including the youngest, do not know
their contents and allow themselves to be carried away by the campaigns
fabricated by the United States.</p>
<p>With the arrival of President Donald Trump to the White House, 243
new sanctions were added that aim to asphyxiate Cubans, and Cuba was
once again included in the list of countries that sponsor terrorism,
which increased the coercive measures against banks and international
companies that carry out transactions and trade with the island, a
situation that drastically worsened the economic crisis and has led to
an unprecedented volume of emigrants.</p>
<p>Errors exist and also policies that do not adjust to reality, but the
brutal economic war exercised by the Yankees for 64 years cannot be
denied and only the lack of knowledge and the lack of systematic
disclosure of the obstacles that must be circumvented to materialize
Cuban trade, allow the disinformative machinery of the United States
through social networks, to gain a space that does not belong to them.</p>
<p>José Martí is right when he affirmed: “To appreciate with fruit, it is necessary to know in depth.”</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://razonesdecuba.cu/verdades-que-se-quieren-ocultar/">Razones de Cuba</a>, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English</p>
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