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"To bring about hunger,
desperation and overthrow of government"
State Department, April
6, 1960
A few weeks from now, the UN General
Assembly will pass, with practical unanimity, a new resolution,
the number 15, condemning the blockade on Cuba, which Washington
tries to describe as barely an "embargo". The United
States Government will try to justify its policy once again without
success. They have been doing this for almost half a century
now, concealing the truth behind their fabrications and lies.
The truth is, however, contained
in documents that were kept secret by Washington until 1991.
More than an embargo or blockade, it is in fact an act of ¨economic
warfare¨, as the then secretary of state, Christian Herter,
said in 1959. An economic warfare that began with the triumph
of the Revolution in January of 1959 and it is still in force
today, a war which has always had the same genocidal purpose:
to bring about hunger, misery and desperation among the people
of Cuba.
Dictator Fulgencio Batista
and his main accomplices plundered the Republic's Treasury and
upon fleeing Cuba in January of that year they took with them
more than 424 million dollars which came to rest in the United
States and form the economic basis of a mafia often hailed by
the US press as ¨successful businessmen¨ of Miami. For
Cuba the situation was critical and Washington knew it. The Department
of State described it as such, saying in February 1959 that:
"the serious threat to
the stability of the Cuba peso which results from the fact that
following the departure of the Batista administration it was
determined that the currency reserve of the country is depleted",
something which, "would tax the governing abilities of any
of the best leaders".
The Central Bank of Cuba sent
a team of experts to Washington to seek a modest loan that would
alleviate such a crisis. The issue was analysed by the National
Security Council on February 12, 1959. The decision was unequivocal:
they would listen to the Cubans but offer them nothing at all.
They didn't grant any kind of loan. They didn't even promise
to look into the matter. Needless to say, not one cent of the
money stolen from the Cuban people was ever returned.
The dispossession of Cuban
bank reserves, which constitutes a blatant act of economic aggression,
took place long before any revolutionary measure was adopted
on the Island (the first being the Law of Agrarian reform, passed
on May 17 of that year).
On March 26, 1959, the National
Security Council also discussed the Cuba situation. At this meeting
CIA's director, Allen Dulles, said that: "it was quite possible
that the US Congress would do something which would affect the
sale of Cuban sugar in the US". Depriving Cuba of its main
source of income, sugar exports to the US market, would become
a recurrent theme of Washington's secret meetings before, long
before, relationships with the Soviet Union were re-established
and before socialism was proclaimed to be Revolution's goal.
They did that when sugar was still being grown on large landed
estates and processed in factories -many of which were US owned-
that had not been expropriated and were still in the hands of
the Island's oligarchy and foreign companies.
US Government officials were
aware of the consequences of such action. A report from the Department
of State acknowledged that: "If Cuba were deprived of its
quota privilege, the sugar industry would promptly suffer an
abrupt decline, causing widespread further unemployment. The
large numbers of people those forced out of work would begin
to go hungry".
But they weren't just talking
about sugar: "if we were to cut the Cubans off from their
fuel supply, the effect would be devastating on them within a
month or six weeks".
Nobody in Washington claimed
to have been deceived. They knew that the actions taken against
the Revolution would cause pain and suffering to all the Cuban
people. They did it with premeditation and full knowledge of
the effect, converting the act of genocide into a malicious political
instrument. An analysis from this same Department, dated April
6, 1960 and approved with the signature of Assistant Secretary,
Roy Rubottom, offers us explicit proof of this policy.
In this analysis it is flatly
affirmed that:
"The majority of Cubans
support CastroThe only foreseeable means of alienating internal
support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic
dissatisfaction and hardshipit follows that every possible means
should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of
Cuba it should be the result of a positive decision which would
call forth a line of action while as adroit and inconspicuous
as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and
supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring
about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government".
Note that they acknowledged
they should act in a manner "as adroit and inconspicuous
as possible", something that fits with a criminal behaviour,
and not just any crime, but rather one that has been particularly
condemned by humankind: the crime of genocide clearly defined
by the Geneva Convention of 1948 as any attempt to cause total
or partial damage to any human group. What is this if it isn't
precisely that: an attempt at ¨bringing about hunger and
desperation¨ among all Cubans?
It is probably the most prolonged
act of genocide in history. It began before the majority of Cubans
alive today were born, meaning that they have spent their entire
lives under the blockade.
Soon it will be condemned again
by humankind as a whole. Once again the US administration will
reveal its arrogance and ignore the demand being made worldwide.
When will it end?
NB: All quotes are from
the official documents compiled in the book published by the
Department of State: Foreign Relations of the United States,
1958-1960 Volume VI Cuba, United States Goverment Printing Office,
Washington, 1991.
Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada is Cuba's Vice President and President
of its National Assembly.
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