CUBA: Ordinary Cubans Would be Hardest-Hit by Stiffening of Embargo

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Oct 3 1995 (IPS) - Ordinary Cuban citizens, who are finally beginning to breath more easily after five years of economic crisis, would be the main victims of a U.S. bill designed to stiffen the 35-year-old embargo against the Caribbean island nation.

Cuban officials and experts say the “Law for Freedom and Democratic Solidarity with Cuba”, which has already been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, would block possible escape routes from the crisis that has gripped this country since the disappearance of the eastern European socialist bloc in the late 1980s.

“For the first time in a long while, people have hope,” said a government official, according to whom the population is beginning to feel the effects of the wave of economic reforms that the government began to implement in 1993.

Although with today’s high cost of living, the majority of Cubans have just enough money to scrape by, most admit that the worst is over. Widespread scarcity of foodstuffs and 10-hour-a-day cuts in electric power have finally become things of the past.

According to Juan Triana, director of the Centre of Studies of the Cuban Economy, the Helms-Burton bill – drawn up by legislators Jesse Helms and Dan Burton – could put an end to the country’s incipient economic recovery.

Triana said the bill, currently being studied by the U.S. Senate, will hurt foreign investment, the most dynamic aspect of the recovery seen in Cuba since late last year in sectors such as nickel, oil, fishing and tobacco.

Figures from the National Office of Statistics show that after a five-year tumble, the Gross Domestic Product showed a slight 0.7 percent growth in 1994 with respect to 1993.

In a gesture termed “political irrationality” by the Cuban government, on Sep. 21, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Helms-Burton bill, designed to stiffen and internationalise economic sanctions against Cuba.

Indeed, one of the main aims of the bill is to block the flow of foreign capital towards Cuba.

As well as stipulating sanctions for those who invest in the Caribbean nation, the bill grants Cubans residing in the United States the same status as U.S. citizens with respect to demands for the return of property expropriated by Fidel Castro’s socialist government.

According to the U.S. Commission on International Claims, such demands now total 5.6 billion dollars, and are growing at an annual six percent interest rate.

After a bill drawn up by Representative Robert Torricelli was approved by the U.S. Congress, Cuba’s trade with subsidiaries of U.S. companies dropped from 700 to five million dollars a year.

Figures released on Sep. 25 by Cuba’s Minister of Economy and Planning Jose Luis Rodriguez show that the national economy has lost more than 44 billion dollars since the U.S. embargo went into effect.

Sources at the Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety say that in 1992 and 1993, the worst years of the crisis, per capita consumption of kilo-calories was cut in half among large parts of the population.

Prior to 1990, Cuba imported 75 percent of its food. But the drop in imports which resulted from the shortage of hard currency has led to an increased number of low birth-weight babies.

Authorities say the need to resort to distant markets because of the embargo has pushed the price of exports up 40 percent, and has led to a deficit of basic goods on the island.

“The politicians decide, and those below pay the consequences,” Ramiro Castellanos, a Havana factory worker who still wonders how he survived the last few years, told IPS.

In less than five months, the 37-year-old lost 15 kilos, and had to get used to riding to work on his bicycle without a solid meal in his stomach.

“But that wasn’t the worst. My wife and I earned only 400 pesos, and we have two children and an elderly woman to support,” he said, pointing out that in August 1994, the peso was worth 140 against the dollar on the informal exchange market.

Officially on par with the dollar, the peso is worth 25 to 30 against the dollar on the black market today.

Castellanos, whose savings disappeared during the tough years of the crisis, said he is only now beginning to feel that his wages have some buying power in the new free farmers and craft markets.

Meanwhile, local observers say the Helms-Burton bill could bring the Castro administration political pay-offs.

“The embargo has always been the perfect justification for any domestic problems,” said a 47-year-old Havana resident, who adds that the newly stiffened blockade “will become a fresh element for official campaigns calling for national unity.”

A condemnation of the blockade has been one of the few common positions shared by the Catholic Church and the Cuban government since the late 1960s.

A declaration issued in May by the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba warns of a possible increase in social unrest if the embargo is reinforced.

The document calls for formulas that do not imply “increasing the people’s suffering, or stepping up the risk of violence due to widespread desperation.”

The European Union and countries such as Mexico, Canada, Uruguay, Colombia and Russia have also condemned the bill.

While sectors in the United States and the Cuban exile community claim the bill offers a magic formula for destabilising the Cuban government, authorities continue to insist that nothing will change.