CUBA-USA: Cubans Awaits Fallout From Helms Burton Legislation

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 30 1996 (IPS) - Cubans are keeping a wary eye on the calendar with the approach of 1997 as, nearly one year after its approval, the full effect of the Helms Burton law tightening U.S. sanctions against Cuba remained to be felt.

Political observers here believed that the first months of 1997 would be decisive for the anti-Cuban legislation, and for U.S. President Bill Clinton who must decide whether to apply the full force of the law and the provisions he postponed after its signing.

The early months of 1997 also would be crucial for the government of Cuban President Fidel Castro which sought to increase foreign investment in this island, observers said.

Castro gambled on opening up the economy as a way of attracting hard currency, which the government badly needed to pull the country out of the economic crisis it has suffered for the past six years.

An official report last week revealed the Cuban economy had grown by 7.8 percent this year, but also pointed to the fact that more external finance was needed to overcome obstacles for a full economic recovery.

Much would depend on Clinton’s decision regarding the postponed Chapter 3 of the Helms Burton law which gives legal recourse for U.S. citizens to seek compensation in court for the confiscation of their properties in Cuba during the 1960s, observers said.

Under the Helms-Burton law, signed by Clinton on March 12, the United States would apply sanctions to governments, businesses or individuals of third countries who trade with Cuba or “traffick” in former US-owned properties on the island.

The law banned the entry into the United States of any material or goods produced totally or partially in Cuba – or products manufactured with Cuban material in third countries. The U.S. government also will suspend its contributions to international agencies that assist Cuba, and will take measures against Russia if it contributes finishing the construction of a nuclear power plant here.

The Helms-Burton law provides for the denial of entry visas to the United States to any individual who has business dealings with the Castro government and the ban also extends to their families.

Described by experts as the “most innovative” development in the three decades of the blockade, Chapter 3 grants U.S. citizens – including nationalized Cuban exiles – the right to claim their former properties in Cuba in U.S. courts.

Political observers said Clinton may grant a further postponment of Chapter 3 as a gesture to the decision by members of the European Union (EU) to take joint action to promote a transition to democracy and multiple-party system in Cuba.

A further postponement would also be an acknowledgment of the agreement between President Castro and Pope John Paul II, which according to the most optimistic observers, implies a willingness on the part of the Cuban president to initiate political reforms in the only communist nation in the Western hemisphere.

But “It’s one thing to open up new spaces for the Catholic Church in Cuba, and quite a different one thing to call for free elections and legalize opposition groups”, said a university professor in Havana, who wished to remain anonymous.

Still “The last thing Cubans ever lose is hope,” he said.

According to the Helms-Burton law, the president of the United States can suspend the initiation of lawsuits if necessary if it is in the “national interest of the United States” and if it will “accelerate the transition to democracy in Cuba”.

“The last thing we ever lose is hope”, Cubans often say.

The new hostility toward Cuba followed action taken by Cuba on Feb 24 this year when it ordered the shooting down of two civilian airplanes piloted by Cuban exiles from Miami.

The “airplane crisis’ put an end to the incipient process of warmer relations between Havana and Washington, which led more than one observer to think that an end to the blockade – imposed on the island in 1962 – was imminent.

Instead of lifting the blockade, however, Clinton accelerated the signing of the “Law for Cuban Freedom and Democratic Solidarity”, known by the names of its promoters, Congressmen Jesse Helms and Dan Burton.

Expert sources assure that “the big winner” in the “airplane crisis’ was the Cuban ultra-right wing in Miami, which recovered lost political terrain in the White House due to the migration agreements between Havana and Washington, signed in 1995.

The agreements, which were achieved at the highest levels and without taking into account the opinion of influential sectors of the Cuban exile groups in the United States, provoked calls for civil disobedience on the part of several exile organizations.

This resulted in the organization of flotillas of boats and plans, which on more than one occasion violated Cuban waters and airspace and led to the downing of the planes on Feb 24 and to Clinton signing the Helms-Burton law which he had previously opposed.

Cuban authorities, however, remained confident that the international community would not tolerate the application of a law which – because of its extra-territorial implications – constituted a “bad precedent” for future international relations.

Local experts argued that the law contradicted the basic principles of international law: self-determination, sovereignty, non- intervention and the inadmissibility of the use of force, and economic coercion.

If the U.S. legislation is applied in full force, Cuba would become a “test case” for what could become a proposal for changing the entire system of international relations, warned Soraya Castro, an Cuban expert in political science.

Cuba was able to get the Helms-Burton law condemned by delegates at this year’s Ibero-American Summit in Santiago, Chile. It also won the support of the Vatican, and a proposal from the EU to establish a panel at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to oppose the extra- territorial application of the law.

Cuban officials also believed the business community in the United States, saw the Helms-Burton law as an obstacle to the retribution that Cuba was supposed to begin paying several decades ago.

In 1972, the Committee for Foreign Claims presented the U.S. Congress a list of 5,911 demands totalling nearly 1.8 billion dollars and an annual interest of six percent.

Alejandro Aguilar, an expert at the National Institute for Economic Research in Havana, argues that if the United States had accepted the payment in sugar, as proposed by Cuba, “the expropriated properties would have been already totally or mostly compensated for”.

Castro’s government dealt another blow to the Helm-Burton law by approving the “Law for the Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty”, which seeks to to block all possible applications of the U.S. law.

The law made it illegal to provide the United States with any information that facilitates the application of the Helms-Burton law, and reaffirmed Cuba’s will to reach a bilateral agreement on the payment of the debts to the formers proprietors.

At the same time, it excluded all possible compensations for those who resort to the U.S. justice system.

Robert L. Muse, an American lawyer, acknowledged in Havana that any legal claim will come up against the obstacle that “primary information on the title to property is filed in a way which can only be used in Cuba”.