CUBA-US: Momentary Breach in Four-Decades-Old Embargo

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 17 2001 (IPS) - Two freighters carrying shipments of food purchased from the United States, whose arrival in Havana passed virtually unnoticed in Cuba, punched a temporary hole in the embargo that Washington imposed against the government of Fidel Castro in 1960.

The ships, which arrived at the Havana port Sunday carrying 24,000 tons of corn and 500 tons of frozen chicken, brought the first of several deliveries of food and medicine scheduled to come in over the next few weeks.

However, the event was not announced in Cuba, and the arrival of the vessels went unremarked by the people sunning themselves on the wall running along the malecon, Havana’s seaside avenue.

“This proves that it makes logical sense for Cuba and the United States to trade with one another,” said Larry Cunningham, senior vice president of corporate communications for Illinois- based agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.

“We think that the best way to improve relations with countries is for them to become trading partners,” Cunningham told the press, adding that his company was “cautiously optimistic” after making the first delivery of corn to the Cuban government-owned food import company Alimport.

Archer Daniels Midland plans to make further shipments of soy beans, wheat and rice to Havana.

Cuba is paying some 30 million dollars in cash for around 200,000 tons of food, which will go towards replenishing emergency government reserves held in case of disasters, which were used after Hurricane Michelle devastated crops and infrastructure in Cuba on Nov 4.

The sale is the first of its kind in 38 years. But according to Castro, it may be the only one, if the United States insists on keeping the laws that make up the embargo on the books.

The Cuban president said last week in Venezuela that his country could not accept the idea of “unilateral trade,” or trade that moves in only one direction.

That was the position taken by Havana when the US Congress passed a law last year permitting sales of food and medicine to Havana, but without allowing private or government financing of such sales, or imports of products from Cuba.

Castro said last year that until the blockade was lifted and Cuba was allowed access to credit for financing purchases, Havana would not buy “one single grain of rice or one single aspirin” from the United States.

Making good on that pledge, Cuba refused entry to the Havana port last April of a ship carrying humanitarian donations and commercial shipments of food and medicine from the United States.

Castro, however, backed down slightly on Dec 12 when he said he did not want to pronounce “the last word” on the question, and that if there were positive gestures from the United States, there would also be gestures from Cuba.

Pedro Alvarez, the head of Alimport, said the food purchase was “a one-off deal” that “in no way represents stable trade relations or a break in the blockade.”

He added that due to US legislation, agribusiness and other interests in the United States are unable to gain access to Cuba, a “sure market” that is eager to buy US goods.

A partial embargo first went into effect in April 1960, and was subsequently expanded. In 1996 it was stiffened by the Helms- Burton law, which provides for sanctions against third countries that do business with property that Cuba expropriated from US citizens in the 1960s.

Granma, the daily publication of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party, recalled Monday that the last shipment of US products to Cuba took place in 1963, as part of a 63 million dollar indemnification for damages caused by the US-orchestrated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

Cuba imported food and medicine at that time, and as part of the negotiations sent back to the United States those detained during the frustrated invasion.

Another chink in the wall opened up in 1999, when the US Treasury Department authorised a transnational firm to negotiate future sales in the United States of a Cuban vaccine against meningitis-B.

The purchase that began to arrive Sunday was agreed after the government of George W. Bush, which took office last January, offered aid in the wake of Hurricane Michelle.

Although the Castro regime declined the offer, it requested authorisation to make a “one-off” purchase of food and medicine, to which the White House agreed.

However, Bush administration officials immediately clarified that US policy towards Cuba had not changed in the least, and that the sale did not indicate an easing of the embargo.

A Dec 5 communique issued by the US government stated that the administration was staunchly opposed to an agriculture bill that would permit private financing for sales of US products to Cuba.

Lawmakers from states with strong farming interests, who sponsored the bill, argue that private US financing of sales to Cuba is an essential step towards establishing trade flows between the two countries.

Studies estimate that if the embargo were lifted, Cuba might purchase as much as 800 million dollars a year in farm products from the United States.