Jillian Jarrett

10/26/00

The Hilltop

 

            Children dying. People starving. Families drowning. All of these descriptions are synonymous with what country? Cuba.

 

            For almost 40 years now, Cuban families have been fighting for survival. Children are dying from diseases that Americans cured decades ago. And what is the reason? The Cuban Trade Embargo.

 

            The United States first imposed the trade embargo on Cuba on February 3, 1962, in response to Fidel Castro’s aggressive support for violent communist revolution throughout the Western Hemisphere. The goals of the embargo were to compel Castro to open Cuba’s economy and establish democracy and to force Castro to relinquish power.

 

            With part of the goals reached, America has yet to see Castro give up his throne. Yet the embargo has forced Cuba to be into a devastating state.  Cuba today is suffering its worst economic crisis since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.  The island’s gross social product has plunged nearly 60 percent. More than two-thirds of the island’s industrial facilities are shut down because of law of raw materials.  Many Cuban women have turned to prostitution in a desperate effort to feed their children and families, since government rationing provides only half of the average family’s nutrition needs.

 

            Alvin Bailey, an American filmmaker, is currently making a documentary of the Cuban lifestyle.  His film entitled “Porque?” (Why?) portrays the past and present of the Cuban people and asks such questions like, why Cubans can’t buy medicine such as penicillin on the open market and why they can’t choose their government?

 

            “I have been working on my film for two years now,” Bailey said.  “My footage illustrates the middle and lower classes of Cuban society. I’m trying to break some stereotypes that people have about the island, such as there is no hard-core use of drugs like some think.”  He said that is major goal in making this film is “to visually tell a story about friendship and companionship between Cubans and Americans. I also want the world to see the conditions that these people are living in. I show their hospitals and homes.”  Bailey works with a group called “Pastors for Peace,” a multi-faith organization made up of many Spanish-speaking people and Americans alike.  People from all over the United States meet twice a year to discuss their mission of lobbying for the end of the Cuban Embargo.

 

            For years, hundreds of Cubans have risked their lives floating on rafts from Cuba in order to reach the American border.  On July 13, 1994, at least 30 Cubans trying to flee the island on a hijacked tugboat drowned at sea when four Cuban government ships swept the decks of the fleeing tugboat with high-pressure water hoses.

 

            The most famous and recent event has been the Elian Gonzalez saga.  Many Americans were heart-broken when they heard the story of the 6-year-old, boy who lost his mother as they sailed from Cuba to the Miami border. Many wanted to know what would make a mother risk her and her child’s life like that?  Because of the Embargo on Cuba, living conditions are very dangerous.  Castro’s communist leadership is very difficult to obey and live by.

 

            With the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union, there has been a growing chorus of cries for the United States to lift the economic embargo on Cuba. Early in 1997, U.S. congressmen, willing to improve relations with Cuba, presented a bill before the House of Representatives that would end the U.S. embargo of food and medicines, the Cuban Humanitarian Relief Act, HR 1951.  This bill, as with others that are geared toward ending the Embargo is still being debated. Thus far, the Clinton Administration has been steadfast in refusing to discuss the economic embargo.  Some say that if the bill does pass Congress, they think that Clinton will approve it.

 

            Pet Robbins is a member of the Pastors for Peace organization in Maine. He has spoken many times on Capitol Hill on behalf of ending the Embargo. He says that he is involved because this organization is involved in challenging the laws: “They apply pressure to this immoral law.  It’s a right of all humans to bring aid to fellow human beings.”

 

            There are some who are still in favor of the embargo. One author said, “The Clinton administration should maintain the embargo until irreversible economic and political reforms leading to democratic capitalism are in place.  Maintaining the embargo will help to end the Castro regime more quickly.”  Although this might be true, Robbins says this will make America look heartless.

 

            The 39-year-old trade embargo against Cuba may finally be producing its intending results of destabilizing the island’s communist government and weakening Fidel Castro’s control of the Cuban people. It seems clear that Castro believes his survival hinges on the embargo’s elimination.

 

            Paradoxically, just as Castro’s communist government may be close to falling, a chorus of voices in the United States has risen to call for the lifting of the embargo.  Many Americans, such as Bailey and Robbins, believe this will ease the suffering of the Cuban people, capitalize on the trade and investment opportunities other countries are enjoying that Cuba, and establish the basis of a free-market economy that in time will compel democratic reforms as well.