By José Luis Méndez Méndez. Latin American Summary, May 24, 2024.
The maneuver of the US Democratic administration to partially eliminate Cuba’s registration from the infamous list of alleged countries sponsoring terrorism is a distraction to weaken global pressure, which demands the total and complete exclusion, without adjustments, of the Island of listed where it should never have been, for being a country that has faced terrorism and suffered from that scourge for more than six decades, including that of State, of successive administrations in the United States.
It is incongruous to remove Cuba from the US list of countries that do not cooperate with its anti-terrorist efforts, that is, those of the United States, and unjustifiably keep it on the other list of alleged sponsors of terrorism. A reduction of the analysis, it would seem, is cooperative, but it is. The action is intended to confuse international public opinion and solidarity on this issue; it is a crude manipulation for dark purposes.
The US declaration left another message, any change on the dark list and the spurious Cuban presence goes through its Congress and the president cannot or does not want to invoke his prerogatives claiming national interest. The announcement is a fraud, which only recognizes what was reported, that the Island should never have been on any of those lists. It is also timorous in its wording by stating that the causes present in 2022 are not present in 2023 and that is why the exclusion is decided, which is totally false and there was no reason for the qualification before or after.
An example of a measure of terrorist effects by the US side is the aforementioned cancellation of the ESTA, which affects British, Spanish, German and French citizens. The State Department has decided to cancel access to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) for more than 300,000 Europeans, who have traveled to Cuba during the Joseph Biden administration since January 2021.
The United States knows that tourism is the main source of foreign currency income for the Cuban economy, it has advertised in national media, as well as argued the efforts it makes to attract tourists to the Island, the “maximum pressure” finds a way to increase suffocation.
First, the message is clear, if you travel to Cuba you cannot travel to the United States in an expeditious and economical manner. The ESTA permit costs 21 dollars, lasts 90 days and is processed electronically and the response is almost immediate, almost 48 hours. . On the other hand, the hearing takes several months, even years, costs between 160 and 180 dollars and may or may not be granted.
Cubans with dual citizenship scattered around the world, if they have visited Cuba, cannot visit the United States, they require a visa and the threat of considering the traveler a possible immigrant slows down the response to the request.
Thousands of Cubans, who have Spanish citizenship, cannot travel, nor apply for a visa in Havana, because the staff of the US consulate was unilaterally reduced, pretexting some ghostly “sonic attacks” against its staff, a subterfuge that has since vanished. as the fantastic “Havana syndrome” has manifested itself in other countries, to make it even more ridiculous.
In the twisted aggressive policy of the United States, it is prohibiting and preventing its citizens from traveling to the Greater Antilles, but those who do so through delayed and obstructed licenses are harassed and frightened upon return, their civil and civil rights violated. humans, persecuted, this has happened with American solidarity workers who attended Labor Day festivities in Cuba, co-opted of the right of free movement, delayed at airports, their belongings searched, booked in actions aimed at terrorizing them and dissuading them from new trips.
It is a machinery of suffocation, if Cuba makes efforts to resolve air connectivity in order to make viable and encourage the arrival of tourists, with that intention it hires planes, improves its national fleet, opens new destinations, recovers closed ones, then what to do? on the part of imperial decision-makers to look for alternatives to cut off that possibility. Remember then that the Island is listed as a supposed sponsor of terrorism, and until now it has not contributed to confronting it and one of the laws of the blockade is “trade with the enemy”, with that fallacious argument they put pressure on sovereign countries, some face the pressures, others break in the face of the threat and the least lend themselves to expanding coercive measures against the blockaded island, as occurred with the prohibition by the Argentine national authorities on the sale of fuel to the Cuban Aviation flag line, which caused the closure of that means of communication between Argentina and Cuba, generating immediate and long-term damages and losses, after 39 years of fluid exchange between the two countries and common benefit.
An example of the extraterritorial application of US laws and the outrage of international trade rules in a global context where international law has been weakened and relegated to being invoked only in inoperative resolutions of the stagnant UN.
The measure affected Argentine national interests that are protected by their own laws approved decades ago to defend their sovereignty and independence. The pressures found an echo in a docile administration, which has benefited foreign interests over national ones and alienated local heritage to the best. bidder to the detriment of the conquests achieved during decades of struggle by several generations of its best citizens.
In summary, the blockade affects even the interests of American transnationals, thus the General Electric emporium based in Boston Massachusetts, agreed to pay a fine of more than 27 million dollars to the United States Government for an “apparent” violation of the economic sanctions against Cuba would have violated the Cuban Asset Control Regulations, the main mechanism for applying the blockade to the Island. The entity pleaded guilty and offered the documentation required to be sanctioned, which minimized the amount from 18 million to what it actually paid for exercise their free right to international trade, which in this case affected Canada’s commercial interests.
It is a present, clear and tangible reality, the policy of “maximum pressure” generates suffocation against a people determined to resist and win.
Writer and university professor. He is the author, among others, of the book “Under the wings of the Condor”, “Operation Condor against Cuba” and “Democrats in the White House and terrorism against Cuba”. He is a contributor to Cubadebate and Summary Latinoamericano.
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