N E W S

Havana. September 30, 2003

U.S. BLOCKADE
Washington’s objective is to “cause hunger, desperation and overthrow the government”

BY RAISA PAGES  —Granma International staff writer—

Some call it an embargo, for others it’s a blockade. But neither word correctly reflects the magnitude of the actions carried out by the U.S. government against Cuba since 1959.

It was Secretary of State Cristian Herter who used the correct description for the proposed measures during a meeting of the State Department on June 24, 1959, five weeks after the Cuban Revolution passed the First Agrarian Reform Act. Heter considered his country’s measures were an economic war on Cuba, a policy that has continued for the last 44 years.

“(…) We must rapidly use every conceivable method to weaken Cuban economic life…” read an important official document signed by L.D. Mallory, a high-ranking State Department official on April 6, 1960. He added: “(…) A course of action that would have major impact in denying Cuba money and supplies, in order to reduce salaries with the aim of causing hunger, desperation and overthrowing the government”.

From then on, all economic and social sectors of the Cuban nation have felt the effects of the U.S. government’s aggressive policy. But inside this entire punitive arsenal, the blockade on foodstuffs for the island and the measures damaging sugar production and other agricultural produce has been terrorist in it modus operandi.

The first blow to the Cuban economy came when the United States stopped buying sugar from Cuba, in an attempt to leave a large number of people hungry and jobless.

Proposals to destabilize the Cuban Revolution included agricultural, cattle raising and fishing sabotage. On October 26, 1959, two incendiary devices were thrown at the Niágara sugar factory in the western province of Pinar del Río; the same month, the Punta Alegre refinery and Violeta sugar mill in the central-eastern region of Cuba were the targets of several air bombardments.

In January 1960, in the middle of the sugar cane harvest, air attacks over sugar cane plantations multiplied. In that month alone, the number of plantations set alight at various points damaged almost one million units of sugar cane. Two campesino homes were also destroyed in the northern region of central province Villa Clara.

This kind of economic terrorism was repeated time and again. It is estimated that between 1960-65, after pirate attacks and activities by U.S. financed mercenary gangs who burned sugar cane fields, losses rose to one and a half million tons of sugar. This does not include damage by U.S. agents to sugar cane industry facilities used for producing and exporting the product.

One incident occurred during the February 18, 1960 attack on the España sugar mill in Matanzas province: a bomb exploded aboard the plane, killing the pilot, U.S. citizen Robert Ellis Frost and another crewmember, Onelio Santana Roque, former member of dictator Fulgencio Batista’s repressive forces. Both men had taken part in several terrorist aerial incursions against Cuba and their departure base was Tamiami airport, Florida.

Aggressors directly attacked no less than 46 sugar factories. Evidence presented during the Cuban People’s Lawsuit against the U.S. Government for economic damage suffered by Cuba, in January 2000, it was noted that sugar production losses increased to over $11 billion due to sabotage and biological attacks.  

FOOD PRODUCTION FALLS

The saboteurs also endangered agricultural and poultry farms established to produce foodstuff for the population. Between 1960 and 1980 alone, 34 acts of sabotage and attacks were registered in the agricultural production sector.

This sector had to change all its technology because it had no access to U.S. made machinery and spare parts and was obliged to look towards more distant markets. It is estimated that because of higher freightage costs and technological changes, the damage to agricultural production has exceeded $2 billion.

Another example of the economic war is the attack on different-size fishing boats. Almost 300 vessels have been attacked and boats used to catch tuna, lobsters, shrimps and other species of scaly fish have become targets of economic terrorism.

Sinking and destroying vessels reduces the level of food production for the Cuban people plus the amount of produce for export, for instance lobsters and shrimps.

On October 10, 1972, crewmembers from two gunboats boarded the Aguja and Plataforma IV fishing vessels close to the island of Andros. They kidnapped the fishermen and blew up the boats, sinking them in the process. Eleven Cuban crewmembers were set adrift in a small vessel and picked up on the 13th by a helicopter from the Bahamas.

One year later, on October 4, 1973, gunboats attacked the Cayo Largo 17 and Cayo Largo 34 fishing vessels; fisherman Roberto Torna died and the other crewmembers were cast into the sea in rubber dinghies without food or water.

Various Cuban families have been left bereaved by such maritime terrorism. In addition, fishermen Bienvenido Matriz Díaz and Luis Orlando Díaz Pérez were murdered on April 6, 1976. Countless crewmembers have been injured in diverse attacks.

THE CRUEL TASK 21

“On February 15, the CIA will embark on a plan causing Cuban food harvests to fail”. This was to be the embryonic step in biological warfare against the island and appears as Task 21 in a document presented on January 18, 1962 under the name Project Cuba, explaining the objectives and 32 original tasks in what was later known as Operation Mongoose.

The first impact of the U.S.’s biological war against Cuba took place that same year. Fowl pox vaccine was contaminated with Newcastle’s disease - a fatal virus that affects poultry – causing the death of a million birds.

Economic damage caused by this epidemic amounted to 3.36 million pesos in chicken meat losses plus the cost of disinfecting poultry sheds.

The next step in the operation to promote food scarcity for the Cuban population came in 1971 when, close to the airport in Havana, a virulent outbreak of African swine fever occurred. This affected herds in Havana and in the nearby province of Pinar del Río.

Information from the same CIA agent who introduced the virus onto the island, confirms that it came from the U.S. Fort Gullick military base, close to the Panama Canal.

Half a million pigs were incinerated in order to avoid the disease spreading. This crime links in with the consequences of the other measures to achieve its objective: causing hunger within the country.

African swine fever surfaced once again in January 1980, in the municipalities adjoining the U.S. military base at Guantánamo. On this occasion, almost 300,000 animals were slaughtered, an event that seriously affected the future of pork meat, one of the Cuban people’s favorite dishes.

Sugar cane — used in Cuba’s principal export at the time — was the next objective in the biological war. In September 1978, a mildew epidemic broke out in the eastern province of Holguín, quickly spreading throughout the country. Barbados 4362, the principal variety of high-performance sugar cane, was virtually destroyed. Thirty-four per cent of the island’s sugar cane fields had to be destroyed and new varieties replaced Barbados 4362, although they never achieved the same agro-industrial results as their predecessor, greatly missed by sugar cane growers. Because of the plague, one million tons of sugar had to be produced for the following harvest. Studies into the mildew outbreak showed it did not originate naturally.

Perhaps the biological warfare best remembered by Cubans is the outbreak of tobacco mildew, a fungus that quickly spread through tobacco plantations after first appearing in November 1979 in the central province of Villa Clara.

Reported in Cuba in 1957 as a result of importing recycled fabric used in plantations of covered tobacco plants; the fabric came from the United States where this fungus proliferated. Measures were taken to eradicate the disease and it was never detected again.

The arrival of tobacco mildew in 1979, 22 years after the first outbreak, was not by chance. The appearance of contamination points over a widespread area revealed that it had been spread from the air. Once again, the CIA had attempted to strangle Cuban farmers. Tobacco industry losses were so great that reductions on the export and domestic market were calculated at $350 million. 

In the 1980’s, whilst the island was developing important genetic programs for cattle vaccines, an outbreak of the virus known as bovine nodular pseudo-dermatosis was detected on August 4, 1981. Within three weeks, the disease had spread to nine Cuban provinces. The agent from which this virus originates had only been isolated in the United States and Italy, but the U.S. authorities had failed to inform any of the international health organizations. At the time it appeared in Cuba, scientists were working on the disease at the U.S. laboratory for tropical medicine on Plum Island. Cuba had to eradicate almost 3,000 contamination points of the disease and establish strict quarantine regulations. The number of sick animals exceeded 220,000.

The Cuban cattle industry continued to be a CIA target. In the 1980’s, the country registered its best ever figures for milk production, thanks to the success of its genetic programs. In order to damage this industry, the CIA searched for a fatal pathogen that would produce serious losses in dairy farming. In April 1989, they introduced ulcerative mammitis into the eastern province of Granma. Outbreaks were soon reported in the western region of the island and the country has not yet been able to eradicate the disease completely from cattle herds despite taking preventative measures and embarking on clean-up operations.

INTENSIFIED AFTER 1990

After the Eastern European socialist bloc disappeared, the United States intensified actions to deprive the Cuban people of food.

When trade between the island and its former allies ended, Cuban imports and exports had to be acquired from more distant places and it is estimated that the average voyage increased by 11,000 kilometers, entailing subsequent extra expenditure.

Every time Cuba announced an investment program to increase cultivation, its farms were suspiciously attacked in order to prevent agricultural advances and improved supplies on the island.

The introduction of a localized irrigation system for bananas — a produce highly consumed by Cubans, especially in the eastern region — made it possible to increase production. At the same time as huge banana investments were being carried out, sigatoka negra was detected in the central eastern province of Camagüey. The previously unknown disease in Cuba appeared very close to the Maya international air corridor. From 1990-95, plantations sensitive to this banana fungus were reduced by 77%. Estimates place the cost of the plague at over $100 million and for a long time bananas were missing from Cuban people’s diet. Many areas had to be replanted with banana varieties more resistant to the disease.

In December 1992, citrus fruits — in great export demand — were affected by biological warfare; the black plant louse, the most efficient transmitter of the disease known as tristeza de citrico (citrus sadness) was identified.  The insect vector was traced to the Caimanera municipality, where the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo is located. It was the first time that the dangerous insect had ever been reported in Cuba.

Another rare insect that had never been reported in the Americas appeared in Havana in 1993. It was the minador de citricos, a plague that spread from eastern Cuba to the central eastern province of Camagüey.

But the worst of the recent biological attacks occurred on October 21, 1996 when a U.S. aircraft was observed spraying a powdered substance whilst flying over the western province of Matanzas via the Girón international air corridor.

Two months later the thrips palmi karny insect, until then unknown in Cuba, appeared in this territory, devastating the potato harvest and spreading to the main potato producing zones; by 1998, harvests had fallen by 50%. It cost almost $3 million each year to control the insect.

From 1978 to 1996, some five foreign species attacked the island’s vegetable crops. From 1997-99, eight introduced diseases were registered, thus proving that attacks were increasing.

This increase in economic terrorism and, above all, the appearance of various illnesses affecting the Cuban people, were part of the decision to bring down two Brothers to the Rescue light aircraft in 1996, after they were warned to stop their illegally flights over Cuban territory.

STRONGER PRESSURE

The approval of the Torricelli amendment included in the 1992 U.S. defense budget acts intensified the blockade measures by prohibiting trade with U.S. subsidiary companies based in third countries. The announcement of sanctions against those nations providing economic assistance to the island caused even greater problems in negotiations to purchase food.

But as the Cuban Revolution was able to overcome these difficulties, in 1996 they resorted to the Helms Burton Act, aimed at cutting off the flow of foreign capital to the island. Every progressive sector worldwide repudiated this piece of extra-territorial legislation. However, all the U.S.’ intimidations and sanctions on business people could not prevent Cuba from doing business with foreign partners, although some did retreat in the face of such coercion.

Acquiring food from distant places, the obligation to maintain high food stocks, scant alternatives to finding low-priced products due to time factors, and other financial problems are the result of an economic war on Cuba.

EXCEPTIONAL PURCHASES FROM THE UNITED STATES

The U.S. government offered its help in the wake of the devastating effects caused by hurricane Michel, which hit Cuba on November 4, 2001. The Cuban Revolution leaders replied that it would be better if Washington were to sell food and medicine to the island.

Thus the sale of foodstuff to Cuba was approved as an exceptional measure, but everything had to be paid for upfront and in cash. The first U.S. food shipment arrived on December 17, 2001. This is unilateral trade of an exceptional character, as a result of a natural disaster.

Recent information places U.S. food transactions to the island at $500 million, following the first shipment.

Although this trade has been represented as a breakthrough in the blockade, the truth is that Cuba cannot export products to the United States, nor pay for purchases on credit.

For a long time now, many U.S. sectors have profoundly rejected the economic war on the Cuban Revolution. This movement is continuing to grow but it has a fierce opponent: the powerful extreme right and the Miami mafia. These individuals are part of a policy described as one of the U.S. government’s most resounding failures.

EXTREMELY COSTLY PROHIBITIONS

• The U.S. government’s prohibitions on food imports have caused losses of $114 million to Cuba.

• The blockade on grain shipments means costlier transportation because ships cannot dock at U.S. ports after putting in at the island. This is why freightage charges of $15.5 per metric ton are incurred, which could be reduced to $10 if the ships were allowed to pick up cargo for their return voyage to the United States.

• The U.S. blockade has damaged agriculture to the tune of more than $108.5 million.

• Before 1959, Cuba traditionally exported tropical fruit to the United States. The island could export 13,000 tons of avocado, mango, coconuts, papaya, etc. worth some $25 million to that country.

• Potato seeds cost 50% more because they cannot be imported from the United States. If this were possible then 2,300 hectares more could be sown, providing 57 thousand additional tons.

• In just one year, food imports purchased from other markets cost $22.4 million more. With this money some 52,000 metric tons of rice and 4,000 tons of full fat powdered milk to augment Cubans’ basic die, could have been bought from the United States.