|
OFFICIAL
NOTE
The possible
U.S. measures against
Cuba have been anticipated and will be confronted
AN
article in The New York Times on Thursday
revealed that President Bush is considering a series
of steps designed to punish the Cuban government.
"Among the more drastic are the possibilities
of cutting off cash payments to relatives in Cuba
— a mainstay for millions of Cubans — or halting
direct flights to the island, the officials said.
"
"President
Bush is likely to make a public statement soon about
the crackdown," stated the article.
"Administration
officials said they were preparing a variety of
options for the president, and no final decisions
have been made. The harshest sanctions involve
restricting or eliminating the transfer of cash
payments, called remittances, to friends and
relatives on the island. The payments, sent
primarily from South Florida exiles, are a lifeline
to millions of Cubans and, with estimates as high as
$1 billion, a mainstay of the economy.
"Also
being considered is a move to limit the number of
Americans who travel to Cuba by ending direct
charter flights between the countries. Thousands of
travelers — mostly Cuban-Americans visiting family
— board charter flights each month from Miami, New
York and other cities."
Perhaps
those who benefit from remittances do not run into
the millions that the article suggests, but hundreds
of thousands of nuclear families or persons whose
number is difficult to exactly determine do indeed
benefit. Originally, remittances benefited solely
those with family ties in the United States and
other countries, allowing them to acquire items in
the dollar stores or change them into pesos to buy
in stores, farmers’ markets and other goods and
services facilities. Today, all Cuban citizens have
the possibility of buying and selling dollars and
convertible Cuban pesos in Central Bank exchange
bureaus, which has signified positive progress.
The
U.S. president and his advisors among the Miami
mafia, his close friends to whom he is indebted to
for an election won by outright fraud, start from
the idea that remittances and trips to Cuba to help
or visit relatives should be prohibited. They
subscribe to the theory that these two variants
translate into hundreds of millions of dollars for
the Cuban economy; while certain persons even put
the figure at billions. The reality is however, that
with one dollar in Cuba people receiving remittances
can buy food and other essential products in
quantities superior to those that they would receive
in any other part of the world.
Various
examples can be quoted: a nuclear family with one
child under the age of seven who receives one dollar
can purchase 104 liters of milk at an exchange rate
of 26 Cuban pesos to one U.S. dollar. In our country
the price of milk for children in this age range is
25 Cuban centavos: in other words less than one U.S.
cent. On the world market, the price of milk varies
from 15 to 20 U.S. cents per liter or is 15 to 20
times more expensive than in Cuba. In the same way,
it is possible to purchase through the ration system
more than 100 pounds of rice for one dollar. The
price of rice is 25 Cuban centavos per pound. The
same is true of beans, bread and many other
foodstuffs. Pharmacies sell medicines in national
currency at half the price they were 40 years ago;
those used in hospitals are absolutely free.
Recreation is almost free. Entry to a good baseball
game is paid in Cuban pesos and costs around 500
times less than in the United States, where the
entrance fee is $20 USD. Cinema and theater
performances range from five to 26 for one dollar;
in the United States each event costs between $10-12
USD. These are approximate figures and vary
according to the event and the city. In Cuba, 85% of
housing is owned by nuclear families — thanks to
legislation introduced by the Revolution – who pay
neither rent nor taxes. The remaining 15% of the
population pays a symbolic rent that does not exceed
four dollars per month. Electricity costs an average
half a centavo per kilowatt. Healthcare and
education are completely free for the whole
population. An excellent 160-hour English language
course on television can be subsidized with 20 U.S.
cents spent on paper and electricity.
This
is possible because each year the Cuban state
subsidizes essential imported foodstuffs by $500
million USD and many thousands of millions of pesos
for essential services that are freely available to
the whole population, including those who receive
remittances in dollars.
The
figures relating to food and services at the prices
mentioned serve to demonstrate the degree to which
nuclear families or any other Cuban citizens will be
deprived if family members in the United States are
prevented from sending them just one single dollar.
For more than 30 years, the remission of funds from
abroad to relatives in Cuba was prohibited, given
that it constituted a privilege that the vast
majority were unable to enjoy. Visits to Cuba from
relatives in the United States were also prohibited
given the risks involved for a country that had been
victim to thousands of acts of sabotage, terrorism,
espionage, subversion and assassination attempts;
from the Bay of Pigs invasion 42 years ago to the
recent terrorist attacks on hotels and other tourist
locations, the work of Cuban citizens resident in
the United States.
At a
certain point the strength, maturity and experience
of the Revolution permitted a relaxation of the
policy followed for all those years. It is strange
that it is now that country’s government that is
toying with the idea of this prohibition in order to
punish Cuba. More than four decades of Revolution
have demonstrated that our country is capable of
facing any threat and defeating sinister plans of
any kind. Nothing could be harsher than 44 years of
criminal blockade and economic warfare, the collapse
of the Socialist camp and the disintegration of the
Soviet Union, the special period, the Torricelli
Act, the Helms-Burton Act, the Cuban-Adjustment Act
in place since 1966, biological attacks on plants
and herds. We have confronted all that without
anything impeding our social development, which
places Cuba in a high position, above that of many
developed nations. Whatever their plans for
punishment may be, the U.S. government does not have
many weapons left in its arsenal to use against
Cuba. Every possibility has been anticipated and
will be confronted. The punishment will fall on many
families who have adapted their lives to a certain
economic standard and the considerable benefits
offered them by those small remittances in Cuba’s
current condition, as has been demonstrated with
irrefutable facts; and, what is far worse, many
persons, particularly the elderly, depend on those
remittances.
The
Cuban economy and its social services can resist the
suspension of the supposedly great benefits of
remittances and charter flights or any other
measure, including the suspension of food sales for
which we have paid over $300 million USD without
receiving any bank credit, and without failing to
cover down to the last cent and without a second’s
delay.
This
measure has served to demonstrate that, for strictly
political motives, the United States is not a secure
and reliable food provider. It has limited our
purchases that, nevertheless, have grown at a rapid
rate due to the efficiency and seriousness of U.S.
farmers. Had we had financing, the damage would be
far more considerable.
The
difficulties involved in prohibiting remittances and
travel to Cuba, thus affecting an endless number of
people in Cuba and in the United States, will fall
on the government of that country. Those affected
will do whatever they can for their families in
order to prevent their most elemental link and
relations from being so unjustly and arbitrarily
sacrificed.
And
Cuba, where not one citizen is left to his or her
fate, will even be capable of protecting those in
need of the Revolution as the result of such an
inhumane policy.
The
warnings made in such threatening language, that the
U.S. government will not tolerate an exodus of
rafters, is in total contradiction to the huge
incentives given by the U.S. authorities to the
hijackers of planes and maritime vessels who used
firearms and other methods similar to those
individuals who crashed aircraft into New York’s
Twin Towers and the Pentagon by putting knives to
the throat of the pilots and crew.
Over
90 percent of illegal immigrants arrive in
speedboats owned by person smugglers resident in the
United States, who travel with impunity between the
United States and Cuba. In conjunction with the
absurd and criminal Cuban Adjustment Act and the
ambition of traffickers who carry two or three times
the person capacity on their vessels, that method
has led to the loss of many lives.
It is
evident that the awards and privileges conceded by
the U.S. government to delinquents who hijack
aircraft and vessels by using terrorist methods,
contribute nothing to the legal and orderly
emigration to which the U.S. is committed. Nor do
they contribute to the infamous slander of Cuba for
the energetic and legal measures that it was forced
to take in order to avoid a wave of aircraft and
maritime vessel hijackings.
The
announced measures of banning flights and
remittances will also stimulate illegal immigration,
responsibility for which cannot be placed on Cuba,
which is strictly conforming to the obligations
accorded in the migratory agreement, without any
exception.
It is
truly absurd and contradictory that the United
States is making threats related to a mass exodus
against a country that has repeatedly proposed a
cooperation agreement to combat human trafficking,
something not even considered by the United States.
We
will wait for the pronouncement and punitive
measures announced. Meanwhile, we will try to divine
and use our imagination to successfully confront,
with dignity, firmness and efficiency, any form of
hostility and aggression, as the Cuban Revolution
has done for over four decades.
April
18, 2003
1:40
a.m.
|
