By Franklin Ledezma Candanedo, on November 7, 2020
Photo: Jose Manuel Correa
No one in the great and universal homeland should create false expectations as a result of the long and controversial triumph of the US Democratic presidential candidate and the chosen candidate for vice president, no matter how striking their roots are, because history does not lie, and there are many facts that should alert everyone, to avoid falling into an unfounded optimism.
We can be sure that the genocidal imperialist beast will continue to apply criminal blows to governments and people who refuse to comply with its dreadful directives (Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and now victorious Bolivia), who do not accept the denigrating role of being its backyard and, even less, to sustain its pretended role in a unipolar world, with illegal sanctions that reaches outside its borders, like those applied to governments that have never made wars with false excuses, nor invaded anyone, as is the case with the Republic of China.
Let’s see what history teaches us, so that no one has any illusions about this victory of the Democratic Party.
On February 7, 1962, the then President of the United States John F. Kennedy (Democratic Party), declared the unilateral blockade against Cuba, through the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.
Previously, on February 3, Kennedy signed the presidential order to implement a total blockade against the Island, whose objective was to cut all types of commercial ties with Cuba and to encircle the country in order to provoke the overthrow of the revolutionary government.
On January 3, 1961, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba a few days before handing over his White House seat to his successor, who continued his interventionist policies.
In March of that same year, the U.S. government included in its Export Regulations a list of food products and medicines that required a general license in order to be exported to the island. This was one of the first measures taken by the Kennedy administration, which was a prelude to the most brutal economic, commercial and financial blockade in history.
On February 6, 1962, just 24 hours after the policy denounced as genocidal against the Island went into effect; the Department of the Treasury promulgated the Cuban Import Regulations, which prohibited the import of all merchandise of Cuban origin into US territory.
The objective was clear: to economically asphyxiate the Caribbean nation and to make the Cuban people, who lacked the resources forbidden by Washington’s policy towards the Cuban government, yield to hunger. It was a blockade designed to impede and harass Cuba. That was the goal and it continues to be so today.
As Vice President of the Obama Administration, Joe Biden declared that the US would not lift the embargo on Cuba. In 2009, he said, “We believe that Cubans should determine their own destiny and should be able to live in freedom and economic prosperity”. He was from the beginning a concrete interventionist in favor of the nefarious Cuban lobby, one just as perverse as the Israeli lobby.
Five years later, Obama would begin a process of rapprochement to the Island with the resumption of diplomatic relations between both countries. In those days, the then president declared that the embargo “has not served the interests” of either the US or the Cuban people and assured that he would ask Congress to end it, but the request never materialized.
The Democratic Party’s new vice president candidate, Kamala Harris, is against the embargo on Cuba. According to the Tampa Bay Times Joe Biden took up some of the statement made by Harris when she was a Senator of California,
“Senator Harris believes we should end the failed trade embargo and take a smarter approach that empowers Cuban civil society and the Cuban-American community to drive progress and freely determine their own future,” the Florida newspaper quoted.
Can anyone believe that the new occupant of the White House and his Vice President, will respect the self-determination of countries, or will they only act according to their own dark imperialist interests in order to recover economic-financial losses, in a supposed new (old) post-pandemic normality? Hopefully they will be pushed towards the first option in the face of a strengthened progressive struggle in solidarity with the people of the world. What is at stake is the very existence of the planet.
Translation: Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau