Cuban media: Boeing 737 crashes with 104 passengers aboard

[Judi Lynn]

35. The US Blockade of Cuba: Its Effects and Global Consequences

Nicholas Partyka I Geopolitics I Analysis I May 2nd, 2014

It is not possible to discuss almost any aspect of life in Cuba without talking about the US blockade of the island. That the US has an 'embargo' against the island is one of the few things that Americans might know about Cuba. This policy of economic warfare against our hemispheric neighbor has been in place for more than five decades now. In this dispatch, I want to focus on the US blockade policy. We will look briefly at why it exists, its aims, its status under international law, and what its main effects are. Though many Americans may know that there is an "embargo" (though "blockade" is more accurate), few likely know how it works and what its costs are. Attempting to remedy this situation will be the point of this part of the series.

On New Year's Eve 1958, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. The next day, the revolutionary government took control of the country. For the better part of a year, the US foreign policy establishment did not know what to make of Fidel Castro and his revolution. Relations remained cordial until Fidel announced the implementation of a set of Agrarian Reform laws. These laws aimed to put land in the hands of poor farmers who had been largely excluded from land ownership under the old regime. Many of the lands nationalized under Fidel's measures belonged to US citizens or companies; e.g. King Ranch. Other nations also had property nationalized in Cuba in the wake of the revolution, but only the US refused compensation, which the Cubans offered.

In a somewhat ironic twist, the Cubans offered compensation for nationalized property on the basis of the property's value as determined by the most recent pre-revolutionary Cuban tax assessments. Now, this would only be a problem for US owners of Cuban property to be nationalized if those owners felt that there was too large a discrepancy between the value of the compensation offered and the market value of that property. This kind of situation would be likely to come about if US owners had massively underreported the value of their Cuban property to Cuban tax officials (perhaps with official blessing of the regime at the time). The response of the US to these compensation matters also has nothing to do with the fact that the then-sitting CIA Director, Allen Dulles, sat on the Board of Directors for at least one large US firm to have property nationalized in Cuba, namely the infamous United Fruit Company.

Before the revolution, underreporting taxable value saved money in taxes and thus put more of it back in the owner's pocket. After the revolution however, this meant that those owners would lose out in a compensation package offered by the new Cuban government as the value of the compensation offered would be substantially less than what the property would be worth on the market. US owners of Cuban property wanted to both receive the real value of their property, but also not thereby tacitly admit what Castro and the Cuban revolution had accused them of, namely taking advantage of Cuba and Cubans for their own private gain. This is a classic example of one not being able to have one's cake and eat it too. The refusal of the US to acknowledge this had lead to the lion's share of the trials and tribulations that have arisen as the US and Cuba attempt to normalize relations.

More:
http://www.hamptoninstitution.org/cuba-project-part-two.html#.WwDL4kgvzIV