Popularised by French writer Alphonse Karr in 1849, the epigram Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose has become a common adage. “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” most certainly applies to the US trade blockade against Cuba. Marking its 52nd anniversary on 13 November, 188 of the 193 member states of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) voted unanimously to support the island nation's 21st yearly report on “The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States.” Since its inception in 1960, the blockade has cost the Cuban people the mindboggling sum of more than $3 trillion, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the General Assembly. The blockade constitutes a “massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of the people of Cuba”, he said. This year's vote in favour of ending the blockade was the highest ever since the report was first presented to the UNGA in 1991. Only the US, Israel (its ever-faithful ally at the UN and elsewhere), and tiny Palau — an island of 281 square miles in the Pacific Ocean, and a US colony for some 50 years — cast their votes against the resolution. The Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. It was US president Dwight Eisenhower who first introduced the blockade in 1960, in response to the Cuban Revolution's nationalisation of US multinational and other assets. It was subsequently tightened by president John F Kennedy, who sponsored the 1961 invasion of Cuba, dubbed the “Bay of Pigs”, which was only halted by the Soviet threat of a nuclear confrontation with the US in case they decided to act on their plan to attack the island. “It has been the longest enduring blockade we have had in the world,” said Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the US-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, “and the question is, why is it still there?” “The answer is simple,” Cuban Ambassador to Egypt Otto Vaillant told Al-Ahram Weekly. “After 52 years and through 11 administrations, the US continues to stubbornly maintain the same out-dated and failed policy. They use the blockade in an attempt to starve the Cuban people and crush the revolution.” This is no idle talk. The Cuban ambassador is referring verbatim to a declassified State Department report dated 1958-60 (Foreign Relations of the United States, Volume VI, Cuba), that spells out the US aim to use the blockade as an instrument to choke the Cuban economy and starve its people. “Every means should be undertaken to weaken the economic life of Cuba to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow the government,” says the report. The intention expressed in the report, in fact, coincides with the UN's definition of genocide. Based on the text of the 1948 Genocide Convention (Article 2, paragraph b), genocide includes “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a [national, ethnical, racial or religious] group”. Given that the stated purpose of the blockade is to “weaken the economic life of Cuba, to bring about hunger and desperation”, the “specific intent” required as a standard of proof by the convention is evident, while its consequences imply the infliction of “serious bodily or mental harm” on the Cuban people. This single-minded US purpose has remained unchanged, though the mechanisms to enforce the blockade have been fine-tuned and perfected by successive US administrations. In recent decades, the blockade has been legally upgraded, with its tentacles reaching worldwide to bring about the sought “regime change”. To this effect, the US Congress passed two laws to modernise and globalise the blockade: the 1992 Torricelli Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Bill, also known as the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Act. “Liberty and Democracy” requires that imports into the US should not include more than 10 per cent of Cuban ingredients, while Torricelli prohibits foreign subsidiaries of US multinationals from trading with Cuba and threatens severe sanctions for non-compliance. This creative piece of legislation also imposes a six-month ban from US ports on ships that anchor in Cuban waters. Barack Obama, the self-styled “Yes, we can”, “candidate for change” has been quick to follow into the footsteps of his predecessors. At the UNGA, the Obama's UN envoy Ronald D Godard described the blockade as “one of the tools in our overall efforts to encourage respect for human rights and basic freedoms”. According to this bizarre yet conventional US definition of “freedoms”, human rights would be enforced by choking the Cuban economy and denying the island access to the world market. It is a far cry from Obama's 2004 declaration that “The time has come to end the embargo.” Then the presidency was a distant dream to the young Senator. Power corrupts, as Acton said. “The reality is that the last four years have been characterised by the persistent tightening of the blockade,” Vaillant told the Weekly. “Under the Obama administration, we have witnessed more drastic sanctions levelled against companies and individuals for breaking the terms of the blockade than ever before. An example that comes to mind is the fine of $619 million imposed on the Dutch bank ING for using US subsidiary banks, between 2002 and 2007, to carry out its transactions with Cuba and other countries blacklisted by the US. This particular fine has entered the annals of history because it was the highest ever to be imposed on a bank.” In 2011, the US crusade against Cuba increased in cost by 15 per cent when compared to 2010. According to conservative estimates, last year's blockade cost the Cuban people $3,553,602,545.” This staggering figure remains abstract, essentially because “there is no way to pay for the harm to thousands of lives and the suffering that the blockade has cost the Cuban people,” says former Cuban President Fidel Castro. Still, a random sample of the blockade's lethal ripple effects may at least partially translate the blockade's appalling impact. A case in point, Cuba cannot buy temporary skin substitutes, which are used to treat patients with second and third-degree burns, because the artificial skin product INTEGRA and the acellular human dermis product ALLODERM are both manufactured in the US. Another poignant example: a Canadian company, acting as an intermediary agent, cancelled the contract it had signed with MEDICUBA for the sale of the US-manufactured HIV-1P24 ELISA kits used to diagnose AIDS in children of mothers who test positive for HIV/AIDS, after the US producer discovered that the kits were to be sold to Cuba. As a result, the Cuban health authorities had to import kits from other, more distant markets at a much higher cost. In some cases, the blockade also prevents treatment of the mentally ill. Cuba has an ageing population with an estimated 130,000 Alzheimer patients. Their treatment is currently problematic because the blockade prohibits Cuba from buying Donepezil from its US manufacturer Pfizer and its affiliates worldwide. This and similar violations of the Cuban people's human rights were once again exposed at the UNGA. “For the 21st year in a row we exposed the ugly legacy of the US blockade, and we will continue to do so,” says Vaillant, “because most countries stand with us.” Organisations working hard to overthrow the Cuban Revolution have in recent years emerged into plain sight. Most prominent among them is the euphemistically named “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba” that under the Bush administration in 2004 sported a strategic document designated as the “Plan to Annex Cuba”.
