Hillary Clinton suggests that ending the US blockade on Cuba may trigger a counterrevolution. She is mistaken, writes Faiza Rady The United States campaign against Cuba recently took a new and bizarre twist when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the Cuban leadership actually benefited from the economic blockade against the island. "It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalisation with the US, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years," Clinton told a group of college students last week. At first glance, it looks like the US secretary of state may have a point. Never one to procrastinate, Clinton has -- as always -- done her homework. In her speech to the students, she was presumably referring to relevant documents outlining the US goals of the 50-year-old economic blockade. Those are spelled out in the UN General Assembly 1996 Report of the secretary-general on the effects of the blockade, which says that "its objective continues to be the same, to bring about total economic collapse in the country that would lead the population to put an end to the revolutionary process." The General Assembly Report of 2002 similarly notes that the blockade, based on the "decision to cause hunger, disease and the desperation of the Cuban people, as a tool to achieve the goal of political domination, has not only been maintained but has been strengthened." Meanwhile, even US Republicans have dismissed the blockade as a "failed US policy". "What's more, the Cuban people haven't yet put an end to the revolutionary process as the US predicted, instead they continue to extend their support to the revolution," says Cuban Ambassador to Egypt Otto Vaillant. The Cuban people have good reasons to stand firmly behind their revolution. Despite the throttling economic blockade, which prohibits foreign subsidiaries of US multinationals to trade with Cuba under the threat of severe sanctions, Cuba has done well. The island has an excellent educational system, 97 per cent of both men and women are literate, and Cuban doctors and teachers provide their services to more than 20 impoverished nations, explains Vaillant. Since 1964, Cuba has educated and trained some 30,000 African physicians. Healthcare is free and universal and ranks 39th worldwide, whereas the superpower ranks 37th. "The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is in itself an indictment of the American system," says celebrated US filmmaker Michael Moore whose documentary Sicko compares the US and the Cuban healthcare systems. Cuban life expectancy of 76.6 years is the highest in Central America, and slightly lower than the estimated 77.5 years in the US. Cuba similarly outflanks the US, Canada, and all other countries in the Americas in infant mortality rates. Still, the US blockade has caused considerable hardship to the Cuban people. Their government estimates that since its inception the blockade has cost the economy a net loss of $96 billion. But beyond the figures, "there is no way to pay for the harm to thousands of lives and the suffering that the blockade and Yankee aggressions have cost the Cuban people," says former Cuban president Fidel Castro. Because of the blockade Cuba is denied life- saving technology, including radiology, dialysis equipment, respirators and leukemia medication. To cite one specific example among many, the US prohibited the Dutch company Intervet from selling avian vaccines to Cuba, alleging that they contain an antigen produced in the US. To get back to Clinton's argument, it is evident that the blockade has failed to "bring about total economic collapse and cause hunger, disease and desperation" as intended by successive US administrations. Since this is the case, Clinton would presumably argue, then the US will only have to change gears and lift the blockade to realise their long-standing goal of effecting "regime change". This would set the clock back to the good old days of the US- backed Batista dictatorship and "what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years" -- to use Clinton's words -- could be restored: namely US dominance with its list of accompanying ills. Haiti, a sister nation and the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere, provides a model of US-style exported "democracy" to the Caribbean. Following their 1915 invasion, and the subsequent occupation of the island that ended in 1934, the US plundered the island's riches. Then, from 1957 to 1986, they supported the infamous Duvalier dictator dynasty of "Papa" and "Baby Doc". The Duvalier record speaks for itself: they killed 10,000 people, stole millions and bankrupted the country. Then in 1990, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest and Haiti's first democratically elected president, tried to turn things around by establishing land reforms and a poverty eradication programme, the US was quick to intervene. They were threatened by the potential "virus effect of successful independent development", says prominent writer and political activist Noam Chomsky. "If even people in such dire circumstances can take their fate into their own hands, who knows what might happen elsewhere as the contagion spreads." Seven months after his election, a US-backed and financed military junta overthrew the Aristide government. What followed was predictable and in line with US interventions elsewhere in the South. US agribusinesses dumped their subsidised products on Haiti and thereby destroyed the last vestiges of Haitian food sovereignty. The rest is history; today Haiti can no longer feed its own people. The island is a classic model of a failed state, a consequence of US intervention. It is so, explains Chomsky, because "US politics is the shadow cast on society by big business." It is precisely this "shadow of big business" which undermines Clinton's argument in reference to "what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years." "The US secretary of state should remember that the Cuban people already lived in poverty, ignorance and disease throughout 60 years of US imperialism 'under the shadow of big business', like the Haitians and other nations in the region," says Vaillant. Cubans value their rights to housing, education, culture and healthcare -- which the Cuban revolution defines as unalienable human rights. Theirs are rights that the US denies its own citizens.
