The reinstatement of Cuba by the Organisation of American States is not a victory for that organisation but rather for solidarity across the Americas against US colonialism, writes Faiza Rady "The Cold War has ended this day," pronounced a jubilant Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, after the Organisation of American States (OAS) repealed its 47-year-long suspension of Cuba. The resolution was unanimously adopted by the 34-nation organisation, at its General Assembly meeting on 3 June in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Amidst much applause, Zelaya said the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, and his people have been "absolved by history". In 1962, Cuba was suspended from the OAS for having dared defy the United States by advocating Marxism-Leninism and defining its revolution as socialist. Speaking at the meeting's plenary session, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said that the OAS resolution "washes out a stain that has hung over the organisation since 1962". Ortega added that the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) -- which include Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica -- contributed to winning the resolution, which he considered yet another victory for the Cuban people. "The next step," said Ortega, "must be the elimination of the half-century long US blockade on Cuba". If one goes by their recent comments on the question of the blockade, US government agencies don't agree. Although US President Barack Obama lifted some travel and remittance restrictions to the island, he said -- like all other US presidents in the past half-century -- that he would only consider lifting the blockade on condition that the Cuban government holds "democratic elections". As far as US policy is concerned, the conditionality of lifting the blockade hasn't changed in 50 years: unless Cuba tows the line, the US will continue the regime of economic strangulation. "Obama's key policy advisers on Latin America propose cosmetic changes in style and diplomacy, but unrelenting support for re-asserting US hegemony," says Latin American analyst James Petras. Although the US government put much into behind-the- scenes politicking in San Pedro Sula to block the OAS resolution, they were ultimately forced to concede defeat. This only served to highlight the superpower's political isolation in the region. To date, the US remains the lone nation in the hemisphere that doesn't have diplomatic ties with Cuba. After the OAS vote on the resolution, Thomas Shannon, assistant US secretary of state for the Western hemisphere, reiterated renowned clichés about "democracy" and the "market economy". "We've lifted an historical impediment while facing up to the challenge of today, which is: How does the OAS, an organisation committed to democracy, relate to a country that is not democratic?" Shannon told reporters. "And how does the OAS and the inter-American system, which is characterised by open societies and market-based economies, relate to a country that has a closed society and a closed economy?" The OAS Charter answers Shannon's questions, specifically defining the legal boundaries governing the relationship between members within the organisation. Article 1 of the Charter stipulates that the OAS "has no powers to intervene in matters that are within the internal jurisdiction of the member states". Article 3 says that, "every state has the right to choose, without external interference, it's political, economic, and social system and has the duty to abstain from intervening in the affairs of another state." Accordingly, "the American states shall cooperate fully among themselves, independently of the nature of their political, economic, and social systems." It follows that US policy towards Cuba is -- and has been -- in clear violation of the OAS Charter, writes Nelson Valdés in Counterpunch, on the basis of which he recommends that, "OAS members should consider expelling the US from the organisation." Cuba duly welcomed the resolution, but said it will not rejoin the OAS, which it regards as a US tool. "The OAS was an accomplice of all the crimes committed against Cuba," wrote former Cuban president Fidel Castro in a column entitled "The Trojan Horse". "That institution opened the gates to the Trojan horse that backed neo-liberalism, drug trafficking, military bases and economic crises. Underdevelopment, economic dependence, poverty, the forced return of those who emigrate in search of work, the brain drain, were all the consequences of interventions and plundering proceeding from the North." Distinguished professor of linguistics and political scientist Noam Chomsky documents some of the North's warfare and plundering. Military intervention started in 1898, when the US invaded Cuba to halt its war of independence from Spain, turning the island into a virtual colony. The US went as far as rewriting Cuba's constitution. Only repealed in the 1930s following much struggle, a constitutional clause entitled the Platt Amendment gave the US government the right to intervene in Cuba at will. Until the 1959 Cuban Revolution, the island remained a de facto colony of the US. "The Eisenhower administration at once initiated a remarkable campaign to restore Cuba to its proper place, after Fidel Castro entered Havana in January 1959, finally liberating the island from foreign domination, with enormous popular support, as Washington ruefully conceded," says Chomsky. The Kennedy administration then launched the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, with US-trained Cuban exiles, to overthrow the revolution. When the invasion failed, following the threat of a nuclear showdown with the Soviet Union, the US changed strategy and declared economic warfare on the island. The idea was to "bring the terrors of the earth" to the Cuban people and thus starve them into submission. "Other crimes continue to the present, in defiance of virtually unanimous world opinion," says Chomsky. Cuba is being punished for being disobedient and defending its national sovereignty. The OAS, on the other hand, has historically supported US direct and indirect interventions in Cuba, as well as elsewhere on the continent. A proxy of the US, the organisation supported the Bay of Pigs debacle and the 1965 military invasion of the Dominican Republic, among other US incursions. Nonetheless, those days seem to be over. Like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, other Latin and South American countries have learned to challenge US hegemony at the OAS and elsewhere. Indeed, the OAS may very well be obsolete, says Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador. "I believe that the OAS has lost its raison d'être; maybe it never had a raison d'être. It's not possible for the region's problems to be discussed in Washington. Let us construct something of our own."
