A Cuban journalist, Rafaela Cruz, rejects its government’s claim that the U.S. embargo is the cause of the island’s poor exports.[1]
She asserts that “the embargo’s limitations are directed primarily against the Cuban government and not against the rest of the nation, as demonstrated by the fact that after only three years of private entrepreneurs in Cuba, they are already, with relative ease, trading with U.S. ports.”
“It is Castro’s totalitarianism, for whom the Government, State, party and people are the same thing, that is responsible for extending to the rest of the body of the nation economic limitations conceived against the Government, thus using the people as a hostage and shield against its political enemies.”
And the Cuban government has chosen to expand the impact of the embargo by choosing to limit the number of privately owned businesses.
“It is Castroism, not Washington, that prevents peasants from being true owners of the land they work. It is Castroism that prevents them from harvesting what they want. It is Castroism that prevents them from selling where and how they want. It is Castroism that prevents them from importing and exporting directly. And it is Castroism that prevents commercial and financial intermediation in the Cuban agricultural market, which would make possible the specialization of labor that, since the 18th century, has been known to be the basis for increased productivity.”
“The reality is that, today, Cuba does not export because it has nothing to export since Castroism destroyed industry and agriculture, first by taking over everything, then by managing it in the worst way. It is not a blockade, but socialist centralized planning that has annihilated the productive fabric of the country.”
Cuba’s “real blockade [is the one ] that it has imposed on individual freedom since 1959, destroying more than the economy, the entire nation.”
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[1] Cruz, The cost of the blockade against Cuba, Diario de Cuba (Oct. 28, 2024).
