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Editor’s Word
The Biden administration has now been in workplace for six months, together with a slender Democratic majority in Congress. So it appears an applicable time for a report card. I supplied my analysis in one other AfricaFocus Bulletin despatched out as we speak, entitled “Constructing Again Higher? Or Not?” However as I used to be finalizing that Bulletin, I noticed that the rising U.S. assaults on Cuba are a key indicator of how issues are going.
They present that the US is headed towards “Construct Again Worse” – a pointy bipartisan reversion to simplistic Chilly Battle insurance policies and the “dangerous neighbor” coverage towards Caribbean nations. And but the “mainstream media” (for me, the each day Washington Put up and New York Instances) contained at finest only some hints of dissent from this coverage consensus.
I started accumulating hyperlinks on the Cuba state of affairs to incorporate within the Bulletin, they usually grew past the house obtainable there. Therefore the necessity for a separate therapy. This Bulletin incorporates an open letter printed within the New York Instances on Friday, July 25, in addition to excerpts and hyperlinks to sources that present a fuller image.
For earlier AfricaFocus Bulletins on USA/Africa relations, go to http://www.africafocus.org/nation/usa-africa.php
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Open Letter to President Biden
Let Cuba Dwell!
Signal the letter right here.
Pricey President Joe Biden,
It’s time to take a brand new path ahead in U.S.-Cuban relations. We, the undersigned, are making this pressing, public attraction to you to reject the merciless insurance policies put into place by the Trump White Home which have created a lot struggling among the many Cuban individuals.
Cuba – a rustic of 11 million individuals – resides by a tough disaster as a result of rising shortage of meals and drugs. Current protests have drawn the world’s consideration to this. Whereas the Covid-19 pandemic has confirmed difficult for all nations, it has been much more so for a small island underneath the heavy weight of an financial embargo.
We discover it unconscionable, particularly throughout a pandemic, to deliberately block remittances and Cuba’s use of world monetary establishments, provided that entry to {dollars} is critical for the importation of meals and drugs.
Because the pandemic struck the island, its individuals – and their authorities – misplaced billions in income from worldwide tourism that will usually go to their public well being care system, meals distribution and financial aid.
In the course of the pandemic, Donald Trump’s administration tightened the embargo, pushed apart the Obama opening, and put in place 243 “coercive measures” which have deliberately throttled life on the island and created extra struggling.
The prohibition on remittances and the tip of direct business flights between the U.S. and Cuba are impediments to the wellbeing of a majority of Cuban households.
“We stand with the Cuban individuals,” you wrote on July 12. If that’s the case, we ask you to right away signal an government order and annul Trump’s 243 “coercive measures.”
There is no such thing as a purpose to keep up the Chilly Battle politics that required the U.S. to deal with Cuba as an existential enemy relatively than a neighbor. As a substitute of sustaining the trail set by Trump in his efforts to undo President Obama’s opening to Cuba, we name on you to maneuver ahead. Resume the opening and start the method of ending the embargo. Ending the extreme shortages in meals and drugs have to be the highest precedence.
On 23 June, many of the member states of the United Nations voted to ask the U.S. to finish the embargo. For the previous 30 years this has been the constant place of a majority of member states. As well as, seven UN Particular Rapporteurs wrote a letter to the U.S. authorities in April 2020 relating to the sanctions on Cuba. “Within the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the shortage of will of the U.S. authorities to droop sanctions could result in the next threat of struggling in Cuba.”
We ask you to finish the Trump “coercive measures” and return to the Obama opening or, even higher, start the method of ending the embargo and absolutely normalizing relations between the US and Cuba.
Signatories obtainable at https://www.letcubalive.com/.
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Books by Piero Gleijeses
For anybody wanting to grasp the function of Cuba in African liberation struggles, and the parallel U.S. opposition to these struggles, the case research of Angola is crucial.
These two books, by Johns Hopkins College of Superior Worldwide Research professor Piero Gleijeses, are the important thing scholarly works on this historical past, based mostly on a number of archival and oral sources from the US, Cuba, Angola, and different nations.
See his CV right here.
https://bookshop.org/a/709/9780807854648
https://bookshop.org/a/709/9781469628325
Different Background Assets on US/Cuba Coverage
Whether or not merely out of political calculation or a return to the worst of U.S. Chilly Battle considering, the Biden administration, with political assist from each events, is doubling down on damaging insurance policies towards the Cuban individuals. Sure, Cuba does want reform, and uncritical assist of the Cuban authorities disregards present realities.
However U.S. sanctions, aimed toward punishing the Cuban individuals as a method to deliver down the federal government, construct on a historical past of U.S. occupation of Cuba in the beginning of the twentieth century, imposing a extremely restricted “independence” after defeating Spain within the Spanish American Battle. Shortly after Cuban revolutionaries overthrew the newest U.S.-dependent authorities in 1959, hostility between the US and Cuba mounted quickly, culminating within the failed invasion on the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and financial sanctions in 1962, virtually 60 years in the past. Sanctions have been considerably relaxed in the course of the Obama administration, then strengthened once more underneath Trump.
In Cuba coverage, due to this fact, President Biden is continuous the Trump insurance policies and even threatening to escalate. This isn’t “constructing again higher” however doubling down on the worst. No rethinking of previous insurance policies in any respect!
https://www.democracynow.org/2021/7/27/cuba_protests_pandemic_conditions
https://novaramedia.com/2021/07/20/whats-actually-going-on-in-cuba/ by Helen Yaffe.
A wonderful abstract by a number one Cuba knowledgeable based mostly on the College of Glasgow. Creator of the e book We Are Cuba! on the post-Soviet historical past of Cuba.
See additionally https://www.fb.com/helen.yaffe.9/ and https://www.fb.com/100007628650696/movies/pcb.2929945513936375/498584691215357
Yaffe is in Cuba now, and her Fb web page incorporates movies resembling these on the second hyperlink above.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/07/19/ending-forever-wars-must-include-economic-warfare/ – by Assal Rad
“In a uncommon tweet on overseas coverage, President Biden stated, “We stand with the Cuban individuals,” and cited their “financial struggling.” The irony was not misplaced on many commentators who noticed that solely weeks earlier the US rejected — for the twenty ninth consecutive 12 months — a United Nation’s decision to finish the decades-long U.S. embargo on Cuba that has price the small-island nation an estimated $144 billion and hampered its skill to fight the pandemic. Because the worldwide neighborhood overwhelmingly voted to finish the embargo in a vote of 184 to 2, solely Israel joined the U.S. in assist of continuous the now 60-year embargo. “
Philip Brenner, one of many main U.S. consultants on Cuba, based mostly at American College in Washington, DC, has been quoted extensively within the Spanish newspaper El Diario, in addition to within the Spanish-language version of the Los Angeles Instances, however apparently not but in English-language media included in Google Information.
A transparent explainer in a 10-minute video with Dr. Danielle Clealand, College of Texas (Austin). Not the ultimate phrase, however very helpful. I’m instructed by pals who know Cuba very properly that her 2017 e book on The Energy of Race in Cuba is great.
https://thegrio.com/2021/07/22/black-americans-haiti-cuba-opinion/ – by Blue Telusma,
“As a girl of Haitian and Cuban lineage residing in the US, this topic hits house in a really private means. “
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/cuba-airstrikes/ – by Aída Chávez, July 20, 2021
The specter of U.S. army intervention.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-time-for-biden-to-choose-between-starving-cubans-and-votes-in-florida by William LeoGrande, July 15, 2021
And again in March 2020, a dream that it is likely to be higher relatively than worse
– by William Minter and Imani Countess, March 25, 2020
“Do not Be Afraid to Dream
To problem a brand new Democratic administration and encourage progressive mobilization, we should always advance not solely sensible coverage targets but in addition new visions of mutual cooperation past these presently thinkable. One clear albeit tough instance is the case of Cuba, the place U.S. coverage has been paralyzed for many years by right-wing pressures.
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A progressive agenda for U.S.-Cuban relations ought to start with the reversal of latest restrictive measures imposed by the Trump administration and progress towards full elimination of the commerce embargo and journey restrictions which have outlined U.S. coverage for nearly six a long time.
A extra formidable purpose could be to emphasize U.S. collaboration with Cuba in selling world well being, as occurred within the case of Ebola in West Africa. The US ought to be ready to simply accept future Cuban gives of help with catastrophe aid and preparedness, a suggestion that the George W. Bush administration rejected in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. Most visionary, but in addition useful to each nations, could be for the US to ask Cuba for technical help in creating equitable public well being insurance policies on this nation—and to pay generously for such help. That would promote mutual understanding in addition to start to pay for repairing the injury accomplished over many a long time of U.S. intervention in Cuba.”
https://democracynow.cachefly.web/democracynow/360/dn2020-0324.mp4?begin=2547.0&finish=3237.0
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/24/cuba_medical_diplomacy_italy_coronavirus
https://www.aljazeera.com/movies/2020/3/22/cuban-doctors-head-to-italy-to-fight-coronavirus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/cuban-doctors-nurses-arrive-in-italy-to-combat-coronavirus-outbreak/2020/03/23/22e75e15-9a16-4d5c-8cf7-e33b2d635407_video.html
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an impartial digital publication offering reposted commentary and evaluation on African points, with a specific give attention to U.S. and worldwide insurance policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter. For an archive of earlier Bulletins, see http://www.africafocus.org,
Present hyperlinks to books on AfricaFocus go to the non-profit bookshop.org, which helps impartial bookshores and likewise offers commissions to associates resembling AfricaFocus.
AfricaFocus Bulletin might be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please write to this tackle to counsel materials for inclusion. For extra details about reposted materials, please contact immediately the unique supply talked about. To subscribe to obtain future bulletins by electronic mail, click on right here.
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