Time to end Cuban embargo

After forty-two years of Cold War era relations with Cuba, it is time for the United States to recognize its hypocritical Cuban policy and lift the archaic sanctions and travel ban on the Caribbean nation.

Restricting the exportation and sale of medicine and food is a violation of international humanitarian law and has been condemned by almost every international body, including Organization of American States, which normally backs U.S. policies. The United States is alone in its hard-line attack of the Cuban people. No other country honors the restrictions set by the US, and in 1997, the European Union went so far as to bring up charges against the US for violating WTO rules.

Why are we still treating Cuba like an enemy? When the Mexican Ambassador was asked by President Kennedy to support a defense coalition against Cuba, he dismissed the idea of a Cuban invasion as laughable. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, too, everyone knew that the Soviet Union, not Cuba, was the real enemy to be contended with. Though the State Department has labeled Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism, the nation was not on the CIA's Jan. 30, 2002 report to Congress on countries developing weapons of mass destruction.

The Soviet Union has long since collapsed along with the Cold War, and so reasons for continuing the embargo must be examined. Is anyone honestly scared that communist ideas will trickle into the US that have not already been published and distributed by the Socialist Party? Surely, our government does not still fear that the people of this nation will rise up and overthrow their leaders. Most revolutionaries in this country have resigned themselves to working within the system for social change.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the reasons for the sanctions suddenly changed, and our government expected us to swallow new propaganda concerning our love of freedom and democracy in regards to Cuba. Earlier this year, President Bush told the nation that he would not consider lifting the sanctions until Cuba followed a long list of reforms, which included allowing free democratic elections. Most everyone in the United States agrees that Cuban democratic elections are highly desirable, but the root causes of the one-party system must be examined before it is condemned.

After the Cuban revolution of the late fifties, the political leaders opposed to Castro left en masse, and the remaining parties decided to unite to form a single party, the PCC, in 1965. This system has been legalized by Castro's government but not entirely for lust of power. It was partly a precautionary move to prevent the US from spending its significant capital to orchestrate a coup or create its own puppet party, as it has done in many other Latin American countries. United States-backed governments, especially in Latin America, are notorious for abusive dictatorships, far contrary to American doublespeak of supporting freedom and democracy. One needs only to look to the notorious School of the Americas, which trains and sends Latin American soldiers into countries like El Salvador to massacre their own people to maintain U.S. interests.

How can the US, with its own long list of human rights violations, point a finger at a government that has transformed a third-world country with a history of poverty and gross economic inequalities into a state where everyone has a standard of living above the poverty level, an accomplishment we have not yet achieved? Although its own human rights record is far from clean, Cuba has taken great strides in eliminating sexism and apartheid-like racism, it has implemented universal healthcare and prescription drug systems that put us to shame, and its education system is the best in Latin America.

True, Cuba can by no means be considered a fully developed nation yet. However, this is not the fault of a negligent government. Prior to the revolution, US companies and the Mafia controlled most of Cuba's economy, and Cuban political leaders robbed the country of millions of dollars from the treasury, causing everyone except the upper class to live in poverty. Raising a population from such poverty requires more than a half a century.

It would greatly expedite the process if the US were to lift economic sanctions and the ban on tourism. Tourism and sugar are Cuba's only major industries, and the economy would receive a tremendous boost from US tourists. The estimated total economic cost of the restrictions on Cuba was $60 billion in 1998.

The embargo only induces anger and resentment toward the US, provides Castro with an excuse for his government's failures, and hinders the flow of information between our two nations. If the United States truly wants to support democracy in Cuba, the most effective means would be to lift the sanctions and the tourism ban and allow Cubans and Americans to freely exchange ideas. Natalya Efros is from Plano, Texas. She can be reached at eefros@princeton.edu.