Al-Ahram Weekly | International | The moral high ground

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 9 - 15 August 2001 Issue No.546
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

The moral high ground
Washington is still playing an old role of fat cat to Havana's little mouse, but demonstrations in Cuba last week showed this mouse still knows how to roar, writes Faiza Rady
The Cuban capital Havana recently witnessed the largest mass demonstration in its history with 1.2 million people taking to the streets in protest against the United States' war of "economic genocide" on the small Caribbean nation. Rising up in celebration of the 48th anniversary of the Cuban revolution on 26 July, people poured into the streets to denounce the US and its "acts of terrorism against Cuba," and protest the recent conviction of five Cubans in Miami on charges of espionage.
Havana came to a complete standstill as hundreds of buses wound their way from the provinces to the capital in the pre-dawn hours. More than 10 per cent of the island's population of 11 million mobilised for the march. Designated the "Day of National Rebellion," demonstrators condemned the US's 42-year-old blockade of their country.
Keeping with the rebellious spirit of the march, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said it was fitting that the march originate at the city's statue of José Mart’ statue, at the Anti- imperialist Tribunal. Mart’, the revered Cuban poet and independence leader who rose up against Cuba's Spanish occupiers, died in battle in 1895. Castro paid homage to Mart’, honouring him as the "intellectual author" of the 1953 Revolution.
Castro headed the demonstration with some prominent guests at his side, among them Hojjatoleslam Hajj Seyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the late leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, Ayatolla Khomeini. Also prominent among Cuba's guests of honour was Vietnamese Defence Minister General Colonel Phan Van Tra.
Waving thousands of the revolution's red and black flags, Cuban demonstrators were joined by two brigades of European and Puerto Rican youths, working in Cuba over the summer. A contingent of US citizens prominently displayed a banner reading the credo "There will be socialism and always more socialism." The demonstrators marched along Havana's scenic Malecón seaside boulevard to the US Interest Section. Chanting "Down with the genocidal blockade! End terrorism against Cuba!" the jubilant masses surged past the imposing seven-storey building raising their fists in defiance and displaying a sea of multi- coloured banners.
The Western media initially downplayed the mass action as yet another state- organised and elaborately staged event, but news agencies were eventually forced to concede that the Cuban people had responded whole-heartedly to the call to "march for justice." Even Reuters reluctantly admitted that 26 July had expressed an "overwhelming public display of patriotism and Fidelismo." "This march is a duty for us Cubans," said Luis Ernesto Sabater, a financial specialist. "Today we are protesting against all the US aggression with our heads held high."
The Cuban people's call for justice and an end to the economic strangulation of their country was not lost on US President George W Bush. Not to be outdone, the American president rose to the occasion with an attempt to further choke the life out of the Cuban economy. Strategically positioning himself at the forefront of the Miami-led anti-Castro crusade, Bush set about promoting a virulent piece of legislation that would permit US companies to take action against foreign companies trading with Cuba. Hanging this latest move on a convenient hook, the US president justified the assault with an emotional pledge to upholding the human rights of ordinary Cubans. "The sanctions the United States enforces against the Castro regime are not just a policy tool, but a moral statement. It is wrong to prop up a regime that routinely stifles all the freedoms that make us human," Bush said.
On the war-path and highly energised, Bush unleashed the full weight of his "moral" wrath against Washington's old nemesis. In the wake of the legal tightening of the blockade against Cuba, Bush also announced that his administration would increase the funding of right-wing anti-Castro groups in Miami. Such generosity should be interpreted as a natural gesture of deference to the Cuban-American community "without whom Bush would not now be President," commented the British daily The Guardian.
Though Bush proudly hailed the rights and freedoms "that make us human," he would be hard-pressed to defend some of the historic US assaults on the tiny island. The relentless acts of aggression by several US administrations against Cuba began almost immediately after Castro took power in 1959, notes prominent linguist and writer Noam Chomsky. And since that time, "Cuba has been subjected to US terror and economic warfare."
In the annals of political criminology, the record of US terrorist acts is both long and notorious. It is by now common knowledge that between 1960 and 1965 Castro survived at least eight known CIA-engineered assassination attempts. Deriding the US government's bungled attempts at inducing its own version of "democratic transitions," Chomsky remarked that "Washington holds the world record for attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, including Castro."
Turning a new leaf in more recent years, Washington has abandoned old-fashioned Mafiosi-style killings in favour of a trendier, hi-tech strategy. In tune with the times, the US has apparently opted for biological warfare. On 21 October 1996, crew members of Cubana de Avación flight CU-170 spotted a fumigation aircraft -- a Model S2R of the US civilian aircraft registry operated by the State Department -- spraying the western region of Cuba with an unknown substance in the form of a greyish mist. About a month later, on 18 December, the first signs of a Trips plague appeared in Matanzas province -- affecting potato plantations at the Lenin State Horticultural farm. Sample testing confirmed that the insect was of the Trips palmi karav variety, common in Asia but not indigenous to Cuba. The Trips palmi infects practically all crops, weeds and ornamental plants. By January 1997 it had decimated corn, beans, squash, cucumbers and other crops in municipalities south of Havana province, bordering on Matanzas. Trips palmi is considered an ideal biological agent because it strikes and severely damages virtually every crop, and is resistant to a wide variety of pesticides.
However biological aggression remains marginal to the real battle, waged around sanctions and blockades. Economic warfare has had a disastrous impact on Cuban people's lives since the island lost its main trading partners with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Socialist bloc. In October 1992, the existing US blockade was further intensified with the "Cuban Democracy Act" -- also known as the Toricelli law -- which prohibited foreign carriers heading for Cuba to cross US waterways. At the time this US-style "democracy act" was strongly condemned in the UN General Assembly for affecting "other nations' sovereignty and freedoms of trade and navigation."
Despite the international community's unanimous condemnation of the US infringement on "free trade," the noose was further tightened around Cuba's neck in 1996 with the infamous Burton-Helms law that prohibited US companies from buying Cuban products through a third party and blocked Cuba's membership of international financial institutions. Marginalised and sanctioned as a rogue state, the picture looks bleak for Cuba.
Considering the sheer weight of its superpower foe and the formidable forces unleashed against its economy, Cuba has done remarkably well. Although the gross domestic product (GDP) declined by 35 per cent between 1989-93, growth had bounced back to 6.2 per cent by 1999.
The Cuban government has continued to invest in its people despite the hard times. The 1999 UN Human Development Report ranked Cuba 58 among 174 nations in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income. Health care is free and the health care system is among the best in the world. Life expectancy -- 76 years -- is the highest in Central America, and 97 per cent of both men and women are literate.
Meanwhile, US President George W Bush continues to wonder why Cubans support Fidel.

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