The Cuban Democracy Act
March 16, 2010
In 1992, the United States hoped to take advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union that marked the end of Soviet influence in Cuba. The withdrawal of Soviet money and support meant that the Castro regime was weakened. “With increased economic deprivation at home and growing pressure from the Cuban people, Cuban Democracy Act supporters hoped the Castro regime would implode” (163).
Jorge Mas Canosa, the head the Cuban American National Foundation, was chiefly responsible for The Cuban Democracy Act (CDA). The bill was sponsored by New Jersey Congressman Robert Torricelli and signed into law in October 1992 (the bill is also known as the Torricelli Bill). George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton both showed support for this bill. The main goal of the bill was to tighten the U.S. embargo against Cuba in an attempt bring down Castro’s regime, free the Cuban people from tyranny, and transition the Cuban people into democracy.
As Julia Sweig writes in her book Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, “The law had two principal components: sanctions and a series of limited openings” (163). “On the sanctions side, the CDA reimposed the ban on trade with Cuba by subsidiaries of U.S. companies based in third countries, previously lifted in 1975” (163). On the sanctions side, the U.S also didn’t allow ships to dock in U.S. ports within 6 months of docking in Cuban ports. The bill also restricted Cuba’s access to U.S. currency for international transactions. Finally, the bill gave the President executive order on restricting remittances to Cuba.
As well as imposing sanctions aimed at the Castro regime, the bill was meant to show that the U.S. wasn’t an enemy but rather that they supported the Cuban people and wanted them free from oppression. Thus, the bill “allowed for telecommunications companies and the U.S. Postal Service to resume what until then had been nearly nonexistent phone and direct mail service with Cuba” (163). The Cuban Democracy Act also allowed companies to sell medical supplies and medicine to Cuba. However, the companies had to apply to the Treasury Department in order to obtain a license allowing them to sell medicine to the island.
“The CDA thus contained several provisions that, in theory if not always in practice, promoted communication with the Cuban people and created loopholes in the embargo for humanitarian and/or human rights purposes” (164). As a result of the bill’s broad guidelines for helping the Cuban people, there were many loopholes. Also, the bill gave the president “full executive privilege over the embargo…the president could still do away with most sanctions with the stroke of a pen” (165). President Clinton took advantage of these loopholes during his presidency in order to loosen sanctions and somewhat open up relations between the United States and Cuba.
My next post will look into the US-Cuba policies in place during the Clinton administration.
Source: Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know by Julia Sweig
http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-01319.html
http://www.treas.gov/offices/enforcement/ofac/legal/statutes/cda.pdf
Cuban Human Rights Violations
March 7, 2010
According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of the main issues preventing normalization of US-Cuba relations is human rights violations by the Cuban government. On cfr.org, it says, “In March 2003, the Cuban government arrested seventy-five dissidents and journalists, sentencing them to prison terms of up to twenty-eight years on charges of conspiring with the United States to overthrow the state.” The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation also reports that the Cuban government has “resorted to other tactics besides prison -such as firings from state jobs and intimidation on the street- to silence opposition figures”.
The Cuban government has violated human rights in a variety of ways. Some of these violations are carried out against opposition figures that are considered to be a threat to the Castro regime. In a 2008 Cuba report, the U.S Department of State concluded that Cuba had at least 205 political prisoners and detainees. The Department of State goes on to say, “As many as 5,000 citizens served sentences for ‘dangerousness,’ without being charged with any specific crime.” The Department of State also listed all of the human rights violations in Cuba.
Among those listed are:
-beatings and abuse of prisoners and detainees
-harsh and life-threatening prison conditions
-denial of fair trial
-severe limitations on freedom of speech and press
-denial of peaceful assembly and association
-restrictions on freedom of movement
-restrictions on freedom of religion
-arbitrary arrest of human rights advocates
As the list shows, the Cuban people are being denied human rights from their government in a variety of ways. The question is: Should the United States government open trade and diplomatic relations with a country whose government violates the very rights that our country was founded on?
Sources: http://www.cfr.org/publication/11113/uscuba_relations.html
