Cuban Embargo

The island nation of Cuba is located just ninety miles off the coast of Florida and is home to 11 million people and it has one of the few remaining communist regimes in the world. Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro, came to power in 1959 and immediately instituted a communist program that brought sweeping economic and social changes to the country. Castro allied his government with the Soviet Union and seized and nationalized billions of dollars of American property. U.S. relations with Cuba have been strained ever since; a trade embargo against Cuba was imposed in 1960 and is still in place today. Despite severe economic suffering and increasing isolation from the world community, Castro remains committed to communism. (Cuban History)

The United States and Cuba share a long history of mutual mistrust and suspicion. All aspects of U.S. policy with Cuba, such as the current trade embargo, immigration practices, and most recently the possibility of a free exchange by members of the media, create heated debates across the United States. While most Americans agree that the ultimate goals should be to encourage Castro's resignation and promote a smooth transition to democracy experts disagree about how the U.S. government should accomplish these goals. Some believe that the country's current policy toward Cuba is outdated in its Cold War approach and needs to be rebuilt. (Cuban History)

During the first half of the 20th century, Cuba resembled a U.S. colony; many wealthy Americans vacationed on Cuba's beaches, but the majority of the island's citizens lived in extreme poverty. The United States supported the pro-American dictator Fulgencio Batista, who ruled for almost twenty years before being overthrown by Fidel Castro's communist revolution in 1959. Directly following Castro's rise to power, President Dwight Eisenhower first enacted America's trade embargo against Cuba. Eisenhower cut off economic relations with the country in response to Castro's taking away of American property, the regime's human rights violations, and its ties to the Soviet Union.

Cuba became a focal point of the Cold War. In 1962, U.S. leaders learned that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba. In a tense standoff, known as the Cuban missile crisis, President John Kennedy placed U.S. military forces on alert and blockaded the island until the Soviets agreed to abandon their installation. The Soviet Union withdrew the missiles, and a possible nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers was avoided.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991 Cuba's lifeline of economic and political support was cut. The Soviet Union was Cuba's largest trading partner and had provided the Cuban economy with over $6 billion a year. Meanwhile, the U.S. trade embargo remained in place, further weakening Cuba's deteriorating economy. For almost forty years, the United States has not imported any Cuban products, nor allowed any American food, medical supplies, or capital to enter Cuba. President Clinton, like each of his predecessors, supported the trade embargo. In the 1990s two pieces of legislation were passes that tightened the economic restrictions on Cuba. The Cuban Democracy Act, passed by Congress in 1992, further isolates Cuba from the world economy by prohibiting any foreign-based subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with the country. The bill's goal was to cripple the Cuban economy in order to bring down Castro.

In February 1996, President Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act. The law was a retaliatory measure against the shooting down by the Cuban military of two unarmed U.S. civilian airplanes flying just outside Cuba's territorial waters. The Helms-Burton Act states that American citizens can sue foreign investors who utilize American property seized by the Cuban government. In addition, those who "traffic" in this property or profit from it will be denied visas to the United States. In 2001 President Bush decided not to activate a provision of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act that punishes foreigners for investing in Cuban property once owned by Americans. (Helms-Burton)

The United States is alone in the international community in enacting restrictive Cuban policies. No other country has joined the United States in the trade embargo against Cuba; in fact, the Helms-Burton Act angered nations that do business with Cuba. For example, Canada, Spain, France, and Italy are among Cuba's top trading partners. These nations and the World Trade Organization (WTO) contend that the United States has no right to dictate which other countries Cuba can and cannot trade with. Cuba, along with the United States, is a founding member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which prohibits cutting off trade with a member nation. Supporters of the Helms-Burton act cite a WTO "escape clause" that says a nation can enact a trade embargo if its national security is in jeopardy. Many U.S. lawmakers believe that Castro poses such a threat, thereby giving the United States permission to implement trade sanctions against Cuba.

Although the goal of the U.S. trade embargo is to help facilitate the removal of Castro from power, its recent effect has been to deepen the suffering of the Cuban people. Cuba has been in a state of economic ruin during most of Castro's regime. Cubans live under conditions of mass unemployment, widespread hunger, insufficient wages, as well as energy and medicine shortages.

One of the consequences from the suffering in Cuba is the great number of refugees who have tried to immigrate to the United States. In 1980, about 125,000 Cuban refugees, many of whom were former prisoners of Castro's jails, came to the United States in the Mariel boatlift. President Jimmy Carter accepted them, an action that was very unpopular with the majority of the American public. Fourteen years later in a similar boat procession, more than 30,000 Cubans demonstrated their frustrations with rising food prices and increasing poverty by sailing to Florida. President Clinton only allowed 12,000 refugees to be processed for admission into the United States at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

Opponents of the U.S. trade embargo point out that crippling the Cuban economy is only bringing great suffering to the Cuban people, not weakening Fidel Castro. They believe that the United States is acting inhumanely by denying people basic