The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.44           December 15, 1997 
 
 
Cuban Leader Alarcón Denounces U.S. Embargo At UN  

BY RICARDO ALARCÓN
Below we reprint the statement presented by Ricardo Alarcón, speaker of Cuba's National Assembly, to the United Nations General Assembly on Nov. 5, 1997. Alarcón was speaking in support of the resolution "Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial, and Financial Embargo Imposed by the United States of America Against Cuba." That resolution was adopted with 143 states voting in favor, three opposed, and 16 abstentions. The text of Alarcón's statement was issued by the Cuban mission to the United Nations. Translation and subheadings are by the Militant.

Mr. Chairman:

For six years now, the General Assembly has been analyzing the need to put an end to the economic, commercial, and financial blockade the United States imposes on Cuba. Five resolutions have been adopted by the vast majority of this Assembly, but the United States has ignored them and has not ceased to take measures to strengthen the blockade and to add new violations to the sovereignty of other nations.

The arrogance and cynicism of that policy cannot be matched.

In 1991, when the issue was considered for the first time, Washington went so far as to say that the blockade did not exist. On August 21 of that year, in an official document which was distributed here, the State Department was brazen enough to state that: "A blockade implies that the United States is taking measures to prevent other countries from trading with Cuba. Clearly, this is not the case."

The truth is that by then the United States had been taking measures to prevent trade between Cuba and other countries for more than 30 years. To achieve this purpose, it established mechanisms and regulations and carried out illegal measures and acts of interference that on many occasions brought forth protests and legitimate countermeasures of other countries.

In 1992 the General Assembly adopted its first resolution demanding end to the blockade. That same year, Washington enacted the Torricelli Act, which specifically forbids the subsidiary enterprises of U.S. companies in other countries from trading with Cuba and prohibits entry into U.S. ports of ships of any flag involved in transactions with Cuba. In other words, it not only seeks to prevent trade between Cuba and other countries, but also violates the sovereignty of those countries. The inadmissible extraterritoriality contained from the very beginning in the law's administrative regulations and in actions by U.S. officials took on the character of law, spurious in itself.

Every year since then, this Assembly reiterates its rejection of that policy - one that not only is the greatest crime against my people, and which does not limit itself to grossly violating international norms, but is also a clear demonstration of the most scandalous disrespect for the rights, interests, and feelings of humanity, including broad sectors of the United States itself.

In support of its conduct, Washington cannot cite a single intergovernmental, religious, or trade union organization. No other government, parliament, or political party endorses it. No institution, no decent person in any part of the planet advocates it. The number and diversity of those all over the world who demand a stop to this conduct grows. Religious institutions, business people, and personalities in the United States itself are joining the universal clamor.

But Washington's reply cannot be more obstinate.

In 1996, as if out of the Stone Age, emerged the Helms- Burton Act. Its infamous text denies Cuba's independence and overtly proclaims the intention of dominating it totally, reviving the annexation plans of almost two centuries ago. This act codifies all the regulations and practices that the world has been rejecting for three decades and includes new and more aberrant ones in violation of international legality and of the legitimate rights of other states, their enterprises, and citizens.

We come to 1997 under circumstances that compel the international community to act more energetically and consistently.

Since passing the Helms-Burton Act, the United States has been practicing the most grotesque farce. It is trying to implement a machination it knows is irrational and indefensible. In face of international rejection, it engages in negotiations and makes commitments it does not plan to comply with. Lacking true leadership, its rulers acknowledge that they are serving only the vile interests of a tiny group and want the rest of the world to follow suit. Only a few weeks ago, President Clinton, who is supposedly the leader of a superpower, admitted that that policy is the responsibility of the most extremist elements in the city of Miami.

It's a sorry task for representatives of sovereign states who try to negotiate seriously with those who gleefully accept being prisoners of a municipal mafia.

And this is confirmed by facts. They announced with great fanfare the understanding signed with the European Union last April 11, but they have done nothing to honor it. On that occasion they committed themselves to trying to bring about some minor modifications to the law in question, but until now nothing has been done in this respect. On the contrary, in the course of this year, many amendments and other proposals that would make the law more inadmissible have been put forward in Congress, some of them directly contrary to that understanding and others that seek to universalize the measures originally conceived against Cuba.

Cuba is obviously not part of the negotiations that are supposedly taking place concerning that law and its implementation. We only know what sometimes leaks out to the press. We must, nevertheless, make certain points of clarification.

Revolution met needs of Cuban people
U.S. hostility toward Cuba, including its first actions in the economic war it imposes on us, began prior to the nationalizations carried out by the Cuban revolution. Furthermore, these nationalizations were conducted in full compliance with international law and with our own legislation, had the support of all the people, did not have an arbitrary or discriminatory character, and responded to deep-seated needs and the most legitimate interest of our nation. The legitimacy of those nationalizations was acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1964, in a memorable decision in which it reiterated: "Every sovereign State is obliged to respect the independence of each of the other sovereign States, and the courts of one country must not judge the actions of a government of another country performed within its own territory."

Our laws envisioned a just and fair compensation for the former owners, regardless of their nationality, and those laws were strictly applied and are still in force. Based on those laws, the matter was successfully resolved with the other states involved. The United States was the only exception, and this has been the exclusive responsibility of its rulers and no one else.

Washington has no right to place on anyone else's shoulders a problem that exists solely because of its blind obstinacy.

As a matter of fact, the U.S. blockade against Cuba was not contrived to defend the interests of the former U.S. owners. If this had been the case, they would have accepted our sovereignty and our laws as all other states did, and as the United States did with socialist countries or countries it considers as enemies, including states whose existence it did not recognize. The maintenance of the blockade for more than 30 years, far from favoring those former owners, has harmed them. Its intensification now, with the new law, turns them directly into victims of those who allegedly represented their interests. All one has to do is read the Helms-Burton Act to realize in whose benefit it was conceived, who are the "proprietors" who drafted it.

Besides setting up a plan for the colonial absorption of Cuba, and seriously attacking the rights of other states, it introduces an element that radically changes even the traditional position of the United States. This makes it particularly abhorrent for the Cuban people and should bring about the strongest rejection from the other states and from the U.S. business people themselves who are affected by it.

Washington's new position is no longer the alleged defense of those people who were U.S. citizens when the nationalization laws were enacted in Cuba and who were not compensated, in accordance with our own laws, because of their government's conduct. Washington's new position confers nonexistent prerogatives on people who were Cuban citizens when they were affected by our nationalization laws. Making this arbitrary equivalence constitutes a juridical absurdity, it contradicts universal and U.S. norms and violates the Constitution of the United States by granting a special group of its citizens privileges that it does not give to the rest. It must be said that they have already been granted a unique advantage by being permitted to reimburse themselves through tax reductions for the alleged value of the property that was nationalized before they even obtained U.S. residence. This is a privilege that no one else has received in the history of the United States and that has turned the other taxpayers into their contributors for several decades now. How many times over have they collected the value of those properties? What are they still claiming? But Washington's new stance goes even further: Batista's gang, his band of murders and torturers, his thieves and flunkies, who illegally grew rich during the bloody regime that started to crumble on January 1, 1959, are the main beneficiaries of this despicable act.

That date, incessantly repeated throughout the text, is the key to understanding the unfathomable moral abyss and the juridical stupidity of the Helms-Burton Act. According to it, the fierce blockade they impose on us will continue until we Cubans "return" the properties to those who lost them on January 1, 1959, and other states and their own subjects will be punished if they establish economic ties to those properties.

Some historical clarifications
It's useful to make some historical clarifications. The first revolutionary law that entailed nationalization in Cuba was the Agrarian Reform Law, enacted on May 17, 1959. No revolutionary law was passed on January 1, 1959. On January 1, 1959, the Cuban revolution had not yet conquered power. It was still confronting the U.S. attempts to save the old regime, and, in order to prevent this, the people began a general strike, responding to a call by Fidel Castro, which brought victory a few days later.

What actually occurred that day was Batista's flight and that of his main collaborators and their replacement by a military junta that sought to prevent the complete victory of the people.

Those who fled had plundered the treasury and left behind abandoned lands, factories, and other enterprises they had illegally appropriated through the abuse of power, theft, and often violence.

That band of criminals was described by the New York Times in an editorial of January 3, 1959 as: "sadists and perverts in high positions and in the business world, who had enriched themselves through graft and corruption."

Those bandits, who totally controlled illegal gambling and the business of prostitution, also appropriated state resources and became the owners of numerous farms and urban lands, sugar mills, banks and financial institutions, of almost all of the textile, chemical, steel, and construction industries.

The expropriation of those illegally acquired assets - in reality their recovery by the nation - was an act of justice fully endorsed by all of Cuban society without exception. There were no protests or complaints by any foreign government then.

The United States later welcomed those people, protected them and turned them into its main instrument against the Cuban revolution to this day.

Washington now openly proclaims with shameless gall its identification with a tyranny that existed only due to U.S. support in all fields. But to compel the world to also do this is, to say the least, a despicable aberration. To try to protect such criminals with "property rights" is an affront to human dignity, an insult to honest business people. To make this a condition to resolve the bilateral differences between Cuba and the United States is also to sacrifice the legitimate interests of the U.S. people and U.S. businesses.

Mr. Chairman:

It is urgent to put an end to arbitrary U.S. actions. While it is true that these reach their greatest intensity against Cuba, which the United States is trying to suffocate with a total blockade, the economic sanctions that Washington unilaterally imposes on other countries are multiplying at present. According to data published by the National Association of Manufacturers of this country, from 1993 to 1996, the United States has imposed 61 economic sanctions of this type against 35 countries. In addition, there are 40 similar measures dictated against 18 countries by state and local governments. Currently, 42 percent of the world population lives in countries that suffer from this practice, which is contrary to the system of world trade. How far will such a policy that attacks everyone go? How long must we put up with it? My delegation trusts in the world's ability to confront it. The vote of this assembly will serve to confirm, once again, that there are many who are willing to defend the principles of justice and of respect among nations.

The Cuban people shall continue to resist and shall never yield to the barbarous forces that seek to annihilate it. We are facing a big challenge, but even greater than this is and shall be our will to preserve the independence and justice conquered through many years of struggle and immense sacrifice of successive generations of Cubans.

No one can take away from the people of Cuba their houses, their lands, their factories, their schools, their hospitals. No one shall strip them of their properties or their rights. The executioners and exploiters, who were defeated for good and forever, shall never return. Cuba is not and shall never be a colonial possession of the United States.

Next year will mark 100 years since the U.S. military invasion robbed Cuba of its independence and imposed a domination that ended once and for all in January 1959. Those in Washington who are still delirious with their imperial dreams should realize that it is high time that they wake up.  
 
 
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