Following are excerpts of a letter from Cuba's foreign minister, Roberto Robaina, to the secretary-general of the United Nations on the impact of the U.S. economic embargo on the Cuban people. The letter was printed in the August 30 issue of Granma International. In the letter Robaina refers to the Helms-Burton bill, legislation aimed at tightening the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support by a vote of 294 to 130 on September 21. It awaits action in the Senate.
H.E. Mr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Secretary-General of the United Nations Organization
Your Excellency,
For three consecutive years and with the support of a growing number of countries, the General Assembly of the United Nations has passed Resolutions 47/19, 48/16 and 49/9, which express the need to bring to an end the economic, commercial and financial blockade maintained against Cuba by the United States for an uninterrupted period of more than three decades.
In each one of these resolutions the General Assembly has also rejected the extraterritorial nature of the U.S. bases which violate the United Nations Charter and international law.1
Recently, the international community witnessed new initiatives placed before the U.S. Congress, guided not by any respect for the resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, calling for the lifting of the unilateral blockade imposed on Cuba, but containing measures to further extend it.
The Helms-Burton bill, which among its other objectives aims to internationalize the blockade of Cuba, only serves to demonstrate that the cold war still exists for some (document A/50/172, recently circulated, includes an exhaustive analysis of its principal implications).
The General Assembly has been kept informed of the negative effects of these aggressive measures on the Cuban economy, as well as on the living standards of the population, and how our relocation of markets has rebounded in a significant increase in acquisition costs, insecurity of supplies and the destabilization of distribution and production.
Information has also been provided on how the anti-Cuba measures applied by the United States have made existing financial difficulties more acute, by depriving the Cuban economy of access to international sources of finance.
For Cuba, its scant and costly external finance resources (despite being in the main guaranteed by sugar, nickel and other export items), include in their cost, already elevated due to coming from commercial sources, surcharges of at least three percent, purely on account of Cuba's "high-risk country" status as a blockaded country.This is given because of the lack of support from the international financial institutions and a substantial number of private agencies, in view of potential reprisals from the United States of America, and because of the business world's general awareness of the extensive range of restrictions under which Cuba has to trade due to the blockade.
In the same way, the U.S. authorities have proceeded to freeze funds released by Cuban companies in order to make international payments, via the controls they exert on an important part of international banking transactions.
On May 13, 1994, the Cuban Fishing Fleet in Canada transferred 45,000 U.S. dollars to the SERVINAVES Panama company, in order to guarantee payment of services required by the vessel Golfo de Guahanacabibes boat on passing through the Panama Canal. This transfer was sent by the Toronto Bank, but it never arrived at its destination because the U.S. Treasury Department office for the control of foreign goods retained the money.
Another concrete example of the effects of the blockade on the development of Cuban foreign trade is maritime transportation.
For every journey from Europe or Asia undertaken by a ship involved in trade with Cuba, the additional costs in comparison with a similar voyage from the United States amount to 215,800 dollars from Europe to Havana and 516,700 dollars from Asia to Havana.
Since the Torricelli Act came into force, many shipping companies are demanding higher freight charges, claiming that after docking at Cuban ports their vessels are not admitted into U.S. ports for a six-month period.
These shipping companies have quoted concrete examples such as the case of the state of Virginia, USA, where the authorities have included in their official documents for operations within the port, a declaration that the vessel concerned has not docked at a Cuban port for a period of 180 days prior to its arrival in the United States.
The blockade has been specifically targeted at hindering Cuban export products, one of the scarce sources for obtaining hard currency for the country. This has hit the sugar industry, one of the fundamental pillars of Cuban industry, particularly hard.
Deterioration of sugarcane
The progressive deterioration of sugarcane cultivation
over the last four years has been significantly influenced
by the deficit of chemical products (fertilizers, pesticides
and herbicides) required for its harvesting and by the fuel
needed to maintain the high level of mechanization attained
in the past....
According to preliminary estimates, in 1994 the total loss to the Cuban economy - taking into consideration income that is no longer in evidence and the additional spending due to the blockade - amounted to one billion dollars, a figure representing approximately 50 percent of the country's total imports during that year.
If the blockade did not exist, Cuba would not only be able to use those one billion dollars to increase its imports by the same amount, but would have access to additional financial sources currently prohibited as a consequence of its negative effects.
The continuing and recently escalated aggressive measures against Cuba on the part of the United States are designed to cause a "downward spiral" effect on the economy, i.e., to provoke a progressive reduction in the availability of resources to the point of total economic collapse. The promoters of this policy calculate that it would induce such widespread deterioration in living conditions that spontaneous public demonstrations would inevitably follow, thus putting an end to the revolutionary social process initiated 36 years ago, this being the main objective of the last nine U.S. administrations' foreign policy in terms of Cuba.
Due to the factors detailed previously, and in particular to the effect of measures designed to further increase the U.S. blockade of Cuba, a progressive deterioration in the daily intake of important dietary elements has been noted. Taking as a base food consumption in 1989, by the year of 1993 there was a loss in the daily per capita diet equivalent to 40 percent of fats, 67 and 62 percent of vitamins A and C respectively, 22 percent of iron and 19 percent of calcium.
Nutritional deficits are especially notable in sectors of the population such as pregnant women and children up to five years of age. Incidences of anemia are increasing among pregnant women and children between six months and five years of age.
One particularly dramatic case is the situation confronted by those Cuban citizens whose lives depend on a pacemaker implant.
For several years Cuba has imported pacemakers from two firms: Teletronics of Australia and Siemens Elema of Sweden.
Towards the end of 1993, Teletronics, in spite of a long- standing sales contract informed Cuba that it was experiencing difficulties in supplying this product to the country as it contained U.S. components.
In July 1994, Siemens Elema sent a written communication informing Cuba that their pacemaker division had been sold to St. Jude Medical INS., St. Paul, MN, USA, and future sales requests would have to be directed to them. As is known, no company located in the United States can sell its products to Cuba.
That is to say, Cuba's two regular suppliers of pacemakers have ceased to supply this vitally important medical aide....
In 1993, some 30,000 Cubans traveled to the United States on family visits, the majority of whom brought medicines back with them on returning. Some of the Cubans resident in the United States who visited Cuba did the same. Estimates on the volume of medicines as family aid received by Cubans resident on the island in 1993 is to the order of approximately 300 tons.
From August 20, 1994, this situation was made extremely difficult when the U.S. government issued new restrictions which damage the whole spirit of family reunification and the basic right of Cubans resident in the United States to freely travel to their country of origin....
Even though parts of the text [of the Helms-Burton bill] could be modified, the U.S. federal authorities have made clear their intention to overthrow the government freely and sovereignly elected by the people of Cuba.
In her letter of April 28 of this year, Wendy Sherman, assistant secretary for legal affairs in the State Department, pointed out to Benjamin Gilman, president of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that "...We (the United States) will continue with our embargo as a means of pressuring the regime into making reforms...."
This statement is a clear manifestation of the present U.S. administration's position on Cuba.
For three consecutive years the General Assembly has shown its support of this just aspiration, with its adoption of Resolutions 47/19, 48/16 and 49/9. For this reason Cuba maintains its hopes that the United Nations will undertake the role assigned to it to bring an end to this injustice.
I would like to take this opportunity to once again convey to you my greatest respects.
ROBERTO ROBAINA