Vol. 80/No. 13 April 4, 2016
(front page)
As Obama visits, Cuban people defend revolution
Obama’s March 20-22 trip to Cuba, the first by a sitting U.S. president in 88 years, was the first “to a Cuba in full possession of its sovereignty and with a revolution in power,” an editorial in Granma, the newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, noted before his arrival. It registered the increasing consensus in the U.S. ruling class that their attempt to overturn Cuba’s socialist revolution through economic warfare has failed. And it reflected the determination of the historic leadership and millions of working people in Cuba to defend their revolution.
Castro reiterated the Cuban government’s demand for Washington to end its 55-year-long economic embargo, which is “the most important obstacle to our economic development and well-being of the Cuban people.” Normalizing relations must also involve “the return of the territory illegally occupied by the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo,” he added.
While recognizing Obama’s position “against the blockade, and his repeated appeals to Congress to have it removed,” Castro said, “the most recent measures adopted by his administration are positive but insufficient.”
A March 15 executive order — the fourth since December 2014 when plans by the two presidents to re-establish diplomatic relations were announced — made slight modifications in U.S. trade and travel restrictions to Cuba.
The ban on U.S. citizens freely traveling to Cuba remains in place. But now individuals can go “provided that the traveler engages in a full-time schedule of educational exchange activities intended to enhance contact with the Cuban people, support civil society in Cuba, or promote the Cuban people’s independence from Cuban authorities.” The new U.S. Treasury Department regulations state, “The predominant portion of the activities engaged in by the traveler must not be with certain Government of Cuba or Cuban Communist Party officials.”
“The truth is that the blockade is still in force,” said Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez at a March 17 news conference. “The U.S. ban on Cuban imports is still in force” and “current restrictions on U.S. exports to Cuba, which are limited and exclude key sectors of the Cuban economy, have not been modified. Ships carrying goods to Cuba are still not allowed to touch U.S. ports for a period of 180 days.”
“Authorizing Cuba to use U.S. dollars does not mean that banking relations between Cuba and the United States have normalized,” he added. “Cuban banks are still not allowed to open correspondent accounts in U.S. banks.”
Accompanying Obama on his 48-hour visit are nearly 40 members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, and representatives from Xerox, AT&T, hotel chains and other businesses seeking investment opportunities on the Caribbean island.
At the joint news conference Obama acknowledged that “Cuba is sovereign,” but urged the Cuban government “to show that it is ready to do more business, which includes allowing more joint ventures and allowing foreign companies to hire Cubans directly.”
This is the central point of the trip — increasing pressure on the Cuban leadership to accept greater U.S. capitalist investment and widen the operation of market relations. In doing so, the U.S. propertied rulers seek to undermine the working-class confidence and social relations of solidarity that dominate in Cuba as a result of the revolution.
The “labor reality” workers have gained in Cuba is “characterized by the right to employment without discrimination of any kind, equal pay for women and men performing the same job, social security which includes among other benefits the protection of working mothers and pensioners,” the Central Organization of Cuban Workers said in a statement issued March 18 leading up to Obama’s visit.
Following the meeting with Castro, Obama attended a gathering between U.S. business representatives and Cuban “entrepreneurs” at a state-owned microbrewery along the waterfront of Havana Bay. The place is not far from the former Texaco oil refinery, taken over by the workers and nationalized by the revolutionary government in 1960, when its managers refused to process a shipment of Soviet crude.
Obama in his remarks there pointed to U.S. companies “moving ahead with new commercial deals,” including GE, Starwood Hotels, and CleBer, which will build a factory in Cuba to produce tractors. And another delegation of U.S. “business leaders” will be coming “to promote more entrepreneurship in Cuba,” he said.
While it wasn’t the central point of his remarks, Obama repeated at the news conference the standard U.S. government claims of a supposed lack of “democracy and human rights” in Cuba.
“The human rights issue should not be politicized,” said Castro in response to a question from a U.S. reporter. “Do you think there’s any more sacred right than the right to health, so that billions of children don’t die just for the lack of a vaccine or a drug or a medication? Do you agree with the right to free education for all those born anywhere in the world or in any country?”
“In Cuba, all children are born in a hospital. … It doesn’t matter if they live in faraway places or in mountains or hills. We have many other rights — the right to health, the right to education,” Castro said.
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Socialist Workers Party campaign statement
Cuban women’s leaders speak on gains of revolution
‘For us socialism means freedom, sovereignty, dignity’
End embargo, says Cuban official in Bay Area tour
Letter: Cuba mobilizes against Zika virus
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