Vol. 80/No. 21      May 30, 2016

 

Cuban farmers: US gov’t aims to break our unity

 
As part of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuban governments, U.S. President Barack Obama has stated that the economic embargo of Cuba should end. Nonetheless, the embargo — imposed more than 55 years ago in a failed attempt to bring the Cuban people to their knees — remains in place. While its tactics are changing, U.S. imperialism’s goal remains the same: the overturning of the 1959 revolution that removed a U.S.-backed dictatorship and brought working people to power.

Among the shifts Washington is implementing is trying to use U.S. policy, money and other enticements to increase the size and weight of privately owned businesses on the island. The U.S. government aims to increase pressure from below to expand the influence of the capitalist market there; undermine social solidarity and foster a dog-eat-dog mentality; and weaken workers’ control of conditions on the job as well as economic planning that promotes decisions based on the needs of working people, not on the profit motive.

Reprinted below is a statement by the National Bureau of the National Association of Small Farmers of Cuba printed May 5 in Granma, the daily paper of the Communist Party of Cuba, answering Washington’s latest moves in that direction. Translation is by the Militant.

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On April 22, the State Department announced the decision to include coffee on the list of Cuban products produced by the non-state sector that may be imported into the United States. This is a continuation of a measure adopted by the U.S. government in February 2015 — authorizing very limited exports from Cuba — which excluded all goods and services produced by state enterprises.

It is striking that in announcing the decision, the State Department clarifies that to qualify, Cuban entrepreneurs have to prove that their business “is not owned or controlled” by the Cuban government and noted that this is another measure whose purpose is to “support the ability of the Cuban people to gain greater control over their own lives and determine their country’s future.”

What the State Department didn’t mention is the fact that Cuba was unilaterally stripped of its most-favored nation status after the blockade was decreed — a status that was our right as a founding member state [in 1948] of the International Trade Organization — and that in order to export any Cuban product to the United States, the highest customs duties had to be paid, making exports to the United States virtually impossible.

The State Department also ignores the fact that the Agrarian Reform Law, enacted after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, made more than 200,000 peasant families owners of the land, and that since then the Cuban state has implemented a program for the social, economic and productive development of the peasantry of our country and has guaranteed production assistance, access to credit, a secure market for their produce and other social benefits.

No one should think that a Cuban small farm producer can export directly to the United States. For this to be possible, Cuban foreign trade enterprises must participate and financial transactions need to be in U.S. dollars, issues that so far have not been settled.

We are conscious that the objective of these measures is to influence Cuban farmers and separate them from our state.

Cuban small farmers do not fear changes, provided they are of our own making. This is the powerful reason why the permanent aim of the government of the United States to shatter the unity of the people of Cuba can not be permitted as this would destroy a revolutionary process that has provided us with a participatory democracy, freedom, sovereignty and independence.

Cuban peasants are members of socialist civil society and we are part of the state, which represents the power of the people, and not in opposition to it. Together with the workers and all our people, we face the imperialist policy of promoting the division and disintegration of Cuban society, which is what is intended with a measure such as the recently announced one.

If the government of the United States really wants to contribute to the welfare of Cubans, what it must do is definitively lift the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed for more than 50 years, which is the main obstacle to the development of Cuba.

Cuban peasants reaffirm our loyalty to our revolutionary state against all risks and challenges. We will continue to build a prosperous and sustainable socialism, with all and for the good of all, with the patriotic commitment to continue producing for the people.  
 
 
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