Leaving Jose Marti International Airport in this capital city, a billboard reminds vividly of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. It shows a noose with the phrase, “Blockade: The Longest Genocide in History.”
The embargo, partially imposed in 1960 and fully in place two years later, is not a blockade. That’s clear by the abundance of foreign goods and investment in Cuba.
It is a blockade, however, in the sense that U.S. companies are blocked from doing business in Cuba. That hasn’t stopped their international competitors from Canada, Mexico, Brazil and even China from setting up shop.
It’s striking when visiting the island just how much the rest of world now trades with, invests in and sends tourists to Cuba.
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In 2008, the U.S. exported $710 million in farm goods to Cuba, a figure that fell to $347 million in 2011, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, a New York-based group that favors an end to the embargo.
Into the gap came Brazilian farmers, whose government provided looser terms and took much of the business.
Advocates of lifting the embargo say international companies have partnered with Cuba on a wide range of products, including Cuban cigars, rum, bottled water, fruit juices, port development, ice cream and cosmetics.
“Not to mention oil, which is the 800-pound gorilla that’s about to walk into the room,” said Kirby Jones, whose company, Alamar Associates, has been consulting and leading U.S. trade missions to Cuba since 1974. “Here’s China, drilling for oil in Cuba.”
By Agence France-Presse
Saturday, April 14, 2012 22:00 EDT
Leaders from across the Americas launched talks here Saturday on expanding trade as the United States came under strong pressure to let Cuba attend future summits.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, host of the Summit of the Americas, said Saturday it would be “unacceptable†to keep Cuba out of the next gathering.
“The isolation, the indifference has shown its ineffectiveness. In today’s world, there is no justification for this anachronism,†he added.
Cuba has never taken part in a Summit of the Americas, a regular meeting sponsored by the Organization of American States (OAS).
Washington argues that communist-ruled Cuba is ineligible to attend because it lacks democratic credentials and does not “respect the human rights of the Cuban people.â€
Cuba was expelled from the OAS in 1962 at the height of the Cold War. The expulsion was rescinded in 2009, but Cuba has refused to return to the US-based organization.
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa is boycotting the summit because of the exclusion of Cuba, one of its allies and the Americas’ only one-party Communist state.
Saturday, an alliance of left-leaning Latin American countries known as ALBA announced here that its members would not take part in any future summits of the Americas if Cuba was kept out.
“We express our decision not to take part in future Summits of the Americas without the presence of Cuba,†ALBA, which groups Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, said in a statement.
It also demanded an immediate end to Washington’s 50-year-old “inhuman economic, trade and financial embargo against Cuba†and urged regional countries “to continue to maintain its united solidarity in favor of Cuba’s admission to the summitâ€.
AFP – more