By Mildrey Ponce

Cubanow.- Hours before authorizing the blockade against Cuba, John F. Kennedy charged Pierre Salinger, his assistant and great smoker, with an urgent mission: to buy in Washington a large quantity of the Havana cigars he preferred, Petit Upmann. Salinger bought 60 boxes: 1 200 cigars. Years later he disclosed that Kennedy smiled and immediately signed the paper banning Cuban imports in the U. S.

The way to further acts and regulations reinforcing this economic policy was open with the enactment of this presidential decree.

Under Kennedy’s orders, after the “Missile Crisis” the United States Treasury Department issued the Cuban Assets Control Regulations which gave the blockade its basic traits, which are still in force today.

Their implementation started on July 8, 1963, amended by the Trade with the Enemy Act, which gives large power to the American president to impose trade and financial measures in time of war or national emergency.

These new regulations established the freezing of Cuban funds in the United States, the banning of all unlicensed financial and trade transactions, the embargo of Cuban imports and the interdiction of unauthorized transactions in U. S. dollars by individuals of any nationality and place, thus inhibiting the traveling to Cuba of American citizens.

In 1979 the interdiction of U. S. citizens to travel to Cuba was temporally lifted, since President Jimmy Carter did not sign the regulation renewable every six months. The limitation of U.S. dollars Americans could spend in Cuba was also relaxed.

However, the Ronald Reagan administration reinstated the trade “embargo” on April 19, 1982 and the rules for American citizens traveling to Cuba were later modified by the present Cuban Assets Control Regulations.

These regulations perhaps do not forbid American citizens to travel in Cuba, but they make transactions or money expenditures unauthorized by the U. S. government through the Foreign Resources Control Office illegal.

In the years after the collapse of the socialist bloc, there was a tightening of the blockade with the adoption first, in October 1992, of the Cuban Democracy Act (Torricelli Act) and, in 1996, of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (Helms-Burton Act).

The first penalizes transactions or any type of trade relation with subsidiaries of U. S. companies located in other countries and prevents ships arriving in Cuba to enter the United States ports in the following six months.

The Helms-Burton Act tightened the blockade even more, establishes new penalties for those investing in or trading with Cuba and draws the steps that would transform the country into a Washington colony. It includes domestic subversive plans with funding and material support to the counterrevolution, mainly that formed by Cuban exiles, the main supporters of the Act, who have much influence in a politically strategic state such as Florida.

This Act unveils the true intentions of the U. S. administration in dictating the future of Cuba once the Revolution is toppled, since it establishes that the blockade would be in place until the properties that today belong to the people are returned to their former owners and their heirs.

In 1999, President Bill Clinton tightened the trade blockade even more by banning foreign subsidiaries of U. S. companies to trade with Cuba for more than US$700 million a year.

Under the pressure of U. S. farmers, the blockade was relaxed by the Sanction Reform and Exports Improvement Act, adopted by the U.S. Congress in October 2000 and signed by President Clinton. The moderation of the blockade allowed for the sale of agricultural products and medicines on humanitarian grounds. In spite of an initial rejection by Cuba, that considered it a U. S. political maneuver, Fidel Castro accepted the measure after the Michelle Hurricane in November 2001.

Because of the growing demand for Cuban products, legislators favoring free trade from the western states and the large central planes in the United States, areas with a strong agricultural influence, have been trying to soften or eliminate the blockade.

The U. S. House has supported four times the lifting of travel restrictions, with the support by the Senate for the first time in 2003. President George W. Bush, however, aware of the importance of the anti-Castro groups in Florida, vetoed the draft.

The present U. S. president took new decisions actions American citizens traveling to Cuba. On May 6, 2004, he released an impressive report, Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, as if paying the debt he had with his friends in the extreme right at the Cuban American National Foundation since the 2000 elections.

Limiting traveling and remittances only to close relatives (parents, grandparents, children and siblings) and imposing a three year interval to travel to Cuba are part of its contents. The strengthening of the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts is also included.

This plan was updated in 2006 with the purpose of further limiting the traveling of American citizens to Cuba, threatening with imprisonment or fines up to a million dollars. Also, institutions to hunt Cuban nickel, tobacco and rum exports and transactions Cuba might make in dollars were created.

These trade sanctions against Cuba have been in place for more than four decades. They are the direct result of Washington’s intent to restore U. S. domination through the economic suffocation of the Cuban population.

The blockade imposed to Cuba by the United States is condemned every year by most of the countries members of the United Nations.

(Cubanow) 22-01-2007