Reply #50: U.S. Agression & Propaganda Against Cuba [View All]

By Michael Parenti

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Defending Global Capitalism

In June 1959, some five months after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the Havana government promulgated an agrarian reform law that provided for state appropriation of large private landholdings. Under this law, U.S. sugar corporations eventually lost about 1,666,000 acres of choice land and many millions of dollars in future cash-crop exports. The following year, President Dwight Eisenhower, citing Havana’s “hostility” toward the United States, cut Cuba’s sugar quota by about 95 percent, in effect imposing a total boycott on publicly produced Cuban sugar. Three months later, in October 1959, the Cuban government nationalized all banks and large commercial and industrial enterprises, including the many that belonged to U.S. firms.

Cuba’s move away from a free-market system dominated by U.S. firms and toward a not-for-profit socialist economy caused it to become the target of an unremitting series of attacks perpetrated by the U.S. national security state. These attacks included U.S.- sponsored sabotage, espionage, terrorism, hijackings, trade sanctions, embargo, and outright invasion. The purpose behind this aggression was to undermine the Revolution and deliver Cuba safely back to the tender mercies of global capitalism.

The U.S. policy toward Cuba has been consistent with its longstanding policy of trying to subvert any country that pursues an alternative path in the use of its land, labor, capital, markets, and natural resources. Any nation or political movement that emphasizes self-development, egalitarian human services, and public ownership is condemned as an enemy and targeted for sanctions or other forms of attack. In contrast, the countries deemed “friendly toward America” and “pro-West” are those that leave themselves at the disposal of large U.S. investors on terms that are totally favorable to the moneyed corporate interests.

Of course, this is not what U.S. rulers tell the people of North America. As early as July 1960, the White House charged that Cuba was “hostile” to the United States (despite the Cuban government’s repeated overtures for normal friendly relations). The Castro government, in Eisenhower’s words, was “dominated by international communism.” U.S. officials repeatedly charged that the island government was a cruel dictatorship and that the United States had no choice but to try “restoring” Cuban liberty.

U.S. rulers never explained why they were so suddenly concerned about the freedoms of the Cuban people. In the two decades before the Revolution, successive Administrations in Washington manifested no opposition to the brutally repressive autocracy headed by General Fulgencio Batista. Quite the contrary, they sent him military aid, did a vigorous business with him, and treated him well in every other way. The significant but unspoken difference between Castro and Batista was that Batista, a comprador ruler, left Cuba wide open to U.S. capital penetration. In contrast, Castro and his revolutionary movement did away with private corporate control of the economy, nationalized U.S. holdings, and renovated the class structure toward a more collectivized and egalitarian mode.

More:
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Sept2004/parenti0904.html