Fernando Damaso, 28 October 2015 — The Cuban authorities applaud the “victory” obtained in the vote for the lifting of the blockade-embargo at the United Nations. It’s actually their twenty-fourth Pyrrhic victory since 1992, when they lost the substantial Soviet economic subsidies, and began to be bothered by the blockade-embargo, which they previously didn’t care about and treated as a joke.
These 24 Pyrrhic victories have not advanced one iota the cause of ending the blockade-embargo because the resolution that was approved is not binding, that is, there is no mandatory compliance; the countries vote according to their current interests, so a vote in favor of ending it does not affect its relations with the United States, and a vote in favor of keeping it would affect their relations with the Cuban government. It’s all nothing more than sheer political opportunism, without much real significance.
Submitting the measure one more time as a remake, in a time when meetings and talks are being held between the two countries, with the aim of solving this and other ongoing problems, constitutes an error of Cuban diplomacy. Progress in the lifting of the blockade-embargo and the solution of other problems can only be achieved at the negotiating table, where give and take is required. What happens at the UN every year is pure comic theater: it only causes laughter.
But with this remake one wonders whether the Cuban authorities really want to put an end to the blockade-embargo, or if they are doing everything possible to see that it is maintained, so they can continue using it as a smokescreen to hide their demonstrated ineptitude and incompetence.
In this country of magical realism, everything is possible.
Translated by Tomás A.
No comments:
Post a Comment