To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Examining the Castro regime's internal blockade on Cubans - how the dictatorship restricts fishermen from fishing.
The Castro dictatorship calls the United States economic embargo a "blockade." This is not true as the State Department (and U.S. - Cuba trade statistics over the past 20 years) demonstrate. A meme appeared on social media in Spanish that outlines this reality, and Cuban scholar and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner recently gave a commentary on this. Below is a translation to English of this meme.
"The blockade does not prohibit fishermen in Cuba from fishing, the dictatorship does;
The blockade does not confiscate what farmers harvest, the dictatorship does;
The blockade does not prohibit Cubans on the island from doing business freely, the dictatorship does;
The blockade did not destroy every sugar mill, textile factory, shoe store, canning factory, the dictatorship did;
The blockade is not responsible for Cubans being paid with worthless pesos and stores sell you products with American dollars; the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible that Cubans are beaten and imprisoned for thinking differently, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible that there are hundreds of Cuban political prisoners who have not committed any crime, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for sending Cubans US dollars that they give to you in worthless pesos in the Western Union, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for the dictatorship building hotels and the roofs that fall on Cubans' heads, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for hospitals in Cuba that are disgusting, the dictatorship is;
The blockade is not responsible for not having water in homes, for not maintaining the aqueduct system, the dictatorship is;"
The United States does not have a "blockade" on Cuba, but porous economic sanctions with a focus on cutting off funds to the military that controls most of the Cuban economy. What the meme does reveal is that there is an "internal blockade" on Cubans imposed by the Castro dictatorship. Remittances continue to flood Cuba from the exile community in South Florida. What has become vastly more difficult is sending food, and medicine but that is largely due to the regime in Havana.
Afro-Cuban American scholar, Amalia Dache, an associate professor in the Higher Education Division at the University of Pennsylvania who "engages in research within contested urban geographies, including Havana, Cuba; Cape Town, South Africa; and Ferguson, Missouri" explained in July 21, 2021 the reality of the US embargo and the Castro regime's internal blockade.
"No. It’s very hard for me to say that as someone who still has family living in Cuba. But lifting the embargo would not magically improve their lives. Here’s why: To understand the US embargo, it’s important to know about the internal blockade the Cuban government imposes on its own people. For example, the US embargo does still allow for food and medicine sales to Cuba. The Cuban government buys $100 million worth of chicken from producers in the United States annually. It sells that chicken to the Cuban people at a marked-up rate, sometimes at double the cost, and uses the profit to fund the regime. Other countries trade freely with Cuba, but because the government is heavily involved, the internal blockade keeps those profits from reaching the Cuban people. Poor neighborhoods — Afro Cuban neighborhoods — get the worst of the shortages. The police and military get money for new cars and surveillance technology."
The Center for a Free Cuba is highlighting the reality of this embargo by examining each one of the claims above over the next several months. This first one to be examined is the claim that "the blockade does not prohibit fishermen in Cuba from fishing, the dictatorship does." According to an August 27, 2019 Reuters article " Cubans eat a quarter of the seafood they did at the end of the 1980s, according to official data, and just a fraction of the global average fish consumption per capita, leading them to joke bitterly about being an island without fish.
Journalist and visual storyteller Tracey Eaton in an e-mail sent on July 28, 2021 reported that "one of the things that inspired José Daniel Ferrer early on was to organize fishermen and fight for their rights. He told me about that when I interviewed him in his home." Jose Daniel mentions it in this video at 6 minutes 8 seconds in which he describes setting up a "clandestine fishing cooperative" to feed families.
Laws on the books restrict fishing in Cuba by individuals using laws that in practice are onerous and have prevented Cubans from fishing with heavy fines that if they cannot pay means prison.
Real record on pollution
Outside of Cuba and in regime publications the claim is made that the Castro regime is a responsible steward, but like many other claims when closely inspected prove false, and the destruction caused has real impacts on both Cubans and nature.
The Castro regime sells a stolen version of Havana Club, that today"pumps 1,288 cubic meters of waste liquids into the Chipriona inlet in Cuba every day, mostly vinasse (a residual liquid remaining from the fermentation and distillation of alcoholic liquors). It has been doing that since the 1990s, although the problems became more acute starting in 2007," according to Julio Batista in his 2017 report described the impact of this pollution as follows:
"The Chipriona inlet is a place where no one goes, where no one fishes, that doesn't need a fence because no one wants to swim in the boiling filth that flows into its waters every day. The waters of what used to be a beach are now soupy and have the sour smell of decomposition. No studies about the marine life in the inlet are publicly available, but fishermen say there's no fish there." ..."In the last decade, Chipriona has become the drainage point for the Ronera Sana Cruz, the biggest distillery in the country and one of the four owned by Cuba Ron S.A. It's the end point of the sewage of the only place where the white and 3-year-old brands are distilled by Havana Club International (HCI). And the dumping ground for a company that earned $118.5 million in profits in 2016 from the sale of 4.2 million boxes each with nine liters of rum."
Despite the Castro regime's poor record on environmental stewardship and overall terrible record on human rights, the United States in 2016 stripped Bacardi of its right to the Havana Club brand. According to Reuters, "in January, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided to allow Cuban state firm Cubaexport to register the Havana Club name once again in the United States." Bacardi "acquired the rights to the Havana Club trademark from its pre-revolutionary owner whose distillery was nationalized" by the communist regime.
Although Cuban laws prohibit these kinds of practices, the distillery's untreated wastes wind up in the ocean. (It is a regime facility.) Photo Jullio Batista.
Ambassador Otto J. Reich, president of the Center for a Free Cuba, on January 31, 2020 in The Miami Herald called on the United States to undo this wrong that continues to favor the Castro dictatorship and gutted the rights of a Cuban family business. "The Obama administration allowed Cuba to renew an expired trademark registration for the confiscated Havana Club rum. The Trump administration should reverse that action and demonstrate to unscrupulous foreign companies that there are grave risks to economic deals with a regime that has stolen billions of dollars in properties from Americans and Cubans, and thus stop dishonestly enriching the Cuban government."
This action by the United States in 2016 against Bacardi, and in favor of the Castro dictatorship was a deeply unpopular move for Cubans with a sense of history. Business Insider on October 28, 2020 broadcast a podcast on "Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba" that explored the company's history back to Cuba's colonial period under Spain in the 1870s.
Regime fishing fleet overfished Cuban waters for export and Cubans have been heavily fined for fishing without a license, and if not paid they face prison. The following open letter is being circulated. Correspondents on the island will not report on what has damaged fishing because it would earn them a rapid expulsion from Cuba by regime authorities, but independent Cuban journalists, who risk prison, have reported the situation on the ground.
Let Cubans Fish
It is encouraging that President Miguel Diaz Canel has listened to the pleas of the Christian Liberation Movement, the Ladies in White, the Patriotic Union of Cuba, Cuba Decide, and the San Isidro Movement and others that for over a year called on Havana to lift limits and tariffs on food, medicine, and hygiene items brought to Cuba. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero announced on July 14th they would temporarily be lifted until December 31, 2021 following the July 11, 2021 Cuban cry for help, freedom, and an end to the dictatorship.
We are pleading with your excellency for an additional concession. This is a time of great suffering. We ask you to intercede with President Diaz Canel and General Raul Castro. to urge all restrictions on fishing by Cuban citizens be immediately lifted.
Cuba is an island surrounded by a bountiful sea. The most common fish are snapper, grouper, and mahi mahi. For many years most Cubans have been unable to eat these ubiquitous fish. The reason for the absence of these fish in the diets of most Cubans is the same reason for general food shortages: the policies of the Cuban government.
Cuba’s central military- communist governing entities authorize only regime-profiting fisheries to deliver fish from its territorial island waters to its state-run and/or state partnered restaurants and hotels. Those not authorized by the regime cannot fish. There are restrictions in place limiting Cubans from fishing both in fresh and saltwater. A Cuban who tries to sell fish, shrimp, or lobster is fined or sent to prison if he is not authorized to fish by the government, which takes all fish for state-sanctioned purposes.
We urge governments with diplomatic relations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations to immediately send observers on how to come to the aid of Cuban families, and to let Cubans fish. That an island nation’s people are unable to feed their families with fish from the seas around them is beyond comprehension.
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