The skein of the blockade against Cuba

HAVANA — A recent article in Progreso Semanal, by Marcos Bronstein, analyzes the legal and political complications that could surround the acceptance by the U.S. Treasury Department of the establishment of the U.S. company CleBer LLC in the Mariel Special Development Zone.

More than responses to Bronstein’s interesting questions about the implications of that process, I have other questions that could be infinite, given the complex skein of regulations that rule the United States’ economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.

The truth is that, for more than 50 years, this policy has accepted whatever initiative has occurred to any president, legislator, lobbyist or functionary who has wanted to take a shot at Cuba. Now it turns out that neither the people interested in changing the policy nor those who are in charge of it really know how to do it.

One of my experiences in recent months has been to try to explain to diverse groups of Americans who visit Cuba what “Obama’s opening” to the blockade’s rules consists of. What they find remarkable is not so much what is authorized now but what was forbidden and still remains to be unfettered.

The blockade against Cuba has been a “total” policy that affects not only the relations between the two states and their businesses but also the ordinary citizens of both countries, not to mention its implications for third-country citizens.

Not even us Cubans are fully aware of what the blockade has done to our daily lives. It’s like the climate, to which we’ve had to adapt — and now we’re told about a “climate change” and nobody knows exactly what it is.

The Americans understand it even less. Issues as normal to them as how to travel to Cuba under rules that are not applied to any other country; importing $100 in rum and tobacco; using their credit cards — before, they couldn’t even pay in cash — or the possibility of using “roaming” cell phone services, have become transcendental decisions simply because they were forbidden.

But this elementary “flexibility” also has complications. To travel to Cuba, you have to sign a sworn statement that says that you’re applying for one of the 12 categories approved for travel. In the case of “people-to-people” travel (the only category that really benefits large sectors of the population), travelers can only apply in groups, because individual applications can be interpreted as “tourism,” which is still forbidden by U.S. law.

The situation for U.S. businesses is even more complicated. Nobody knows if the credit cards can operate in dollars, and the banks are scared away by the possibility that they could be fined if they make any mistake.

Businesses involving the use of “roaming” and other telephone services must be made in currencies other than the dollar and through entities in third countries, which also fear U.S. persecution.

U.S. agricultural businesses can sell their products to Cuba but under conditions that involve advance payment in cash, forbid credit and any transportation in Cuban ships.

What can we say, then, of the project by the CleBer company to assemble Oggún tractors in the Mariel Special Development Zone?

As Bronstein says, approval of that project by the U.S. Treasury Department will be a headache and although it would not create a legal precedent, given that it’s granted under a specific license, it would compromise U.S. policy toward Cuba in several ways.

Bronstein mentions several of those possible implications. I would like to refer to another, which I consider of enormous importance because it questions the essence of the blockade policy.

If Washington approves this specific license, in accordance with Obama’s call to U.S. businessmen to move forward in his policy toward Cuba, we’d be in the presence of an offshore business, legally established in another country. What logic could then bar Cuba from exporting its products to the United States?

I have the impression that, so far, Obama’s policy toward Cuba has tried to maximize the political impact of the decision, while simultaneously move in safe waters that limit any confrontations with his opponents.

Thus his argument that, in order to move forward, “Cuba must do something,” i.e., reforms in its political system, which Cuba finds unacceptable. Above all, Obama is trying to avoid legal challenges to his decisions, something that could really complicate matters.

What’s happening is that the blockade is so all-encompassing that it does not admit that tactic. As we see, the most basic measures always have ramifications that impede half-measures.

Kerry was wrong when he said in Cuba that the blockade was a two-way street. The Cuban government can facilitate the climate of negotiations and even take measures that facilitate the interest of U.S. businessmen to invest in Cuba, as happened with the approval for CleBer to do business in Mariel.

But untangling the skein is a problem for the United States to solve.

[Photo at top of an Oggun tractor. For a video demonstration of the tractor, click here.]

Progreso Weekly authorizes the total or partial reproduction of the articles by our journalists, so long as source and author are identified.