Cuba: Confronting the U.S. Embargo

Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Winter 2000 by Cosner, Charlotte A

Schwab, Peter. Cuba: Confronting the U.S. Embargo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Bibliography, index, 226 pp; hardcover $29.95, paperback $16.95.

The Eisenhower administration imposed a partial embargo on Cuba in 1960, after Cuba's revolutionary government confiscated land and property belonging to U.S. citizens, including the Esso and Texaco oil refineries. Over the next eight presidential administrations, the United States strengthened the embargo to cover all commerce, including trade by U.S. subsidiaries located in third countries. Peter Schwab's new book uses wide-ranging sources from both the United States and Cuba to present a well-researched analysis of the impact of this central U.S. policy component on Cuban politics and society.

The debate on the embargo's viability has flourished nearly as long as the embargo itself. Yet despite the vast amount of existing material produced by individuals and organizations, both national and international, Schwab significantly adds to this historiography by emphasizing the impasse created by the varying interpretations of human rights in the United States and Cuba. His discussion is insightful, and it provides an excellent example of the difficulty for both countries in reaching agreement on this issue.

Although the United States and other Western nations consider an individual's political rights to be paramount, Schwab explains, Marxists emphasize the collective economic rights of the populace. In addition, U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba contrasts strongly with its policy toward China or other countries that engage in human rights violations, such as Indonesia, demonstrating a double standard in U.S. policy creation and implementation.

This dichotomy shows, Schwab argues, that U.S. Cuba policy is driven more by the frustration that the embargo has failed to change Cuba's politics and less by the issue of human rights, as Washington claims. Although President Jimmy Carter's policy change demonstrated that coexistence between the two countries was possible, such rapprochement was discouraged by the U.S. foreign policy establishment and Congress's Cold War mentality. Ultimately, Schwab argues, "the real goal of many of the embargo's supporters is not the achievement of better relations with Cuba that might lead to increased political rights for its citizens, but the overthrow of Fidel Castro" (p. 17).

Schwab observes that Ronald Reagan's return to hardline embargo policy included isolating Cuba from its Caribbean neighbors. To achieve this, the United States pursued both military and economic hegemony over the region. The construction of military facilities and the creation of the Eastern Caribbean Regional Security System during the early to mid-1980s was followed by the establishment of economic linkages, such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative, that drew the Caribbean into closer economic ties with the United States. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the passage of the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, which closed U.S. ports to vessels that had traded with Cuba within the last 180 days, the U.S. achieved its objective, Schwab says.

Many of the U.S. policies were directed at removing Castro from power. But although the embargo has not achieved this goal, U.S. policy has crippled the island. The increased pressure exerted by the Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Helms-Burton Law has been met with opposition by the United States' European and Latin American allies. Consequently, Schwab notes, President Bill Clinton has repeatedly waived Helms-Burton's Title III provisions.

Like many other authors, Schwab uses two divergent arguments in discussing the embargo's effect on the Cuban food supply. In a chapter titled "Starving the Cuban People," he notes that the island has been unable to provide its people with sufficient levels of food because of the embargo, yet he states that tourist facilities do not suffer from a lack of food for their clientele. The government's role in creating this twotiered system, which favors tourists over Cubans, is not addressed. The "leakages" incurred in the tourism industry divert 70 percent of its profits to maintain the infrastructure for the high-quality facilities and services that tourists expect. Thus, although the Cuban government may see tourism as a way to counteract the effects of the embargo, it is not an unproblematic source of revenue; instead, it creates a hierarchical system. Thus, ironically, the very industry that helps financially to support the government may contribute to increasing dissatisfaction with the current regime among the Cuban people.

Similarly, the two components of Schwab's examination of the embargo's impact on the island's medical system are contradictory. He asserts, for example, that Cuba suffers from a lack of medicines because of the embargo, yet cites the country's excellent medical facilities and health care, particularly in the private hospital infrastructure. Schwab explains the shortage of medicines by noting that many antibiotics are patented in the United States and therefore cannot be sold to Cuba. Yet he also states, "foreigners can obtain the best fee-for-service procedures and rarely entertain deficiencies in obtaining medical care" (pp. 66-67). The Centro Internacional de Retinosis Pigmentaria Camilo Cienfuegos is an example of the private health care facilities available for "medical tourists." The facility is described as offering innovative and advanced treatment of eye diseases; Schwab notes that 78 people defied U.S. law to obtain its services.