The embargo is not going to end until Cuba is free from Castro's tyranny and oppression. The day Cuba is free, the Cuban people are not going to forget that it was the US that paved the way, through the embargo, for a free and republican Cuba. Just like we are not going to forget that it has been Spain, Canada, Italy and Mexico who have kept Castro going since the fall of the Soviet Union.

There are good Cubans who disagree with my views on this subject, but, the great majority of the Cuban Exiles, who love Cuba, who have relatives in Cuba and who yearn for the freedom of our homeland, believe that the embargo should not be lifted. In fact almost 70 per cent of Cuban Exiles would love to make Castro's propaganda a reality by having the US implement a true blockade of the island.

Why? Because we know what would happen if the embargo were to be lifted:
First: The Cuban people would not see the benefits.
Second: The monies would be used to maintain the inefficient bureaucracy inherent in a Communist system and to maintan the huge repressive apparatus that keeps Castro going. The stronger the secret police, the worse off the Cuban people will be.
Third: Castro trades with the rest of the world and obviously what Cuba produces under the system is not enough. Castro only wants access to the World Bank. The borrowed monies would not be used to help Cuba's economic development. He wants to be subsidized by the US while he spits virulent anti US propaganda.
Fourth: It would be a great victory for Castro. His supporters, who represent today a small minority of the Cuban people, would claim a great victory against yankee imperialism. The opposition would be further demoralized.

Thanks to the embargo and the Helms Burton, Europe, for the first time in 38 years has placed pressures on Castro to liberalize the system. Today, Castro has to put up with an underground free press and with political dissidents, that in the sixties were either shot or imprisoned for twenty years. While in the last few weeks, he has stepped up terrorist acts against those who have the unbelievable courage to openly oppose his regime, compared to the sixties it is nothing.

He has now come up with a revolving jail policy. Dissidents are in and out of jail. They are harassed and mocked by the fascist Rapid Response Brigades, but before, he put them in jail or concentration camps and threw the keys away. He has been forced to grant more rights to those who openly profess religious beliefs. He has been forced to dollarize the economy. He has been forced to allow small privately owned businesses. In the sixties, even street vendors had their property confiscated.

For the years 1961 to 1989 Cuba received more asisstance from the Soviet Union and its allies, than all of Europe under the Marshall Plan. It has been estimated to be between $100 and $150 billion dollars. Where did the money go? Why is food rationed in Cuba since 1962? Well, the Cuban people know the answer: The money went to finance "WARS OF LIBERATION" in Latin America and Africa and to finance crazy economic experiments that failed miserably.

In summary, what really bugs me about people who blame everything Cuba is going through on the embargo is the double standard on this and other issues. Such people supported an embargo to South Africa and Haiti. And such people, who asked for free democratic elections to determine the level of support the Pinochet dictatorship had, are not concerned by the lack of symmetry in their thinking, when THEY fail to ask the same FOR MY HOMELAND. To those people, we have a word that fits well: Hypocrites.

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Source: soc.culture.cuba September 13, 1997 by Miguel A. Gayoso

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