What America Must Do: End the Embargo

The Cuban people have suffered long enough. The time has come to put an end to a shameful policy.

By Nadine Gordimer

October 9, 2009, 3:16 PM

I need the fingers of a hand to count off the issues that demand the urgent attention of the next president of the United States of America. But I am confident that others invited to respond to this question will do so forthrightly, stating what needs to be proposed for policies in respect to Iraq, Iran, Israel-Palestine, the urgency to sign the forthcoming successor to the Kyoto agreement, reversing the shameful refusal to sign the original -- and the rest of the roster of present U.S. policies that endanger not alone the peoples directly affected, but the peace, and in the case of the global environment, the survival of the world we have no choice but to share.

I need the fingers of a hand to count off the issues that demand the urgent attention of the next president of the United States of America. But I am confident that others invited to respond to this question will do so forthrightly, stating what needs to be proposed for policies in respect to Iraq, Iran, Israel-Palestine, the urgency to sign the forthcoming successor to the Kyoto agreement, reversing the shameful refusal to sign the original — and the rest of the roster of present U.S. policies that endanger not alone the peoples directly affected, but the peace, and in the case of the global environment, the survival of the world we have no choice but to share.

So I take up an issue that is widely overlooked in the countdown of policies and notions that one regrets to see the most powerful, self-proclaimed upholder of democratic values follow and commit. I refer to the blockade of Cuba.

Last October, Cuba submitted to the U.N. General Assembly for the 16th consecutive year the draft resolution titled "Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba." In 2006, 183 member states voted in favor of this resolution, proof of the international community’s rejection of U.S. policy against Cuba, which is contrary to the charter of the United Nations, the principles of international law, and the relations among states. In 2006, the damage to Cuba’s foreign trade exceeded $1.3 billion as a result of the boycott. The greatest damage was due to the impossibility of having access to the U.S. market, but the Bush administration’s increase of sanctions on enterprises cooperating with Cuba in gas and oil exploration, the ban on the sale of medical equipment to Cuba, and the limited conditions for imports contribute to the inhuman denial of the needs of a people.

The deplorable accompanying effects of the blockade are blatant flouting of standards of justice the United States claims to embody and uphold. There is Guantánamo; the continued existence of a U.S. prison on the land of another, a sovereign state.

There is also the incarceration of the Cuban Five [accused of conspiracy to commit espionage and murder — Ed.] in the United States in ruthless conditions of seclusion, despite the declaration, some time ago, of the United Nations-affiliated Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that their detention is arbitrary, the unanimous decision of the Atlanta appeals court nullifying the sentences pronounced against them in their original trial, and the subsequent dismissal of that decision by a split vote in that same Atlanta court. The five remain in maximum-security prisons. The wives of two have been refused permission to visit; one young woman hasn’t seen her imprisoned husband for nine years.

The one unilateral decision I propose to the next president of the United States of America is to abolish the blockade of Cuba. Whatever else he or she will need to restore America’s standing in the world, this will be a single act of delayed justice.

Nadine Gordimer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, is the author of 14 novels, nine volumes of stories, and three nonfiction collections.