Unhappy 60th birthday El Bloquero

February 3 marked 60 years since JFK imposed the full blown Cuban embargo designed to overthrow the Castro government and return Cuba as an economic piggybank for American capitalism, both legal multi nationals and illegal organized crime. It’s actually 62 years since President Eisenhower first imposed crushing U.S. sanctions against Cuba in 1960. He imposed them for revolutionary Fidel Castro daring to stop its American exploiters from stealing Cuba’s wealth for the previous 62 years following our takeover of Cuba from Spain in the Spanish American War of 1898.

Cuba rightly calls it El Bloquero (blockade) because the embargo effectively blockaded Cuba from doing business with much of the world economy. When implemented, the U.S. didn’t hide its ghoulish purpose. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory trumpeted “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba…denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

The embargo has been codified into U.S. law primarily thru the Cuba Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act and other legislation that make it practically impossible, both legally and politically, for any president to unilaterally overturn the embargo. America simply thumbs its pompous nose at the UN which has, for the past 29 years, voted to demand its abolition. The vote last year wasn’t close: 184-2. Only Israel voted with the U.S. against UN demands America adhere to international law and end its destructive embargo. Hey, if we’ll support Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people, they’ll protect our back in our destruction of the Cuban people.

But we can take heart that America’s third means of overturning the communist Cuban regime is the least violent. First, we launched a proxy invasion in April, 1961, to do so militarily. That failed. Then we spent the next few years trying to assassinate Cuban head of state Fidel Castro. That failed. For the past 60 years we’re simply killing the Cuban people softly with a strangling economic blockade.

America may be cruel. America may ignore international law. But one has to admit, when it comes to effecting regime change, America is resolute.