Why the embargo on Cuba and the Cuban Adjustment Act are still needed

John Suarez in Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:

Why the Embargo on Cuba and the Cuban Adjustment Act are still needed

“La ‘crisis’ no es en Costa Rica, alli son 4000 que ya escaparon de la tirania. La ‘crisis’ es en Cuba, donde son millones queriendo escapar del comunismo.” Tony Diaz Sanchez, November 27, 2015

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Cubans at the Ecuadorian embassy in Havana, Cuba (Photo: 14yMedio)

International news today is reporting on the manufactured Cuban migrant crisis in Central America while ignoring the underlying crisis in Cuba. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that this has happened and those familiar with the situation in Cuba understand the real crisis. Exiled Cuban opposition leader Tony Diaz Sanchez, of the Christian Liberation movement and a former prisoner of conscience explained it well above in Spanish: “The ‘crisis is not in Costa Rica, there are 4,000 who have already escaped the tyranny. The ‘crisis’ is in Cuba where there are millions wanting to escape communism.”

It seems that many in the media are confusing the effects with the underlying cause and it is not only with the question of Cuban migration, but also with the sanctions placed on the Cuban dictatorship by the United States. The reason for the poor relations between the Castro regime and the United States is not because of the embargo but just the opposite. The reason for the embargo on the Castro regime is to safeguard U.S. taxpayers and not have them subsidize a dictatorship hostile to U.S. interests.

The Cuban embargo was first imposed on the Castro regime on  January 3, 1961 by President Eisenhower in response to the confiscation of U.S. properties and toughened by President Kennedy a short time later. The logic for economic sanctions was to raise the cost for the Castro regime to engage in subversion in the hemisphere. Unfortunately, the reason for the embargo still endures.

Cubans were fleeing the Castro regime prior to and following the embargo. However in 1965 the Lyndon Johnson Administration was faced with the Camarioca Boatlift, an migration crisis provoked by the Castro regime. Kelly M. Greenhill in her February 2002 paper, Engineered Migration as a Coercive Instrument, gave an analysis of what the Castro regime did and how the Johnson Administration responded that can be briefly summed up as follows.

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1 thought on “Why the embargo on Cuba and the Cuban Adjustment Act are still needed”

  1. Yes, but those Cubans in Costa Rica didn’t escape; they were let go–obviously because it suited the regime to do so.

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