On Tues­day, Cu­ba pro­posed its draft res­o­lu­tion to the Unit­ed Na­tions to end the 51-year-old eco­nom­ic em­bar­go against the so­cial­ist-run is­land. T&T, along with oth­er na­tions at the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly, votes over­whelm­ing­ly every year against the Unit­ed States-im­posed em­bar­go. In an in­ter­view last week Thurs­day at the Cuban Em­bassy, Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain, Cuban am­bas­sador to T&T, Hum­ber­to Rivero, said the em­bar­go has ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed the Cuban econ­o­my and the en­tire in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty sees it is a fail­ure. "When Amer­i­can Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma was in T&T for the Sum­mit (of the Amer­i­c­as) in 2009, he held a con­fer­ence say­ing he re­ceived many mes­sages to end the em­bar­go and said wher­ev­er there are Cuban doc­tors, peo­ple call for the end­ing of the em­bar­go. What has hap­pened since? So far, the Amer­i­cans' ap­proach has been dis­ap­point­ing." Ac­cord­ing to Cu­ba's re­port that it pre­sent­ed to the Unit­ed Na­tions on Tues­day, "con­ser­v­a­tive es­ti­mates" show that from the in­cep­tion of the block­ade in 1960-2010, di­rect costs of the eco­nom­ic block­ade to the Cuban econ­o­my has US$108 bil­lion. The re­port stat­ed: "Tak­ing in­to ac­count the ex­treme de­val­u­a­tion of the dol­lar against the price of gold on the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­ket dur­ing 2010 and this con­tin­u­al trend, the dam­age caused to the Cuban econ­o­my would ex­ceed US$975 bil­lion."

Pa­ra­me­ters of the block­ade

To the ar­gu­ment that the em­bar­go has sti­fled Cu­ba's econ­o­my, the US gov­ern­ment has ar­gued that there are hu­man right abus­es in Cu­ba and the em­bar­go will con­tin­ue. Ac­cord­ing to Cu­ba's re­port to the UN, the em­bar­go has af­fect­ed all facets of Cuban life:

• Were it not for the em­bar­go, Cu­ba could have re­ceived for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment of US$600 bil­lion.

• US com­pa­nies that work in the tourism sec­tor can­not get in­volved in Cu­ba's tourism in­dus­try, nor can Cu­ba ben­e­fit from US ho­tel chains in the Caribbean, as in the case of Sher­a­ton, Hilton, Mar­riott and Hol­i­day Inn.

• For­eign banks, in­clud­ing Eu­ro­pean banks, are pe­nalised by the US if they try to do busi­ness with Cu­ba in US cur­ren­cy.

• In Jan­u­ary, the US seized US$4,207,000 of fund­ing from the Glob­al Fund to Fight Aids, tu­ber­cu­lo­sis and malar­ia ear­marked for co-op­er­a­tion projects in Cu­ba.

• Ex­port of goods and ser­vices to Cu­ba con­tin­ue to be banned with few ex­cep­tions. Mer­chant ships of any coun­try touch­ing Cu­ba ports are still for­bid­den to call on any US port for 180 days.

• No com­pa­ny af­fil­i­at­ed to and shar­ing in­ter­ests with any US com­pa­ny is al­lowed to trade with any Cuban com­pa­ny.

• The US pre­vents its cit­i­zens from trav­el­ling to Cu­ba with few ex­cep­tions and un­der very strict reg­u­la­tions.

• Twit­ter ac­knowl­edged full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for hav­ing blocked text mes­sages from cell­phones in Cu­ba.

How­ev­er, US Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has tak­en steps small steps to mit­i­gate the oner­ous em­bar­go.

In Jan­u­ary, mea­sures were an­nounced in­clud­ing lift­ing the trav­el ban to Cu­ba for US cit­i­zens for aca­d­e­m­ic, ed­u­ca­tion­al, cul­tur­al and re­li­gious trav­el.

Cu­ba has called the eas­ing of the sanc­tions "in­suf­fi­cient and lim­it­ed in scope."

Im­pact on Caribbean

Rivero is con­fi­dent that once the em­bar­go is lift­ed, it will not have an ad­verse im­pact on Caribbean economies. Giv­ing the ex­am­ple of tourism, Rivero said 2.5 mil­lion peo­ple vis­it­ed Cu­ba in 2010.

"The Amer­i­cans have been send­ing a mes­sage that if the block­ade is re­moved, then tourism ar­rivals in Cu­ba will in­crease and oth­er Cari­com ter­ri­to­ries will lose their tourism share of the mar­ket. We say that will not hap­pen. Of course, we wel­come Amer­i­can tourists. "Our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Caribbean should not be af­fect­ed if that hap­pens. We could es­tab­lish agree­ments on mul­ti-des­ti­na­tions. We have good trade re­la­tions with oth­er Cari­com coun­tries. It could be bet­ter, though. The Brazil­ian air­craft that Caribbean Air­lines have, some of them have more than ten per cent Amer­i­can parts and we could not buy them to in­crease tourism ar­rivals. Our fleet has been af­fect­ed."

Amer­i­cans against the em­bar­go

There has been grow­ing op­po­si­tion by Amer­i­cans against the em­bar­go, now viewed as an anachro­nis­tic hang­over from the Cold War.

The Cuban re­port gave ex­am­ples.

• On Ju­ly 9, 2010, an on­line sur­vey con­duct­ed by USA To­day, which in­clud­ed 1,475 par­tic­i­pants, showed that 94 per cent were in favour of lift­ing the block­ade.

• On Ju­ly 13, 2010, an ar­ti­cle by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive William De­lahunt, (De­mo­c­rat/Mass­a­chu­setts), pub­lished by the Wash­ing­ton Post, stat­ed that putting an end to the block­ade would help the Cuban peo­ple.

• In Sep­tem­ber 2010, Bloomberg an­nounced that cell­phone com­pa­ny Nokia had re­quest­ed that Oba­ma lift the block­ade so it could sell its prod­ucts in Cu­ba.

T&T and Cu­ba

In 2007, T&T es­tab­lished a trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion of­fice in Cu­ba to fa­cil­i­tate greater bi­lat­er­al trade. Ac­cord­ing to the Cuban am­bas­sador, the bal­ance of trade be­tween T&T and Cu­ba is US$30 mil­lion. "It's not bal­anced and it is favour of T&T. Both par­ties need to work on that. T&T is on the top of the trade in all Cari­com coun­tries. The amount of the trade is larg­er than all the oth­er 13 Cari­com coun­tries put to­geth­er." One of T&T's biggest ex­ports to Cu­ba is methanol. "Methanol is used in the pro­duc­tion of nick­el in Cu­ba, which is a big in­dus­try in Cu­ba," he said. Speak­ing about di­rect flights be­tween T&T and Cu­ba, he asked when will Caribbean Air­lines be fly­ing di­rect­ly to Ha­vana.

"Up to 2004 and 2005, BWIA used to fly to Ha­vana di­rect­ly twice a week. As of now, if you wish to go Cu­ba you have to go with Co­pa Air­lines through Pana­ma," he said. He point­ed out that ties in oth­er ar­eas be­tween T&T and Cu­ba have been close. This year, four T&T stu­dents were giv­en schol­ar­ships to study med­i­cine in Cu­ba. Last Sat­ur­day, nine Cuban coach­es ar­rived in T&T on two-year con­tracts with the Min­istry of Sports. He said there is po­ten­tial for T&T to im­port many prod­ucts from Cu­ba, cit­ing Cu­ba's fa­mous rum as an ex­am­ple.

"I ask T&T busi­ness­men why I don't see Cuban rum in T&T. One per­son said they will bring the elite Ha­vana Club rum to sell here. I hope in a short time I will see it here." He said T&T has sup­port­ed Cu­ba at the UN. "T&T has usu­al­ly been sup­port­ing and vot­ing in favour of the draft res­o­lu­tion pre­sent­ed by Cu­ba. In oth­er re­gion­al and oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies, T&T's voice has been in sup­port of the Cu­ba's call to end the block­ade."