Guerrilla History - The History of US Sanctions on Cuba w/ Helen Yaffe

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

This episode of Guerrilla History is a continuation of our Sanctions As War miniseries.  In this excellent episode, we have a discussion with Professor Helen Yaffe on the history and the impacts of sanctions on Cuba, absolutely something that all anti-imperialists need to be fully aware of and engage with to act in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.  Help us spread the word by sharing with comrades, it will be of benefit to the show and to the left movement generally.  Be sure to also stay turned for more installments of our Sanctions As War series! Helen Yaffe is a lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow, specialising in Cuban and Latin American development. She is the author of We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World (Yale University Press, 2020) and Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).  She can be found on Twitter @HelenYaffe Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory  We also have a (free!) newsletter you can sign up for, a great resource for political education!

You remember Dinn-Vin-Bin-Bou? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, podcast that acts is a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons

of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckimacki, joined, unfortunately, only by one of my co-host today. We have Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, with us. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing? I'm great. Henry, it's great to be with you. Absolutely. Unfortunately, we're not being joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, who, of course, is the host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast as he had something come up at the last minute, which is a shame for all of us because I know he was really looking forward to this conversation. And we always like to sit down with Brett. So Brett, we'll see you next time for the next episode of this series.

And listeners, this is going to be another edition of our ongoing Sanctions as War series. So just to remind listeners what that is, we have this book, Sanctions as War, which is edited by our friend Stuart Davis and Emmanuel Ness. And we're going through sections of this book, particularly the case studies, to understand deeply how sanctions regimes work in the real world and the impact that they've had on various countries around the world. For this episode, we have the inimitable Professor Helen Yaffe. Hello, Helen. It's nice to see you on the show.

Wow, what an intro. Thank you very much. And thanks for the invitation. Absolutely. This is a great idea to turn their chapters from the book into a podcast. cost. Sure. So, Professor, you wrote the chapter of the book, Sanctions is word titled US Sanctions Cuba to Bring About Hunger, Desperation and the Overthrow of the Government. Now, before we get into talking about this chapter, can you just talk a little bit about

yourself, let the listeners know who you are and perhaps your other books, because two of the books that you have are very, very closely related to this and are definitely going to be of interest to the listeners. Okay, so I'm currently a senior lecturer in economic and social history at the University of Glasgow and my teaching research and publications focus on Cuban development and teaching also Latin American development. Yeah, so my first book, which you're referring to, is called Che Guevara, the Economics of Revolution. And it was an adaptation of my PhD thesis, which was based on research in Cuba, where I went to find out what Che was doing as a member of the Cuban government for six years

and also to write about his engagement with and contributions to broader socialist political economy debates. So that was the first book. It was fascinating. I interviewed people who had worked alongside Chee, who had never given interviews before, had access to archives that had barely been seen, including, especially by foreign investigators. And yeah, it was just an amazing experience. The second book on Cuba, which is actually my third book,

came out in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, which unfortunately meant that lots of book launches were canceled and libraries were all shut. But it was published by Yale University Press with the title, We Are Cuba, How a Revolutionary, people have survived in a post-Soviet world. And the idea of that was to focus on these key areas of development in Cuba, about which little is known outside of Cuba beyond specialists or maybe solidarity activists.

So we might talk about the biotech sector, the development of biotech technology and the pharmaceutical sector, Cuba's medical internationalism. them, Cuba's shift to organic farming, renewable energies and so on, but also there's several chapters that track changes in economic management systems, political economy, an attempt to explain this process of reforms that Cuba has been going through. And all of the changes that we've seen in those economic policy throughout the years since the revolution of 1959. So really focusing on the post-Soviet period. You know, when I was studying Cuba at university reading the main set text in English, I kept reading, you know, about how Cuba owed its survival

to the existence of the Soviet Union. And that's certainly true that Cuba in that first period of crisis, when it had to undertake almost a complete shift of trade and relations from the United States to the east, to, you know, the Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, that was decisive in Cuba's capacity to survive, you know, the blockade and attack from the United States. However, by the time my We Are Cuba book was published, Cuba had been around, or the revolutionary state had been around for longer without the Soviet Union as an ally than it had been with. So that requires some explanation, and that's what I tried to address in my book. I'm sorry, that was quite a long introduction, but you did invite me. Yeah, totally. So I also want to let the

listeners know, since Brett is not here, that you did an episode on Revolutionary Left Radio with him about the book, We Are Cuba. And it's an excellent interview. It came out, I don't know, several months ago anyway, and listeners should go back and listen to it because it really is a fascinating episode. And if it wasn't for Brett already having that episode out, we would have brought you on to this show to talk about the book. But maybe we'll bring you back in the future to talk about the Che Guevara book, Economics of Revolution. That also is a really fascinating work. Now, before we get talking deeper about the mechanisms and impacts of the sanctions within Cuba, the blockade of Cuba, I'm going to open it with a little bit more of a broad question before

I let Adnan start to dig in a little bit more fine. that you, in the early parts of this chapter, go through, is it blockade or embargo? What is the difference between a blockade and an embargo? And I think that that'll be a good way for us to talk about what does it look like? Why does it fit the definition of a blockade, despite the fact that the United States government would never admit the fact that it is in fact a blockade? Yeah, so this is really important because anyone paying attention would notice that the Cuban government refers to it to a blockade or the blockade.

as do most solidarity activists, and much of the world, Latin America tends to refer to it in that way. But the United States and all this sort of official legislation refers to it as an embargo. But, you know, the difference is not just linguistic. It is political and it has some significance in terms of the legal standing, as well as maybe the moral standing of how you perceive the sanctions implemented by the United States, or the sanctions regime, we should say. So an embargo is considered to be the prerogative of any nation to introduce. And it's an embargo is when one nation establishes a policy not to trade with another

nation for whatever reason or to allow its own ports and territory to be used for commerce with that nation. And it's usually in response it's seen as a penalty. to some action. As I said, it's a prerogative of any nation. But a blockade is when a country uses military threat or force to close the coast of another entity to international commerce. So it prevents third parties from undertaking normal commercial activity with that country.

A blockade is an act of war rather than one individual country, a bilateral issue exercising its prerogative. So although we don't see Cuba at this point in history surrounded by ships that are military ships stopping, you know, supplies from other countries and so on, the cumulative effect of United States sanctions is precisely that. It is to obstruct Cuba's capacity to carry out normal exchange, whether that's trade, or even collaborations, even, you know, scientific exchanges, they are all obstructed by US sanctions. And one of the most powerful mechanisms through which that's achieved is the international financial system. So as we know, with the Bretton Woods Agreement coming out of the Second World War, there was an agreement that the US dollar would be the international currency.

and this gives the United States huge leverage over the entire international financial system, which, you know, means that the ability of people to exchange goods and services and so on. In 2019, the Washington Post said that 88% of all international trade was carried out using the US dollar. So you can see and you can extrapolate from that the kind of leverage that the United States has. And also being, you know, a huge big market that still just about the wealthiest country in the world, the ability to close access to its markets as punishment for other countries, individuals, entities trading with Cuba is a powerful tool which the United States uses shamelessly. So just to finish, I mean, you know, I think it's indisputable that the United

States has a blockade against Cuba. Right, right. And I think what's, you know, AIDS, your conclusion there is the fact that you're taking up a historical analysis rather than just some sort of narrow legal analysis, which is, of course, the U.S.'s position is to try and say technically according to some legal definition. But when you do, as you've done, a historical analysis, you see that it fits this characterization of blockade much better. And that's one of it seems to me the strengths and the importance of a historical perspective that you're accomplishing in this is that these are the longest running sanctions that the U.S. has imposed upon any country.

So we can learn an awful lot about the different phases and eras of it. But you said at the outset of the article that while it is the longest running one and it has these different phases and periods in its history, it's objective. have remained the same. So I'm wondering if perhaps you could go back to the beginnings and give us a sense of how did these sanctions begin and what kind of continuity has there been over this period of the goals and objectives of sanctions on Cuba? So the way that I describe it is that US sanctions on Cuba are not just this sort of economic policy. They are in fact one tool. in the United States toolkit to enact regime change, right,

to remove the scourge of the Cuban Revolution and the state and socialist state from the Western Hemisphere. And, you know, I quote from this very famous memorandum, which I think is very indicative of the driving motivations of U.S. policy towards Cuba. This is the memorandum written by Lester Mallory, who was US Deputy Assistant of Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, not a snappy title. On the 6th of April 1960, so before the US blockade, sanctions have been introduced, before Cuba has announced that the revolution is taking a socialist path, before most of this significant nationalisation, although some had taken place. And the memorandum basically says, you know,

we have to consider that the new Cuban government support, has support, Castro has support from Cubans. There's no effective opposition. Those are their terms in this memo. There's increasing influence of communism and communists. And, you know, we don't see that trying to have, you know, invade Cuba's going to help. So the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disdisfaction based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. Now, how do they

foster those conditions? Well, the means for doing that, in fact, he explains, this is an extraordinarily short memo, by the way, it's worth saying it's like one page, right? So the whole of the motivation of U.S. policy is, you know, crystallized in these very short and direct sentences, which, of course, were in a confidential memo and never written to be seen. And Mallory proposed that every possible means should be undertaken to promptly weaken the economic life of Cuba. He goes on to say that this can be done by denying money and supplies to Cuba, decrease monetary and real wages, and to bring about hunger, desperate, and overthrow of Cuba.

So the idea is you have essentially a two-track policy. On the one hand, you make conditions using your economic leverage. You make conditions really difficult, as he says, you drive Cubans to desperation, right? And then on the other hand, you're going to be attempting to use that dissatisfaction to generate an internal opposition. Now, you know, as someone who studied the history of the Cuban Revolution and looked at the relationship with the United States and someone who's lived in Cuba since on and off, you know, lived and studied and researched in Cuba since the mid-1990s, it's absolutely clear that that two-track policy remains and is essentially the main characteristic of this regime change. attempt by the United States. So you still have the US blockade. In fact, it is currently being tightened under the Trump administration to unprecedented levels. You know, there was an interview with a Cuban who was in charge of, you know, relations with the United States at a point in 2019 where Trump was

saying, we're going to implement a full blockade. And this man, Kossio said, well, we've had a full blockade. What else can they do? But, you know, they went on to show what they could do. So the Trump administration introduced 243 new actions, sanctions and coercive measures on top of a blockade, a set of sanctions that was already six decades long. And, you know, what you have currently in Cuba is an externally imposed crisis, which replicates the crisis, no. as a special period which Cuba suffered and Cubans suffered in the 1990s as a consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries where Cuba lost 86 to 87 percent of its trade and investment and GDP collapsed by 35 percent. So the double whammy of the Trump

sanctions finding any avenues where Cuba was able at that point to circumvent the U.S. sanctions or to get around them or to obscure transactions that it was making, go through third parties and so on, to be able to continue trading with the world, they, you know, maliciously persecuted every little avenue where Cuba had built a capacity for work arounds, right? And then they moved to eliminate them. So, you know, that still happens.

And then if you look in terms of the other part, the track two, the creation of an internal opposition, the US Congress, this is what is overtly agreed every year, approves a budget of $20 million every year for what they call democracy promotion programs in Cuba. And we know that those are, well, the Cuban certainly refer to them as regime change programs. And what they've done with the post-1990 legislation that backs up the US blockade, because it's worth saying that the blockade or sanctions are not just one law. It's a very complex web of overlapping and sometimes contradictory, very comprehensive, very extensive set of legislation. And the new legislation in the post-190 period, the post-Soviet period, was one of the characteristics is it completely conditions and improvement of a relations

and the lifting of sanctions on Cuba transitioning towards a capitalist, what they call democracy. So, you know, the two things are completely put together, yeah? Cuba's right to trade internationally depends on its introducing a new constitution, a new political system and new system of election in which communist party members and affiliates and associates are prohibited from participating. You actually brought up something that I wanted to follow up on, which is the fact that this is a very complex web of sanctions.

You write in the chapter, for example, that they often couldn't figure out whether something was legal or not because of how interlocking these different mechanisms that the United States uses to sanction Cuba in all of these various different ways, whether or not there was, you know, one component of the web somewhere that would prohibit them from doing trials of a drug in the U.S., for example. But there's, as you write in the chapter, there's six primary tools that the U.S. uses to sanction Cuba.

And I'm just going to run through these very quickly. I'm just reading directly from your chapter now. The six main statute, section 5B of the 1917 trading with the Enemy Act, section 620A of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, 1963 Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, also known as the Torricelli Act, 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democracy, Solidarity, Libertad Act, also known as Helms Burton, and the 2000 trade sanctions reform and export enhancement act. These all are very complex and large acts in themselves that then start to interweave themselves with one another.

So the question that I have for you, professor, is can you try to disentangle these a little bit for the audience? I mean, I don't mean can you go like bullet point by bullet point? What does each of these acts do? Because it is a web. But in large brush strokes, in large sweeps, what do? what kind of things are these sanctions regimes doing that the United States is imposing on Cuba through primarily these six acts? Yes. So, I mean, in the chapter, which obviously people are encouraged to read,

I do explain, summarize the purpose of each act. But essentially, in a sense, they're incremental. I think there is often an understanding that the embargo dash blockade of Cuba only becomes extra territorial, in other words, it only starts to apply to other countries or individuals and entities in third countries in the 1990s period. But what's really interesting is one of the first pieces of legislation, the Foreign Assistance Act, in 1961. So just two years after the revolutionary seized power, that already had a character of a character of extra territoriality. What does that mean? It said, it reorganized how the United States distribute foreign aid. It wasn't specific for Cuba, but it does have a section specifically about

Cuba. And it says that the US government will not provide any financial assistance to Cuba, nor to any communist country, and nor will it provide financial assistance to any country that helps Cuba. So already it's using its sort of military prowess, sorry, economic prowess to interrupt and to scare other countries from assisting Cuba, from dealing with Cuba in any way that they wish. So, I mean, so that's a distinction that is generally correct, that the first set of legislation were mainly focused on cutting off Cuban exports to the United States and cutting off US exports to Cuba. Now, to understand how devastating that was to Cuba, you have to know something about the economic history of Cuba and Cuba's complete economic,

almost complete economic dependence on the United States, right? So, you know, 99% of capital goods, i.e. machinery came from the United States by the 1950s and 100% of spare parts. What happens when the United States implements its first blockade, the first set of sanctions that just crudely stopped that exchange of goods and services? Well, the Cubans are forced to get new machinery and so on from the Soviet Union and the socio-spot countries. But even, you know, this is sort of stuff that I discovered when I was doing the research from my first book.

You're thinking about the minute Che Guevara was minister of industries, right? He's trying to implement industry. But all of the machinery, the equipment that comes from the Soviet Union, works on a different electrical system than the, than Cuba. So everything has to be adapted. Every small piece of electrical equipment has to be adapted. They can't, when their machinery breaks down, they can't get spare parts, right? So, you know, this endless problems, one of the first sort of grassroots committees that Che Guevara set up in, as Minister of Industries, was the committees for spare parts to get people to, you know, Cubans talk about Inventos, where they are very creative in resolving their problems. And they had to set up these committees to try and resolve these problems. And the oil refineries, oil refineries are designed according to the kind of oil they're going to process. Cuba had these huge.

big oil refineries of two U.S. companies and a British company, and they were designed to process Venezuelan oil. When they shifted to a Soviet oil, you know, it's very much higher content of salt and it, you know, corrods the insides of the equipment. So all these incredible problems that happen. But the fact is that while its imports and exports were cut off and interrupted by those early sanctions, Cuba at least had the option to turn to the USSR and the socialist bloc countries. Now, there's, you know, another problem that they encountered that there was a relative backwardness of a lot of the equipment and machinery compared to what they were used to getting from the United States. And I talk about that a lot in the first book about

chase working industry. However, you know, the Soviet Union was there and it could say, well, you know, when the United States says, right, we'll punish you by cutting off oil, the Soviet Union can step in and say, well, we'll supply oil. So what's, you know, it acts as a cushion. What's really significant is the way that after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, after the collapse of the Eastern European socialist countries, they revert to capitalism and Cuba is left alone.

And many analysts just thought it was a matter of time. There was no way that Cuba could survive on its own. own. But, you know, and this is the topic of my book, how on earth were they able to survive that period? But they did. And the US didn't sit idly by. So they started this process of increasing sanctions with an extra territorial character that was aimed to stop Cuba's capacity to go through this process that it went through, which is to restructure its internal economy in order to reintegrate into a global economy that was dominated by capitalism. And in that period, the 1990s, dominated by neoliberalism and a world economy dominated by the

United States. So the fact that Cuba was able to do that is an astonishing story, which that's why I decided to look into it. But the nature of sanctions then becomes an attempt to prevent Cuba from seeking those new trade and investment partners, from developing those new sectors. So, you know, Cuba starts to develop tourism. So there is sanctions that directly affect tourism. But there's also from the, you know, right-wing extremists in Miami, Posada Carillis, the renowned terrorist, there is a bombing campaign to target Cuban hotels to prevent this development of their tourist industry. So, you know, it's everything, every time Cuba finds that, you know,

develops a sector that could be a key to prosperity to growth, it's targeted very, very specifically. Recently, we've seen what happened with that, you know, their biotech, you were referring, Henry, to the biotech sector. I mean, the fact that Cuba has drugs that can save, improve, and prolong the lives of people in the United States, United States, but all around the world as well, and they're prevented from accessing those because of the, because of US sanctions. But during COVID, when Cuba became the only country

in Latin America and the Caribbean to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines, the mass production of those vaccines was held up because Cuba needs to import a reagent that's patented by a US company or, you know, somehow, or there's another company that produces it, but it's a subsidiary of a US or shares a laboratory. And the same happened with medical ventilators. So the Cubans had medical ventilators from a Swiss company. They have to get them from elsewhere, never the United States, which is, you know, 90 miles away. It's a short, ferry ride. That's how they used to deliver goods. So it always increased cost, but they had these medical ventilators. But the US, in the context of COVID, U.S. companies were buying up other companies and they bought up these Swiss companies and when Cuba said

can we get new machines they said no and when Cuba said can we get spare parts for the existing machines they said no and those machines were for their ICU their emergency hospital patients you know suffering from COVID-19 so that is that is one of the features that we've seen the The Cubans have been, let's be honest, ingenious, they have been extraordinarily resilient and creative in finding ways to bypass the US blockade, because we can't sit here and pretend that it's total. Cuba does trade. It trades in billions, actually, with different partners around the world. And it works very hard at its international relations. It works very hard to diversify where possible. The other aspect has been the export of medical professionals.

but you see there also under the Trump administration, incredible efforts. Some of them taking the character of sort of formal sanctions and some of them being political pressure, put on governments, for example, in Latin America, a phone call to the government of Panama, warning them not to take medical assistance from Cuban medical specialists in the context of COVID-19. So I don't know if that's quite addressed your question, but I mean, really, they're incremental and the extra territorial character has increased. Yeah, that's very helpful.

And I just want to come back actually to the 1990s period because I think it's kind of commonly understood that, of course, with the withdrawal of support of the Soviet Union, Cuba would suffer, given that they had adapted their entire economy. to survive and to develop in the Cold War period when the U.S. sanctions first come in and they had to reorient their economy. As you're talking about, they were able to do so by trading with the Soviet Union and so on. So I think the withdrawal of that, it's perfectly understood that that would impose a huge crisis. But I think what's not well understood that I was really quite startled by in your account and analysis is how significant the aggressive U.S. tightening of the sanction regime was after the 1990s and how important establishing these liberalizing political goals were as part of the legislation that not only authorizes and commits funds for opposition groups and so on,

how significantly ideological the tying of potential changes in the relationship, which should be, you know, thought of as a natural consequence. What's the reason for the sanctioning, you know, if the Cold War was the sort of rationale that they're communist and that's a threat or a danger, you know, in the Western Hemisphere, once that has collapsed, you know, the rationale, you know, there would be collapses. as you would expect that there might be some opportunities. And often it is characterized as like, well, there's, you know, what starts to happen is that there are some kinds of negotiations, the Obama period, which you discuss and so on. But I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about this very ideological commitment to these political goals of regime change that are embedded in, aggressively so, in this new wave of legislation in the 1990. So I think, again, it's about the historical context, the global historical context. This is the, you know, the period declared as the end of history, you know, the neoliberal period. And Cuba was a fawn in their side of the US because it was one little reminder, right,

that actually you can construct and you can pursue an alternative development strategy. And, you know, there's a fantastic quote from Fidel Castro from the time. You see, people, often people take a sort of ultra-left position. They say, oh, what, Cuba, you know, allowed for an investment or invited tourism. And, you know, it's reneging on socialism. But as Fidel Castro said in that time, right now, we're just trying to survive as a socialist country and protect everything that we have been able to develop. And they always talk about the conquistas, the conquests of the Cuban Revolution.

That is the education system, the healthcare system, the housing, you know, 96% of Cubans own their own homes. That's not to say there isn't a problem with overcrowding. And, you know, again, there's resource scarcity and houses are crumbling and so on. But the conquistas, the education, the sport, the culture, and so on. And he said, right now, that's what we're doing with surviving. If we can build for a little more. socialism, that's great. So I think that is essentially what happened. And, you know, it's actually

fascinating how quickly the economic situation was turned around. So Cuba was in a massive crisis. By 1993, GDP had fallen nearly 35%. There were 12-hour blackouts all over the country. There were shortages of everything. I mean, I arrived in Cuba in 1995 and things had started to improve already. But very quickly, they got the black market exchange rate from the dollar down from 150 to, you know, first of all, 18, then it settled at 24 very, very quickly. They stabilized the fiscal deficit. They focused on the vulnerable. They addressed problems of man. nutrition that appeared as soon as they were clear. You know, it's just incredible things. They carried out an almost complete shift to organic farming because they couldn't get the chemical

fertilizers. They couldn't get the diesel for the tractors. So, you know, incredibly creative ways of responding. But then what happens is the world starts to change again. So neoliberalism in Latin America has seen, you know, another 40 million people plummet below the severe poverty line, right? And it's discredited and you have the end of the Washington consensus and you have Lula in Brazil and you have Chavez in Venezuela and you have what then becomes called the pink tide. And suddenly the benefit of Cuba's struggle to survive is that it's still there. It's there as that alternative, that example, that an alternative is possible. Not that it's a model.

Nobody should consider Cuba as a model. Cuba is for Cubans built by Cubans and relevant to Cuban history and circumstances. But the idea that there is an alternative way of developing. And looking at Cuba, you know, that quote that you mentioned from Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, I mean, I interviewed him. He had just signed up, or they had just signed up Ecuador to the Alba, the Bolivarian Alliance of Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, this trade and cooperation treaty. And Cuba was an example to them, how a country with such a low GDP could have one of the

highest, I mean, the highest, the greatest international solidarity record in the world and could have, you know, incredible human development results, yeah? Infermortality, literacy rates, women's participation in politics, just all outstanding and far beyond the capacity of most countries with an equivalent GDP. So Cuba, in that period, the post-2000 period, actually reintegrates into Latin America and is at the heart of a new embrace of experimentation with welfare-based development models, right? Various degrees of various degrees of reformism or more radical policies. Some countries say they're building socialism for the 21st century.

Some don't. They're looking for more mixed economy. But almost the whole region does adopt some of that welfare-based approach and environmental approach, which, of course, Cuba has spearheaded with the shift to organic farming. It's been identified in quite a few scientific reports as being well-deeding in terms of sustainable development and so on. So, you know, the merit of Cuba surviving actually shows, you know, it then becomes an inspiration to this Latin American left.

And also, you know, to some degree, it was part of the success. that were had by those radical governments which were backed up by social movements because it was the Cuban educators who went into Venezuela and Barrios where people couldn't read and write and gave them their skills that allowed them to read the constitution

which Chavez was proposing and then to get behind the revolutionary project in Venezuela and it was the Cuban doctors within a few months They went from zero to 10,000 Cuban doctors who went into the Cuban Barrios. Well, people had never seen a doctor before and showed, right, that actually here was a new government and a new proposal that meant what it said.

It was more than hollow words. So Cuban role was massively, massively important in that. So we shouldn't underestimate the extent to which Cuba remains a threat. by its good example from the perspective of the United States. So Cuba is the threat of a good example. And, you know, for that reason, the United States, it's almost inconceivable to imagine the United States

ending sanctions and just allowing Cubans to build their socialist society, to prosper in their socialist society in peace. Because it is a threat of a good example. or at least the threat of an alternative form of development. So you mentioned this quote by Correa, and this is actually something that we brought up before we hit records, just so the listeners are aware of the quote,

he said that if the sanctions that were put on Cuba had been put on Ecuador, Ecuador would not last for five months under the sanctions regime that the United States is imposing upon Cuba. So it's something worth keeping in mind that we have other Latin American leaders looking at the sanctions regime and understanding that their own societies would not make it even

half a year under the same situation that Cuba has been going with for 62 years now. So it is definitely something that's worth looking into. Now, I'm going to throw a couple of perhaps disparate threads that you can tie together however you want. So you'll have total freedom of wherever you want to go at this professor. So first of all, I would like, if possible, for us to dive a little bit more. into what the Cubans were doing in order to survive under these sanctions regimes. I know you mentioned this a little bit in that last answer, but perhaps it would be interesting

for us to think about because, as Correa said, Ecuador would not survive five months under this sanctions regime. Why was Cuba able to do so? What was the government doing? What were the people doing? Like, there's things going on here that can help us at least begin to understand how Cuba was able to cope with this unprecedented level of sanctions. that's thread number one that I'm going to let you start weaving a tapestry with.

Thread number two is international condemnation of the sanctions regimes that have been placed on Cuba with the way that the United States' role is within the world system. When the United States wants to get its way, it just does what it wants. And a lot of the times, we don't actually see that much dissent on the international stage from what the United States wants because of the United States' role within the world system. A lot of these other countries realize that even if they don't like what the United States is doing, you know, taking a role of strategic indifference, at least rhetorically, is perhaps to their benefit. But with the issue of Cuba, that's not really the case.

I mean, these countries aren't going out of their way to actually try to circumvent the blockade in any way. They're not actually like putting their neck completely on the line here. But there has been at least rhetorical condemnation of these sanctions regimes. And then the third thread that perhaps I can throw in there, I promise, it's the last one, Professor, because I'm giving you a lot here. But, you know, you're wonderful at bringing these things together. So I figured I might as well just give you some arrows to go with in your quiver. The third thing would be, we talked about how Cubans have adapted to the sanctions regime. It would also be important for us to understand the impact of the sanctions regime on Cuba.

So if you could just bring up how devastating these sanctions have been. I know that we talked a little bit about how the special period was particularly devastating relative to the previous period. But the sanctions regime in general, special period or not, has been an absolute devastating thing for the Cuban state, which they've had to overcome in various ways. So those are the kind of the three threads that were floating around at the top of my mind that I thought maybe you might be able to tie together somehow. Okay. Let's see if I can move seamlessly between or free. So the first question, right, how on earth does Cuba survive, right? It's almost completely dependent on the United States for trade, investment, capital, and then that's cut off overnight. Okay, it shifts to the Soviet Union. There's all sorts of problems that come with that. Then it's isolated on its own. How does

Cuba survive? The short answer is that Cuba is a socialist country. And that means it has a planned economy. And that gives it the capacity to mobilize resources, although they may be scarce, to mobilize scarce resources and to direct them according to a politically determined plan. So, you know, they have to take into consideration what. should be the priority for our development strategy? Wealth, sorry, health and welfare, you know, education. We want to, you know, give this amount that any country will do that and so on. What should be the balance between consumption and investment?

What should be the, who should be our international partners? What should be the sectors that we develop? So they have a lot more capacity to really control a development strategy. They're very restrained. They work within the restraints imposed externally by the United States. But one thing I will say as an economic historian, right? You know, there's this argument that only the free market and market forces can lead to efficiency and productivity. But actually, history shows us that whenever the economies,

capitalist economies are unstable, under threats, they are weakened, there is crisis. They resort to the same sorts of mechanisms, right? The state takes responsibility, the state channels resources to save enterprises and so on and so forth, right? So we've just seen that process, haven't we? We saw it when the beginning of COVID, you know, the state took control, in most capitalist, many capitalist countries, the state took control of elements of the economy that are normally in private hands. And it decided, you know, it channeled massive

borrowed and channeled masses of finance to save private businesses and to, you know, in many places they're really active in the healthcare system in a way that's not, that's not the regular sort of relationships. So that's, I mean, that's the first thing. you know, we have to understand that there is this myth about the free market and efficiency. And actually what you can see in Cuba is that in some areas, the planned economy and the ability of the state to have a set of program, a development strategy that can make these different aspects work together. So education, investment in science and technology, the flow of between institutions, of graduates with universities of science. And you see that so well expressed in their biotech sector.

Their biotech sector is completely funded by the state, completely owned by the state. There are no private interest. There's no speculation. And all of these characteristics make their Cuban biotech sector extremely efficient and productive. They don't waste ideas and resources. is by this constant phenomena that happens in capitalist countries of trying to sell an idea

to the next private institution up to try and getting finance through the stock market and so on and so forth where so many great ideas from medicines are lost because they're not viewed as profitable, right? So, I mean, essentially, Cuba has survived by having a centralized planned economy, which has put the welfare of its population as a priority. What that has meant is it retains the majority support of the population. It doesn't mean there's not people who complain. Everyone in Cuba complains, you know, even if they're Fidelistas or Communist Party members. It doesn't mean there aren't opponents, but they have incredible, they have been able to sustain

incredible communication. There is a lot of, what's the word is very porous between, you know, a ordinary Cuban, whatever that means, and someone who is a member of the party and someone who's in government because they have these grassroots institutions. And, you know, when this legislation from the United States, like the Helms-Burton Act says, anyone who is a member of an organization of the masses

can't stand in the future government, you're probably ruling out 98% of the Cuban population because people are either in their street committee or the Women's Federation or the Small Farmers Federation or a trade union of some description or in the Communist Party. So, you know, those I think are really key elements to understand how Cuba has survived. In terms of the international condemnation, I want to actually start with the impact of sanctions because I need to be clear that as I, I mean, we talked a bit about the conditions. in the 1990s, but I also said that sanctions are now at unprecedented levels. They have been tightened and tightened. So I want to make clear that the conditions are in Cuba are almost as bad, if not worse.

In some aspects, not as bad as the special period of the 1990s. So I have seen this process since 2019, sorry, since 2019. I was in Cuba in 2019, after Trump had threatened to. of fine shipping companies carrying oil to Cuba, and they had, you know, sailed away with a tanker full of oil, and Cuba once again was suffering from blackouts and public transport couldn't operate until they had found very costly replacements on the international market. I saw from 2019 as a result of that pressure, you know, these were the measures Trump was taking to ensure that he would win Florida in the presidential election

because it's been mapped out by some Cuban researchers. You know, you can look at the, you can map the intensification of sanctions against Cuba with the electoral cycle, right? And from 2019, there was food scarcity, medical scarcity, and Cubans have been having to wake up at four or five in the morning to get into queues, for shops that will distribute goods that they have the right to because they still have control over distribution. They still have the ration system. But, you know, queuing until maybe 11 o'clock and then having to, you know, go to work or do their caring responsibility. So the

situation in Cuba has been exhausting, a daily grind with no real immediate prospects of improvement since 2019. Obviously that was the situation and then you had COVID-19. The Cubans dealt with it in the best way from an pediomological perspective. They closed their borders. Everyone was sent home.

A lot of the, you know, public forums and stuff were closed down. But Cubans still had to get up every day with their masks in the hot sun and get into these cues. And Cuba lost, you know, it's tourist. it lost 11% GDP fell

11% just in 2020 and then of course it carried on to 2021 you had the surge in summer 2021 the first violent protests in 30 years and all of this actually I mean those things have happened the 2021 happened since

I wrote the chapter and what you can see is it is just an enactment of that first memorandum by Mallory and the 6th April in 1960. Let's create desperation and hunger and see if we can achieve through that, the overthrow of the Cuban government. And last summer, Biden and the administration in the US actually thought that that moment was close. So Biden reneging completely on his campaign promises

and despite the fact that he was vice president to Trump, sorry, that was a slip up, Vice President to Obama, when Obama introduced, announced rapprochement, restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, despite all that, Biden was obviously told by his advisors that the Cuban government was close to collapse and he increased the number of sanctions on Cuba. So the impact on the Cuban people has been terrible. The Cubans, with their amazing biofarmar sector, which before COVID was producing,

nearly 70% of the medicines they consume domestically, the Trump sanctions has made it very difficult to get ingredients that they need for making those medicines. They also dedicated a lot of their laboratories to the, you know, urgent need to develop the COVID vaccine. So they've had shortages of medicine. And, you know, for the first time ever last summer during the surge, at 2021, I'm saying, they saw their medicals, their hospitals under strain, which, you know, they

were not opposed them to. So the impact has been brutal. But one thing I want to say is it's not just on Cubans in Cuba, because also affected have been Cubans in the United States and in Europe and all around the world who have seen, have watched their families going through this really difficult time and who have had their ability to send remittances, to send money to help their families also massively impacted by the Trump sanctions. And this partly leads me on to your next question about international condemnation, because there are a couple of interesting developments that I want to mention. There is a growing movement in the United States among Cuban Americans who have joined with Cuba solidarity activists and are becoming increasingly

vociferous in their demand to lift these really punitive sanctions that have imposed such suffering on a daily basis for all Cubans. They're not targeted to the Communist Party. They're not targeted to the government. They affect each and every Cuban, in fact, disregarding their own political affiliation and commitments. So there is a growing movement among them. But there is also wanted to mention, if you don't mind, a new campaign that has been launched within the last two weeks of solidarity activists in the UK and Europe. And I think Canada as well, who are using actions against banks, international banks, that implement US sanctions. Now, why are they doing this? The United States is the only country in the world that sanctions Cuba. The sanctions are unilateral. And yet because of the power of OFAC, the Office of Foreign Asset controls of the US Treasury, which threatens to fine entities and individuals, mainly entities and financial institutions that trade with Cuba, banks have put Cuba on their list of sanctioned countries. Now, to do so for a British bank is actually in violation of British law.

There is a law from 1980 and there are laws that were introduced in Britain, Canada and through the European Union in response to the Helmsburtain Act of 1996 that say it's illegal to implement US unilateral sanctions against individuals or entities in those countries. Now the problem is, you know, we discussed, you were asking me about international repudiation. Yes, when Helmsburtain was introduced, politicians, businesses in the EU, in the UK, in Canada, all around the world, in fact, complained because there are elements, there's Title III and Title IV specifically of the Helms-Burton Act, which very directly threaten people from other countries. And, you know, the US does not have jurisdiction over them. So the EU, with which Britain was part of, threatened to carry a formal complaint to the World Trade Organization.

Canada threatened to do the same to NAFTA. So what happened is they came to an agreement. The following year, 97, the US said, we won't implement parts of the Helmsburton that directly affect the rights of EU, UK and Canadian citizens, for example, to trade with Cuba. But in response, we want you to support us in condemning Cuba and international forums. So that was the agreement. And as a result of that, the title three of the Helms-Burton Act, which says that US courts can take actions against, for example, a UK citizen that trades with Cuba and has something to do with a property that it's claimed previously belonged to a US citizen. So now it's very interesting as well because it has a very abnormal interpretation of what US citizen is. So someone who was a Cuban citizen at that time can retrospectively be given US citizenship under this law, which is a complete violation of norms.

Anyway, so the point is that there was an agreement made. Now, when, and the Title III was suspended, a president of the United States sat down and signed it every six months for 23 years. And then finally, the Trump administration imposed Title III. Now, why didn't the UK government, the European Union and Canada issued declarations, but they took no action? They did nothing. And, you know, when solidarity activists have written. and complained, you know, their attempts to send humanitarian donations to Cuba during COVID or following the tornado the previous year have been blocked. Pay power accounts have been

closed. You know, HSBC account of Cubans in the UK was frozen. All these things have happened. And basically, our legal system, our politicians are not prepared to stand up to the United States. So the point about the new campaign is that it allows people to directly challenge the banks by purposefully drawing attention to transactions. So people are making transactions that cross their borders to solidarity groups. There's one in Belgium at the moment, one in Switzerland, one in the UK, and putting the word Cuba in the reference. Now, this automatically triggers the bank risk assessment process.

And what has happened is that people are sending one pound, one pence and whatever, and the banks are blocking the transaction, but then the people who are doing the transactions can make a complaint. And this starts to cost the bank time and money. And they have also tended to give compensation, which can go towards medical aid for Cuba or towards one of the organisation. So I would encourage people to look at the new website. It's called one cent for Cuba, is the name of the campaign. It's one c for Cuba.orgia.com. And, you know, people can get involved with this campaign. It's a way that someone outside the United States who is opposed to the US blockade and also rejects the fact that it's imposed on us, although we're not US citizens,

they can take very simple direct action to help to build a consensus that something has to be done and also to change the balance of costs of the banks so that it's more costly to enforce the US blockade than it is to the threat of fines for not enforcing it. So, yeah, I think I've probably answered enough on those questions, and I know it's the most time to wrap up. Yes, well, you've been so generous with your time, and that was a wonderful response to Henry's three extraordinarily large questions. But I'm glad you brought up about what solidarity might mean in this context

as a way to globally mobilize against these sanctions. I know that the book also included a section on resistance to sanctions. And I feel that the case example that you offered in your work in this book on Cuba is so important as an example of an alternative and also of the experience of surviving and resisting sanctions that I just wondered since, as we were sort of talking about at the very outset, of this, that, you know, the problem of sanctions and what they mean is probably becoming increasingly visible to people around the world as a result of the Ukraine war sanctions on Russia and the realignments that are taking place and almost the emergence, you might say,

of a block of sanctioned states, whether it's Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Russia, or of course Cuba, which has been there throughout, all attempting to survive and circumventing. it seems that the Cuban example would be very useful for countries to learn from. So I just wonder if in final conclusion, perhaps what you might say we can learn, other states can learn about Cuba's example that would be helpful politically and in other ways. Yeah. Okay. So in a slightly different context, I've been addressing this question in relation to work I've done on Cuba's response to climate change because the Cubans have a very unique state plan is called the state plan to confront climate change, but it's known in Cuba as Tarea Vida, which means life

task. And it's entirely, you know, the state. There's no sort of private stakeholders that the state has to incentivize and negotiate with. It's a state plan that projects up to the year 2100 and was formally approved as a, you know, legally approved in 2017. So I made a documentary about it, which is available on YouTube. It's called Cuba's life task combating climate change. But this is often a question that people ask in relation to that. What can people learn from Cuba? And I think that the answer is probably relevant to your question as well. One of the things is that the Cuban response in this area, and I would say everywhere, is led by the science, right? So I think this is really important for surviving, you know, this kind of hostile economic environment, global economic

environment. The investment in science and technology has been really key to Cuba. And that means you have to have a very good basic education system. And of course, a basic healthcare system, because healthcare is an essential for, you know, a cultured, educated population. So these investments in human welfare, but also in, I guess it's called today, a knowledge economy are really important. And this leads to the second capacity, the capacity to seek national solutions, yeah? So this is, you know, I gave the example earlier of the fact that Cuba was the only country, in the Caribbean, Latin America and the Caribbean, to develop its own COVID-19 vaccine.

Why did they do it? Well, A, very important, they had the capacity. And they knew they had the capacity because already what's called the scientific poll in Cuba produces 11 out of the 13 vaccines that children are given as part of a childhood immunisation program in Cuba. But they also did it out of necessity because of this hostile environment. The United States was highly likely to stop them joining, oh gosh, what I've just forgotten it was called the COVAX, right, the COVAX organization. The United States was not going, I very much doubt was ever going to allow them to buy any of the US-based vaccines.

So, you know, they couldn't depend on an external aggressor to solve their problem. So those are really key elements. And the third element, which I think is as relevant to Cuba's response to climate change as it is relevant to Cuba's response to COVID-19 to everything else is popular participation. You have to get the population to be involved, to have a say, to appropriate the decision making and to, you know, to actually support the project. So I think that is really important. I mean, I was just listening today to something called the Mesa Redonda, which is a daily Cuban TV program. And you had, and it was on, this is from yesterday, and I was listening to today because of the time change in Cuba. And you had the Minister of the Economy on there explaining to, you know, in live broadcasts to all Cubans,

why they've taken a new set of economic measures that they've taken. So that communication is completely essential. People have to understand the policies that are being introduced. They have to understand the context. And I think, you know, that is one of the features that made Fidel Castro so popular. Whether you like it or not, he was very, very popular in Cuba. And now what people say is, we miss Fidel. We miss Fidel.

We missed how he, you know, it was mocked outside Cuba. But the Cubans missed those long speeches where he talked about the global scenario and he interweaned it with a bit of history and then he explained the policies and what the results would be. And, you know, it is very important. So I think those three elements are very important. The investment in science, technology, education, healthcare

and your own population and the, the, and then looking for national solutions and then the popular participation. Yeah, excellent. And a really excellent interview. I know that we could go on for hours and hours more because I have so many things that I personally would like to ask you. I've been a fan of your work for quite some time. So it's really a pleasure to bring you on the show. But because we want the listeners to still read this chapter of this very important book, we'll wrap up now and tell the listeners, do pick up a copy of sanctions as war, particularly when it comes out from Haymarket at an affordable price. And read this chapter on sanctions on Cuba. Again, our guest was Helen Yaffi, who's a senior lecture of economics and social history at the University of Glasgow, author of three books, including We Are Cuba. Make sure to go back and listen to the Revolutionary Left Radio episode on this listeners. I guarantee that it will not be, there'll be no better usage of your time today when you go back and listen to that. Besides listening to this episode, of course.

And also the fantastic work, Che Guevara, the Economics of Revolution. I'm really hoping that we can bring you on in the future to talk about that book, Professor. you'd be up for it. Yeah, of course. Excellent. So on that note, Professor, can you tell the listeners how they can find you on social media and anything that you'd like to direct them to? Yeah, so I'm just on social media with my own name and see you about. I hope you enjoyed the interview. Excellent. Loved it. Oh, we certainly did. Yeah, that was wonderful. Adnan, how can the listeners find you in your other podcast? Sure. You can find me on Twitter at Adnan, A, who says, H-U-S-A-I-N, and if you're interested in the Middle East, Islamic World, Muslim diaspras, questions of Islamophobia, we cover those topics on another podcast called The M-A-J-L-I-S, and you can find it on all the platforms.

Excellent. Highly recommend doing that. Listeners, you can find our co-host, Brett, who is not here today in all of his work at Revolutionary Left Radio.com. You can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995. Listen to the other show that I do with my wife called What the Huck. It's on all podcast feeds and on YouTube. We do all kinds of random stuff on there. Follow Gorilla History on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod.

And you can support the show on Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. Until next time, listeners, Solidarity. I'm going to be able to be. You know,