Story and photos by Lewis McCool
Cortez Journal Managing Editor

Cuba and the United States have been intertwined politically and economically for more than a century, even before U.S. and Cuban troops kicked the Spanish off the island in 1898. U.S. industrialists were heavily invested in Cuba throughout the first half of the 20th century.

At the time Castro's revolution took hold in the late 1950s, U.S. crime bosses dominated much of the Cuban economy, operating giant casinos and catering to the vices of wealthy foreigners. As rebel forces approached Havana, the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, skipped the country on Jan. 1, 1959, with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Castro nationalized foreign businesses and industries - and the real estate holdings of foreigners and wealthy Cubans. Uncle Sam, acting on behalf of U.S. investors, responded with an economic embargo in 1960 that has lasted to this day.

In addition to its punitive intent, the embargo was - and is - intended to force Castro and his communist regime from power.

Medicine was exempted from the embargo in 1992, food in 2000, although restrictions require cash payment, a difficult proposition for the cash-strapped Cuban economy.

In a speech in May 2002, President Bush said, "Trade with Cuba will not help the Cuban people. It will merely enrich Castro and his cronies. `85 Full normalization of relations with Cuba - diplomatic recognition, open trade and a robust aid program - will only be possible when Cuba has a new government that is fully democratic, when the rule of law is respected, and when the human rights of all Cubans are fully protected."

During his visit to Cuba in 1998, Pope John Paul II called for an end to the embargo for humanitarian reasons.

Several times in recent years, the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for an end to the embargo. Last year, more than 175 nations supported the resolution. The United States, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted against it.

Human Rights Watch, a privately funded international organization based in New York, has an unfavorable opinion of the American embargo in spite of its recognition of decades of human rights violations by Castro's regime.

Last September, the organization's Washington advocacy director, Tom Malinowski, said in a presentation to the U.S Senate Finance Committee, "It seems to us that any American policy designed to promote human rights in another country has to meet two basic tests. First, is the policy more likely to be effective than the alternatives? Second, does it advance the interests and speak to the needs of those struggling to defend human rights in the county concerned? After 40 years, it's clear that the all-out embargo against Cuba fails both tests."

In 2001, the Texas Legislature passed a resolution calling for the end of the embargo.

Dallas Democratic Rep. Domingo Garcia, who sponsored the resolution, called Bush a friend, but said, "After years of a failed policy of trying to remove Castro by an embargo that most of the world doesn't respect and doesn't follow, I believed that it was time that we looked at a different course. `85 We're trading with countries like China and Vietnam that have been involved and killed American soldiers."

Former President Jimmy Carter visited Cuba in 2002 and met with Fidel Castro. After that visit, he joined the call for an end to the embargo, saying it restricted the freedoms of U.S. citizens.

Later in 2002, then Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura attended a trade convention in Havana, touting his state's agricultural products. He expressed dismay that, because of the travel ban, his wife could not accompany him. After he returned to Minnesota, he too called for an end to the embargo.

"How can we switch them to capitalism if we don't work with them?" A former Navy SEAL, Ventura said, "We have no problem today trading with Vietnam."

But Castro's crackdown on dissidents in March 2003 cost him a lot of support in the United States.

Leaders of the Washington-based Cuba Policy Foundation, which had fought for softening in U.S. policy toward Cuba, resigned en masse. "We can only conclude, however, that in spite of its claims to the contrary, Cuba does not share our enthusiasm for a more open relationship," the group said in a statement.

"Castro has handed the hard-liners in the United States a silver platter," said Brian Alexander, the organization's executive director.

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, interviewed by phone from his Miami office in late April, said that Castro will never soften and that other avenues for change must be found - in addition to the embargo.

Established in Florida in 1981, the foundation is largest Cuban-exile organization.

"You have to change the dynamic, because you are not going to change Castro," Garcia said. "Existing U.S. policy has trapped itself: 'Are you for the embargo and against the embargo?' It's a stale debate. It's only one piece of U.S. policy."

He opposes any easing of pressure on the Cuban regime, and warned against what he termed "humanitarian capitulation."

"You see suffering and you want to do something. You make concessions that only strengthen the existing regime," Garcia said. "U.S. policy should be involved in incrementing `85 a paradigm shift ... the fundamental paradigm shift all of us want."

Last fall, President Bush formed the Commission for the Assistance to a Free Cuba, made up of cabinet-level officials co-chaired by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez. The panel is scheduled to release a five-part report this month. It may recommend policy changes, but the embargo will stay in place.

In a speech in Miami last October, Roger Noriega, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, said, "The embargo is one tool of our policy, and it is a tool that we will not surrender."