The U.N. General Assembly on Oct. 27 approved a Cuban resolution on the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” The United States and Israel disapproved; 191 other nations said yes.
The Bangor Daily News did not report the story. It should have, and here’s why.
The outcome and the U.S. “no” vote demonstrate U.S. government failings in the wake of President Obama’s announcement last December that diplomatic relations between the two nations would be restored. Obama urged Congress to end the embargo and has reiterated the plea since. Congress alone enjoys such power, courtesy of the Helms Burton Law of 1996.
Yet in the General Assembly, the United States signaled approval of the embargo. Surely contradictory governmental behavior qualifies as news. And the world’s thundering rejection of the U.S. posture on Cuba is no less worthy of coverage.
In fact the vote this year was old hat. The assembly has approved the same Cuban resolution for 24 consecutive years. Since 1992, no more than four nations have ever opposed the resolution. Over the first seven years, abstaining nations fell from 71 to 12. No nation abstained this year — a first. The United States and Israel always vote no. Maybe stubborn consistency warrants media attention.
Wordage in the Declaration of Independence suggests international approval mattered in 1776. The Declaration’s opening paragraph pays homage to “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” Now, however, the U.S. government falls back on contrariness, arrogance and isolation. It’s a shift that ought not to pass in silence.
Some news is worth rehashing. U.S. policy causing diminished access worldwide to materials essential to survival for Cubans, even medical supplies, is one example. Responsible critics everywhere have condemned the embargo as cruel, immoral and illegal under international law.
Even on the day U.N. delegates voted, Noemi Bernardez was in the news. That Cuban child, recently operated upon for a brain tumor, needs a chemotherapeutic agent made only in the United States. Authorities were securing the drug, AFP news reported, through undercover negotiations with dealers in third countries at extra cost.
U.S. motivation, when it’s outrageous, is newsworthy, too. An April 1960 State Department memo reveals U.S. purposes. Author Lester D. Mallory called for the “greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
So it seems that much hardship in Cuba has been intentional. Who could deny that firsthand testimony as to plans for causing human distress has news value? After all, our own government is the perpetrator, and the policy in question continues.
The story has a Maine angle. Freed of the embargo, scores of Mainers would no longer have to skirt the law when they visit the island. And Maine travelers will save money: current regulations herd legal travelers to groups organized by officially approved and expensive travel agencies. Maybe with the blockade gone, Mainers could sell potatoes and wood products in Cuba. And besides, Mallory, the diplomat who wrote the 1960 State Department memo, was born in Houlton.
Tom Whitney of South Paris is a member of the Maine group Let Cuba Live, which works politically for better U.S.-Cuba relations. He is a retired pediatrician.