Response to Parade Magazine Article on Cuban EMbargo

Response to Parade Magazine Misrepresenting the Cuban Embargo

by Claudio A. Benedi

Excerpt from Parade Magazine
March 15, 2009

COUNTRY	IMPOSED BECAUSE	EFFECTS
Cuba	The U.S. hoped that major sanctions, begun in 1962, would cripple Fidel Castro's Communist regime and bring democracy.	Cuba has struggled economically, but the government--now under Raul Castro--has stayed in power. President Obama has called for "a new chapter" in U.S.-Cuba relations, which may lead to an end to sanctions.

It is unconscionable that Parade continue to misinform the American public by repeating untruth about the reason for the US embargo on the Cuban government. President John F. Kennedy imposed the embargo on the Cuban government during the 1960s when the Castro’s appropriated (read stole) all properties, large and small, belonging to American citizens or corporations. The embargo applied to American companies and lending institutions, however, it does not apply to other countries. Cuba could negotiate with any country in the world and does so. American companies can sell to the Cuban government items considered to be humanitarian such as medicines and food products; however the Cuban government must pay in cash. The Cuban government has squandered untold amounts of money from the Soviet Union, Mexico, Spain, Canada and other countries that have finance the dictatorship of the Castro brothers. The Castro’s have established the worst tyranny this hemisphere has ever witnesses, and is morally and economically bankrupt. They have a system of apartheid in Cuba that were it some place else, the whole world would be clamoring to establish not only an embargo, but a blockade like the one that was imposed on South Africa to end the apartheid there. For Parade to continue misinforming the American people is an error in judgment that should not continue.