Havana: Modifying the policy of the United States (USA) towards Cuba is a promise of the president-elect, Joe Biden, but he will have limited powers against the blockade and must face legislation designed to last, a specialized source today explained.
Exclusively with Prensa Latina, the doctor in legal sciences Seida Barrera, emphasized that the core of the hostile policy against the island is made up of several laws, such as the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws, which only the US Congress can eliminate.
According to the expert, since 1959 Washington considered that a socialist system could threaten its position of power in the region, for which it took measures to eliminate that threat: the blockade of Cuba began legally in 1962, with the proclamation of 3,447 of then President John F. Kennedy.
“The president does not have the power to order its repeal, however, he can suppress orders, proclamations, notifications and determinations of the executive related to that siege?, the legal statement clarified.
In addition, he has the power to act on federal agencies and departments under his command; the most recurrent in this regard are those of the Treasury, State and Justice.
The also specialist from the Center for Hemispheric and US Studies stressed that the options to repeal the provisions of the blockade may take years given the complexities of the congressional legislative mechanism.
“It was designed that way, taking advantage of the fact that accumulation is an inherent phenomenon in that system, therefore, you remove one obstacle and you can have several more?, she said.
According to official sources, from January 20, 2001 (President George W. Bush’s inauguration date) to November 3, 2020 (holding the last elections), 131 legal regulations related to the blockade were processed, of which 100 percent resulted in extensions or modifications of previous legislation.
In Barrera’s opinion, the Barack Obama administration (2008-2016) showed how much can be done to make the application of this siege more flexible, since the president signed executive actions that fostered a climate of security.
“With Trump, on the other hand, we observe all the damage that can be caused in record time?, she stressed.
In fact, the Republican administration left unprecedented damage figures in 2020 due to this punitive policy against Cuba, exacerbated during the pandemic.
The island’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, recently reported that, for the first time in six decades, this hostile policy caused losses of more than five billion dollars in one year.
On the other hand, the extraterritorial application worsened between 2019 and 2020 as the Office for the Control of Foreign Assets imposed 12 penalties, which exceeded two thousand 403 million 985 thousand 125 dollars.
According to the expert, the coercion of the United States began with the revolutionary triumph, on January 1, 1959, through pressure on foreign companies to stop their sales to Cuba, then the Torricelli Law (1992) threatened sanctions against the countries that cooperated with the island and Helms-Burton (1996) perfected this mechanism.
Under Donald Trump, legal processes were initiated under the latter legislation for the first time in 23 years.
The actions of Democrats and Republicans, the interests of power groups and sanctions as a method of pressure show for Barrera that ultimately “the policy is applied with different standards, depending on the interests of the elites involved.”