Fernando Dámaso, 2 November 2018 — As it does every year, the Cuban government put on a show in the United Nations calling for the end to the embargo, which it refers to as a blockade, by the United States government. And as they do every year most countries formally voted in favor of its elimination, votes that are absolutely meaningless given that these United Nations resolutions are non-binding, which is to say they require no action.
If the Cuban government hopes to end the blockade, it must first be willing to enter into a dialogue with the United States government and, more importantly, be willing to both give and take. Simply making demands without offering any concessions, as it always does, will not work.
Russia, Vietnam, China and other countries in the former communist bloc did this and resolved their differences. Now North Korea is doing the same.
As long as the Cuban government and its leaders refuse to relinquish their failed ideology and innate stubbornness, continually clinging to the past and forgetting the present, they will solve absolutely nothing.
In short, what impacts Cubans is not the blockade by the United States government but the blockade that the Cuban government has imposed on the Cuban people for sixty years, now made harsher by a draft constitution which includes recently approved laws and resolutions restricting self-employment, now referred to as non-state employment.
