In April of 1960, just over a year after the establishment by Fidel Castro of a revolutionary communist government in Cuba, the US state department issued an internal memo about its prospects for bringing down the new regime. The memo acknowledged that Castro had the support of an overwhelming majority of Cubans, and that there was no effective political opposition remaining on the island. Military intervention from outside would be counterproductive, as it would only serve to strengthen communist support, and so the correct American approach would be to create “economic dissatisfaction and hardship” among ordinary Cubans.

“If such a policy is adopted,” the memo recommended, “it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes 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.”

This, from the beginning, was the policy aim of the most powerful country on the planet toward the tiny communist nation 90 miles to its south: to strangle its economy, to starve and immiserate its people until it collapsed into chaos – out of which could be fashioned a regime more amenable to US geopolitical and business interests.

Despite causing a great deal of hardship and deprivation to Cubans, the policy known to Americans as the “embargo”, and to Cubans as the “blockade”, has famously never achieved its desired effect. (This was not the only approach, of course: the CIA’s history of failed assassination attempts on Castro – exploding cigars, poisoned chocolate milkshakes, employment of mafia hitmen........

© The Irish Times