Conclusion

Abstract

The 1990s began very badly for Cuba. The collapse of the Soviet Union was an economic disaster for the island and the survival of the Revolution was called into question. In international terms, rather than pursuing new policies in the spirit of post-cold war multilateralism (the stated aim of the inaccurately termed New World Order proclaimed by President George Bush), the United States intensified its attacks upon Cuba. Charging that Cuba continued to pose a security threat to the Americas, it introduced aggressive legislation (the Torricelli-Graham Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and also the Helms-Burton Act of 1996) which strengthened the blockade and confirmed the belief held by the right-wing Cuban lobby in the US that it was now time for the final assault upon Castro. Clinton agreed to Helms-Burton after Cuba’s shooting down of two Hermanos al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue) planes on 24 February 1996 after they illegally flew over Cuban airspace and after several earlier warnings to the US government that it would take such action.¹ The Hermanos had initially formed in order to rescue people on the seas between Cuba and the US coastline following the 1994 balseros crisis. The Cuban government let it be known it would not stop those wishing to leave. Thousands set off from small ports around Havana. After three decades, Washington was compelled to reverse its open door immigration policy when, on 18 August, it ordered the US Coastguard to take any survivors to Guantanamo rather than to the American mainland.