Crack in the Boycott

For 14 years, the U.S. has maintained a trade boycott against Cuba as part of a policy of trying to isolate the Communist island country from the rest of the hemisphere. Last week, in the most significant change in that policy to date, the State Department announced a partial lifting of the boycott. Direct trade with Cuba is still banned. But U.S. firms with overseas subsidiaries will now be allowed to make unrestricted sales to Cuba from their foreign-owned plants; foreign merchant vessels will be allowed to refuel in U.S. ports even if they have previously called in Cuban ports; and countries that trade with Cuba will be eligible to receive U.S. food supplies distributed under U.S. Public Law 480.

For some time, Cuba's Premier Fidel Castro has been sending out signals indicating that he would welcome a policy change. As long as two years ago, he promised to begin arresting skyjackers who sought asylum in Cuba. In June he quietly expelled three skyjackers and let the U.S. know they could be picked up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He returned $2 million in ransom money that had been taken to Cuba in 1972 by the skyjackers of a Southern Airways DC-9. He also toned down the anti-American rhetoric on Cuban radio concerning the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo.

Perhaps most important, Castro gradually convinced the U.S. that Cuba was no longer "exporting revolution" to the hemisphere. When Senator George McGovern visited Cuba last May, Castro discussed the 1962 missile crisis with him. "I was furious when Khrushchev compromised," Castro said. "But I realize in retrospect that he reached the proper settlement with Kennedy. If my position had prevailed, there would have been a terrible war. I was wrong."

Purely Pragmatic. Last year the U.S. reluctantly agreed to permit the shipment to Cuba of some $80 million worth of automobiles manufactured by General Motors, Ford and Chrysler in their Argentine subsidiaries. That decision, however, was purely pragmatic. The Buenos Aires government had warned that if such permission were denied, Argentina would expropriate the U.S.-owned production lines. Last week's action--taken only three days before the foreign ministers of the world's nonaligned nations were due to begin a conference in Lima--merely extended the previous ruling to cover all U.S. firms with foreign subsidiaries.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger still maintains that a full resumption of U.S. trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba would be "premature." But as the vice president of the Cuban Agrarian Reform Institute, Solano Pinera, told McGovern: "Don't forget, we need about $3 billion in equipment for our new [farm development] program, and we're ready to buy." With that kind of money piled up only 90 miles off Key West, U.S. businessmen are already putting pressure on Washington.

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