Measures Announced by the Cuban Government in Response to Bush Administration Actions

Translated by Common Ground from the notice published in Granma, the Cuban National Newspaper.

May 10, 2004 4:00 PM

The brutal and cruel measures that the U.S. government has just adopted against Cuba, on top of the strict blockade that has lasted 45 years, are directly aimed at strangling our development and reducing to an absolute minimum the hard currency required to ensure food, medical and educational services and other essential needs of our population.

The Revolution, guided by its long experience, its equanimity and the solid unity and high political culture of its people, will respond immediately to these measures:

• Until further notice all stores will suspend sales of products in hard currency, with the exception of food and articles of personal hygiene. Our first guarantee will of the goods and services that are distributed to the entire population without privilege of any nature.
• Prices on regulated and subsidized products assigned to all citizens will be maintained unchanged.
• All current public health programs will be maintained without change.
• All educational programs will be maintained without change, including the service of school snacks and school lunches, and they will be increased along the current plan.
• Cultural activities, as an essential element of the quality of life of our people, will continue their extraordinary current development and the development of a comprehensive cultural life for all citizens will not be stopped for even a second.
• Universal higher education programs will continue forward and will reach all corners of the country.
• Unemployment will be kept below 2.5% for the active working population.
• The Cuban banking system's currency exchange centers (CADECAS) will continue to function with their accustomed seriousness and efficiency.
• Current exchange rates for the Cuban peso, the convertible peso and the dollar will be maintained without change.
• Bank accounts in Cuban pesos, convertible pesos and dollars of Cuban citizens are absolutely guaranteed, as are the corresponding interest rates.
• Farmers'markets where peasants offer their products at free market prices as well as the state farm product markets will be kept open under existing norms of operation.
• Nickel and cobalt mining will be increased as will the search for petroleum and gas in the most carefully studied and secure areas, with the application of new techniques for extraction, until we achieve self sufficiency.
• In terms of what is called economic investment, the principle to be followed is: Priority to the most rapid amortization and greatest short term benefits.
• In agriculture, the priority will be products for export and food production, with greater reliance on animal labor, lower cost imported inputs and lower costs for fuel.
• Rational and optimized use of land cleared of cane by the restructuring of the sugar industry.

For their part, the population and all production and service enterprises should maximize creation of goods and services with the highest quality and greatest economy of resources possible.

If the measures adopted do not prove sufficient to over the obstacles, whatever other measures are needed will be taken, always within the parameters of prioritizing the population's essential needs.

The brutality of measures adopted by the United States Government will lamentably raise the prices in the chain stores offering products in convertible currency and at the gasoline stations, though these will still not nearly compensate for the extraordinarily high current prices of food and transport in the world market, nor the near inaccessible cost of petroleum.

Understanding the political scope of this moment is of maximum importance. The fundamental task is to continue to perfect the tactics, techniques, the methods and the principles of War of All the People, and to continue raising the revolutionary, patriotic and socialist understanding of our invincible people.

Days of work and sacrifice await us, but also days of glory and victory for our heroic homeland.