Helms-Burton Act: Resurrecting the Iron Curtain

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The Bill that places a stranglehold on Cuba’s economy in order to facilitate its long-term goal of expelling Castro from office.

Helms-Burton Act: Resurrecting the Iron Curtain

On March 12, 1996, the United States Congress passed one of the most regressive and draconic foreign policy initiatives in recent memory with the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (LIBERTAD), also known as the Helms-Burton Act.  This legislation was enacted in response to a 1996 incident in which the Cuban air force shot down two civilian planes belonging to the Miami-based anti-Castro initiative, Brothers to the Rescue.[1] Congress  passed the act in an attempt to place a stranglehold on Cuba’s economy in order to facilitate its long-term goal of expelling Castro from office.  Helms-Burton proved to be a costly policy both in terms of the resources it consumed as well as the negative impact it had on Washington’s reputation.

History of the U.S. embargo against Cuba up to the Helms-Burton Act

Prior to the 1990s, the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba had never been officially designated by law, but was rather upheld by a series of executive orders.[2] President Kennedy initiated the U.S. trade embargo in 1962, in response to Cuba’s nationalization of U.S. assets in the wake of the Cuban Revolution.  The embargo drove Cuba to rely on the Soviet Union as its primary trade partner—so much so that Cuba’s economy eventually became completely dependent upon its communist ally.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the Cuban economy quickly  tanked.  With its largest trading partner defunct, Cuba almost immediately lost around 85 percent of its foreign trade,  with its GDP falling by a third between 1989 and 1993.[3] This led the island nation to undertake drastic economic reforms as a means of attracting foreign investment and other sources of capital.[4] A hardening of Washington-Havana relations soon resulted,  leading  to the signing of the Cuban Democracy Act, also known as the Toricelli Law, in 1992.  This was the first step towards making the embargo on Cuba an official law, rather than a general policy upheld by successive administrations.

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