Page 10 - Social Science.docx

Principles of social science
Cuba, marking the first step in a long line of Kennedy’s legislation that progressively restricted trade with Cuba more and more following the Bay of Pigs disaster.7 President Kennedy also increased trade restrictions with a 1962 executive order that covered all product imports containing Cuban goods in the embargo; the restrictions were so extreme that the embargo applied to products that featured any Cuban parts, even if they were assembled in another nation or were mainly manufactured elsewhere.8 The economic tensions between the United States and Cuba also extended to impact other countries as Kennedy extended the Foreign Assistance Act in 1962 to forbid foreign aid from being provided to any nation involved in assisting Cuba.9 In a more encompassing restrictive move, Kennedy amended the embargo later in the year to include goods with any trace of Cuban materials.
In Cuba, anti-American sentiment was fueled by the embargo’s negative impacts on the Cuban public’s access to necessities including food, water, and medicine. Protested by Cuba’s citizen groups and dubbed by foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque as “an act of genocide,” the embargo’s impact manifested itself in some areas as poor nutrition that evolved into widespread diseases stemming from these nutritional issues.10 The growing antagonism between the United States and Cuba is illustrated in Castro’s 1971 speech reflecting on the embargo: “It is quite clear. It is not we who owe them. It is they who owe us for the immense material and human damage
7 “United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.” | United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. 8 ““Executive Orders Disposition Tables,” National Archives and Records Administration.
9 “Foreign Assistance Act of 1961,” U.S.C. Title 22 - FOREIGN RELATIONS AND INTERCOURSE.
10 Archibald Ritter, and John M. Kirk, Cuba in the International System: Normalization and Integration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); “General Assembly Yet Again Issues Annual Call for End to US Embargo against Cuba | | UN News.” UN News Center. United Nations.
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