The Helms-Burton Law: An Obstacle to Democracy in Cuba?
Keywords:
economic sanctions, USA, democratizacion, human rights, political dissidence-CubaAbstract
This article assesses the role of the US embargo, and the Helms-Burton law in particular, in promoting a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. Drawing on democratization theory and an analysis of the singular role of the USA in the contruction of a political discourse of adversial nationalism in Cuba, the effectiveness of the Helms-Burton law is questioned. Focusing on human rights as a particular piece of the broader democratization puzzle, the article examines the effects of Cuban legislation- the Law of Reaffirmation of Cuban Dignity and Sovereignity and the Law of Protection of Cubas National Independence and Economy"- enacted as countermeasures to Helms-Burton, concluding that the US law does little to promote political liberalization in Cuba. Instead, it is argued the Helms-Burton law contributes to the tightening of an already repressive regime.
Downloads
Issue
Section
License
The authors who publish in this journal agree on the following conditions:
In accordance with copyright laws, Política y gobierno recognizes and respects the authors’ moral rights, as well as the ownership of property rights, which will be transferred to the journal for its dissemination in open access. Política y gobierno does not charge the authors for submitting and processing articles for publication.
All the articles published in Política y gobierno —with no exception— are distributed under a Creative Commons License 4.0 Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0 International), that allows third parties to use the published work providing they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this journal.
The authors can enter into other independent and additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in Política y gobierno (for example to include it into an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as lomg as it is clearly indicated that the work was published for the first time in Política y gobierno.
For all of the above, the author(s) must submit the Format of transfer of the ownership of the first publishing rights duly filled in and signed by the author(s). This format can be sent as a pdf by e-mail: politicaygobierno@cide.edu (Letter- transfer of property rights)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International.
Contact