USA charged Brazil to put pressure on Cuba, reveals telegram

In one of these flights, however, Havana chose to overthrow the plane, opening a deep crisis between the two countries. On February 26, 1996, Clinton asked Congress to pass a law to seek immediate compensation for the family members of the dead pilots. He ordered the expansion of Radio Martí, placed boundaries of movement to Cuban diplomats and banned commercial flights between Cuba and the United States.

Clinton then asked the Pentagon to evaluate two possible response options: a massive air strike and a missile attack against San Antonio Air Base, where the migs who knocked down the civil plane had taken off. The Pentagon, however, advised against such measures and recommended extreme caution.

Clinton, not to be perceived as “weak”, decided to support the Cuban Democratic Freedom and Solidarity Law, known as the Helms-Burton Law, which provided for sanctions against Cuba and third countries that negotiated with the country.

Until then, it was the older legislation in history. Clinton, on the eve of the presidential election, neutralized the accusations of the Cuban exiles that he was changing politics. The gesture was critical to keep Florida in the hands of the Democrats.

But personally, the president seemed to understand that the embargo never brought results. “Anyone with a minimum of intelligence could see that the embargo was counterproductive,” he later told a confidant in the oval hall. “He challenged wiser policies of engagement we had adopted with some communist countries, even at the height of the Cold War,” he concluded.

In his biography, My Life, Clinton once again admitted the internal policy character that had the measure. “Supporting the law was good in an election year in Florida. But he undermined any chance I could have to withdraw the embargo in a second term, in exchange for positive changes in Cuba,” he wrote. “It almost looked that Castro wanted to force us to keep the embargo as an excuse for his economic failures,” he added.