Charles Rangel: “in the shadows of this great Republic of the United States is a small island 90 miles off our shore called Cuba. The…”

“in the shadows of this great Republic of the United States is a small island 90 miles off our shore called Cuba. The most powerful Nation in the world somehow just fritters when we consider talking to the Cuban people, trading with the Cuban people or visiting in Cuba. The sanctions that we have had against this small nation that have been locked into place for over 40 years just have not worked. They never do. Unilateral sanctions never do work. It is so arrogant that not only do we have these sanctions against the Cuban people and their government but we are arrogant enough to put sanctions against our friends and our allies that want to do business with the people in Cuba. It falls beneath the dignity of a great country to try to bring down a government in any country by using food and medicine and economic exchange as a weapon in order to do that. There is no way that we are going to convince the American people that Fidel Castro is more of a tyrant, more of a dictator, more oppressive than people in other parts of the world which we are doing business with.”