Action whose mission is to pressure a person, group, organization, eliminating or complicating the ties that exist with it
The word boycott designates that action whose mission is to pressure a person, group, organization, among others, eliminating or complicating the links that exist with it and that can be commercial, economic and thus affect the economy and finances of the person or entity boycotted, or failing that, other levels and planes such as the social one can be attacked.
Origin of the term
The term has its origin back in the middle of the 20th century, when the Irish captain Charles Cunningham Boycott administered land in his hometown and used to oppose the claims made by the peasants who worked them and who demanded better working conditions. Meanwhile, his neighbors, upset with this attitude, punished him by not working for him or by not rendering any service he needed, with the intention of pressuring him to accept the requests of the peasants.
Hence, the concept and the application that we give it today arises when we want to name that negative action that is executed against a person, company or country, mainly in the economic plane, with the mission that the affected person modify the attitude adopted in some aspect and that complicates the present of a group.
And for those who like anecdotes we must emphasize that the pressure Boycott received was such that he ended up going into exile in England.
Although the boycott is mostly applied in economic and commercial contexts, it also tends to occur in the social or labor sphere.
The United States' boycott of Cuba
It is common for this concept to be associated and used as a synonym for the word blockade and to see it more clearly we will give a very descriptive example ... The blockade that Cuba suffered by the United States for so many years and that complicated its economy was a clear An example of the boycott that the northern country imposed on the island ruled at that time by Fidel Castro with the mission of punishing it for its behavior.
The blockade has been in force since October 1960 and was the United States' response to the expropriations that the Cuban government carried out on the properties of Cuban citizens and also of North American companies residing on the island. At first, areas such as medicine and food were left out of the boycott, but in 1962 it was decided to extend it to those mentioned as well.
Since 2014, Cuba and the United States have moved closer together and progress is slowly being made towards ending the current blockade.
