Anti-Castro Group Aims Ads at Sanctions Foes in Congress
By Karen DeYoung and Juliet Eilperin. Washington Post Staff Writer. Sunday, June 18, 2000; Page A06
The Cuban American National Foundation, the powerful anti-Castro lobbying organization reeling from recent losses in the Elian Gonzalez case and growing support for lifting U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba, plans this weekend to launch a series of television ads targeted against supporters
of the anti-sanctions movement.
The 30-second ads, titled "Dictatorship" and initially set for broadcast in Spokane, Wash., Little Rock, Ark., and Washington, D.C., accuse Fidel Castro's Cuba of allowing forced child labor and child prostitution, sponsoring international terrorism and imprisoning political
dissidents. "Lifting America's embargo on Cuba will strengthen Castro and help the abuses continue," the ads say. "The embargo is right . . . because the abuses are wrong."
Although the ads mention no names (except Castro's) or specific legislation, Emilio Vasquez, a Washington spokesman for the Miami-based foundation, said the initial targets are Rep. George R. Nethercutt Jr. (R-Wash.) and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). Nethercutt has sponsored a House measure to
lift all unilateral U.S. embargoes on sales of food and medicine, and Lincoln led a recent delegation to Cuba of Arkansas agricultural producers seeking new commodity markets there.
Vasquez said that the campaign, whose budget he declined to provide, is by far the largest the foundation has ever mounted and that it will last through the end of the year, moving to various markets around the country.
In a statement, Nethercutt criticized the ads as "misguided and misleading."
"If sanctions on food and medicine were so effective in forcing change in Cuba, surely we would have seen some results after forty years," he said. "In reality, these sanctions have only served Castro's interests by allowing him to demagogue the United States."
Jennifer Greeson, a spokeswoman for Lincoln, said the senator is fighting to lift the embargo because it has cost the state half of its rice export market. "The opportunity to ship 400,000 tons of rice down the Mississippi River through the Gulf of Mexico to the Cuban people would be an
enormous boost to the economy of the state," she said.
The foundation, which the Center for Public Integrity has called "the most potent voice on U.S. policy toward Cuba," provided financial and public backing to the efforts of the Miami relatives of 6-year-old castaway Elian Gonzalez to prevent his father from taking him back to Cuba. The
relatives are appealing a series of adverse court decisions, and public opinion polls indicate most Americans disapprove of their efforts.
Until this year, foundation efforts to prevent loosening of 40-year-old economic sanctions against Cuba had been overwhelmingly successful. A newly forged coalition of liberal Democrats and farm-state Republicans seeking new agricultural markets, however, has brought new challenges.
Most of the charges in the ads are taken from the State Department's 1999 human rights report on Cuba. The report notes that Cuba has no laws against forced labor and that prisoners are often used for agricultural work. Although forced labor by children is prohibited by Castro's government,
schoolchildren over the age of 11 are required to spend 30 to 45 days of their summer vacation doing unpaid farm work, the report says.
A LOOK AT . . . Trading With Communists
By Tom DeLay. Sunday, June 18, 2000; Page B03
The struggle against communist oppression did not conclude with the fall of the Berlin Wall. In fact, this struggle to liberate men and women from the evil of totalitarianism continues with great urgency.
In China, 1.2 billion souls live without the most basic of human rights. In Cuba, 11 million men, women and children suffer under Fidel Castro's brand of Marxism. The challenge posed by these dreadful circumstances mirrors the responsibility America shouldered during our Cold War with the Soviet
Union: We must implement a comprehensive policy that enhances our security by defending and exporting our values.
We must smash the last few remnants of the Iron Curtain by recognizing the particular circumstances present in the remaining repressive states and applying a specific approach to each.
China and Cuba offer the perfect example of how, if we are to transform communist states, we must use different tactics for different countries. America should work to encourage states such as China that are already undertaking changes that promise to foster democratic principles; and we should
quarantine regimes that steadfastly refuse to take even incremental steps toward political and economic reform, such as Cuba.
We have good reason to expect that increased trade with China through the permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) recently approved by the House will accelerate the growth of democratic impulses in that country. China's command economy has greatly evolved since the 1970s. At that time, the state
and the state alone set prices, planned economic goals, and allocated resources. China had no real private enterprise or foreign ventures. It imported only those goods that could not be made in China.
Today, China is changing rapidly. Free-market forces increasingly drive economic decisions. Beijing has eased restrictions on business enterprises, and loosened the rules governing where and how international firms can operate. As a result, the private sector is growing. Entrepreneurs, once
condemned as "counterrevolutionaries," are now the instruments of reform. It is easier for private firms to secure import and export rights, obtain funding, and form joint ventures.
Without a doubt, China remains a serious threat to peace and stability. It is still ruled by despots, and trade in the absence of a determined U.S. effort to undermine the communists in Beijing will make little difference.
But all the dramatic shifts now taking place do suggest that a middle class is emerging in China, and I believe that this middle class will eventually demand broad acceptance of democratic values.
Unfortunately, the prospects for even a slow transition to a market democracy through trade are much dimmer in Cuba. Castro has made it clear that he has no free-market or democratic impulses. Cuba strictly limits foreign investment. Cuban contracts have no integrity. Foreign firms operating
there must hire employees from the government bureaucracy.
In short, Castro's dogmatic enforcement of pure communist ideology would make trade with Cuba a source of economic support for a despicable system, not a tool for growing a freedom-loving middle class. By "engaging" Cuba, America would only provide Castro with more funds for his
policies of repression.
In addition to these fundamental contrasts in their domestic economic structures, China and Cuba maintain other dramatic differences, not the least of which are size and location. The embargo against Cuba--a small island nation in our hemisphere with a population that equals about 4 percent of
our own--has, in fact, largely contained an aggressive Marxist who is openly committed to sparking revolution throughout Central and South America.
Applying the same approach to China--a country on the other side of the globe, occupying an enormous portion of an entire continent, and with a population well over 400 percent larger than that of the United States--makes little sense. Withholding PNTR from China, for example, would only limit
our ability to reach out to the Chinese entrepreneurs who are so critical to the advancement of free markets and human rights.
Defending and exporting democratic virtues is the proper goal of U.S. foreign policy. Trade represents a means of pursuing this objective, and it is a means that must only be employed when greater commerce will serve to undermine tyranny and promote democratic ideals.
We can never forget that the cause of freedom must be the cause that guides our nation's actions in the world, and we need only cast a brief gaze into the past to find countless lessons about freedom's enormous value and precious nature.
I had such a lesson as a young boy. It is not, to be sure, the kind of lesson that in any way compares to the searing experiences endured by the thousands and thousands of immigrants who seek refuge in America each year. Nonetheless, it is enough of a lesson to merit mention during a discussion
about how we can best promote democracy in China, Cuba and around the world.
My dad drilled oil wells in Venezuela. Our family lived there for several years and witnessed three revolutions. Occasionally, we traveled back and forth to Texas, and in those days, Cuba was the refueling stop. I will never forget one short stay on Castro's island. Escorted between rows of
soldiers with barking guard dogs, my mother, brother, sister and I were held in a small detention room for hours without cause or explanation. Although she did her best to conceal her fear, I sensed that my mother was not at all certain that we would ever get back on the plane.
We were released later that same day and able to depart without further incident, but by then I had learned an absolutely unforgettable lesson about freedom. I learned that freedom is not an unalterable condition. I learned that freedom, though the greatest gift after life, could be taken away
in an instant.
When companies operate in China, they are working in a way that I believe will ultimately deliver freedom to the Chinese people. When such companies operate in Cuba, they strengthen a communist dictatorship dedicated to the destruction of that same freedom. The difference is decisive, and an
effective and principled U.S. foreign policy must recognize and incorporate this distinction as we labor to bring these two states into the family of democratic nations.
Rep. Tom DeLay, a Republican, represents Texas's 22nd District and is House Majority Whip.
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