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Making
deals with communists
Posted on Fri, Nov. 28,
2003 in The
Miami Herald.
Our opinion: It's bad business to lobby
Congress for Cuba's tyrant
How does it feel to shill for a tyrant?
Ask the Indiana Farm Bureau or Port Manatee
officials on the west coast of Florida.
Both have signed quid pro quo deals with
the Cuban government. They have agreed to
lobby Congress to lift the U.S. trade and
travel restrictions on Cuba in exchange
for the dictator's promise that the regime
will send business their way.
That's bad business, bad politics and worse
morality. U.S. companies shouldn't be carrying
water for a foreign power, much less a totalitarian
regime that is on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting
nations, and they should refuse to do so.
Trade deal negotiated
''It's not healthy to have a commercial
relationship that is dependent on a quid
pro quo for political purposes,'' says John
Kavulich, U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council
president. Yet Cuba has been pressuring
U.S. firms that want to sell agricultural
products to the regime to become more politically
active. The regime needs new supporters
pushing Congress since their ranks thinned
after Fidel Castro unjustly imprisoned 75
dissidents and executed three accused hijackers
this year.
Apparently unperturbed by these events,
the Indiana Farm Bureau signed a deal with
the regime in Havana last month. In their
''memorandum of understanding,'' the bureau
agrees to lobby Cuba's interest on Capitol
Hill. In return, the regime promises to
buy $15 million in Hoosier soybeans, cattle,
pork, poultry, corn and eggs.
Thus, American farmers and firms are being
used by a despot whose goal is to maintain
a stranglehold on power. After decades of
driving the Cuban economy into the ground
and stiffing creditors, the dictator needs
new sources of income. Lifting the embargo
and travel restrictions would boost his
bankrupt dictatorship.
Wooed by Castro
Angel Dalmau, Cuba's deputy foreign minister,
confirmed the regime's agenda last week.
He told the AFP wire service that every
purchase of U.S. foodstuffs has a ''political
component'' with the "objective of
defeating the North American blockade.''
So important is this aim that the regime
has spent $304.5 million in hard cash buying
agricultural and food products from U.S.
sellers since sales restrictions were lifted
in December 2001. The push is accelerating,
too, with sales this year running nearly
50 percent higher than in 2002, Mr. Kavulich
notes.
Indiana farmers and Port Manatee aren't
alone. A parade of other U.S. farm interests,
ports, governors, Congress members and business
people have been visiting the island, wooed
by Castro while ordinary Cubans are forbidden
from even starting their own businesses.
Congress should ignore shills for the regime.
It shouldn't lift embargo until political
prisoners no longer rot in Cuba's jails
and the Cuban people enjoy democracy, free
enterprise and human rights.
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