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On
sanctions and sunbathing in Cuba / Ileana Fuentes
By © Ileana Fuentes. La
Nueva Cuba, September 6, 2003.
On August 21st, the state of Alabama signed trade
agreements with Cuba worth 10 million dollars
in poultry, dairy products and other undisclosed
items. Are these items to be sold in pesos by
the ration card, or freely at the chopins where
the government can hoard the coveted dollar? As
Alabamans celebrated their chicken deal, Cuba's
daily Granma announced a national inventory of
all computers to identify and seize those of "dubious
provenance."
In July, Pinar del Río police confiscated
sewing machines and sewing supplies from local
women engaged in dressmaking, an anti-social form
of self-employment by Cuban standards. Others
engaged in selling ice cream, ham snacks and fruit
drinks for a living also had their supplies seized.
Last January, the Cuban government started to
random search people's homes to weed out drug
dealers and black-market operators, or so it said.
In February, the Holguín police confiscated
legally purchased wares and cooking supplies from
countless licensed female cuentapropistas in the
food-to-go business. Neither pots, nor pans, nor
sewing machines have yet been returned.
It should surprise no one that the Cuban regime
should show such blatant disregard for privacy,
private property, contracts, entrepreneurship,
and the sanctity of sales transactions. After
all, the revolution started out in 1959 confiscating
all privately owned land larger than 990 acres;
then all national firms and urban property in
1960; and between 1960 and 1961 the property of
foreigners, Americans first and foremost. Soon
even the smallest mom-and-pop stores were nationalized.
In 1963, the government confiscated further all
farms larger than 165 acres, causing agricultural
production -traditionally the bountiful accomplishment
of small farmers- to go down the drain.
Most confiscations went un-compensated, an early
sign that the regime disregarded fair business
practices, ownership rights, contract compliance,
and honesty. Cuba is a rogue state, run by military
thugs who have excelled at thievery. This is the
trade partner the foes of the U.S. embargo are
peddling to American business.
A few months ago, the International Labor Organization
denounced the exploitation of Cuban workers at
the hands of the sole employer -the Cuban State-
and its foreign corporate accomplices. These companies
pay workers salaries directly to the Cuban State
in hard currency. They look the other way when
the government turns around and pays a minimal
fraction to the Cuban worker, in worthless Cuban
pesos. As reported recently by Dr. Jorge Salazar-Carrillo,
a Brookings Institute senior researcher and chair
of the Economics Department at Florida International
University, foreign hotel concerns, like the Spanish
Sol Meliá, in partnership with Cuba, pay
US$400 per worker "hired." The government
then pays the worker 400 worthless Cuban pesos.
Net gain per worker is $384. Is this a government
with whom decent Americans want to trade?
The 20-year policy of engagement with Cuba -trading
and people-to-people contact-practiced by dozens
of countries in Europe and Latin America has failed
to transform repression into tolerant diversity,
exploitation into fair labor practice, or tyranny
into democracy. So, it begs the question: why
will U.S. engagement and "gringo-to-asere"
contact bring about any kind of improvement?
Not that commerce and trade -much less tourism-
exists to reform dictatorial regimes, or bring
civil and human rights to the natives. The business
of business is business. Trade has to do with
profit, making money, multiplying assets and developing
markets, not with justice or human rights, even
if the prospective trade partner is a dismal autocracy
like Kuwait, or a genocidal power like China (the
female infanticide that results from China's reproductive
policies is genocide), or a military bully the
likes of pre-perestroika Russia.
Thirty years ago, that kind of "ugly American"
was despised, for he cared little about rights,
whether human, women's, workers', or blacks'.
That is, until the question of apartheid in South
Africa shook international conscience. In December
of 1985, the World Council on Churches gathered
in Harare, Zimbabwe, to discuss the South African
drama. In the end, the Harare Declaration stated
clearly:
"We call on the international community
to apply immediate and comprehensive sanctions
in South Africa…the minimum requirement of
which must be to promote divestment and end all
investments in South Africa."
Divestment and sanctions did influence greatly
the repeal of apartheid and the advent of a free
and democratic South Africa. Now, if sanctions
were moral and good for South Africa, why are
they immoral and evil for Cuba? Is Castro's 44-year
tyranny any less offensive to human dignity than
apartheid? American business trading with a quasi-capitalist
ruling class that allows only the spoils to its
people, will only make the oppressor wealthier,
the dictatorship stronger, and 11 million disenfranchised
and rights-less Cubans a lot poorer and miserable.
The stampede of farm, cattle and grain interests
storming the halls of Congress to influence legislation
that will allow them to trade with the Cuban dictatorship
is a despicable performance by opportunist capitalists.
Whatever happened to the passion with which liberals
hated money-grubbing capitalist pigs?
Last week, Florida's cattle industry scored a
deal to sell 450 heads of Holstein and Jersey
cattle to ALIMPORT, the Cuban government's all-powerful
imports monopoly. Let's talk cattle for a moment.
In 1958, the year before the revolution, there
were 1.2 heads of cattle -Holstein and Jersey
among them- per person: 7 million heads of cattle
amidst 6 million Cubans. Today, there are 0.4
mooing quadrupeds per Cuban citizen, some 4 million
heads of cattle in a population of 11 million
people. Every cattle expert will assure you that
the U.S. embargo did not cause the demise of the
cattle industry in Cuba. So, what will the 450
heads these Dixie ranchers will sell to ALIMPORT
do for 11 million hungry people, when INTUR -the
State tourism agency- has to feed like royalty
an estimated 1 million tourists -not counting
Americans- expected to vacation in the island
in 2004?
This takes us to the subject of travel restrictions.
I empathize with American citizens who want to
vacation at Varadero Beach, or have medical treatment
in Cuba's SERVIMED health facilities. But, just
like I am against American business helping Cuba's
white oppressive military elite become any richer
or powerful, I am against my next door neighbor
going to Cuba to consume the medical and food
supplies that my people -who are almost 70% "of-color"
-are entitled to, and ain't getting.
If moral or ethical considerations don't matter,
let the business community take into consideration,
at the very least, Cuba's appalling business record
and credit history. Cuba has debt payment and
accounts payables in long-term arrears with France,
Italy, Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, and even Russia
-a country whose multi-billion claims Fidel Castro
cynically dismisses saying it was owed to the
now defunct Soviet Union. Most of these countries
have suspended credits to Cuba, and their attempts
to negotiate payment schedules on the arrears
have failed. Who, but a greedy and/or misguided
lot, could recommend that American business trade
with that Cuba?
The cash-only option is not the answer. First,
the cash that goes into American coffers will
not translate into economic or political benefits
for Cubans. The argument that lifting U.S. sanctions
will benefit the Cuban people is sheer demagoguery.
It would have been racist demagoguery in the case
of South Africa. Secondly, if anyone has priority
in receiving cash payments from Cuba's government,
it is:
Foremost, the dozens of foreign trade partners
and creditors, as well as those countries whose
Cuban receivables are in arrears; and secondly
· The hundreds of corporate and individual
American claimants registered with the Joint Corporate
Committee on Cuban Claims to which Castro's regime
owes an estimated $6 billion dollars in compensation
for the expropriations of the early sixties.
Is Cuba a nice place to visit? Of course! Cubans
are a hospitable and warm people. But, why should
freedom-loving Americans spend their hard-earned
vacation dollars boosting a ruthless regime?
Is Cuba a desirable trade partner at present?
An old Cuban proverb says it best: "He who
trips twice over the same stone is a damn fool."
Nobel Peace laureate, South Africa's Archbishop
Desmond Tutu spoke relevantly about South Africa
back in 1988, with words that fit Cuba today:
"The only peaceful way of forcing [the South
African government] to sit at the negotiations
table is through properly-enforced and comprehensive
diplomatic and economic sanctions. I reiterate
my call for such sanctions."
The South African government freed its violent
opposition, Mandela and Sisulu among others. Let's
hold out touring and trading with Castro until
his regime is compelled to free its internal peaceful
opposition and negotiate a full transition to
democracy.
Copyright © 1997-2003
- LA NUEVA CUBA. All Rights Reserved.
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