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School
Trade With Plantation Cuba?
David Landau. Accuracy
In Media. August 29, 2003.
The matter of Cuba's benighted revolution continues
to grip the interest of Americans-or so one might
conclude from the fact that a recent panel discussion
on the U.S. embargo against Cuba drew a lunchtime
crowd of some 400 persons to the Commonwealth
Club of San Francisco.
The large audience had mostly come to show support
for relaxing the current laws against commerce
with Cuba. The embargo, its opponents aver, has
not brought positive changes to Cuban society.
An American economic presence in Cuba, they say,
can only be more beneficial than its absence has
been.
An abundant irony is that many people who make
this argument are those who still sentimentalize
Castro. At the San Francisco meeting, the loudest
applause went to a speaker who restated the very
litanies the regime has employed for nearly fifty
years to justify itself. And in the face of conventional
wisdom, one must clarify that the embargo law
was never meant to cause reform in Cuba. Its purpose
was to turn away from a regime that-under the
guise of "socialization" -had just stolen
about one billion dollars in U.S. properties.
The heart of the current anti-embargo stand is
a plea for "constructive engagement."
Its advocates posit that when American citizens
come face to face with Cuban citizens, mutual
understanding will flower and democratic tendencies
will spread. Actually, some of that did happen
when Castro's regime opened the door to family
visits by Cuban exiles; but business-to-business
relations are much more doubtful, because independent
enterprise does not exist in Cuba. American companies
would be dealing not with Cuban counterparts but
directly-and whether they know it or not-with
Castro's security forces; a prospect that offers
no hope of amelioration to ordinary Cubans.
Unlike U.S. companies, Cuba's enterprises are
completely dominated by government officials and
informants. Any sign of disloyalty can bring the
gravest consequence. Workers have no right to
collective bargaining; any attempt to organize
among workers is met with ostracism, demotion,
dismissal, or with arrest and lengthy imprisonment.
Foreign businesses that employ Cuban workers do
not pay those workers directly. Payments are made
to the state, which keeps nearly all the money
and doles out a pittance to workers who receive,
on average, about fifteen dollars a month. The
fact that even so small an amount is paid in dollars
makes the deal attractive to Cubans, who gladly
accept jobs in foreign companies.
This setup is a potential boon to offshore investors
who can acquire the services of skilled workers
without labor troubles, and without concerns about
how workers are treated. A further irony-given
the extensive support Castro's regime has enjoyed
in the West-is that such arrangements, far from
fostering a general welfare, have led to the kind
of hyper-exploitation that once occurred in pre-capitalist,
feudal societies.
Even if our Western countries have no current
experience in this regard, we do have words for
a condition in which people must do as they are
told, say and think as they are told, work as
they are told, consume as they are told, live
where they are told-with one's only chance for
a self-determined life residing in escape. One
of those words is serfdom; another is slavery.
The freeborn Cuban people are now in chains,
while their leaders cry for commerce with the
United States. Can we sensibly believe that dealing
with Cuba's bosses will improve the lot of those
who toil under them? At times, Western companies
have made handsome profits in dealings with the
Cuban government. At other times, especially with
foreign banks, Cuban entities have defaulted so
regularly that Castro's regime now has a credit
rating among the world's worst. In neither case-foreign
businesses gaining or losing-do Cuba's people
benefit. The only winners, who get money and staying
power, are the members of Castro's regime.
Not so long ago, when Castro imprisoned his political
enemies and forced a famous poet to recant his
ideas, Western intellectuals argued that if the
regime was on the side of the average farmer and
laborer, then repression of a few artists and
activists would not be a cause for concern. That
argument was Maoism on stilts. Decades of history
have now shown the bitter fruits of Castro's rule.
In all that time, the U.S. embargo has achieved
exactly what it set out to do. It has simply stated,
for everyone to hear, that Americans do not wish
to have trade with Cuba's overlords and slave-masters.
David Landau is publisher of Los Angeles-based
Pureplay Press, which publishes books about Cuba.
He can be reached at info@pureplaypress.com.
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