Author Archives: Arch Ritter

WHY REPUBLICAN CRITIQUES OF OBAMA’S APPROACH TO HUMAN RIGHTS IN CUBA ARE WRONG

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Arch Ritter

New York Times, MARCH 2, 2016

By WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE

Original Essay: Obama’s Long Game for Cubans’ Rights

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s announcement that he will visit Cuba this month has prompted a new round of criticism from opponents of normalizing relations. Their complaint: that the administration’s opening to Cuba has yet to yield any tangible progress on human rights.

“I think the president ought to be pushing for a free Cuba” instead of going there, said one Republican presidential hopeful, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Mr. Cruz’s rival, echoed the theme: “A year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban government remains as oppressive as ever.” The United States, such critics argue, should insist on human rights concessions in exchange for normalization.

Election year hyperbole aside, this argument sounds compelling because it appeals to core American values of democracy and human rights. But the critics have it backward: Mr. Obama has not given up on human rights in order to pursue normalization; he is pursuing normalization as a path to improving human rights. Nor is this a particularly new or exotic strategy; it’s been American policy toward China since President Richard Nixon’s trip to Beijing in 1972.

As President Obama said when he announced the opening to Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014, he chose engagement because the old policy of trying to coerce concessions from Havana had failed. If anything, it made things worse by giving the Cuban government a convenient enemy to blame for its problems and a ready excuse to suppress dissent.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is more subtle. He aims to weave a web of economic and diplomatic ties that create self-interested reasons for Cuban leaders to change. As the president explained to Yahoo News, “The more that they see the benefits of U.S. investment, the more that U.S. tourist dollars become woven into their economy, the more that telecommunications is opened up so that Cubans are getting information unfettered by censorship, the more you are laying the foundation for the bigger changes that are going to be coming over time.” In the meantime, he says, Washington will continue to “push, prod, nudge” Cuban leaders to do better on human rights in the near term.

While critics denounce engagement as a betrayal of the Cuban people, the Cuban people themselves overwhelmingly support it. Anyone who was in Cuba, as I was, on Dec. 17, 2014, can testify to the jubilation with which they greeted the announcement. People applauded, hugged one another and cried. Church bells rang across Havana.

In April 2015, an independent poll on the island found that 97 percent of the 1,200 Cubans sampled thought better relations with the United States would be good for Cuba. And lest anyone think people were afraid to speak honestly, the poll also found that Mr. Obama was more popular than either Fidel or Raúl Castro (80 percent positive and only 17 percent negative, as compared with 50 percent negative for Fidel and 48 percent negative for Raúl). Mr. Obama can expect a warm welcome in Havana.

To be sure, some prominent Cuban dissidents have criticized his approach. Jorge Luis García Pérez — also known as Antúnez — called the vision of promoting change through engagement “a farce promoted by the Castro regime in order to perpetuate itself in power.” The political activist Antonio Rodiles has argued that American sanctions failed because they were “anemically imposed.”

But the dissident community is not monolithic. Miriam Leiva, one of the founders of Ladies in White, a group of women related to jailed dissidents, applauded Mr. Obama’s policy as “a unique opportunity to assist the Cuban people.” Elizardo Sánchez, who founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and National Reconciliation and reports monthly about political arrests, also endorsed engagement, saying, “It’s better to resolve differences in this way, not to make war, either cold or hot.”

Engagement has already borne some fruit. Expanding commercial relations are reinforcing the economic liberalization that began in Cuba in 2011. Internet access is growing. Debate within Cuban civil society about the island’s economic and political future is more robust than ever. As Mr. Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, who negotiated the 2014 agreements, noted, “We see everything that we’re doing as being in the net positive for the lives and human rights of the Cuban people.”

Mr. Obama’s visit is an opportunity to strengthen diplomatic and commercial ties, and to directly raise the issue of human rights both publicly and privately. He plans to meet with a broad range of civil society leaders and with a group of dissidents, as Secretary of State John Kerry did on a visit last August. In his public address, President Obama will undoubtedly speak with eloquence about the virtues of democracy and human rights, as former President Jimmy Carter did on his 2002 trip.

In short, human rights has never been off the agenda of Mr. Obama’s Cuba policy, but experience has taught him that making imperious demands and issuing ultimatums did nothing to advance the cause. Instead, he is playing a long game, knowing that his strategy of engagement and persistent persuasion will not produce dramatic change overnight. Still, the president is gambling that his formula will create the conditions that draw Cuba inexorably toward a more open body politic and economy.

All gambles are uncertain, of course. But the president is on to something: Engagement has a better chance than the policy of hostility, which has been a losing bet for more than half a century.

William M. LeoGrande is a professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., and a co-author, with Peter Kornbluh, of “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.”

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William M. LeoGrande

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CUBA CONFRONTS THE ZIKA VIRUS

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Arch Ritter

CUBA ANNOUNCES FIRST CASE OF ZIKA, IMPORTED FROM VENEZUELA

By Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press

HAVANA — Mar 2, 2016,

Original Article: First Zika Case

Cuba announced Wednesday that it had detected the first case of the Zika virus on the island, which had been one of the last nations in the Western Hemisphere free of the disease.

The Ministry of Health said in state media that a 28-year-old Venezuelan post-doctoral student in gastroenterology arrived in the country Feb. 21 and a day later came down a high fever and rash. The government says the woman was under medical quarantine in Artemisa province outside Havana with other newly arrived doctors when her symptoms were detected.

An initial test for Zika was negative but a second test on Feb. 28 was positive, health officials said. The woman remains hospitalized in good condition at Cuba’s main tropical disease hospital in Havana, officials said. The woman’s husband and brother-in-law had both come down with Zika in Venezuela in recent weeks. The medical professionals who had entered Cuba alongside the sick woman remain in quarantine with no sign of Zika, officials said.

The Health Ministry made no mention of any case of Zika transmitted inside Cuba.

President Raul Castro announced Feb. 22 that the country was militarizing its fight to kill disease-carrying mosquitos, assigning 9,000 soldiers to spray for the insects nationwide. Since then, soldiers, police and health workers have launched an intense door-to-door effort to fumigate for mosquitos.

Gaps had been increasingly obvious in the effort to spray homes and businesses for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has infected thousands of Cubans with the dengue virus and dozens with chikungunya, a disease that causes fever and severe joint pain. Cubans frequently claimed allergies or asthma to put off fumigation crews composed of public health workers and teenagers completing obligatory military service.

Those days appear to be ending as troops deployed across the country with hand-held foggers are now armed with the threat of fines for anyone who resists fumigation and fog-spraying trucks and small airplanes are blanketing the capital and other cities with white clouds of pesticide.

In Cuba’s airports and cruise ship terminals, crews of white-clad doctors are monitoring incoming travelers for high temperatures or other signs of illness. Medical officials said the fight against Zika had taken on increasing urgency as Cuba’s hot, humid spring and summer draw near.

Cuba earns billions of dollars a year from programs that dispatch doctors to allied countries like Venezuela and Brazil and bring medical students to Cuba. Wednesday’s report appeared to imply that those medical professionals were now being quarantined on return.

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ZIKA VIRUS: PREGNANT WOMEN WARNED AGAINST TRAVEL TO AFFECTED AREAS

The Guardian, Sarah Boseley, Tuesday 1 March 2016 19.26 GMT

Original Article: ZIKA Virus

Pregnant women or those hoping to become so should stay away from Brazil and other regions of Latin America affected by the Zika virus, according to revised government advice.

The weight of evidence that Zika is to blame for the surge in babies with brain damage in Brazil has now tipped the balance, Public Health England (PHE) feels.

The previous guidance advised pregnant women to consider staying at home, consult their doctor if they intended to travel and take precautions against mosquito bites. Now it advises them not to go.

“It is recommended that pregnant women should postpone non-essential travel to areas with active Zika transmission until after pregnancy,” says the advice.

The update may cause some women who had hoped to travel to the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in the summer to abandon their plans – even though the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has been blamed for transmission of the virus, does not breed or bite in the summer.

Prof Paul Cosford, director for health protection and medical director at PHE, said: “As our knowledge of the Zika virus, and the evidence linking microcephaly to Zika infection, becomes clearer, a more precautionary approach is warranted. This advice will be kept under review and updated as more information becomes available.”

The decision to upgrade the advice follows the emergence of an increasing amount of evidence linking the Zika virus to microcephaly – the small heads in babies growing in the womb that can cause brain damage.

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CUBA THROWS SOLDIERS INTO BATTLE AGAINST ZIKA VIRUS

Yahoo: Cuba Throws Soldiers…. against Zika

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ February 24, 2016 10:23 AM

HAVANA (AP) — Olive-clad soldiers are going door-to-door across Cuba, filling houses with mosquito-killing fog in a nationwide mobilization to keep the Zika virus out of one of the last countries in the hemisphere without it.

President Raul Castro announced this week that he was throwing 9,000 military personnel and hundreds of police into what he called Cuba’s “inadequate” fight against the mosquito that carries the virus linked to birth defects and paralysis elsewhere in Latin America.

“Our people will know how to demonstrate their ability to organize and maintain the public health achievements of the revolution and prevent our families from suffering,” Castro declared. “We must be more disciplined and demanding than ever before.”

Castro’s call to action included an unusual admission of deficiencies in Cuba’s vaunted free neighborhood-level health-care system, which has suffered in recent years from lack of equipment, short-staffing and low morale among poorly paid state health workers. It was also a test of the communist government’s once-legendary ability to marshal the entire country behind efforts ranging from civil defense to bigger sugar harvests to disease prevention.

The government announced Tuesday that it was activating the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, a neighborhood watch organization that enforced government dictates for decades but has lost importance in recent years. The government said that committees across the country would distribute anti-Zika information to every Cuban and inspect at-risk sites for mosquitoes in coming days.

Gaps have been increasingly obvious in the effort to spray homes and businesses for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which has infected thousands of Cubans with the dengue virus and dozens with chikungunya, a disease that causes fever and severe joint pain. Cubans frequently claim allergies or asthma to put off fumigation crews composed of public health workers and teenagers completing obligatory military service. Unwilling to force homeowners to let them in, the crews often mark the residence as fumigated and move on to the next house or apartment.

Those days appear to be ending as troops deployed across the country with hand-held foggers are now armed with the threat of fines for anyone who resists fumigation.

“Cuba has a series of advantages: It’s an island, it has a homogenous population and a health infrastructure that generally reaches every street corner,” said Jaime Torres, director of tropical medicine at the Central University of Venezuela. “And its political system allows it to take measures, including imposing punishments, that are harder to impose in other places.”

Cuba Zika

Soldiers carrying a fumigating machine leave a home after spraying for mosquitos in Havana, Cuba,

In Cuba’s airports and cruise ship terminals, crews of white-clad doctors are monitoring incoming travelers for high temperatures or other signs of illness. Medical officials said the fight against Zika had taken on increasing urgency as Cuba’s hot, humid spring and summer draw near.

“The objective is to diminish the adult mosquito population ahead of the coming critical months,” said Reinaldo Garcia, head of anti-mosquito efforts for a neighborhood health clinic in Havana.

As soldiers fumigated Wednesday, medical students were knocking on doors alerting homeowners to watch for symptoms such as fever and conjunctivitis. State-run television and radio featured a constant stream of educational messages about Zika, which has been linked to the birth defect microcephaly.

“Although there is no sign of that disease, we want to eliminate the transmitter, eliminate the chain, so if it enters the country there is no way to transmit it,” Dr. Osvaldo Mendoza of the Public Health Ministry said as he supervised a crew of military fumigators.

Medical workers were ready to move into any area where a possible Zika case is detected, quarantining and testing anyone who lives within 500 meters, said public health official Dr. Lorenzo Somarriba.

“Everyone’s talking about it,” said Suset Valdes, a 19-year-old Havana resident who is six months pregnant. She said pregnant women in her maternity ward were protecting themselves with repellent-soaked mosquito nets.

Carlos Espinal, director of the global health program at Florida International University in Miami, said that while it was virtually certain that Zika would arrive in Cuba, he was hopeful the island’s health system would prevent the virus spreading as it has elsewhere in Latin America.  “It’s inevitable, but the Cuban disease-monitoring system is sure to greatly mitigate the negative impact in the community,” he said.

Valdes’ mother, Dolores Hernandez, 51, said she felt better with her daughter off the streets of their Old Havana neighborhood, where garbage had been piling up for weeks or months without any government reaction.  “It’s horrible how people threw trash in Old Havana,” she said. But now “they’re picking it up, running around, unclogging their drains. Now, they’re really getting going.”

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RIGHT AND LEFT, FROM A CUBAN PERSPECTIVE

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Arch Ritter

Juan Antonio Blanco | Diario de Cuba | 2 Mar 2016

Original Article: Right and Left, from a Cuban Perspective

 zraulfamily28216iRaúl Castro, accompanied by a son and grandson. (Diario de Cuba)

From Havana I get an email seeking to address the challenges facing the country applying the binary axis of “Left” and “Right.” I imagine that two factors lead to this interest. One is an incipient ebb in regional populism. Another is the congress in April of the island’s only legal party – the same one that imposes on Cuba these dubious semantics and focus, exercising a monopoly over all State institutions.

But the language of the Jacobins and Girondins from the 18th century does not allow us to understand what is happening in the 21st century, in any geographical region.

The dilemmas facing humanity today cannot be solved applying the outmoded concepts of Left and Right. Neither do the labels of socialism or capitalism apply. As I stated in Tercer Milenio (Havana, 1993) what we are experiencing today is a change of eras, not an era of changes. This period is characterized by the rapid obsolescence of all that we knew. As Moisés Naim recently reminded us, everything is now extraordinary. From the fall of the USSR and the Eastern bloc, to Kodak being sunk by Instagram, and taxis by Uber.

Discussing the future of Cuba – or of any country – based on the conceptual coordinates of the last century is a futile and even dangerous exercise.  It is not possible to address and resolve these current challenges if they are not designated lucidly.

Cuba today is simply a poor country, disconnected from global processes; with a dreadful physical, communications and financial infrastructure; two decades behind in the acquisition of reliable and fast internet connections; public services (health, education, transport, water, electricity, sewage), whose quality is plummeting; degraded land, and the lowest wages in the hemisphere. It is also a closed society, where there is no basic freedom to exercise the right to free expression, association, movement, the forming of unions, or political choice, such that citizens have no way to peacefully alter this sorry state of affairs and achieve prosperity.

The policies that could resolve this mess are not socialist or capitalist, but rather good or bad, efficient or inefficient. Those in force today are terrible and counterproductive.

Revolution? The “Cuban Revolution” was already being quashed even as forces were fighting Batista, when a group of totalitarians yearning for a caudillo began to plot how to liquidate their comrades after their victory. Talking about this in 2016 is a big scam. What exists in Cuba is a totalitarian regime in the hands of a family, a clan.

Sovereignty? How can one uphold it in the 21st century to oppose citizens’ civil rights when Cuban society as a whole is deprived of the right to self-determination?

Nationalism? It is difficult to defend the government’s administration based on this outdated concept, nurtured in the late 18th century, when Havana prefers to negotiate with foreign powers and refuses to even dialogue with its own citizens.

I do not share the idea that the “bureaucracy” is the Big Culprit. Power in Cuba is held by two families with the same surname: Castro. Around them is a select military cadre. Together they constitute a permanent elite wielding power. Below them is a bureaucracy that serves only to “manage” their interests, not to make key decisions that benefit the country.

Lage, Robaina —and Díaz Canel today— were never members of the governing elite. They are simply CEOs, always expendable. Cuba’s real owners exercise their privileges as if the island were a private company registered under the trade name “Cuban Revolution.” They attach to this corporate appellation a series of qualifiers —”progressive,” “leftist,” “anti-capitalist” and others— which only serve to distract from reality.

I laugh when I think about Bernie Sanders and Podemos speaking, terrified, of a casta that represents 0.1% of the population but owns more than half of the economy. In this regard, as in others related to human rights, they suffer from a severe moral hemiplegia by selecting the victims they prefer to “defend.” When the offender is in their political camp, they choose to look the other way. In Cuba some 100 people rule the roost, lording it over the rest of the island. What percentage do they represent in relation to the 11.5 million citizens on the island, and the other two million off it?

Invoking the abstraction “state ownership of the means of production,” the “shareholders” of this dubious corporation, and the family presiding over it, claim permanent and unlimited exploitation rights over Cuba, not even needing to be the formal owners of work or recreational facilities, or real estate. They also have unlimited powers to do whatever they please vis-a-vis all other Cubans. The demand for freedom and human rights is the only solution that goes to the heart of the problem.

Modernity died in the ovens of Auschwitz. Absolute respect for the sovereignty of Germany allowed Hitler’s government, first, to deprive citizens of their freedoms and rights, and, then, under the shadow of a closed society, to undertake a forbidden process of rearmament. The Soviets and the Cuban government were able to secretly install nuclear missiles on the island because there existed no basic freedoms to denounce that operation in time. The Khmer Rouge initiated a national genocide —which rendered any dissent impossible, even within the party— and then turned on its former ally and neighbor: Vietnam. Hanoi, incidentally, did not hesitate to adopt a policy of “regime change” to install, at gun-point, a government that would be friendly to it in Cambodia.

The human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of 1948 take as their reference point those adopted by the French Revolution, but with a substantial difference: thereafter it was established that such rights were not just a national affair, but a good that was to be protected by the international community. It is not a question of moralizing. Respect for these rights is vital for international stability and security. The signers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the various international agreements for the protection of citizens’ rights have recognized that their sovereignty in this regard has limits.

Without freedoms and rights Cuban society will be neither socialist or capitalist, left-wing nor right-wing, but rather remain a sort of disastrously managed private Estate, employing slave labor. And a country whose owners can again pose a serious danger to their neighbors.

This, I think, is what we need to talk about.

zCaptureJuan Antonio Blanco Gil

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WHY IS OBAMA VISITING CUBA?

Posted on February 25, 2016 by Arch Ritter

KONRAD YAKABUSKI

The Globe and Mail, Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016

Original Article: Why is Obama visiting Cuba?

Only two months ago, U.S. President Barack Obama laid out the conditions under which he would visit Cuba before he leaves office. “If, in fact, I with confidence can say that we’re seeing some progress in the liberty and expression and possibilities of ordinary Cubans, I’d love to use a visit as a way of highlighting that progress,” he said on the first anniversary of his historic announcement of the renewal of U.S. diplomatic relations with the Communist holdout.

The world has become accustomed to Mr. Obama’s foreign policy flip-flops (see his “red line” in Syria) and desire to do away with the image of the United States as a meddling and moralizing superpower. But even critics of the five-decade U.S. policy of isolating the Castro regime were taken aback by news that Mr. Obama will next month become the first sitting president to visit to Cuba in 88 years.

In no material sense has Cuban President Raul Castro, who took over from his ailing brother Fidel in 2006, expanded the freedoms of ordinary citizens. Recent baby steps toward economic reform fit a pattern that seasoned Cuba watchers recognize all too well. The Castros are experts in diffusing the frustrations of average Cubans with their stultified economic conditions by offering up mini-reforms that, once the dust settles, never amount to much for average folk. Low expectations are now so integral to the Cuban condition that mere crumbs are welcomed.

There has been even less progress on human rights. Arbitrary arrests and detentions climbed steadily throughout 2015 and hit 1,474 people in January, according to the Cuban Observatory on Human Rights. Political repression has not eased. “The figures reflect only certain repressive actions, and therefore do not express all the violations of various human rights that occur in Cuba,” the Madrid-based organization noted. “But they serve to demonstrate the lack of political will to change on the part of the Cuban government, which remains stuck in intolerance and immobility.”

This has not stopped the Obama administration from unilaterally easing restrictions on Americans travelling to Cuba and sending remittances to relatives on the island. It has reopened the U.S. embassy in Havana and announced plans for the resumption of commercial flights to Cuba by U.S. airlines. (Congress, however, has no intention of lifting the U.S. trade embargo.)

Mr. Obama plans to meet with dissidents, but under what conditions remains to be seen. The visit will be covered by Cuba’s state-run media, which will showcase to Cubans their censored version of it. It is not Mr. Obama’s style to deliver a Reaganesque ultimatum on foreign soil. The President hopes to “nudge the Cuban government in a new direction.” Good luck with that.

The Castros have not held on to power for 57 years by taking friendly advice from neighbours on how to transition to democracy. If anything, Mr. Obama risks enhancing their legitimacy and strengthening their grip on the island’s economy. The Cuban military, also headed by Raul Castro, controls most of the economy (including its burgeoning tourist industry) and stands to benefit the most from increased U.S. trade and investment. The regime is desperate for hard currency, especially now that fast-spiralling Venezuela can no longer play Cuba’s benefactor.

Mr. Obama seeks to make his opening toward Cuba “irreversible” for a future president and prepare for a post-Castro Cuba. But it would be naive to believe the 84-year-old Raul, who plans to quit the presidency in 2018, has not planned for his succession. Many Cuban experts believe he has chosen 55-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, a Communist hardliner and first vice-president of the Cuban Council of State, to succeed him as president. But the real post-Raul power may lie with his son and/or son-in-law; both are top military officials who run some of Cuba’s biggest businesses.

Supporters of Mr. Obama’s approach argue that human-rights violations and political repression have not stopped the United States from pursuing economic and diplomatic relations with China. So why apply a tougher standard to Cuba, especially when the United States continues to indefinitely detain and deprive of due process dozens of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay?

The answer is that Cuba is in North America’s backyard and the Castros head the longest-running dictatorship in the Western hemisphere. Their brutality is well documented, in spite of the romanticism with which Canadians often view them.

The world does not need more (of the Castros’) Cuba.

 

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ANOTHER SIGN OF PROGRESS: GEORGE ORWELL’S ‘1984’ IS TRANSLATED AND NOW SOLD IN CUBA AFTER HALF A CENTURY OF CENSORSHIP.

Posted on February 19, 2016 by Arch Ritter

‘1984’, DE GEORGE ORWELL, VUELVE A CUBA DESPUÉS DE MEDIO SIGLO DE AUSENCIA

14YMEDIO, Febrero 16, 2016,  Zunilda Mata, La Habana

Original Article: ORWELL’S ‘1984’ NOW IN CUBA

En la tarde de este martes, se vendieron alrededor de 80 ejemplares a un precio de 15 pesos moneda nacional cada uno. (14ymedio)

Mientras la prensa independiente o las obras de Juan Carlos Cremata siguen prohibidas en la Isla, las autoridades cubanas levantan por fin la censura sobre la novela de George Orwell, 1984, uno de los libros más críticos de los sistemas totalitarios. La obra del escritor británico ha sido presentada este martes en la Feria Internacional del Libro de La Habana.

El libro, que denuncia los regímenes totalitarios, se presentó en la fortaleza de la Cabaña, un sitio que para muchos evoca los fusilamientos masivos y el desmontaje de las libertades en Cuba. La sala Alejo Carpentier estuvo atestada de un público mayoritariamente joven. “Vas a ver que el libro no va a salir”, comentaban algunos de los asistentes ante el retraso del prologuista y presentador principal, el investigador Pedro Pablo Rodríguez.

A pesar de los temores, la obra fue lanzada y puesta a la venta bajo el sello editorial Arte y Literatura. La edición, en papel gaceta y carátula blanda, dista mucho de la calidad que merece un clásico de esa importancia, pero tiene el valor añadido de ser un evento editorial que trasciende la obra orwelliana.

La traducción de esta edición ha corrido a cargo de Fabricio González Neira y en la tarde de este martes se vendieron alrededor de 80 ejemplares a un precio de 15 pesos moneda nacional cada uno.

Rodríguez aseguró en sus palabras introductorias que  “este libro nos tiene que hacer pensar en nuestro país” y llevar a la pregunta “¿Qué cosa es la Cuba que queremos?”. El historiador clasifica de “muy bien” que finalmente se haya editado el volumen y espera que traiga “nuevas visiones” sobre esta “particular realidad” que se vive hoy en la Isla.

El prologuista del libro espera que su lectura abra  “un debate intelectual que ojalá sea público, y que al menos, cada lector sostendrá consigo mismo” y aludió a quienes han tenido la  “impresión de que las obras de Orwell eran inadmisibles” en Cuba “por sus diferencias con la Unión Soviética”. Rodríguez considera que la novela es ” atractiva, atrapa, si bien describe una realidad espantosa”.

Durante décadas las obras del conocido escritor y periodista británico han circulado de manera ilegal en Cuba, donde han sido muy populares otros títulos suyos como Rebelión en la granja. La recreación del universo totalitario, donde el individuo es permanentemente vigilado por un poder omnipresente, ha sido utilizada con frecuencia como paralelismo del sistema político cubano.

“Tanta prohibición y al final ha sido una de las novelas más leídas en Cuba por años”, asegura un asistente

“Ahora a ver si también publican a Vargas Llosa y a todos los autores exiliados que no hemos vuelto a ver en las editoriales del país”, comentó a 14ymedio Enmanuel, un joven que asistió a la presentación aunque no compró el libro. “Ya lo tengo y lo he leído varias veces, sólo vine a ver si era verdad que lo iban a publicar”, explicó.

Otros viven el momento como un hecho histórico. “Tuve un ejemplar que perdí y estaba gastado de tanta gente que lo había leído”, comenta un hombre que se identifica como profesor de inglés retirado. “Tanta prohibición y al final ha sido una de las novelas más leídas en Cuba por años”, asegura el hombre que ha venido con una nieta a la presentación.

z2El traductor Fabricio González Neira (izq.) y el presentador Pedro Pablo Rodríguez (der.) en la presentación de ‘1984’ este martes en la Feria del Libro. (14ymedio)

A las afueras de la sala, varios lectores se fotografiaban con su ejemplar, aún entre la sorpresa y el beneplácito de encontrar a Orwell en la Feria del Libro. “No sabía nada de la presentación, pasé por aquí y me llamó la atención tanta gente, así que entré”, comentó la empleada de una editorial para niños y jóvenes que expone sus producciones en un local cercano.

A pesar de que 1984 llevaba varios días vendiéndose en algunos locales de la Feria, cuando el presentador Pedro Pablo Rodríguez terminó de hablar muchos se abalanzaron sobre la pequeña mesa de plástico con los ejemplares en venta. Una señora tomó el micrófono y pidió poner orden en la sala para escuchar también las palabras del traductor. “Esto no es la cola de las papas”, sentenció la funcionaria del Instituto Cubano del Libro.

La experiencia de Orwell durante la guerra civil española, en la que combatió en el bando republicano, lo llevó a crear en sus más reconocidas obras una alegoría contra la corrupción de los ideales socialistas por parte de Stalin. El escritor profetizó entonces una sociedad totalitaria, gobernada por el Gran Hermano, bajo un régimen policial y de absoluto control a través de tecnologías como las telepantallas.

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OBAMA SEEKS TO IMPROVE LIVES OF CUBANS IN HISTORIC MARCH VISIT

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Arch Ritter

The Globe and Mail, Feb. 17, 2016 9:34PM EST

By Josh Lederman and Kevin Freking

Original Article: HISTORIC VISIT

Barack Obama, Raul CastroPresident Barack Obama said Thursday his history-making visit to Cuba next month was part of an effort to “improve the lives of the Cuban people.” He vowed to press the communist government on human rights and other policy differences.

“We still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly. America will always stand for human rights around the world,” Obama wrote, as he announced the visit on Twitter.

The trip will make Obama the first sitting U.S. president to set foot on the island in nearly seven decades. In a series of tweets, Obama cast it as part of steady progression of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba, a communist nation estranged from the U.S. for over half a century until Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro moved toward rapprochement more than a year ago. Since then, the nations have reopened embassies in Washington and Havana, eased travel restrictions and barriers for business and have moved to restore commercial air travel. A presidential trip was held out as significant leverage in these talks.

“There is much more that can be done — by the United States, and by the Cuban government — to advance this opening in ways that will be good for Cubans and good for the United States. That is why President Obama is travelling to Cuba,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes wrote Thursday in a post on Medium, a blogging website. “We want to open up more opportunities for U.S. businesses and travellers to engage with Cuba, and we want the Cuban government to open up more opportunities for its people to benefit from that engagement.”

Rhodes noted the ultimate aim is to persuade Congress to lift the trade embargo — an unlikely possibility in the near term.

In addition to meeting with Castro, Obama will interact with members of Cuban “civil society,” the White House said, referring to activists that advocate for various social causes. Prior to announcing the trip, Obama had said one of the conditions for a presidential visit would be the ability for him to speak to all kinds of groups — including those that oppose the Castro government.

Obama’s stop in Cuba will be part of a broader trip to Latin America that the president will take next month. From Cuba, Obama will travel to Argentina, where he’ll meet with the new president.

Word of his travel plans drew immediate resistance from opponents of warmer ties with Cuba — including Republican presidential candidates.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose father came to the U.S. from Cuba in the 1950s, said Obama shouldn’t visit while the Castro family remains in power. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another child of Cuban immigrants, lambasted the president for visiting what he called an “anti-American communist dictatorship.”

“Today, a year and two months after the opening of Cuba, the Cuban government remains as oppressive as ever,” Rubio said on CNN. Told of Obama’s intention to visit, he added, “Probably not going to invite me.”

With less than a year left in office, Obama has been eager to make rapid progress on restoring economic and diplomatic ties to cement warming relations with Cuba that his administration started. Following secret negotiations between their governments, Obama and Castro announced in late 2014 that they would begin normalizing ties, and months later held the first face-to-face meeting between an American and Cuban president since 1958.

But Obama, facing steadfast opposition to normalized relations from Republicans and some Democrats, has been unable to deliver on the former Cold War foe’s biggest request: the lifting of the U.S. economic embargo. Opponents argue that repealing those sanctions would reward a government still engaging in human rights abuses and stifling democratic aspirations.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican born in Cuba, called the visit “absolutely shameful.”

“For more than 50 years, Cubans have been fleeing the Castro regime,” said Lehtinen, the longest-serving Cuban-American in Congress. “Yet the country which grants them refuge — the United States — has now decided to quite literally embrace their oppressors.”

Obama and supporters of the detente argue the decades-old embargo has failed to bring about desired change on the island 90 miles south of Florida. Still, while Obama has long expressed an interest in visiting Cuba, White House officials had said the visit wouldn’t occur unless and until the conditions were right.

“If I go on a visit, then part of the deal is that I get to talk to everybody” — including political dissidents, Obama told Yahoo News in December. “I’ve made very clear in my conversations directly with President Castro that we would continue to reach out to those who want to broaden the scope for, you know, free expression inside of Cuba.”

Officials didn’t immediately specify what had changed in the last few weeks to clear the way for the trip, first reported by ABC News. But on Tuesday, the two nations signed a deal restoring commercial air traffic as early as later this year, eliminating a key barrier to unfettered travel that isolated Cuban-Americans from their families for generations.

Hundreds of thousands more Americans are expected to visit Cuba per year under the deal, which cleared the way for the Transportation Department to open bidding by American air carriers on as many as 110 flights a day. Currently, there are about one-fifth as many flights operating between the two countries — all charters.

According to the State Department historian’s office, President Harry Truman visited the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo Bay and its naval base on the southeast end of the island in 1948 and former President Jimmy Carter has paid multiple visits to the island since leaving office in January 1981. Not since President Calvin Coolidge went to Havana in January 1928 has a sitting U.S. president been to that city.

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NEW TALKS BEGIN WITH CUBA ON EXPANDING BUSINESS TIES

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Arch Ritter

New York Times, FEB. 17, 2016

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS 

Original Article: Expanding Business Ties

WASHINGTON — Top Obama administration officials will open a round of talks on Wednesday in Washington aimed at expanding business ties between the United States and Cuba, pushing forward on President Obama’s directive to seek normalized relations, even while the American embargo continues to bar most trade and commerce between the two nations.  The regulatory discussions, to be hosted by Penny Pritzker, the commerce secretary, and attended by Cuban officials and their counterparts from the departments of Commerce, State and Treasury, come after the signing in Havana on Tuesday of an arrangement allowing scheduled direct flights between the United States and Cuba for the first time in decades.

American carriers can begin applying to the Department of Transportation to offer the service — up to 20 scheduled flights per day to Havana and 10 to each of nine other international airports in Cuba. The pact aims to substantially increase travel between the two countries, which are

But even as Mr. Obama makes progress in his drive to forge closer commercial ties with Cuba, the process is hamstrung by sanctions that have left American businesses wondering what they are permitted to do. Rodrigo Malmierca, the Cuban minister of trade and foreign investment, said on Tuesday that he had heard from many American companies that want to establish businesses in Cuba but are ensnared in regulatory limbo, awaiting special licenses from the United States government.

“The problem that we face today is that many companies want to do business, but we need to create the conditions for them to access the Cuban market,” Mr. Malmierca said in Washington at an event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  He repeatedly said that Cuba welcomed American investment and would not “discriminate” against United States companies. “Lifting the blockade is essential to advancing this,” he said.

With the Republican-controlled Congress unlikely to lift the embargo soon, Mr. Malmierca called on Mr. Obama to do more unilaterally, including allowing the dollar to be used in transactions with Cuba, lifting the ban against imports of top Cuban products like rum and cigars and ending the prohibition against direct investment in Cuba.

Critics argue that with each move to foster better relations and American investment, the president is rewarding a dictatorial government that infringes on human rights and squelches democratic discourse.  But Mr. Obama, who has said he wants to travel to Cuba before leaving office, has argued that the best way to put pressure on the Cuban government is to expose its citizens to American values and ideals and through diplomatic channels re-established last year when embassies reopened in Havana and Washington.

This week’s technical talks are the second time since Mr. Obama announced the opening with Cuba in December 2014 that Ms. Pritzker and Mr. Malmierca have come together with officials from their governments to try to work out the complex details of harmonizing some aspects of their business regulations. Ms. Pritzker traveled to Havana in October to begin the discussions, which have been made even more labyrinthine on the American side by the statutory embargo.

The Obama administration announced last month that it was relaxing more restrictions on business with Cuba, including allowing United States banks to provide direct financing for the export of any product other than agricultural commodities, which are still walled off under the embargo.

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CUBA’S FIRST U.S. FACTORY IN 56 YEARS

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Arch Ritter

Forbes, Feb 16, 2016

Original Article : CUBA’S FIRST U.S. FACTORY

Susan Adams, Forbes Staff

Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal, both 72-year-old retired software engineers, are slated to become the first Americans since 1959 to set up a manufacturing plant in Cuba. Their plan: produce small, easily maintained tractors for use by family farmers. Under new regulations issued by the Obama administration, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control gave the Paint Rock, AL-based partners the go-ahead last week. Once they get final approval from the Cubans, they anticipate that in early 2017, they’ll start building a factory in a special economic zone set up by the Cuban government in the port city of Mariel. In this condensed and edited interview, Berenthal describes his transition from software entrepreneur to Cuban manufacturing pioneer.

zzzxzzSusan Adams: Tell me about your personal connection to Cuba.

Saul Berenthal: I was born and raised in Cuba. I came to the U.S. in 1960 right after the revolution. First I came and then my parents. My family in Cuba is in the cemetery. But I have lots of friends there and I’ve been traveling back and forth since 2007.

Adams: How did you get the idea to build tractors?

Berenthal: I understood the needs of the Cuban economy. Cuba has to import more than 70% of what people eat. They’re still using oxen to farm the land. Our motivation really is to help the Cuban farmer be more productive.

Adams: But you and Mr. Clemmons are software engineers. How did you know the first thing about farm equipment?

Berenthal: Horace was born and raised on a farm in Alabama. He’s the farming expert and I’m the Cuba expert.

Adams: Just because he was raised on a farm wouldn’t mean he would know how to make tractors.

Berenthal: We hired an engineering company in Alabama that helped us pick up an existing design that was appropriate for what we wanted to do. We brought in state-of-the-art technology and produced the tractors. We have a tractor in Cuba already that’s going to be shown at an agricultural fair in March.

Adams: It sounds like you were motivated less by profit than by a desire to help the Cuban economy and Cuban-American relations.

Berenthal: Yes, our motivation is really to help Cuban farmers be more productive. Through commerce and trade, we can bring Cuban and American people closer together.

Adams: What about making money?

Berenthal: Our business model says we are investing in Cuba and reinvesting any profits we make. We’ll do what we did with our other businesses. We’ll create value and then sell the company.

Adams: What profit margins do you project for your tractors?

Berenthal: We’re aiming for 20%.

Adams: How many tractors do you need to sell before you’re profitable?

Berenthal: We believe we’ll sell 300 tractors in the first year and then we’ll ramp up to 5,000. That includes other light equipment we’ll sell for construction as well. The facility will have the capacity to produce up to 1,000 tractors a year. I think the profitability will come after the first or second year when we start to do production and not just assembly in Cuba.

Adams: But Cuba is plagued by shortages of the most basic products. How will you get tractor parts?

Berenthal: They’re all going to be sourced and shipped from the U.S. The current state of the embargo makes it so we can’t buy parts there. But we think that within the next three years the embargo will be lifted and we’ll be able to source from Cuba, if not sooner.

Adams: Your factory will be in a special economic zone?

Berenthal: It’s called ZED, for Zona Especial de Mariel. It’s built around one of Cuba’s biggest ports and it has a whole bunch of sections dedicated to foreign investment. They provide for a bunch of tax and investment incentives. We’re also taking advantage of Cuba’s commercial treaties with the rest of Latin America, where we’ll be able to ship and provide better pricing than for tractors built in the U.S.

Adams: What kind of tax incentive is Cuba offering?

Berenthal: For the first 10 years we don’t pay any taxes.

Adams: How many local people will you employ?

Berenthal: We’ll start with five and ramp up to 30 within the first year and then probably go up to 300.

Adams: You want to sell the tractors for $8,000-$10,000. How can a Cuban farmer with an ox possibly afford that?

Berenthal: There are a couple of ways. There is financing by the Cuban government and by third countries like Spain, France and the Netherlands. We also count on Cuban-Americans who live in the U.S. who have relatives and friends that run farms. We think they would be happy to contribute to Cubans owning a tractor. We’re also counting on NGOs that help Cuban farmers, like religious groups.

Adams: How much is your initial investment?

Berenthal: We project a $5 million investment and then it will go up to $10 million.

Adams: Where are you getting the money?

Berenthal: It’s private money. We have a couple of investors but we have also sold a couple of companies.

Adams: What did you find when you went to Cuba?

Berenthal: I started meeting with people and I had a lot of contacts in the economics department at the University of Havana. I learned what the Cuban government was proposing to do about readjusting the economy. In 2014, when the opportunity for trade arose, we decided to pursue farming and tractors.

Adams: How difficult was it to get U.S. government approval?

Berenthal: In all honesty it was tedious rather than difficult. We had to wait for the regulations to change so that the proposal we made was covered by the regulations implemented over the last nine months.

Adams: Were you competing with other U.S. companies?

Berenthal: We certainly believe we’re going to compete with the Chinese and Byelorussians, who are the current suppliers of tractors to the Cuban government.

Adams: Where did you get the names for your company, Cleber, and product, Oggun.

Berenthal: Cleber is from our names, Clemmons and Berenthal. It’s clever! Oggun is the name of the deity for iron in the Santeria religion. Santeria is the most popular religion in Cuba. It’s a mixture of Catholic and African religions.

Adams: Do you practice Santeria?

Berenthal: No ma’am. I’m Jewish. We’re called Jewbans

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U.S. APPROVES FIRST FACTORY IN CUBA SINCE 1959

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Arch Ritter

MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN

HAVANA — The Associated Press

Original Article: U.S. Tractor Factory in Cuba

Globe and Mail, Toronto. Published Monday, Feb. 15, 2016 5:23PM EST

The Obama administration has approved the first U.S. factory in Cuba in more than half a century, allowing a two-man company from Alabama to build a plant assembling as many as 1,000 small tractors a year for sale to private farmers in Cuba.

The U.S. Treasury Department last week notified partners Horace Clemmons and Saul Berenthal that they can legally build tractors and other heavy equipment in a special economic zone started by the Cuban government to attract foreign investment.

Cuban officials already have publicly and enthusiastically endorsed the project. The partners said they expect to be building tractors in Cuba by the first quarter of 2017.

“Everybody wants to go to Cuba to sell something and that’s not what we’re trying to do. We’re looking at the problem and how do we help Cuba solve the problems that they consider are the most important problems for them to solve,” Mr. Clemmons said. “It’s our belief that in the long run we both win if we do things that are beneficial to both countries.”

The $5-million (U.S.) to $10-million plant would be the first significant U.S. business investment on Cuban soil since Fidel Castro took power in 1959 and nationalized billions of dollars of U.S. corporate and private property. That confiscation provoked a U.S. embargo on Cuba that prohibited virtually all forms of commerce and fined non-U.S. companies millions of dollars for doing business with the island country.

Farm Worker Plowing Field with a Team of OxenSome Competition for the Oxen. (Ploughing a field at Vinales)

Letting an American tractor company operate inside a Cuban government facility would have been unimaginable before Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared on Dec. 17, 2014, that they would restore diplomatic relations and move to normalize trade, travel and other aspects of the long-broken bilateral relationship.

Since then, Mr. Obama has been carving exceptions into the embargo through a series of executive actions, and his administration now says they allow U.S. manufacturing at the Mariel port and special economic zone about 48 kilometres west of Havana. One exception allows U.S. companies to export products that benefit private and co-operative farmers in Cuba. Mr. Berenthal and Mr. Clemmons say they will sell only to the private sector.

The Obama administration says it is eager to make the opening with Cuba irreversible by any future administration. Since the start of the year, the United States and Cuba have made a series of announcements that appear designed partly to create a sense of unstoppable momentum in their new relationship.

Cuba announced late last month that it would more than double the number of public WiFi access spots to more than 100 across the country this year and bring broadband Internet to a small number of Cuban homes, where it is currently illegal. Mr. Obama said in 2014 that Mr. Castro had promised to increase Cubans’ access to the Internet as part of détente.

On Saturday, Cuba announced it had returned a U.S. Hellfire missile it said was mistakenly shipped to Havana from Paris in 2014. On Tuesday, Cuba’s Transport Minister and the U.S. Secretary of Transportation will sign a deal authorizing the first regularly scheduled commercial flights between the United States and Cuba since shortly after the 1959 revolution.

The Oggun tractor plant, named after a god in Cuba’s syncretic Santeria religion, will assemble commercially available components into a durable and easy-to-maintain 25-horsepower tractor selling for less than $10,000, Mr. Clemmons and Mr. Berenthal said. The men believe they can sell hundreds of the tractors a year to Cuban farmers with financing from relatives outside the country and to non-government organizations seeking to help improve Cuban agriculture, which suffers from low productivity due mostly to excessive control of both basic supplies and prices by an inefficient, centrally planned state bureaucracy.

“I have two countries that for 60 years have been in the worst of terms, anything I can do to bring to the two countries and the two people together is tremendously satisfying,” said Mr. Berenthal, a Cuban-born semi-retired software engineer who left the country at age 16.

He met Mr. Clemmons, who is from Paint Rock, Ala., when they worked at IBM in the 1970s. They left to form a successful cash-register software company that grew to earn $30-million a year before they sold it in 1995 for a sum Mr. Clemmons says was “enough that I don’t have to work.”

Between their own capital and commitments from private investors, they say they have enough cash in hand to build the Oggun factory as soon as Cuba lets them proceed.

“Everything’s locked in,” Mr. Clemmons said.

Mr. Berenthal said they are optimistic they will also be able to export Oggun tractors to other Latin American countries, which have low or no tariffs on Cuba products, making them competitive on price. The men expect a 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent profit on each tractor.

For the project’s first three years, Mr. Clemmons and Mr. Berenthal say they will export components from the United States for assembly in Cuba. They hope to eventually begin manufacturing many of the parts themselves on the island. They said they expect to start with 30 Cuban employees and, if things go as planned, grow within five years to as many as 300.

Mr. Clemmons and Mr. Berenthal will publish all the schematics of their tractors online to allow Cubans and other clients to more easily repair their equipment and come up with designs for other heavy equipment based on the same frame and motor that the company, Cleber, can then produce at its Mariel factory.

The men already have plans to produce excavators, backhoes, trench diggers and forklifts, equipment badly needed across Cuba, where virtually all the infrastructure is crumbling after years of neglect and mismanagement and a lack of cash the government blames on the embargo.

“I think it’ll have a tremendous impact on their ability not only to help their economy but to set an example across the Caribbean and Latin America,” Mr. Berenthal said.

zzz

 Case – International Harvester sugar cane harvester, made in Brazil. The next step for Cuban agricultural machinery assembly?

z Cane-Harvester-October-1993-002Cuban-manufactured Sugar Cane Harvester Pausing on the Highway, November 1994.  Was this the last Cuban-made  cane harvester?Photo by Arch Ritter.

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ALTERNATIVE INSTITUTIONAL FUTURES FOR CUBA’S MIXED ECONOMY

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Arch Ritter

Archibald Ritter                                                                                          

February 1, 2016

Since 2010, Cuba has been implementing a redesigned institutional structure of its economy. At this time it is unclear what Cuba’s future mixed economy will look like. However, we can be sure that it will continue to evolve in the near, medium and longer term. A variety of institutional structures are possible in the future and there are a number of types of private sector that Cuba could adopt. Indeed it seems as though Cuba were moving towards a number of possibilities simultaneously.

The objective of this note is to examine a number of key institutional alternatives and weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages for each arrangement.  All alternatives include some mixture of domestic or indigenous private enterprises, cooperative and “not-for-profit” activities. foreign enterprise on a joint venture or stand-alone basis, some state enterprises (in natural monopolies for example) and a public sector.  However, the emphasis on each of these components will vary depending on the policy choices of future Cuban governments.

The possible institutional structures to be examined here include:

1. Institutional status-quo as of 2016;

2. A mixed economy with intensified “cooperativization”;

3. A mixed economy, with private foreign and domestic oligopolies replacing the state oligopolies;

4. A mixed economy with an emphasis on indigenous small and medium enterprise.

 Option 1. Institutional Status-Quo as of 2016

The institutional “status quo” is defined by the volumes of employment in the registered and unregistered segments of the small enterprise sector, the small farmer sector, the cooperative areas, the public sector, and the joint venture sector, plus independent arts and crafts and religious personnel.  The employment numbers are mainly from the Anuario Estadístico de Cuba together with a number of guesstimates, some inspired by Richard Feinberg (2013). The guesstimate for unregistered employment in the small enterprise sector may seem exaggerated. However, a large proportion of the “cuentapropistas” utilize unregistered workers and a proportion of the underground economy does not seem to have surfaced into formally registered activities.  These employment estimates by institutional area are presented in Table 1 and illustrated in Chart 1, which also serve as a “base case” for sketching the other institutional alternatives.

Table 1 z zz

The current institutional status quo has a number of advantages but also some disadvantages. On the plus side, adhering to the status quo would avoid all the uncertainties and risks of a transition.  It would maintain the possibility of “macro-flexibility,” that is the ability for the central government to reallocate resources by command in a rapid and large scale fashion. However, in view of the numerous “macro errors” made possible by a centralized command economy (the 10 million ton sugar harvest of 1970, the “New Man” endeavor, shutting down half the sugar mills), “macro-flexibility” may be a disadvantage.  There are major advantages for the Communist Party in maintaining the institutional status quo in the economy, namely enabling political control of the citizenry (a disadvantage from other perspectives) and continuing state control over most of the distribution of income (also a disadvantage from other perspectives).  The approach also helps foster good relations with North Korea (I am running out of advantages).

There are also major disadvantages. The centralized planned economy and public enterprise system generates continuing bureaucratization of production; continuing politicization of state-sector economic management and functioning; continuing lack of an effective price mechanism in the state sector and continuing perversity and dysfunctional of the incentive structure. The result of this is damage to efficiency, productivity and innovation.

 OPTION 2. Mixed Economy with Intensified “Cooperativization”

zzzA second alternative might be to promote the authentic “cooperativization” of the economy in a major way.  This would involve permitting cooperatives in all areas, including professional activities; opening up the current approval processes; encouraging grass-roots bottom-up ventures; providing import & export rights; and improving credit and wholesaling systems for coops.

 This approach has a number of advantages. First, it would strengthen the incentive structure and elicit serious work effort and creativity on the part of those in the coops.  This is because worker ownership and management provides powerful motivation to work hard and profit-sharing ensures an alignment of worker and owner interests. This approach would generate a more egalitarian distribution of income than privately-owned enterprises. Cooperatives may possess a greater degree of flexibility than state and even private firms because their income and profits payments to members can reflect market conditions. Perhaps most important, democracy in the work-place through effective and genuine coops is valuable in itself and constitutes an advantage over both state- and privately-owned enterprise.  [Workers’ ownership and control proposed in Cuba’s cooperative legislation is ironic and perhaps impossible since Cuba’s political system is characterized by a one-party monopoly.  On the other hand it may help propel political democratization.]

The “second degree cooperatives” or “cooperative coalition of cooperatives” called for in the cooperative legislation is particularly interesting as it may permit  reaping organizational economies of scale (a la Starbucks, McDonalds, etc. ) for small Cuban coops in these areas.

An emphasis on cooperatives would help to maintain ownership and diffused control and profit-sharing among local citizens, thereby promoting greater equity in income distribution.

But cooperatives also face difficulties and disadvantages.  First, are they really more efficient than state and private enterprises? Generally speaking, cooperatives have passed the “survival test” but have not made huge inroads against private enterprise in other countries over the years.  Perhaps this is because the “transactions costs” of participatory management may be significant.  Personal animosities, ideological or political differences, participatory failures and/or managerial mistakes may occur.  And for larger coops, complex governance structures may impair flexibility.

 Second, Cuba’s actual complex co-op approval process is problematic and creates the possibility of political controls and biases. Certification of professional cooperatives is unclear. Also, the hiring of contractual workers is problematic

  • The “Hire or Fire after 90 days” rule may curtail job creation;
  • The 10% limit on contractual labor also may curtail job creation;
  • Governance may be impaired if uncommitted workers have to join.

Finally, what will be the role of the Communist Party in the cooperatives?  Will it keep out of cooperative management?  Will Party control subvert workers’ democracy and deform incentives structures?

OPTION 3. Wide Open Foreign Investment Approach zzzzA third possibility would be to open up completely to foreign investment. This would involve a rapid sell-off of state oligopolistic enterprises to deep-pocket foreign buyers such as China, the United States (in due course), Europe, Brazil, or elsewhere.  The buyers might be the Walmart’s, Lowes, Subways, or Starbucks of this world, wanting to acquire major access to the Cuban market. This is a strong possibility if existing state oligopolies (e.g., CIMEX and Gaviota) were to be privatized in big chunks. The policy requirements for this approach to occur would be rapid privatization plus indiscriminate direct foreign investment and takeovers by large foreign firms.

 This approach does have some advantages.

  • It would generate large and immediate revenue receipts for the Cuban government;
  • It would lead to large and rapid transfers into Cuba of financial resources; entrepreneurship and managerial talent; physical capital (machinery and equipment and structures); most modern technology embedded in machinery and equipment; and personnel where and when necessary;
  • The results would be rapid productivity gains, higher-productivity work and rapid GDP gains.

However, there would also be disadvantages such as:

  • Profits would flow out ad infinitum;
  • Income concentration: profits to foreign owners (e.g. the Walton family of Arkansas who practically own Walmart) and profits to oligopolistic domestic owners;
  • Oligopolistic economic structures would be damaging in the long run;
  • There would be a strengthened probability of lucrative employment and ownership for the civilian and military “Nomenclatura”;
  • Blockages or inhibitions to the development of Cuban entrepreneurship;
  • “Walmartization” of Cuban culture; dilution of Cuban uniqueness;
  • Further reduction of the potential for diversified manufacturing in Cuba (e.g. due to the  Walmart/China  mass-purchaser/mass-supplier symbiosis);
  • Probably a blockage of export diversification.

 OPTION 4: Pro-Indigenous Private Sector in a Mixed Economy

zzzzzA fourth possibility would be for Cuba to promote its own small-, medium- and larger enterprises in an open mixed economy. This would require

  • An “enabling environment” for micro, small and medium enterprise with a reasonable and fair tax regimen; an end to the discrimination against domestic Cuban enterprise (See Henken and Ritter, 2015, Chapter 7);
  •  The establishment of unified and realistic monetary and exchange rate systems;
  •  Property law and company law.

A liberalization of micro-, small and medium enterprise would also be necessary to release the creativity, energy and intelligence of Cuban citizens.  This would involve open and automatic licensing for professional enterprises;  an opening up for all areas for enterprise – not only the “201”; permission for firms to expand  to 50 + employees in all areas; creation of wholesale markets for inputs; open access to foreign exchange and imported inputs;  full legalization of “intermediaries” ; and permission for advertising.

 This approach has some major advantages:

 Oligopoly power would be more curtailed compared to Option 3;

  • The economy would be more competitively structured with all the benefits this generates;
  • It would encourage a further flourishing and evolution of Cuban entrepreneurship;
  • It would permit the development of a diversified range of manufacturing and service activities and also a greater diversification of exports;
  • It would provide a reduced role for the “Nomenclatura” of military and political personnel and their families that would otherwise gain from the rapid privatization of state enterprises;
  • It would decentralize economic and thence political power and reduce the power for government to exert political influence through economic control;
  • It would generate a more equitable distribution of income among Cuban citizens and among owners than Option 3;
  •  Profits would remain in Cuba;
  •  There would be a stronger maintenance of Cuban culture.

There would be some disadvantages with this approach.

  • There would be no massive and immediate cash infusion to Government from asset sell-offs.   Or is this an advantage?  [more effective use of in-coming revenues]
  •  Perhaps there would be a slower macroeconomic recuperation;
  • There would be slower inflows of technology, finance, managerial know-how – but more domestically controlled.

Conclusion

Most likely, Cuban policy-makers in the government of Raúl Castro, the government of his immediate successor, and future governments of a politically pluralistic character will design policies that ultimately will lead to some hybrid mixture of the above four possibilities.  I of course will have little or no say in the process. However, my personal preference would be for an economy resembling the structure in the accompanying chart, with a large “indigenous” private sector, a significant cooperative sector, of course a large public sector for the provision of public goods, a small sector of government-owned enterprises, and a significant private foreign and joint venture sector. zzzzzzSo my bottom-line recommendations for current and future governments of Cuba would be:

  1. Utilize Cuba’s abundant resource — well-educated, innovative, strongly-motivated entrepreneurship — effectively, by further liberalizing the regulatory and fiscal regime for the indigenous micro-, small and medium enterprise sector, thereby also promoting Cuba’s indigenous economic culture;
  2. Use Cooperatives and “Coops of Coops” where possible;
  3.  Avoid “Walmartization” & homogenization of Cuban economy and culture by utilizing an activist policy towards direct foreign investment.

Bibliography

Feinberg, Richard E., Cuba’s Economic Change in Comparative Perspective, Brookings Institution, 2013

Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas, Anuario Estadístico de Cuba, 2014

Ritter, Archibald and Ted Henken, Entrepreneurial Cuba, The Changing Policy landscape, Boulder Colorado: Lynn Rienner, 2015

 

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