Tag Archives: International Relations

Lopez-Levy and Piccone: UNITED STATES, CUBA and EBOLA

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Fighting Ebola: A new case for U.S. engagement with Cuba

Original Article: http://tbo.com/list/news-opinion-commentary/fighting-ebola-a-new-case-for-us-engagement-with-cuba-20141028/

BY ARTURO LOPEZ-LEVY
Special To The Tampa Tribune; October 28, 2014

The simple fact that Cuba and the United States are in the same boat fighting the Ebola epidemics in Western Africa demonstrates how the level of conflict between the two countries is irrational. While Havana and Washington have considerable differences — and no parallel efforts against a common enemy as Ebola can bridge them — it is evident that narratives of suspicion and intransigence prevent such joint efforts for the benefit of both countries and the world in general.

But, words matter. The recent statements by John Kerry and Samantha Power praising what Cuba is doing to fight Ebola in Africa on behalf of the U.S. State Department — as well as the declarations by Fidel and Raul Castro that Cuba would welcome collaborative efforts on Ebola with the United States — show that a revision of the bilateral relations is long overdue.

President Obama now needs to apply the dictum of his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and not waste the opportunity presented by the Ebola crisis. Cuba and the United States should advance long-term cooperation in international health efforts under the auspices of the WHO.

Political leadership in the White House and the Palace of Revolution would transform a fight against a common threat into joint cooperation for the advancement of human rights (the right to health is a human right) all over the developing world and the national interests of the two neighbors.

Political conditions are ripe for such turn. Americans strongly support aggressive actions against Ebola and would applaud a president who put lives and medical cooperation with Cuba above ideology and resentment.

As more information comes out about Cuba’s international health effort, it is becoming clearer how unreasonable it is to assume that all Cuban presence in the developing world is damaging to U.S. national interests. The more than 40 000 Cuban doctors and health personnel working in 80 countries are playing a key role to improve human development and protect the world from the spread of Ebola and other contagious diseases.

During the Bush administration and even under Obama, the United States spent lavishly to support groups in Miami that focus on undermining Cuba’s international health presence in Africa and Latin America.

The U.S Cuban Medical Professional Parole Immigration Program (CMPP) is reminiscent of the Cold War. The program encourages Cuban doctors to abandon their contracts in third countries and immigrate to the United States.

Washington’s ideology-driven hostility toward Cuba’s international health efforts has further divided the United States from other democratic countries. The trouble for Miami die-hard Cold Warriors is that examples of how Cuba shares the burden and merits of international health efforts with U.S. allies are expanding. Cuba is cooperating with several institutions of the European Union, Brazil, Canada and Norway in projects of medical education on the island, and in Haiti and other countries. The programs might even grow as result of the current negotiation in Brussels between the EU and Cuba for a comprehensive agreement on cooperation and political dialogue.

The good news is that two former U.S. presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, have talked positively about Cuba’s health achievements and international programs. President Carter and former first lady Rosalyn even visited Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine in 2002. In a meeting with then Cuban minister of health Carlos Dotres, Mrs. Carter mentioned that their presidential center’s Global Health program would like to collaborate with Cuba’s international medical educational assistance. There is no moral, political or national security explanation for why such humanitarian endeavors are not happening already.

As a senator and presidential candidate, Obama was one of the loudest critics of looking at Cuba through the glasses of the Cold War. As a president, it isn’t enough for him just to retune the same policy of embargo implemented by his predecessors. He must adjust the official U.S. narrative about post-Fidel Cuba: It is not a threat to the United States but a country in transition to a mixed economy, and a positive force for global health.

Arturo Lopez-Levy is a visiting lecturer at Mills College in California and a PhD candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

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Ebola Could Bring U.S. and Cuba Together

By: Ted Piccone, Brookings Institution

On October 28, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for the 23rd year in a row to condemn the United States’ tough embargo on Cuba as a unilateral interference in free trade. Coincidentally, the UN system is tackling the devastating spread of the Ebola virus in West Africa and urging states to contribute medical and financial resources to stem the outbreak.

Ironically, Cuba and the United States have led the world in responding to the call for help, rushing hundreds of medical workers, military personnel, equipment, and other resources to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea to treat Ebola’s victims and prevent the epidemic from spreading. Could this be the moment for both countries to set aside their differences and join forces for the greater good?

The answer is a qualified yes. The onerous U.S. embargo poses no obstacles to such cooperation, and in any event, bilateral assistance for humanitarian reasons, including food and medicine, is a well-established exception to the rule. So there is no legal reason why U.S. personnel could not work alongside Cuban doctors and nurses in a third country to provide humanitarian aid to the stricken.

Moreover, there are precedents for this kind of cooperation. In 2010, in response to the devastating earthquake in Haiti, American and Cuban personnel worked together to provide emergency care, including the provision of U.S. medical supplies to field hospitals staffed by Cuban doctors.

Cooperation was so positively received that the two sides launched high-level discussions about a joint project to build a new hospital in rural Haiti to be staffed in part by Cuban medical personnel.

Yet, as in so many other instances, cooperation between Havana and Washington broke down. This time, the dispute concerned a Bush-era program allowing Cuban doctors and other health personnel easy immigration into the United States. Cuba insisted that the program be dropped.

Already, nearly 1,600 Cuban health workers have taken advantage of the enticement, which undermines Cuba’s well-regarded health-care system, a pride of the revolution.

Proponents of the expedited visa program, on the other hand, argue that these medical workers are forced to work for Cuba’s public health service under the island’s restrictive labor laws. Given their specialized medical training, they also have a much harder time than other Cubans gaining permission to leave the island, even under the more relaxed travel policies that Cuba adopted in 2012.

U.S. President Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to show the world that the United States can rise above old hostilities for the sake of saving lives. He can immediately use his executive authority to suspend the discretionary parole program for any Cuban medical worker who is deployed to West Africa in response to the Ebola outbreak, and thereby stem Cuba’s professional brain drain.

Cuba has sent more than 50,000 medical personnel to 66 countries (more than those deployed by the G7 combined), and is now the biggest single provider of health-care workers to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. For their part, the Cubans could address concerns about the nature of their highly touted medical missionary work by giving participants in their medical brigades the option of serving abroad as volunteers, not conscripts, at no cost to their careers if they say no, and with higher pay if they say yes.

The timing for such a move is ripe. Since Obama eased the embargo in his first term by allowing more Cuban Americans to visit and send remittances to their relatives, and facilitating other categories of travel to the island, people on both sides of the Florida Straits are reconnecting in myriad ways, slowly rebuilding the bridge that has long divided the two countries.

Both sides have begun cooperating in modest but pragmatic ways, in such areas as counter-narcotics, aviation security, marine environmental affairs, and migration. This would be one additional step on the path toward the reconciliation that a majority of Americans, including Cuban Americans in Florida, want and deserve.

The next steps, however, will be even more important. After the November elections, President Obama should signal his willingness to improve relations with Cuba by ending more travel and remittances restrictions, expanding support to Cuba’s emerging private sector, and engaging in high-level talks to remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Action on key cases involving citizens held in prison in both countries should be on the agenda as well, but not as a precondition for talks. And, assuming cooperation in West Africa goes well, President Obama should broaden the scope and timeline of the suspension of the medical parole program.

Now is the time to take these steps, before President Obama travels to the Summit of the Americas in Panama in April. There, he and Cuban President Raúl Castro should finally talk face-to-face, without preconditions, and set a path toward reconciliation through dialogue. It would be a great legacy for both presidents as they depart office in just a few years.

This piece was originally published by The Mark.

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RAÚL CASTRO Y LA CORRUPCIÓN

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Carlos Alberto Montaner | Miami | 7 Oct 2014

Original: http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba

¿Cree Raúl Castro que puede haber un Estado medularmente corrupto con funcionarios honrados que cometen delitos pero no lucran con ello?

Esto es, en síntesis, lo que se ha publicado: Cy Tokmakjian un empresario canadiense de 74 años, presumiblemente de origen armenio, llevaba dos décadas haciendo negocios en Cuba, pero fue condenado a 15 años de cárcel por (supuestamente) sobornar a funcionarios cubanos.

En la redada —de acuerdo con Reuters— fueron apresadas, además, 16 personas. Otros dos canadienses, cinco empleados cubanos y 9 funcionarios del Gobierno. En el grupo hay un viceministro del Azúcar, Nelson Labrada, con el que se ensañaron, seguramente como una advertencia general. Lo condenaron a 20 años.

De acuerdo con el informe a que tuvieron acceso los periodistas, a Labrada le regalaron un televisor de pantalla plana, le pagaron unas vacaciones en Canadá y lo llevaron a un casino en Toronto donde jugó y ganó 2.500 dólares. En Cuba, ya le habían obsequiado una piscina plástica y una parrilla. En el lenguaje coloquial cubano era un “pacotillero”. Si existió corrupción fue de poca monta.

Escarmiento contra la corrupción

En todo caso, Raúl Castro cree en el escarmiento como forma de mantener la autoridad. Utiliza a Labrada para mandar un mensaje. Él y su hijo Alejandro Castro Espín están decididos a terminar con los delitos contra la economía nacional mediante una dosis de terror en el campo administrativo. Son dos versiones tropicales de Maximiliano de Robespierre, pero muy distorsionadas y llenas de contradicciones.

Para ellos ese comportamiento —la corrupción— pertenece a la permisiva era de Fidel. (Fidel se parece más a Georges Danton, de quien se dice que pagó por un cargo en el Consejo del rey Luis XVI, aunque luego pidiera su cabeza.) Los raulistas lo afirman desdeñosamente a media lengua: “Eso ocurría antes”. “Antes” es la palabra clave. “Antes” quiere decir cuando Fidel gobernaba.

El Comandante era más político, más manengue, regalaba vistosos relojes Rolex a sus subordinados, o les daba autos Alfa Romeo, o se hacía de la vista gorda cuando Ramiro Valdés se asignaba una casa con piscina y gimnasio en Santa Fe, o cuando el general Guillermo García Frías utilizaba dos yates suntuosos para sus francachelas.

Si Fidel, gran malversador de los recursos públicos, disfrutaba de 50 residencias suntuosas, coto privado de caza, y yates de lujo para pescar, si la Isla era suya del hocico al rabo, podía entender que la manera de mantener viva la lealtad de sus subordinados era alternando la intimidación con recompensas materiales. Él sabía que el discursito revolucionario del “hombre nuevo” que predicaba el Che Guevara era una tontería.

Esta diferencia entre las posiciones de Fidel y Raúl con relación a la corrupción comenzó desde los primeros días del triunfo de la revolución. En sus memorias inéditas, Benjamín de Yurre, recientemente fallecido, secretario personal de Manuel Urrutia, el primer presidente de Cuba tras la huida de Batista (enero a julio de 1959), cuenta que estaba de visita en el despacho de Camilo Cienfuegos, situado en una suite del hotel Riviera, cuando Raúl entró como una tromba, rodeado por sus guardaespaldas, e increpó al popular comandante echándole en cara sus borracheras y orgías con el dinero de la revolución. Camilo le respondió airadamente y trató de sacar su pistola cuando el capitán Olo Pantoja se interpuso y los guardaespaldas de Raúl y de Camilo los separaron. De Yurre se evadió discretamente de aquella peligrosa trifulca.

imagesCAT03Z4EA Fidel, en cambio, le traía sin cuidado el comportamiento de Camilo. Para Fidel la corrupción era un arma de gobierno y se extendía al campo internacional. Usaba el dinero del país para “hacer revolución”. ¿Qué era eso? Con frecuencia, era expandir su influencia con los recursos de los cubanos. Era darles cientos de miles de dólares a las guerrillas, a los terroristas, o a los candidatos amigos durante los periodos electorales, a sabiendas de que una parte importante de esa plata se quedaba en el camino. Era invitar a 50 diputados mexicanos para que disfrutaran de Tropicana. Era convocar a cientos de personas, con todos los gastos pagados, para alinearlos tras alguna consigna política, o, simplemente, para que lo aplaudieran.

A Fidel le encanta que lo aplaudan. Tiene y alimenta con ese ruido su ego descomunal. Raúl, en cambio, posee conciencia de sus muchas limitaciones y es menos vanidoso. Entre sus defectos, no es de los menores su tosco desconocimiento de la naturaleza humana, lo que le llevó en los años 60 a proponer y llevar a cabo el cruel apresamiento de miles de jóvenes acusados de homosexualismo y “otras conductas antisociales”, formas de corrupción burguesa que él iba a corregir con durísimos trabajos agrícolas en los campos de concentración de la UMAP.

En definitiva, Fidel incurría en el terreno político, y para sus fines políticos, en las mismas prácticas delictivas por las que ahora Raúl acusa a Cy Tokmakjian en el campo empresarial. Sus intereses serían diferentes, pero sus métodos y su burla de las leyes son similares. ¿De dónde salía el dinero para “hacer revolución”?¿De qué presupuesto? ¿Quién lo fiscalizaba? Por la centésima parte de esa retorcida conducta las cárceles de medio planeta están llenas de funcionarios venales que incumplen las leyes.

La corrupción de Raúl

¿Y Raúl? ¿Advierte Raúl que cuando les alquila miles de profesionales de la salud a otros países y les confisca el 90% del salario está incurriendo en una falta tipificada en los acuerdos de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo de donde pueden deducirse consecuencias penales?

Pedirle 55 millones a la familia o a la empresa de Cy Tokmakjian a cambio de su libertad, ¿no es un clarísimo delito de extorsión típico de las mafias?

Quedarse con una parte sustancial de la plata que les produjo a los montoneros argentinos el secuestro de los acaudalados hermanos Born —60 millones de dólares—, ¿no es complicidad con un gravísimo delito?

Amenazar con la cárcel a los empresarios a los que el Gobierno cubano les debe dinero —como sucede con algunos exportadores panameños de Colón— si no les condonan las deudas a la Isla, ¿no es un comportamiento gangsteril?

No es verdad que Cuba le debe 500 millones de dólares a los exportadores panameños de la ciudad de Colón. Son casi 5.000 millones, y algunas deudas se arrastran desde hace más de 30 años, como me contó, indignado, uno de esos comerciantes atrapado entre la deuda, el miedo y la amenazada familia que ya formó en Cuba.

El mecanismo es diabólico: la manera de hacer negocios en Cuba es mediante la trampa y el amiguismo, dos conductas delictivas. Donde las reglas son deliberadamente opacas, en donde los tribunales son un brazo de la policía política, y en donde no funcionan el mercado y la competencia, sino el favoritismo, ¿qué otra forma hay de desarrollar actividades comerciales de una cierta envergadura?

No obstante, esos comportamientos corruptos son bienvenidos… pero solo mientra al Gobierno le conviene. Cuando llega la hora de ajustar cuentas comienza el calvario de los empresarios, a quienes someten a toda clase de chantajes y extorsiones. A fin de cuentas, Fidel y Raúl —en eso coinciden— sienten el mayor de los desprecios por los hombres de empresa que persiguen fines egoístas. Ellos, supuestamente, son revolucionarios puros a los que no les queda otro remedio que admitir a una gentuza deleznable para salvar la revolución

RC

La corrupción cubano-venezolana….

Read More: Raúl Castro y la Corrupción

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IN THE MEDICAL RESPONSE TO EBOLA, CUBA IS PUNCHING FAR ABOVE ITS WEIGHT

Posted on October 6, 2014 by Arch Ritter

4 Octobre 2014 – The Washington Post – Adam Taylor

 Original Here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/10/04 /

10-03-2014Cuban_Ebola While the international community has been accused of dragging its feet on the Ebola crisis, Cuba, a country of just 11 million people that still enjoys a fraught relationship with the United States, has emerged as a crucial provider of medical expertise in the West African nations hit by Ebola.

On Thursday, 165 health professionals from the country arrived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to join the fight against Ebola – the largest medical team of any single foreign nation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And after being trained to deal with Ebola, a further 296 Cuban doctors and nurses will go to Liberia and Guinea, the other two countries worst hit by the crisis.

Cuba is, by any measure, not a wealthy country. It had a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of slightly more than $68 billion in 2011, according to the World Bank, putting it a few places higher than Belarus. At $6,051, its GDP per capita was less than one-sixth of Britain’s. However, its official response to Ebola seems far more robust than many countries far wealthier than it – and serves as further proof that health-care professionals are up there with rum and cigars in terms of Cuban exports.

Cuba’s universal health-care system enables such an export. The country nationalized its health care shortly after its revolution, ending private health care and guaranteeing free health care in its constitution. The results have been widely praised. In 2008, evaluating 30 years of Cuba’s “primary health care revolution,” the WHO noted impressive strides that the country had made in certain health indicators. “These indicators – which are close or equal to those in developed countries – speak for themselves,” Gail Reed noted, pointing to a huge reduction in number of deaths for children under five years old and Cuba’s high life expectancy of 77 years.

Cuba’s health-care success is built upon its medical training. After the Cuban revolution, half of the country’s 6,000 doctors fled and the country was forced to rebuild its work force. The training system grew so much that by 2008, it was training 20,000 foreigners a year to be doctors, nurses and dentists, largely free of charge.

Ebola isn’t the first time that Cuban health workers have been sent to deal with a global disaster. Even back in 1960, immediately after the revolution, Cuba sent doctors to Chile to help in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, and the practice has continued for decades since. In 2005, Cuba even offered to send medical workers to the United States after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (they were apparently rebuffed). Reuters reports that Cuba currently has around 50,000 health workers working in 66 countries. Despite the high-profile acts of charity, the medical diplomacy more often seemed to serve more practical purposes – an estimated 30,000 health workers are currently in Venezuela as a partial payment for oil, for example. Exported medical expertise is predicted to net Cuba $8.2 billion in 2014, according to a recent report in state newspaper Granma. There are hopes that medical tourism and exported medical technology could one day provide similar figures.

It’s not a simple picture. Critics have complained that Cuba has begun to sacrifice the health of its citizens at home to make money sending medical workers abroad, and the conditions for these medical workers themselves have been criticized – The Los Angeles Times reported earlier this year that a significant number of Cuban health-care workers in Venezuela have fled the country to escape “crushing” workloads.

Even so, Cuba’s oversized response to Ebola seems to have brushed aside these criticisms, for now at least. The number of Cuban medical staff in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea looks set to be more than those sent from far-larger countries like China. Israel, a wealthier country with a similar population, caused controversy this week when it rejected calls to send medical teams.

“Money and materials are important, but those two things alone cannot stop Ebola virus transmission,” Dr Margaret Chan, director-general at the World Health Organization, said last month. “Human resources are clearly our most important need.”

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WHAT SHOULD CANADA DO ABOUT CUBA’S PARTICIPATION IN THE AMERICAS SUMMIT?

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Arch Ritter

CIPS-logo2By Stephen Baranyi, Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa, and Chair, Latin America and Caribbean Study Group of the Canadian International Council’s National Capital Branch.

See the original at: http://cips.uottawa.ca/what-should-canada-do-about-cubas-participation-in-the-americas-summit/#sthash.RUA0hXpt.dpuf This commentary reflects the public remarks and off-the-record

discussion with officials at the forum on Cuba, the 2015 Americas Summit, and Beyond: Obstacles and Opportunities, which was co-sponsored by CIPS on September 4, 2014.

Most Latin American and Caribbean states have indicated they will not attend the Americas Summit planned by Panama for April 2015 unless Cuba is invited. Canada and the United States have expressed reservations about Cuba’s participation on the grounds that it would gravely weaken the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Yet neither Ottawa nor Washington can afford to see the summit fail. In an age of emerging regional powers and increasing involvement by external heavyweights like China, North Americans are rightly concerned about being left on the margins of new hemispheric relationships.

From the moment it joined the OAS in 1989, Canada has made the protection and promotion of democracy a cornerstone of its hemispheric engagement. This commitment informed Canada’s hosting of the Americas Summit in Quebec and engagement in helping negotiate the Inter-American Democratic Charter, as well as the Harper government’s current Americas Strategy. Ottawa played a key role in drafting the Democracy Clause of the Quebec Declaration, which states that

 “any unconstitutional alteration or interruption of the democratic order in a state of the hemisphere constitutes an insurmountable obstacle to the participation of that state’s government in the Summits of the Americas process.”

Recognition of the different and often difficult paths to democracy provides an opening for productive dialogue, even between ideological foes, on ways of assisting Cuba in its construction of more democratic institutions. While Ottawa has maintained respectful relations with Havana since 1959, it definitely sees the Cuban regime as not meeting the standards of liberal democracy codified in the Democratic Charter. On that basis, it is understandable that Ottawa does not favour moves that might lower the bar on democracy in the region—at the summit or in other Inter-American fora.

Yet Canada does not wish to be left out in the cold, especially if Washington decides to go along with the majority view on Cuba’s participation. The Inter-American system, with the OAS at its centre, remains important because those are the only hemispheric institutions which include Canada as a full member (unlike the new Latin American and Caribbean Community (CELAC). Saving the Americas Summit is thus part of safeguarding Canada’s presence in the hemisphere. The tricky part is finding a way to save the summit and enabling Cuba to participate, without compromising Charter norms.

How might Canada contribute to that outcome?

First, Ottawa could see Cuba’s participation in the Americas Summit as a confidence-building measure rather than as a clear dilution of Inter-American democratic norms. Cuba’s participation in the Panama Summit would move it further along the path to reincorporation opened up at the San Pedro Sula General Assembly of the OAS in 2009. Yet it would not nullify the need for many other steps, by Havana and others, before Cuba could become a full member of the Inter-American system. As such, for Canada there would be little cost (and some possible benefits) in accepting Cuba’s participation in the Panama Summit.

Second, Ottawa could quietly support the construction of a summit agenda around a less controversial theme, such as the cooperative management of migration flows. Panama is not the place to reopen the Democratic Charter, with Cuba in the spotlight. Yet Ottawa could support a lower-profile discussion elsewhere on ways of breathing fresh life into the Charter.

The publications around the 10th anniversary of the Charter in 2011 (including the work of Canadian scholars like Maxwell Cameron and Thomas Legler) generated many ideas for strengthening the application of the Charter. Those range from compendia of best practices to the establishment of a special rapporteur on democracy. That conversation might interest Cuba and its allies, if it is broadened to include a consideration of how the participatory and substantive dimensions of democracy could be enhanced—as a complement to the mostly liberal, procedural dimensions codified in the Charter. This is complex and it will take time, much longer than the months leading up to the Panama Summit.

It will require adaptation in Cuba but also a considerable degree of conceptual and operational innovation on the OAS side. For those who think that the Harper government is unlikely to support that approach, let me cite the words of Foreign Minister Baird at the OAS General Assembly a few months ago. “Democracy”, he noted in Asunción, “is a journey, not a destination. There is no single outcome. Every democracy will look a little different, coming from a different set of experiences and from a different journey.”

This recognition of the different and often difficult paths to democracy provides an opening for productive dialogue, even between ideological foes, on ways of assisting Cuba in its construction of more democratic institutions. That could be timely, given the creation of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD), which merges the democracy promotion and development mandates into one department.

Finally (and probably also quietly, since Ottawa has learned that megaphone diplomacy does not work on this file), Canada could continue supporting home-grown democratic development through technical cooperation with Cuban institutions. This could be done by supporting greater citizen participation in municipal governance; funding Cuban (quasi) civil society organizations working to enhance tolerance of diversity and the peaceful management of disputes; and backing Cuban researchers exploring ways to promote more governmental accountability.

Several Canadian non-governmental organizations are already engaged in such initiatives. More could be done to expand those efforts over the coming years, on the safe assumption that they will converge with internal processes such as generational change, as well as with the renewal of democratic norms in hemispheric fora.

See more at: http://cips.uottawa.ca/what-should-canada-do-about-cubas-participation-in-the-americas-summit/#sthash.TO8hwHTb.dpuf

000477_baranyi1-e1365429847141Stephen Baranyi

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CUBAN-AMERICANS AGREE: TIME TO END THE EMBARGO

Posted on June 18, 2014 by Arch Ritter

The Cuban Research Institute of Florida International University has just released its 2014 Poll on Cuban-American views towards U.S. policy towards Cuba.

The complete write-up of  the poll can be found here: 2014-fiu-cuba-poll

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Majority of Cuban Americans want sanctions loosened: poll

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/17/us-usa-cuba-poll-idUSKBN0ES1CQ20140617

BY DAVID ADAMS

MIAMI Tue Jun 17, 2014 4:30pm EDT

(Reuters) – A survey of Cuban Americans in Miami shows eroding support for hardline Cold War-era policies adopted by the United States against Cuba, with a narrow majority in favor of closer ties with the communist-ruled island.

The poll, released on Tuesday by Florida International University (FIU), found that 52 percent of 1,000 Cuban Americans surveyed in Miami-Dade County oppose continuing the five-decade-old trade embargo against Cuba. That figure edges down to 49 percent among registered U.S. voters.

An even greater majority of those surveyed – 68 percent – favor diplomatic relations with Cuba. A similar number – 69 percent – favor lifting travel restrictions to Cuba for all Americans, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. Current U.S. policy allows visits to the island only under tightly controlled licenses for cultural and academic tours.

The results highlight the shift among members of the Cuban diaspora who fled the island nation to the United States to escape the rise of communism in the 1960s and show opinions have grown far less monolithic due to demographic changes.

Conducted between February and May as part of a periodic survey of Cuban Americans dating back to 1991, the poll found that younger exiles who left Cuba more recently were more favorable to changing policy than those who came in the 1960s.

The survey was funded by the Trimpa Group, a Democratic-leaning consulting firm based in Denver that promotes social change, and Open Society Foundations, which funds public policy causes and was founded by billionaire investor George Soros.

Miami represents the heart of the Cuban American community. “The Cuban enclave is changing at all levels,” Guillermo Grenier, an FIU sociology professor who helped lead the survey, told a news conference.

“The trends are clear,” Grenier said, noting that older exiles were dying while 20,000 new Cubans arrive in the United States every year under a migration accord with Cuba.

Only 8 percent of Cuban Americans ages 18 to 29 support continuing the embargo, compared to 60 percent of those ages 65 and older, the poll showed. In 1991, 87 percent of those surveyed backed the embargo compared to 48 percent now. Still, the latest poll found that a majority of Cuban Americans – 63 percent – support keeping Cuba on the United States’ annual list of state sponsors of terrorism, along with countries like Iran, Syria and Sudan.

“The results show that the (Cuban) government and the (Cuban) people are seen differently,” said Grenier. “There’s a certain willingness to throw the embargo under the bus, if there’s an alternative way to exert pressure on the government,” he added.

Asked if they would vote for a candidate who advocated replacing the embargo with support for private businesses in Cuba, 57 percent of registered voters said yes.

A larger majority – 81 percent – of registered voters said they would support a candidate who advocated replacing the embargo with a policy that increased pressure on the Cuban government over human rights.

Critics accused the FIU pollsters of ideological bias, highlighting the Trimpa Group’s lobbying ties to efforts to loosen the Cuba sanctions and promote travel to Cuba.

Mauricio Claver-Carone, director of the pro-embargo group U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, pointed to a recent poll conducted for the Miami Herald newspaper that found Cuban Americans support the embargo by a 56 percent to 36 percent margin. That poll, conducted by Miami firm Bendixen & Amandi International, involved a smaller sample of 300 voters with a 5.6 percent margin of error.

 

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Time to hug a Cuban

Posted on February 14, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Source:    http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21596532-rush-embrace-fading-outpost-communism-time-hug-cuban

A rush to embrace a fading outpost of communism

20140215_AMD000_0The Economist; Feb 15th 2014 |

HOW best to speed change in Cuba? The past few weeks have brought three different answers to that question, from the United States, the European Union and Latin America.

For more than 50 years the official American answer has been to try to asphyxiate Cuban communism through an economic embargo, and to encourage internal dissent. It was policy as tantrum, a counterproductive failure. Change is coming to Cuba—but from the top, not below. Since replacing his elder brother, Fidel, as Cuba’s president in 2008, Raúl Castro has unleashed economic reforms which, while officially aimed at “updating socialism”, are in practice introducing elements of capitalism. Some 450,000 Cubans work in a budding private sector of farmers, co-operatives and small firms.

Across the Florida Straits, the changes are causing long-monolithic support for the embargo to crumble. A poll taken in the United States for the Atlantic Council, a think-tank, published on February 11th found that 56% of respondents favoured normalising relations with Cuba. Days earlier Alfonso “Alfy” Fanjul, the patriarch of a pre-revolutionary sugar dynasty and long a pillar of anti-Castro Miami, told the Washington Post that he had made two trips to his homeland, talked to Cuban officials and would invest in Cuba “under the right circumstances”.

Barack Obama, who briefly shook Raúl’s hand at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in December, has lifted some restrictions on travel and remittances to the island. Many observers expect him to take further steps in that direction and to revoke Cuba’s anachronistic designation as a state sponsor of terrorism—once November’s mid-term elections are out of the way. But only the United States Congress can fully dismantle the embargo.

On February 10th the European Union, whose members maintain economic ties with Cuba, announced that it wants to start talks on a “political dialogue and co-operation agreement”. In practice many of its members have already sloughed off a “common position” adopted in 1996, a kind of embargo-lite that predicated closer links on promoting a transition to democracy. The EU was at pains to stress that this was not really a policy change, but it is.

One thing the EU will keep doing is to complain about the lack of human rights in Cuba. Latin America has already stopped bothering. Last month Raúl hosted a gathering of the Confederation of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a body set up in 2011 explicitly to include Cuba and exclude the United States. In Havana the bloc’s leaders signed a declaration that stated that regional integration should “respect…the sovereign right of each of our peoples to choose its own form of political and economic organisation”.

Many Latin American leaders see being friendly to the Castros as a cost-free way of showing that they no longer take political direction from Washington, DC, let alone Miami. (A handful would like to go further and be like the Castros.) Yet their declaration was a cavalier disavowal of the democracy clauses inserted into many regional agreements over the past two decades. It smacked of double standards: so quick to condemn dictatorships of the right, today’s crop of centre-left leaders are happy to give the Castros a free pass.

Oddly this rush to hug a Cuban comes as reform shows signs of stalling. The pace of private-sector job creation has slowed. The government has shut down private cinemas; it has ejected several Western businessmen. A special economic zone at a new Brazilian-built port at Mariel has yet to attract foreign investors, because of the restrictions they still face. Many Cubans felt insulted when they were granted permission to buy new cars—at astronomical prices.

The aim of the reforms is to allow the private sector to create the wealth that the state can’t. But the Communist bureaucracy still resists the notion that this has to involve creating wealthy people. If Raúl were to die before the reforms have created a broad coalition of winners, there would be a risk of backsliding.

In fact, the key to speeding change in Cuba probably lies in Caracas. Thanks to an alliance forged by Fidel and Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan aid accounts for around 15% of Cuba’s GDP. Years of misrule have brought Venezuela to the verge of an economic implosion. It is the fear of losing Venezuelan petrodollars, as well as apprehension about the “biological factor” (as Cubans call the death of the elderly Castros), that drives the island’s halting process of change. For other powers the best way to help is through efforts that support Cuba’s budding capitalism without offering the Castros any political endorsement.

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Venezuela and Argentina: The party’s over; [ time for Cuba to partner with Brazil ! ]

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Latin America’s weakest economies are reaching breaking-point

Feb 1st 2014 | BUENOS AIRES AND CARACAS

Original essay here: http://www.economist.com/-latin-americas-weakest-economies-are-reaching-breaking-point


sguCV_St_84 Nicolás Maduro and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the CELAC Cumbre, Havana

WHEN the euro crisis was at its height it became commonplace for struggling European economies to insist that they were not outliers like Greece. Whatever their woes, they declared, Greece’s were in a class of their own. In Latin America, by contrast, the unwanted title of outlier has two contenders: Argentina and Venezuela. Both have been living high on the hog for years, blithely dishing out the proceeds of an unrepeatable commodities boom (oil in Venezuela; soya in Argentina). Both have been using a mix of central-bank interventions and administrative controls to keep overvalued exchange rates from falling and inflation from rising. Both now face a come-uppance.

High inflation is a shared problem. Argentina’s rate, propelled higher by loose monetary and fiscal policies, is unofficially put at 28%. Argentina’s official exchange rate is overvalued as a result, fetching 70% more dollars per peso than the informal “blue” rate in mid-January. Venezuela’s prices are rising faster still. Last year, during an awkward political transition after the death of Hugo Chávez to the presidency of Nicolás Maduro (pictured with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Argentine president), the Central Bank stepped up money-printing to finance public spending, pushing inflation to 56.2%. A dollar fetches 75-80 bolívares on the black market, up to seven times the official rate.

Both countries have dwindling arsenals with which to defend their overvalued currencies. Venezuela’s reserves of gold and foreign currency, which stood at nearly $30 billion at the end of 2012, were down to just over $21 billion by last week. Only about $2 billion of that is in liquid assets. Ecoanalítica, a research firm, estimates that the government can also dip into around $13 billion of opaque, off-budget funds. Argentina’s reserves have also been tumbling (see chart).

Something had to give, and late last month it did. Argentina first allowed the peso to plunge, by more than 15% in the week starting January 20th, and then announced a relaxation of the government’s ban on buying foreign currency for saving purposes. Argentines making over 7,200 pesos ($900) monthly are now able to change 20% of their salary into dollars at the official exchange rate so long as they get approval from AFIP, Argentina’s tax agency. The dollars are transferred to their bank accounts, not released in cash, and hit by a 20% fee if withdrawn before a year. If that sounds complicated, it is still cheaper than buying dollars in the illegal market.

The government’s objective seems to be to close the gap between the official and blue exchange rates, alleviating the need to spend more of those precious reserves to prop up the official rate. Although the gap has closed a little, fear that devaluation will lead only to yet higher inflation explains continued high demand for dollars, even at the less favourable exchange rate. So too does the fact that only a third of Argentine workers meet the declared-income threshold for buying dollars, according to analysis by IARAF, a think-tank.

Guido Sandleris of the University Torcuato di Tella says the plan is doomed to failure unless the government becomes more open about its intentions and adopts a genuinely restrictive set of policies to battle inflation. Although the Central Bank this week raised one of its interest rates by a full six percentage points, rates remain below inflation, giving Argentines little reason to hold pesos.

On the fiscal front the government needs to reduce subsidies and remain unyielding in the face of workers’ demands for pay rises. Miguel Kiguel of EconViews, a consultancy, says wage increases to be negotiated in March and April must remain under 30% if they are to serve as an anti-inflationary anchor. That will be hard given lavish pay awards handed out to striking policemen last year.

Whether the government is willing to put prudence before politics is not clear. On the day that her government let the peso’s slide turn into a slump, Ms Fernández announced a plan to fund education for unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds that could cost 11 billion pesos. Her only reference to the currency’s fall was a tweet accusing banks of helping favoured investors to speculate on the peso. There are some people, she wrote, who “want to make us eat soup again, but this time with a fork.”

20140201_AMC257At least Argentina’s partial liberalisation of currency controls is a halting step towards normality. Venezuela, where the situation is even more perilous, is heading in the other direction. On January 22nd the government unveiled new rules under which a higher rate for non-essential transactions is set weekly (it stood at 11.36 bolívares to the dollar this week). The old rate of 6.3 still applies for government imports and basic items such as food and medicine, so reserves will keep falling as the government defends the currency.

Venezuela is running out of dollars to pay its bills. Although payments to its financial creditors of around $5 billion this year do not appear to be at risk, the country’s arrears on non-financial debt are put at over ten times that sum. These include more than $3 billion owed to foreign airlines for tickets sold in bolívares, and around $9 billion in private-sector imports that have not been paid for because of the dollar shortage. “Under the current economic model, and with this economic policy,” says Asdrúbal Oliveros of Ecoanalítica, “this [debt] looks unpayable.”

The effects are already apparent. Foreign airlines have placed tight restrictions on ticket sales; some have suspended them altogether. Many drugs and spare parts for medical equipment are unavailable. Car parts, including batteries, are increasingly hard to find; newspapers are closing for lack of paper. The country’s largest private firm, Empresas Polar, which makes many basic foodstuffs, is struggling to make some products. In a statement Polar said the government owed it $463m and that production was “at risk” because foreign suppliers of raw materials and packaging were threatening to halt shipments.

The government blames the crisis on private businesses and “irresponsible” use of hard currency by ordinary Venezuelans. It has ordered drastic cuts in dollar allowances for travellers, especially to popular destinations like Miami. Remittances to relatives abroad have also been slashed. In a bid to curb runaway inflation, it has introduced a new law restricting companies’ profits to 30% of costs. Long jail sentences await transgressors. Without a big injection of dollars from the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, which brings in 96% of foreign earnings, the crunch will continue. Better terms for foreign investors in the oil industry would bring in much-needed cash and boost stagnant production. But unless the government abandons its antipathy to private capital, the prospect of new investment is dim. Shortages of goods are only likely to worsen. If Argentina is an outlier, Venezuela risks straying into a different category entirely.

cristina-fernandez-raul-castro-nicolas-maduro-foto-estudios-revolucionRaul, Cristina and Nicolás 

Raul and DilmaRaul and Dilma Rousseff

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EU to start talks with Cuba on a co-operation accord

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Arch Ritter

Original Essay here: http://www.bdlive.co.za/world/americas/2014/01/31/eu-to-start-talks-with-cuba-on-a-co-operation-accord

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BRUSSELS, JANUARY 31 2014 (Reuters) — The European Union (EU) will agree next month to deepen relations with Cuba in its most significant overture to the communist island since the bloc lifted diplomatic sanctions in 2008, people close to the matter have told Reuters.

Foreign ministers from the EU’s 28 countries will give the go-ahead on February 10 to launch talks with Havana on a special co-operation accord to increase trade, investment and dialogue on human rights. The pact could be agreed by the end of 2015.

“Cuba wants capital and the EU wants influence,” said one person involved in the talks who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. “This co-operation could serve as a prelude to much more.”

Two other people with knowledge of the negotiations told Reuters that a consensus had been reached in Brussels to give momentum to Cuba’s market-oriented reforms under President Raul Castro and to position European companies for any transition to a more capitalist economy there in the longer term.

While the initial effect of a co-operation agreement will be limited, the symbolism is huge for the EU, whose ties with Cuba had been strained since it imposed sanctions in 2003 in response to Havana’s arrest of 75 dissidents.  Although the EU lifted those sanctions in 2008, the normalisation of relations has been tortuous because of resistance from Poland and the Czech Republic due to their communist past.

Havana has rejected the EU’s “common position” on Cuba that the bloc adopted in 1996 to promote human rights and democracy in the country.

Furthermore, the US, Cuba’s long-time foe that has kept an embargo against the Caribbean island since 1962, had exerted pressure on Brussels to try to isolate Havana. Washington has not sought to block the EU’s latest efforts, people close to the talks said, while Poland and the Czech Republic now back a deal with Cuba.

In a sign of impatience with the status quo, the Netherlands sent its foreign minister to Havana in January. This first such trip by the Dutch since the 1959 Cuban Revolution broke with EU policy to limit high-level visits. Spain, a former colonial power in Latin America and the Caribbean, has also been pushing for a change of approach since ailing, long-time Cuban leader Fidel Castro handed power to his younger brother Raul in 2008. Some EU countries see the 1996 “common position” policy as outdated because 18 EU governments have bilateral agreements with Cuba outside the common position, making it hard for the bloc to speak with one voice.

Still, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo has been adamant that the “common position” will remain for the time being while the European Commission, the EU executive, negotiates the co-operation pact.

“If Europe wants to have a presence when there’s a transition in Cuba, the EU has to start working now.

“It’s right to start dialogue now so that Europe isn’t absent when a transition happens,” said Carlos Malamud, head of Latin American research at the Real Instituto Elcano, a think-tank in Madrid.

A co-operation pact, which the EU has used as a tool in the past to strengthen relations with Central America and Asia, is not likely to increase trade greatly because Cuba sells very little to Europe. Besides cigars and rum, Cuba’s exports are not of huge interest to the EU, but Brussels believes developing business ties is the best way to press for change in Cuba. The EU is Cuba’s biggest foreign investor and Cuba’s second biggest trading partner after Venezuela, and a third of the tourists to the island every year come from the EU.

Cuba recently opened a Chinese-style special economic zone and is preparing a new foreign investment law. The country is seeking foreign investment at its port facilities in Mariel Bay to take advantage of the expansion of the Panama Canal.

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CELAC Summit in Cuba, the Challenges of Regional Integration

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Arch Ritter

cumbre_celac2014

Original Havana Times translation from BBC Mundo: http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=101429

January 23, 2014 |

Fernando Ravsberg*

HAVANA TIMES — The Presidents of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) meet in Havana Jan. 28-29 and, paradoxically, the meeting coincides with the 50th anniversary of the mass breaking off of diplomatic and economic relations of countries in the region with Cuba.

“It’s very symbolic ,” says Luis Suarez, a Cuban specialist in Latin America. He explains that “the restoration of relations with all nations of the region and the presence in this gathering of their Heads of State demonstrates clearly that the US failed in its policy of isolating us.”

To continue with the symbolism, coming to the event as a guest is the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza. It will be the first official visit by a senior official of that entity to Cuba after his expulsion in 1962. “It is the first time in 200 years, the countries of Our America founded an organization at this level without being convened by the United States or Europe.”

Suarez points out that, despite this, Cuba “was the first country in Latin America that included the goal of integration in its Constitution. That vocation comes from the war for independence, when we had the support of citizens of several countries on the continent.” He explains the magnitude of the CELAC noting that “no other entity in the history of the region has joined so many nations,” adding that “it is the result of the existence of leftwing governments that seek to solve social problems and achieve more autonomy. In another context this would have been very difficult.”

Suarez said “the worst external and internal enemies of the CELAC are those who do not want us to have an organization of our own that allows us to reach out to the world with an consensus position. And the closest is the U.S. Pan-American policy.”

Suarez believes “the future of the regional organization will depend on the political consensus achieved for concrete actions that reach the ordinary citizen, in areas such as health or education, for example.” Luis Suarez “No other body in the history of the region has joined many nations” as CELAC.

In these and other subjects, such as coping with natural disasters, Cuba could play a key role. “The country has a vast experience in these areas and also has the necessary human resources to support such initiatives.”

“We even have a Latin American School of Medicine for Latin Americans; the Operation Milagro eye treatment program that has restored vision to millions of people of the continent, and we created the literacy teaching method “Yes I can” that has taught more than 3 million persons read and write,” explains Suárez .

The agenda of the Havana summit falls squarely on social issues but it remains to be seen what agreements are reached and which governments join them, because their application is not mandatory, “because CELAC is just a mechanism for dialogue and intergovernmental cooperation.”

It also aims to declare Latin America a “Zone of Peace”, an agreement that the Cuban specialist considered “extremely important because it implies that governments undertake to seek political and negotiated solutions, avoiding the use of force in the region.”

CELAC-2-Luis-SuarezProf. Luis Suarez

“The future of the regional organization will depend on political consultations that are achieved for concrete action to reach the ordinary citizen with social action.”

Furthermore, CELAC “can prevent others from using our conflicts to divide us, as they have done many times in the past.” If such an accord is reached it remains to be seen what would happen with the foreign military bases that exist today in Latin America.

Suarez believes that to achieve greater practical effectiveness CELAC should “integrate regional institutions such as SELA, the Latin American Economic System, ALADI, the Latin American Energy Organization, dedicated to integration, the Pan American Health Organization, and ECLAC.” He explains that “the institutional map of cooperation and integration is a swarm of interlocking agreements, overlapping and sometimes conflicting. The great contribution of CELAC is that everyone could now converge in the same forum.”

Luis Suarez reminds me that with the establishment of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States “is the first time in 200 years, the countries of the Americas founded an organization at this level without being convened by the United States or Europe.”

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The Changing Slogans of Cuba’s Leadership

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Arch Ritter

pedro_campos1December 17, 2013 |  “Down with Capital, Long Live Capital!” Pedro Campos HAVANA TIMES

Those in Cuba who once bet on the complete expropriation and nationalization of foreign capital today beseech foreign capital to come in their aid, offering investors every imaginable guarantee. The Cuban State economy is in crisis, but not as a result of the imperialist blockade or the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the defenders of “State socialism” often say. The main reasons for the crisis must be looked for in more than fifty years of nearly-absolute state control, in the extreme centralization of decisions regarding how and how much of the billions of rubles received as subsidies from the former Soviet Union and the billions of Cuban pesos and hard currency produced by the working class were spent over this period of time, in the all-encompassing intervention of the State in the economy through domestic and foreign trade monopolies. It is to be found, also, in the State’s almost complete control over the means of production, in the nationalization of international capital, the capital of Cuba’s high and petite bourgeoisie, of free, individual and family workers – recall the “revolutionary offensive” of 1968 – of cooperatives and worker associations. The low salaries of workers, the maintenance of wage labor for the State, the financial imbalances generated by high spending in gigantic State institutions – such as the Armed Forces, State Security, the Party’s political and grassroots apparatuses, propaganda networks entirely subordinated to the State / Party / government, the country’s unwieldy foreign service – and international campaigns aimed at securing support for the government are some of the other causes behind the crisis. All of this could be summed up as the catastrophic result of that series of aberrant, archaic and dogmatic conceptions that Stalinism developed under the banner of Marxism-Leninism. According to the Stalinist logic, a political and military elite is to determine and regulate a society’s laws, economy, way of life and just about everything else in the name of the communist Party, the revolution, socialism and the working class – so-called “real socialism”, whose only real characteristics have been the absence of democracy and the refusal to socialize political and economic power. I have insisted on this elsewhere: unless the economic, political and social failure of this false socialism is acknowledged, the mistakes made will never truly be rectified. Those who defend this unjust system and now unscrupulously try to “update” it mistakenly identify the Cuban revolution with the Cuban government/State/Party that has made and continues to make every absurd mistake, “validating” the claims of right-wingers worldwide regarding the “unviability of socialism” (perhaps the best help global capitalism could hope for). Today, Cuba’s State economy can no longer rely on massive subsidies from the Soviet Union, Venezuela is experiencing a serious economic crisis and cannot continue to provide the aid Chavez offered the island. Likewise, the governments of powerful allies such as Russia, China and Brazil only offer credits that must be repaid. The bureaucratic apparatus of Cuba’s government/Party/State has refused to consider the truly socialist option: it has refused to share the country’s economic power with the people, with Cubans at home and abroad, with the workers. It has refused to allow workers to participate in the administration, management and revenue-collection of State companies and to grant full freedom to the self-employed and cooperatives, instead subjecting these to regulations, experiments and all manner of toing-and-froing. Naturally, workers identify less and less with a State that only caters to the interests of an elitist, bureaucratic caste which continues to determine the country’s laws, investments, estates and the lives of people. Faced with this complex situation, torn apart by its own contradictions and flip-flopping, the Cuban government/State/Party has now decided to contract legal matrimony with international capital, in order to be able to continue exploiting Cuban workers with its aid. The ironies of history! The “revolutionary leadership”, thirsty for foreign capital, today assures us it will not nationalize foreign investments made at El Mariel, the immense commercial project dependent on the end of the US blockade / embargo. The same government that blamed international capital – and US capital in particular – of all the world’s evils, that once boasted of having nationalized (placed under State control, to be more accurate) all foreign properties, today swears blind that it will respect international capital and begs, beseeches its powerful northern neighbor to lift the restrictions that prevent US millionaires from showering Cuba with dollars. They are not concerned about the risk that big, transnational companies – particularly US companies – will take possession of the resources and wealth of the “Pearl of the Antilles”, the “Key to the Gulf”, the “World’s Cruise Ship”, offering foreign investors the sweat of Cuban laborers on a silver platter, in order to share with them the surplus value they can squeeze out of workers together. This is typical of the annexationist stance that Cuba’s new Right – which has taken power in “socialist” Cuba – cannot conceal. We are dealing with the same people whose slogan once was “down with Capital”, those who today yell: “long live Capital!” The traditional Cuban Right based in the United States does not conceal its intentions of restoring capitalism on the island. The new Right offers us a pig in a poke, painting itself a “socialist” red while acquiescing to Yankee capital, allegedly excluding the old, “imperialist” capitalists (no, the new ones are “anti-imperialists”), so that the nouveaux riches and bureau-bourgeoisie, allied to and financially dependent on international capital, can survive the inevitable collapse. This comes as no surprise. Many of us in Cuba’s democratic and socialist left have been saying for many years that the bureaucratic State has only two options: coming to an agreement with the Cuban workers and people or with foreign capital. The second alternative has been the one chosen in all places where “State socialism” was essayed, where the powerful, authoritarian elite re-converted back to capitalism and became a new type of bourgeoisie. We are not against foreign investment. The question is who these investments benefit and what type of economy they are to serve, whether they are aimed at overcoming the economic and financial problems of the bureau-bourgeoisie and Cuba’s new Right or at developing the mid-sized and small companies and cooperatives of a socialist economy. During a fund-raising campaign in Miami, President Barack Obama assured Cuban dissidents he would not negotiate with the Cuban government in what is left of his term in office, while speaking of the need to change the United States’ long-standing foreign policy towards Cuba. The Democrats are already scrambling to secure votes from the Cuban and Hispanic communities, in view of the fact that there is a good chance the Republicans will put forth a Cuban-born senator as presidential candidate in the coming elections. If that were to happen and the Republicans won… Many concerns, questions and disagreements must exist in the high echelons of Cuba’s leadership. What did the US president mean? If there are to be no negotiations, the blockade will not be lifted and American investments will not come. What will they do with the Mariel project, its three million containers and their debt to Brazil? What steps could be taken to ensure the inflow of US capital, without putting their political power at risk? If this US president doesn’t lift the blockade, is that possibility to be discarded by Cuba’s current leaders? If the Republicans were to win the coming elections and a man of Cuban origin were to take office, what would they do? Now, has anyone in Cuba’s distinguished government of generals asked the Cuban people what they want? With every new development, what becomes clearer and clearer is that Cuba needs to democratize society, allow all Cubans to freely express our thoughts and to peacefully and democratically fight for their realization, allow for freedom of expression and association, the free and democratic election of all public officials and full access to the Internet. This process of democratization would allow all Cubans of good will to take part in the building of a democratic future of peace, justice and harmony, with everyone and for everyone’s benefit, regardless of their political views, religion, skin color or sexual orientation. Let’s hope open debate and the interests of the people prevail over the petty interests of extremists. Socialism in defense of life.

 

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