Tag Archives: US-Cuba Relations

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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Obama-Castro handshake – a Sign of Mandela-like Reconciliation?

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Arch Ritter

The Obama-Castro Handshake: No High-five

The Economist, Americas View;  Dec 10th 2013, 15:54 by H.T. | MEXICO CITY

s1.reutersmedia.net

“ON BACKGROUND, I can confirm there was a handshake.” In such deliciously cloistered terms did aides in 2000 confirm that President Bill Clinton had shaken hands with Fidel Castro–the first time a sitting American president had ever done so with the Cuban leader. Compared with that, President Barack Obama’s quick but highly public handshake with Raúl Castro, the Cuban president (and Fidel’s brother), at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in Johannesburg on December 10th looked like a sign of rapprochement between America and Cuba meant to be shouted from the rooftops.

Don’t read too much into it. Judging by the video footage, Mr Castro was the first in a line of leaders greeted by Mr Obama. It would frankly have been rude to rebuff him, not least at an occasion in which Mr Obama spoke movingly of Mr Mandela’s spirit of reconciliation. There were a few words exchanged, but they looked more polite than profound. Not a word, it seems, about Alan Gross, an American government subcontractor jailed in Cuba, who a few days ago appealed to Mr Obama to push for his release.

What’s more, next in line was Dilma Rousseff, the Brazilian president who has been publicly furious with the Obama administration over spying allegations. If he had given the cold shoulder to Mr Castro, she could legitimately have spurned his kiss on both cheeks.

Nor is it the first time Mr Obama has shaken hands with a Latin American antagonist. When he warmly greeted the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez in 2009, it was reported as an attempt to usher in a new era of friendship between the two countries. Nothing of the sort happened. Nor, for that matter, did it after Mr Clinton’s handshake with Fidel.   Better, then, to look for real signs of a thaw. The half-a-century-old American embargo of Cuba still exists, and diplomatic ties have been severed since 1961.

However, Mr Obama’s government has shown some signs of flexibility. Cuban-Americans can travel and send money to Cuba more easily, and postal restrictions have been relaxed. Last month Mr Obama told a group of Cuban-Americans that the United States should “update its policies” towards the Caribbean island.

Then again, in his speech at Mr Mandela’s memorial, Mr Obama also took a swipe at repressive regimes, presumably including Cuba’s. “There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people,” he said.

pb-131210-obama-castro-nj-01_photoblog600

With Dilma Rousseff

FIDEL-CASTROAn Earier Handshake! No trace on the Web of the Clinton-Fidel Handshake.

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Fidel Castro’s Son Calls for Major Change in Cuba Baseball Policy

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Arch Ritter

October 27, 2013 |

 HAVANA TIMES — Antonio Castro, son of Fidel Castro and team doctor of the Cuban baseball squad, requested that the Cuban players who fled the island and became professionals in the US Major Leagues be allowed to play with the national team in international tournaments, reported dpa news on Sunday.

“We need to change on both sides, we have to do something realistic, we have to do something for our players … [The current policy is] not good for athletes, for families, for anyone. We lost those players but why can’t they return to play again with the national team,” asked Castro, in an interview on Cuban baseball today by ESPN.

“We have to strive to not lose them. Unless we change, we lose the players, we lose everything,” he added.

IndustrialesCampeon2010The Famous “Industriales”

Up to 16 players who fled the island played this season in the Major Leagues, including the new idol of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Yasiel Puig.

Professional sports were abolished on the island in 1962, prohibiting Cuban athletes from working as professionals or joining foreign teams. Over the years it became routine for some athletes to skip out during trips abroad to try to build a future as professionals.

The sacrifice of having to leave their family is sometimes compensated with millions: This month Cuban first baseman José Dariel Abreu closed a record contract for a non-US player to play next season with the Chicago White Sox. He will earn US $68 million over six years.

Abreu defected from the island in August and obtained residency in Haiti, from where he began processing permits with the US Treasury Department in order to be a free agent and sign with the majors.

From Haiti he traveled to the Dominican Republic, where major league scouts were able to follow his progress as he trained.

Antonio Castro noted as an example the visit to Cuba this year by Jose Contreras, who defected and returned to the island after spending ten years playing in the United States. “I never expected to return to Cuba because many before me were not able to return, since the government considered us traitors,” he told ESPN.

Contreras escaped from the island in 2002 taking advantage of the presence of the national team in Monterrey, Mexico.

The return of the pitcher early this year was the first by an athlete who had abandoned a national team and came after the new Cuban immigration policy took effect on January 14, which allows for the return of athletes who left the country through irregular channels since the early ’90s and later as long as they had spent eight years abroad.

“Many want to go back and live here to teach children, is that bad? No, of course not. Contreras returned and is working for children to develop baseball. I love that idea,” Antonio Castro told the ESPN reporter in English during her recent visit to Cuba .

The island seems to be gradually lifting restrictions for high-level athletes that have existed for decades. The Cuban authorities, for example, announced on September 27 that they would allow their athletes to sign in the off season with teams in foreign leagues as long as they play in the Cuban leagues.

The reform seeks to “generate revenue” and “gradually increase wages,” explained the official daily Granma.

The measure is part of the process of market economic reforms being instituted by Raul Castro’s government.

In July, the Cuban Baseball Federation also announced that it had authorized the signing of active Cuban ballplayers with professional clubs abroad with the aim of “inserting Cuban baseball in the world.” Shortly after the authorities allowed the three players to sign with the Mexican professional team the Campeche Pirates.

“Cuba needs change, we are part of the world, we need to change,” Antonio Castro told ESPN.

Fidel-Castro-playing-baseball Antonio Castro’s Father in Earlier Times

fidel-hugo-baseball

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Remittances Drive the Cuban Economy

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Arch Ritter

By Emilio Morales and Joseph L. Scarpaci, Miami (The Havana Consulting Group).— Fidel Castro’s government reluctantly accepted remittances from abroad in 1993 when it realized it needed access to hard currency to survive.

It was a devastating ideological blow at the beginning of the so-called ‘Special Period in a Time of Peace’ because it revealed that the Cuban exile community had become a lifeline for the island. Suddenly, U.S. dollars started inundating the island and would never leave. Both the Cuban society and the exile community were startled by this bold move.

The former Cuban leader probably never imagined that the forced opening up to dollars was going to become the most efficient driver in the economy over the last 20 years. Not a single Cuban economist foresaw that outcome. Today, remittances reach 62% of Cuban households, sustain about 90% of the retail market, and provide tens of thousands of jobs.

Money sent from overseas far exceeds the value of the once powerful sugar industry which, in 1993, began a huge decline from which it has not recovered. Remittances in 2013 surpass net profits from tourism, nickel, and medical products manufactured by the Cuban biotech industry.

Table 1. Remittances versus Other Sources of Hard Currency in Cuba, 2012 (in millions of US dollars)

No.

Source

2012

1

Remittances received in cash

$2,605.12

2

In-kind remittances

$2,500.00

3

Total remittances

$5,105.12

4

Tourism revenues

$2,613.30

5

Nickel exports

$1,413.00

6

Pharmaceutical exports

$500.00

7

Sugar exports

$391.30

Data sources: Calculated by The Havana Consulting Group, based on their data and open-source statistics published by the Oficina Nacional de Estadísticas e Información (ONEI), Havana.

The table above shows that remittances ($5.1 billion) outstrip the leading four sectors of the Cuban economy combined ($4.9 billion). Moreover, the figures for items 4 through 7 do not take into account expenses incurred in generating those gross revenues (i.e., costs of processing sugar, manufacturing drugs, food imports, etc.). Sending remittances does not cost the Cuban government money, but it circulates throughout he economy and supports most Cubans in some way.

White House Policies Trigger Growth in Remittances

Barack Obama’s arrival in the White House has directly influenced the increase in money being sent to Cuba. In the past four years, $1 billion USD of remittances have infused the Cuban economy.

Cash remittances in 2012 reached a record $2.61 billion USD; a 13.5% increase over 2011.

In other words, cash remittances outweigh government salaries by 3 to 1. The current monthly mean salary according to ONEI (the official government statistics agency) is 445 Cuban pesos, or the equivalent of just under $19 USD. Today, the economically active work force is 5.01 million workers, of which about 80% (4.08 million) draw state paychecks, whereas the balance is self-employed, agricultural, or cooperative workers.

If we use the official exchange rates that one Cuban convertible peso (CUC) equals 24 pesos (CUP) or one US dollar, the annual payout for state workers is three times less than the volume of money that Cuban émigrés send to family back home. Include in-kind remittance contributions (gifts, appliances, clothing, etc., brought to Cuba during visits), and the ratio leaps to 5.5 to 1.

Behind this growth in sending money to Cuba is the opening up of travel to Cuba as well as eliminating restrictions on sending money there. In 2012, just over a half a million Cubans residing abroad visited Cuba, making them the second largest tourist group in the island’s market; only Canadians (1.1 million visits) surpass them.

Out-migration from Cuba –about 47,000 annually on average over the past decade or nearly a half million émigrés—is also a contributing factor because those who have most recently left the island are the ones most inclined to send money back home. That was not the pattern with the original exile community in the 1960s; sending dollars to the island was forbidden back then.

We also need to acknowledge that several reforms introduced by the Cuban government in the past three years have encouraged remittances. This cash infusion helps to start home restaurants (paladares), B&Bs, car rentals, and more recently the buying and selling of private cars and real-estate. These businesses are aided by the 1.6 million cell phones in use today –available to the general public only since 2007—of which 70% are paid for by Cubans living off the island.

Never at a loss to encourage remittances, the Cuban government announced just last month the opening of 118 Internet stations that charge very high hourly rates. The new cyber cafés will initially cluster in the tourist poles across the island and the provincial-capital cities.

At the present, then, the role the Cuban diaspora plays in developing the island’s economy has never been greater, despite the restrictions on how and where money can be invested. However, the short term is unlikely to witness a greater influx of capital beyond the diaspora’s giving. Witness the failures in recent offshore gas and oil oil drillings that have come up ‘dry’ and the political and economic crisis in post-Chávez Venezuela is mired. This may create a broader space for the exiles to have a more direct hand in rebuilding the country.

Like it or not, Cuban exiles carry economic clout on the island. They have a lot of skin in the game; some of it is economic, and a lot of it is love of family. Their role in shaping the lives of many will be transformative in years to come, and on both shorelines that straddle the Florida Straits.

Last Updated (Tuesday, 11 June 2013 04:20)

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Cubans on the Island and Cubans Around the World: We Are All Just Cubans, Period

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Arch Ritter

Yoani Sanchez

[Text read in an event at the Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida, 1 April 2013]

Years ago, when I left Cuba for the first time, I was in a train leaving from the city of Berlin heading north. A Berlin already reunified but preserving fragments of the ugly scar, that wall that had divided a nation. In the compartment of that train, while thinking about my father and grandfather — both engineers — who would have given anything to ride on this marvel of cars and a locomotive, I struck up a conversation with the young man sitting directly across from me.

After the first exchange of greetings, of mistreating the German language with “Guten Tag” and clarifying that “Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch,” the man immediately asked me where I came from. So I replied with “Ich komme aus Kuba.”

As always happens after the phrase saying you come from the largest of the Antilles, the interlocutor tries to show how much he knows about our country. “Ah…. Cuba, yes, Varadero, rum, salsa music.” I even ran into a couple of cases where the only reference they seemed to have for our nation was the album “BuenaVista Social Club,” which in those years was rising in popularity on the charts.

But that young man on the Berlin train surprised me. Unlike others, he didn’t answer me with a tourist or music stereotype, he went much further. His question was, “You’re from Cuba? From the Cuba of Fidel or from the Cuba of Miami?”

My face turned red, I forgot all of the little German I knew, and I answered him in my best Central Havana Spanish. “Chico, I’m from the Cuba of José Martí.” That ended our brief conversation. But for the rest of the trip, and the rest of my life, that conversation stayed in my mind. I’ve asked myself many times what led that Berliner and so many other people in the world to see Cubans inside and outside the Island as two separate worlds, two irreconcilable worlds.

The answer to that question also runs through part of the work of my blog, Generation Y. How was it that they divided our nation? How was it that a government, a party, a man in power, claimed the right to decide who should claim our nationality and who should not?

The answers to these questions you know much better than I. You who have lived the pain of exile. You who, more often than not, left with only what you were wearing. You who said goodbye to families, many of whom you never saw again. You who have tried to preserve Cuba, one Cuba, indivisible, complete, in your minds and in your hearts.

But I’m still wondering, what happened? How did it happen that being defined as Cuban came to be something only granted based on ideology? Believe me, when you are born and raised with only one version of history, a mutilated and convenient version of history, you cannot answer that question.

Luckily, it’s possible to wake up from the indoctrination. It’s enough that one question every day, like corrosive acid, gets inside our heads. It’s enough to not settle for what they told us. Indoctrination is incompatible with doubt, brainwashing ends at the exact point when our brain starts to question the phrases it has heard. The process of awakening is slow, like an estrangement, as if suddenly the seams of reality begin to show.

That’s how everything started in my case. I was a run-of-the-mill Little Pioneer, you all know about that. Every day at my elementary school morning assembly I repeated that slogan, “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che.” Innumerable times I ran to a shelter with a gas mask under my arm, while my teachers assured me we were about to be attacked. I believed it. A child always believes what adults say.

But there were some things that didn’t fit. Every process of looking for the truth has its trigger, a single moment when a piece doesn’t fit, when something is not logical. And this absence of logic was outside of school, in my neighborhood and in my home. I couldn’t understand why, if those who left in the Mariel Boatlift were “enemies of the State,” my friends were so happy when one of those exiled relatives sent them food or clothing.

Why were those neighbors, who had been seen off by an act of repudiation in the Cayo Hueso tenement where I was born, the ones who supported the elderly mother who had been left behind? The elderly mother who gave a part of those packages to the same people who had thrown eggs and insults at her children. I didn’t understand it. And from this incomprehension, as painful as every birth, was born the person I am today.

So when that Berliner who had never been to Cuba tried to divide my nation, I jumped like a cat and stood up to him. And because of that, here I am today standing before you trying to make sure that no one, ever again, can divide us between one type of Cuban or another. We are going to need each other for a future Cuba and we need each other in the present Cuba. Without you our country would be incomplete, as if someone had amputated its limbs. We cannot allow them to continue to divide us.

Just like we are fighting to live in a country where we have the rights of free expression, free association, and so many others that have taken from us; we have to do everything — the possible and the impossible — so that you can recover the rights they have also taken from you. There is no you and us… there is only “us.” We will not allow them to continue separating us.

I am here because I don’t believe the history they told me. With so many other Cubans who grew up under a single official “truth,” we have woken up. We need to rebuild our nation. We can’t do it alone. Those present here — as you know well — have helped so many families on the Island put food on the table for their children. You have made your way in societies where you had to start from nothing. You have carried Cuba with you and you have cared for her. Help us to unify her, to tear down this wall that, unlike the one in Berlin, is not made of concrete or bricks, but of lies, silence, bad intentions.

In this Cuban so many of us dream of there will be no need to clarify what kind of Cuban we are. We will be just plain Cubans. Cubans, period. Cubans.Freedom Tower, Miami, Florida

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“ASSESSING THE GOALS AND IMPACT OF THE CUBAN EMBARGO AFTER 50 YEARS”

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Arch Ritter

The Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy, University of Georgia School of Law presented a most interesting conference on The Cuban Embargo: Policy Outlook after 50 Years  on March 22, 2013. The principal organizers of the conference were Ambassador C. Donald Johnson, Director, Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy and Laura Tate Kagel, Assistant Director, Dean Rusk Center for International Law and Policy.

The Conference included a broad range of views on the issue from Dan Fisk, the major author of the Helms-Burton Bill to Ambassador Jose Cabanas of the Cuban Interest Section in Washington, and from Ricardo Torres and Jorge Mario Sanchez of the Center for the Study of he Cuban Economy to Vicky Huddleston, former US Ambassador to Cuba. The Dean Rusk Center will publish a “Conference Proceedings” document in the near future and I will make this available on this site when it appears.

In the meantime, here is the Power Point version of my presentation: “ASSESSING THE GOALS AND IMPACT OF THE CUBAN EMBARGO AFTER 50 YEARS”

Below is the Programme for the Conference

Friday, March 22, 2013,  8:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Dean Rusk Hall, Larry Walker Room, 4th Floor

 Program:

8:30 a.m. Registration and Coffee

9:00 a.m. WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION

 Rebecca H. White, Dean, University of Georgia School of Law

 C. Donald Johnson, Director, Dean Rusk Center

 9:15 a.m. PANEL 1— ASSESSING THE GOALS AND IMPACT OF THE CUBAN EMBARGO AFTER FIFTY YEARS

Panelists:

– Archibald R.M. Ritter, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, Carleton University,  Ottawa, Canada

– Ricardo Torres, Deputy Director, Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy (CEEC), University of Havana, Cuba

– Ray Walser, Senior Policy Analyst, Latin America, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Moderator: C. Donald Johnson, Director, Dean Rusk Center

11:00 a.m. PANEL 2— EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE PATHWAYS TO REMOVING SANCTIONS

Panelists:

– Daniel W. Fisk, Vice President for Policy and Strategic Planning, International Republican Institute, Washington, D.C.

– Vicki Huddleston, former Chief of Mission, Interests Section of U.S.A., Havana, Cuba

– Robert L. Muse, Attorney, Washington, DC

Moderator:   Timothy L. Meyer, Assistant Professor, University of Georgia  School of Law

12:45 p.m. KEYNOTE ADDRESS:  José R. Cabañas Rodríguez, Chief, Cuban Interests Section, Washington, D.C.

1:45 p.m. Break

2:00 p.m. PANEL 3— TRADE AND INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND THE U.S.-CUBAN ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP IN A POST EMBARGO REGIME

Panelists:

– Jonathan C. Benjamin-Alvarado, Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska at Omaha

– Gary W. Black, Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Georgia

– C. Parr Rosson, III, Professor and Head, Department of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University

– Jorge Mario Sánchez Egozcue, Senior Researcher and Professor, Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy (CEEC), University of Havana, Cuba

 Moderator:  Marisa Anne Pagnattaro, Professor of Legal Studies, Terry College of Business , University of Georgia

3:30 p.m. CLOSING

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Cuba Study Group, “Restoring Executive Authority Over U.S. Policy Toward Cuba “

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Arch Ritter

A major analysis of US policy towards Cuba has just been published by the Cuba Study Group. A brief Introduction and Executive Summary are presented below. The complete study is available here: Cuba Study Group, Restoring Executive Authority, Feb 21, 2013

 “Supporting the bill was good election-year politics in Florida, but it undermined whatever chance I might have if I won a second term to lift the embargo in return for positive changes within Cuba. It almost appeared that Castro was trying to force us to maintain the embargo as an excuse for the economic failures of his regime.” —President Bill Clinton

  “To make matters worse, the economic fence has helped to fuel the idea of a place besieged, where dissent comes to be equated with an act of treason. The exterior blockade has strengthened the interior blockade.” —Yoani Sanchez

 Opening Statement

The U.S. embargo toward Cuba is a collection of prohibitions, restrictions and sanctions derived from several laws that has been in effect for more than 50 years. Taken together and compounded with the designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism,” they result in the most severe set of sanctions and restrictions applied against any current adversary of the United States. This collection of sanctions was first codified into law by the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (“Torricelli”), severely tightened by the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 (“Helms-Burton”), and modified by the Trade Sanctions and Reform Act of 2000 (“TSRA”), thus transferring almost absolute authority over U.S. policy toward Cuba from the Executive Branch to the U.S. Congress.

The codification of the U.S. embargo against Cuba has failed to accomplish its objectives, as stated in Helms-Burton, of causing regime change and restoring democracy in Cuba. Continuing to ignore this obvious truth is not only counterproductive to the interests of the United States, but also increasingly damaging to Cuban civil society, including the more than 400,000 Cubans now working as licensed private entrepreneurs, because it places the burden of sanctions squarely on their shoulders to bear.

At a time when Cuba seems headed toward a path of change and reforms, albeit slower than desired, and a real debate seems to be emerging within Cuba’s elite regarding its future, the inflexibility of U.S. policy has the ironic effect of hurting and delaying the very changes it seeks to produce by severely limiting Cuba’s ability to implement major economic reforms and strengthening the hand of the reactionaries, rather than the reformers, within the Cuban government.

Moreover, Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA deny the United States the flexibility to address dynamic conditions in Cuba in a strategic and proactive way. They effectively tie the President’s hands in responding to developments on the Island, placing the impetus for taking advantage of the processes of change in Cuba in hands of hard-liners among Cuba’s ruling elites, whose interests are best served by the perpetuation of the embargo.

The Cuba Study Group is publishing this whitepaper to acknowledge that a Cuba policy fundamentally based on blanket unilateral sanctions and isolation has been grossly ineffective for more than half a century; it disproportionately hurts the Cuban people and is counterproductive to the creation of an enabling transitional environment in Cuba where civil society can prosper and bring about the desired social, political and economic changes for which we long.

Thus, we call for the repeal of the Helms-Burton Act, its related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA, and for the restoration of authority over U.S.-Cuba policy to the Executive Branch. It is our belief that we can no longer afford to ignore the failure of this legislation.

Executive Summary

Seventeen years after its enactment, the Helms-Burton Act—which further codified the sanctions framework commonly referred to as the U.S. embargo against Cuba and conditions its suspension on the existence of a transition or democratic government in Cuba—has proven to be a counterproductive policy that has failed to achieve its stated purposes in an increasingly interconnected world.

Helms-Burton has failed to advance the cause of freedom and prosperity for the Cuban people, to encourage free and democratic elections in Cuba, to secure international sanctions against the Cuban government, or to advance the national security interests of the United States. It provides a policy framework for U.S. support to the Cuban people in response to the formation of a transition government in Cuba; yet, the all-or-nothing nature of its conditions for suspension undermine that very framework by effectively placing control over changes to embargo sanctions in the hands of the current Cuban leadership. Simply stated, it is an archaic policy that hinders the ability of the United States to respond swiftly, intelligently and in a nuanced way to developments on the island.

Worst of all, the failures of Helms-Burton have more recently produced a tragic paradox: Policies once designed to promote democratization through isolation are now stifling civil society, including an emerging class of private entrepreneurs and democracy advocates whose rise represents the best hope for a free and open society in Cuba in more than 50 years.

The Cuba Study Group believes that the most effective way to break the deadlock of “all-or-nothing” conditionality and remedy the ineffectiveness of current U.S.-Cuba policy is to de-codify the embargo through the repeal of Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions in Torricelli and TSRA that limit the Executive Branch’s authority over U.S. foreign policy toward the Island (hereinafter collectively referred to as “Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions”). De-codifying the embargo would allow the Executive Branch the flexibility to respond strategically to developments in the Island as they take place; using the entire range of foreign policy tools at its disposal—including diplomatic, economic, legal, political and cultural—to advance the cause of human rights and incentivize changes in Cuba.

The primary consequences of Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions have been to isolate the United States from Cuba and to serve as a political scapegoat for the Cuban government’s many failures. It has become a “Great Crutch” to all sides of the Cuba debate. First, for ordinary Cubans, their struggle has fallen hostage to an international dispute between their government and the United States, which they see themselves as powerless to affect. For the Cuban leadership, it has become easier to blame the embargo than to adopt the difficult reforms needed to fix their economy. Lastly, for defenders of the status-quo within the Cuban-American community, it has become easier to wait for the United States to solve our national problem rather than engage in the difficult and necessary processes of reconciliation and reunification.

Helms-Burton indiscriminately impacts all sectors of Cuban society, including democracy advocates and private entrepreneurs, causing disproportionate economic damage to the most vulnerable segments of the population. Conditioning our policy of resource denial on sweeping political reforms has only served to strengthen the Cuban government. The scarce resources available in an authoritarian Cuba have been and continue to be allocated primarily based on political priorities, thereby increasing the state’s relative power and its ability to control its citizens.

The majority of American voters, Cuban-Americans and Cuban democracy advocates in the Island have rejected isolation as an element of U.S. policy toward Cuba and have called on the U.S. government to implement a policy of greater contact and exchange with Cuban society.  As Cuba undergoes a slow and uncertain process of reforms, the continued existence of blanket U.S. sanctions only hinders the types of political reforms that Helms-Burton demands.

Instead of maintaining a rigid policy that ties our hands and obsesses over hurting the Cuban leadership, U.S. policy-makers should adopt a results-oriented policy that focuses primarily on empowering the Cuban people while simultaneously pressing the Cuban government to cease its repressive practices and respect fundamental human rights. Repealing Helms-Burton would also free civil society development and assistance programs to be implemented outside of a contentious sanctions framework.

Furthermore, the Cuba Study Group believes that any forthcoming congressional review of current legislation relating to Cuba, such as a review of the Cuban Adjustment Act, must require a review of the totality of the legislative framework codified in Helms-Burton and related statutory provisions so that the United States may finally develop a coherent policy toward the Island.

While we wait on the U.S. Congress to act, the Executive Branch should continue to take proactive steps through its limited licensing authority to safeguard and expand the free flow of contacts and resources to the Island, encourage independent economic and political activity in Cuba, and increase the relative power of Cuban private actors. The U.S. should pursue these courses of action independent of actions taken by the Cuban government so as not to place the reigns of U.S. policy in the hands of Cuban proponents of the status quo.

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Castrocare in Crisis: Will Lifting the Embargo on Cuba Make Things Worse?

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Arch Ritter

The original complete essay is located here:  Castrocare in Crisis

Laurie Garrett; Foreign Policy, July-August, 2010

Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras

 Cuba is a Third World country that aspires to First World medicine and health. Its health-care system is not only a national public good but also a vital export commodity. Under the Castro brothers’ rule, Cubans’ average life expectancy has increased from 58 years (in 1950) to 77 years (in 2009), giving Cuba the world’s 55th-highest life expectancy ranking, only six places behind the United States. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Cuba has the second-lowest child mortality rate in the Americas (the United States places third) and the lowest per capita HIV/AIDS prevalence. Fifty years ago, the major causes of disease and death in Cuba were tropical and mosquito-borne microbes. Today, Cuba’s major health challenges mirror those of the United States: cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic ailments related to aging, tobacco use, and excessive fat consumption.

By any measure, these achievements are laudable. But they have come at tremendous financial and social cost. The Cuban government’s 2008 budget of $46.2 billion allotted $7.2 billion (about 16 percent) to direct health-care spending. Only Cuba’s expenditures for education exceeded those for health, and Cuba’s health costs are soaring as its aging population requires increasingly expensive chronic care.

Cuba’s economic situation has been dire since 1989, when the country lost its Soviet benefactors and its economy experienced a 35 percent contraction. Today, Cuba’s major industries — tourism, nickel mining, tobacco and rum production, and health care — are fragile. Cubans blame the long-standing U.S. trade embargo for some of these strains and are wildly optimistic about the transformations that will come once the embargo is lifted.

Overlooked in these dreamy discussions of lifestyle improvements, however, is that Cuba’s health-care industry will likely be radically affected by any serious easing in trade and travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba. If policymakers on both sides of the Florida Straits do not take great care, the tiny Caribbean nation could swiftly be robbed of its greatest triumph. First, its public health network could be devastated by an exodus of thousands of well-trained Cuban physicians and nurses. Second, for-profit U.S. companies could transform the remaining health-care system into a prime destination for medical tourism from abroad. The very strategies that the Cuban government has employed to develop its system into a major success story have rendered it ripe for the plucking by the U.S. medical industry and by foreigners eager for affordable, elective surgeries in a sunny climate. In short, although the U.S. embargo strains Cuba’s health-care system and its overall economy, it may be the better of two bad options.

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Conclusion

In the long run, Cuba will need to develop a taxable economic base to generate government revenues — which would mean inviting foreign investment and generating serious employment opportunities. The onus is on the Castro government to demonstrate how the regime could adapt to the easing or lifting of the U.S. embargo. Certainly, Cuban leaders already know that their health triumphs would be at risk.

The United States, too, has tough responsibilities. How the U.S. government handles its side of the post-embargo transition will have profound ramifications for the people of Cuba. The United States could allow the marketplace to dictate events, resulting in thousands of talented professionals leaving Cuba and dozens of U.S. companies building a vast offshore for-profit empire of medical centers along Cuba’s beaches. But it could and should temper the market’s forces by enacting regulations and creating incentives that would bring a rational balance to the situation.

For clues about what might constitute a reasonable approach that could benefit all parties, including the U.S. medical industry, Washington should study the 2003 Commonwealth Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health Workers. The health ministers of the Commonwealth of Nations forged this agreement after the revelation that the United Kingdom’s National Health Service had hired third-party recruiters to lure to the country hundreds of doctors and nurses from poor African, Asian, and Caribbean countries of the Commonwealth, including those ravaged by HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. In some cases, the recruiters managed to persuade as many as 300 health-care workers to leave every day. Although the agreement is imperfect, it has reduced abuses and compensated those countries whose personnel were poached.

Cuba’s five decades of public achievement in the health-care sector have resulted in a unique cradle-to-grave community-based approach to preventing illness, disease, and death. No other socialist society has ever equaled Cuba in improving the health of its people. Moreover, Cuba has exported health care to poor nations the world over. In its purest form, Cuba offers an inspiring, standard-setting vision of government responsibility for the health of its people. It would be a shame if the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba killed that vision.

 

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Brookings Institution: “Opening to Havana “

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Arch Ritter

By: Ted Piccone

Original Essay Here:

http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/01/opening-to-havana

President Obama can break free of the embargo against Cuba by asserting executive authority to facilitate trade, travel and communications with the Cuban people. Ted Piccone drafted this memorandum to President Obama as part of   big bets and black swans: a presidential briefing book.

How should the U.S. initiate a dialogue with Cuban officials on trade, travel and communications?

How does Cuba easing its travel restrictions affect U.S. migration policy?

Congress may be hesitant to pursue talks with Cuba. What can Obama do to secure Congressional support?

Your second term presents a rare opportunity to turn the page of history from an outdated Cold War approach to Cuba to a new era of constructive engagement that will encourage a process of reform already underway on the island. Cuba is changing, slowly but surely, as it struggles to adapt its outdated economic model to the 21st century while preserving one-party rule. Reforms that empower Cuban citizens to open their own businesses, buy and sell property, hire employees, own cell phones, and travel off the island offer new opportunities for engagement.

Recommendation:

You can break free of the straitjacket of the embargo by asserting your executive authority to facilitate trade, travel and communications with the Cuban people. This will help establish your legacy of rising above historical grievances, advance U.S. interests in a stable, prosperous and democratic Cuba, and pave the way for greater U.S. leadership in the region.

Background:

Early in your first term, you made an important down payment on fostering change in Cuba by expanding travel and remittances to the island. Since then, hundreds of thousands of the 1.8 million Cuban-Americans in the United States have traveled to Cuba and sent over $2 billion to relatives there, providing important fuel to the burgeoning small business sector and helping individual citizens become less dependent on the state. Your decision to liberalize travel and assistance for the Cuban diaspora proved popular in Florida and helped increase your share of the Cuban-American vote by ten points in Miami-Dade county in the 2012 election.

As a result of your actions and changing demographics, families are more readily reuniting across the Florida straits, opening new channels of commerce and communication that are encouraging reconciliation among Cuban-Americans and a more general reframing of how best to support the Cuban people. Cuba’s recent decision to lift exit controls for most Cubans on the island is likely to accelerate this process of reconciliation within the Cuban diaspora, thereby softening support for counterproductive tactics like the embargo. The new travel rules also require a re-think of the outdated U.S. migration policy in order to manage a potential spike in departures from the island to the United States. For example, the team handling your immigration reform bill should be charged with devising proposals to reduce the special privileges afforded Cubans who make it to U.S. soil.

Under Raul Castro, the Cuban government has continued to undertake a number of important reforms to modernize its economy, lessen its dependence on Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, and allow citizens to make their own decisions about their economic futures. The process of reform, however, is gradual, highly controlled and short on yielding game-changing results that would ignite the economy. Failure to tap new offshore oil and gas fields and agricultural damage from Hurricane Sandy dealt further setbacks. Independent civil society remains confined, repressed and harassed, and strict media and internet controls severely restrict the flow of information. The Castro generation is slowly handing power over to the next generation of party and military leaders who will determine the pace and scope of the reform process.

These trends suggest that an inflection point is approaching and that now is the time to try a new paradigm for de-icing the frozen conflict. The embargo — the most complex and strictest embargo against any country in the world — has handcuffed the United States and has prevented it from having any positive influence on the island’s developments. It will serve American interests better to learn how to work with the emerging Cuban leaders while simultaneously ramping up direct U.S. outreach to the Cuban people.

I recommend that your administration, led by a special envoy appointed by you and reporting to the secretary of state and the national security advisor, open a discreet dialogue with Havana on a wide range of issues, without preconditions. The aim of the direct bilateral talks would be to resolve outstanding issues around migration, travel, counterterrorism and counternarcotics, the environment, and trade and investment that are important to protecting U.S. national interests. Outcomes of these talks could include provisions that normalize migration flows, strengthen border security, break down the walls of communication that hinder U.S. ability to understand how Cuba is changing, and help U.S. businesses create new jobs.

In the context of such talks your special envoy would be authorized to signal your administration’s willingness to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, pointing to its assistance to the Colombian peace talks as fresh evidence for the decision. This would remove a major irritant in U.S.-Cuba relations, allow a greater share of U.S.-sourced components and services in products that enter Cuban commerce, and free up resources to tackle serious threats to the homeland from other sources like Iran. We should also consider authorizing payments for exports to Cuba through financing issued by U.S. banks and granting a general license to allow vessels that have entered Cuban ports to enter U.S. ports without having to wait six months. You can also facilitate technical assistance on market-oriented reforms from international financial institutions by signaling your intent to drop outright opposition to such moves.

Under this chapeau of direct talks, your administration can seek a negotiated solution to the thorny issue of U.S. and Cuban citizens serving long prison sentences, thereby catalyzing progress toward removing a major obstacle to improving bilateral relations.

You should, in parallel, also take unilateral steps to expand direct contacts with the Cuban people by:

• authorizing financial and technical assistance to the burgeoning class of small businesses and cooperatives and permitting Americans to donate and trade in goods and services with those that are certified as independent entrepreneurs, artists, farmers, professionals and craftspeople;

• adding new categories for general licensed travel to Cuba for Americans engaged in services to the independent economic sector, e.g., law, real estate, insurance, accounting, financial services;

• granting general licenses for other travelers currently authorized only under specific licenses, such as freelance journalists, professional researchers, athletes, and representatives of humanitarian organizations and private foundations;

• increasing or eliminating the cap on cash and gifts that non- Cuban Americans can send to individuals, independent businesses and families in Cuba;

• eliminating the daily expenditure cap for U.S. citizens visiting Cuba and removing the prohibition on the use of U.S. credit and bank cards in Cuba;

• authorizing the reestablishment of ferry services to Cuba;

• expanding the list of exports licensed for sale to Cuba, including items like school and art supplies, athletic equipment, water and food preparation systems, retail business machines, and telecommunications equipment (currently allowed only as donations).

The steps recommended above would give your administration the tools to have a constructive dialogue with the Cuban government based on a set of measures that 1) would engage Cuban leaders in high-level, face-to-face negotiations on matters that directly serve U.S. interests in a secure, stable, prosperous and free Cuba; and 2) allow you to assert executive authority to take unilateral steps that would increase U.S. support to the Cuban people, as mandated by Congress.

To take this step, you will have to contend with negative reactions from a vocal, well-organized minority of members of Congress who increasingly are out of step with their constituents on this issue. Your initiative should be presented as a set of concrete measures to assist the Cuban people, which is well within current congressional mandates, and as a way to break the stalemate in resolving the case of U.S. citizen Alan Gross (his wife is calling for direct negotiations). Those are winnable arguments. But you will need to be prepared for some unhelpful criticism along the way.

Conclusion:

Current U.S. policy long ago outlived its usefulness and is counterproductive to advancing the goal of helping the Cuban people. Instead it gives Cuban officials the ability to demonize the United States in the eyes of Cubans, other Latin Americans and the rest of the world, which annually condemns the embargo at the United Nations. At this rate, given hardening attitudes in the region against U.S. policy, the Cuba problem may even torpedo your next presidential Summit of the Americas in Panama in 2015. It is time for a new approach: an initiative to test the willingness of the Cuban government to engage constructively alongside an effort to empower the Cuban people.

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Canadian diplomats spied on Cuba for CIA in aftermath of missile crisis: envoy

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Arch Ritter

From the Globe and Mail,  October 16, 2012

In a little-known chapter of the Cold War, Canadian diplomats spied for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Cuba in the aftermath of the 1962 missile crisis – and for years afterward.

A major part of that story is told in a forthcoming memoir by retired Canadian envoy John Graham. Mr. Graham was one of a series of Canadian diplomats recruited to spy for the CIA in Havana. The missions went on for at least seven years, during the 1960s. “We didn’t have a military attaché in the Canadian embassy,” explained Mr. Graham, who worked under the cover of Political Officer. “And to send one at the time might have raised questions. So it was decided to make our purpose less visible.”

Mr. Graham said he worked as a spy for two years, between 1962 and 1964. His mandate was to visit Soviet bases, identify weapons and electronic equipment and monitor troop movements. The espionage missions began after President John Kennedy asked Prime Minister Lester Pearson – at their May, 1963, summit in Hyannis Port, Mass. – whether Canada would abet American intelligence-gathering efforts in Cuba. As a result of the crisis, which brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war, the Soviets had agreed to withdraw nuclear missiles from Cuban territory, in exchange for Washington’s pledge to remove its own missile batteries from Turkey and Italy.

To monitor Russian compliance, the United States needed to supplement data gleaned from almost daily U-2 reconnaissance flights. It had few assets on the ground. Its networks of Cuban agents had been progressively rolled up by Castro’s efficient counterintelligence service. And having severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961, it had no embassy of its own through which to infiltrate American spies. Soon after the summit meeting, Ottawa sent diplomat George Cowley to Havana. Now deceased, Mr. Cowley, who had served in the Canadian embassy in Japan and sold encyclopedias in Africa, spent about two months in Havana in the late spring of 1963.

He was followed by Mr. Graham, seconded from his post as chargé d’affaires in the Dominican Republic. His formal training, he told The Globe and Mail, was minimal – a few days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. At the end of it, an agency officer offered him a farewell gift – a sophisticated camera with an assortment of telephoto lenses. He declined the present, arguing that if he were ever caught with it, he’d surely be arrested.

“But how will we know what the Soviet military convoys are carrying?” a CIA officer asked him. “We need precision. Configuration is essential for recognition.”

“I’ll draw you pictures,” Mr. Graham said. “It was a bit like the character in Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, but that’s what I did.”

In the Greene novel, an inept salesman, recruited to spy for Britain, sends illustrations of vacuum cleaner parts to his handler, calling them drawings of a military installation.

Mr. Graham’s sketches, however, were the real thing. To get them to Canada, he flew to Mexico City – the only regional air connection – and deposited the drawings at the Canadian embassy. From there, they were dispatched by diplomatic courier to Ottawa. Copies were subsequently sent to the CIA and, Mr. Graham later heard, to the Kennedy White House.

Read the complete article here: Canadian diplomats spied on Cuba for CIA in aftermath of missile crisis:

John Graham, 2012

 

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