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DEL.ICIO.USCuba softens U.S. attitudes on trade ban
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Havana, Cuba — The Cubans have learned from this country’s debate over Iraq: To change national policies, change public opinion.
Until George W. Bush is out of the White House and until the next presidential campaign moves past Florida, where anti-Castro Americans of Cuban descent are influential political players, there’s little likelihood that the U.S. trade embargo — “blockade,” the Cubans call it — or travel restrictions will be lifted. No presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, competing for Florida’s 27 electoral votes, enough to have been pivotal in the last two elections, dares alienate South Florida’s Cuban-Americans by advocating an end to the embargo.
“Cuban-American hard-liners represent the only community in the U.S., in the whole world, that can control a president,” says Pedro Alvarez Borrego, chairman and chief executive officer of the Cuban government’s trading company. “That small group controls the president.”
While haranguing the Bush administration, Cuban officials are clearly schooled in the art of speaking past the head of state. Borrego, for example, speaks diplomatically in framing an argument to ordinary Americans — those who, as we have seen on the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, are able to press for policy changes. “Congress needs to be convinced” to lift the embargo and travel restrictions, he says, “and the only ones who can convince Congress are the Americans.”
“To have peace and friendship with the U.S., these are our primary objectives,” says Borrego. “When the blockade is lifted, let Americans invade us” as tourists and traders, he says. Trade will represent more revenues to American companies, he continues. “The whole world wants to sell to us, but we believe two neighboring countries should” be trading partners.
American farmers and others who sell to Cuba deal through Borrego’s state-owned company, which is referred to as Alimport. Farmers and those connected with agriculture have become some of Cuba’s most energetic advocates for lifting the embargo.
John Newcomb, a cotton farmer in Mississippi and Arkansas, who attended a trade conference that Alimport sponsored, said “this trade embargo has not only hurt the Cuban people, it has hurt the American farmer as well.” And this: “I want to challenge Mr. Bush to tear down this trade embargo now; open up free trade and travel between our two countries.”
Marvin Lehrer, the USA Rice Federation’s senior adviser for Cuba, said that in 1959, Cuba was America’s biggest rice customer, and that it could be again. “The sanctions are sanctions against ourselves,” he told the delegates.
In addition to farm groups, Cuba also allows journalists, state agricultural and legislative delegations, university students and others — all of whom mingled at the National Hotel of Cuba during the last week of May. It may be a coincidence. But all are groups in positions now or in the future to be influential advocates for normalizing relations with Cuba, post the Bush presidency and post Castro.
“There’s no doubt that the Cuban government is trying to make full political use out of agriculture’s access to Cuba. We recognize that,” says James H. Sumner, president of the Stone Mountain-based USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, which represents 200 member companies comprising 95 percent of U.S. poultry production, along with exporters, port authorities and shippers. He continues:
“Whether it is a state department of agriculture or the American Farm Bureau, we realize they are trying to buy from as many states as they can to win as much political support as they can. Is that wrong? I don’t know. Our organization does not actually lobby government. I don’t go to Congress and ask them to lift the embargo, but I don’t have a problem making a statement in Cuba or elsewhere that the embargo should be lifted. We are punishing the Cuban people more than we are punishing Fidel Castro.”
Cuban officials insist for the record that nothing dramatic will change after Castro’s death. “Continuity,” as they describe it, is set with Raul Castro assuming power from the ailing Fidel, and after that will come an orderly transition and, if need be, a restructuring of power. They may be right.
But the prospect of lifting the embargo and permitting freer travel, if done sensibly once Castro is gone, could serve both countries.
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By jbmlaw
June 12, 2007 8:06 AM | Link to this
Good morning all. John Kennedy was the author of the Cuban embargo. The emotional appeal of “punishing” the leftist dictator still has strong sway in our culture – after all, this is a guy who imprisons political opponents of all persuasions, free-marketeers as well as those few leftists who dislike torture as a normal instrument of the government’s mind-control programs. I like the idea of punishing Castro. So it is only with great reluctance that I acknowledge what all free-marketeers know – free trade inevitably leads to greater freedom in all other aspects of society. Two examples of the broad principle: Soviet Union and China.
In 1980 the Carter administration’s CIA simply cited the stability of the Soviet Union, coupled with the large nuclear arsenal, as the greatest risk to the US in the world. While we all acknowledge the infallibility of CIA assessments, even then cracks had appeared in the economic infrastructure – Pepsi was sold in the USSR. In the 1950s Nixon rebuked Khrushchev for questioning the modernity of the “typical” American kitchen at an international trade show (note, this was a kitchen without dishwashers or microwaves!) That frontal challenge to socialism - that capitalism could produce such a nicer domestic world than the central planners – could not be left unanswered. The Soviet’s creaky efforts to modernize thereafter were insufficient to eliminate the culture of bread lines and rationing and domestic shortages. Enter Ronaldus Maximus, who mocked the Soviets, and reasonably challenged directly their integrity and ethics, aided and abetted by the brilliance of Maggie Thatcher and the unimpeachable decency of Pope John Paul. One of the under-spoken agents of change was American television; I respectfully cite the decadent MTV, beamed Eastward from free Europe, as a leading element – Soviet kids could not believe what they saw, as frankly could none of us. Additionally I urge all to seek, on YouTube, the famous Wendy’s “Soviet Fashion Show,” probably the funniest commercial to ever sell a hamburger. The culture of evil died from humiliation, and the incapacity to compete with freedom.
Similarly, Tiananmen Square ranks as the dying gasp of a culture that killed more of its own citizenry than any other in history. Strangely, the principal push there was initially perceived as a Western loss, the turnover of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was so far ahead of China, economically, that all Chinese who were allowed to visit had something like a religious conversion. While the doddering old men still control the politics of the country, and certainly some recent government efforts (for example, censoring freedom on the internet, and upgrading submarines) are noteworthy and troubling, but the inexorable march of 1,000 steps in China today is toward freedom.
Those arguments are the long way of saying, “Freedom will recover in Cuba only after the end of the embargo.” President Kennedy was wrong.
By Si Se Puede
June 12, 2007 8:08 AM | Link to this
By Bobby
June 11, 2007 6:08 PM | Link to this
Also, to Si Se Pueda, you can take the Redneck baloney and stick it way up your……….
Hey Bobby! Why so sensitive mi amigo? If the shoe fits wear it you fartin, butt scratchin, nose pickin, Blue Ribbon drinkin, spittin, chawin, right wing REDNECK cretin. Have a nice day REDNECK. Si Se Puede! Si Se Puede!
By Don't be a shill Jim
June 12, 2007 8:15 AM | Link to this
Yet another day Jim without a public fawning over Kathy Cox? I was hoping for some more praise that was as based in “reality” as the CRCT scores. You know, like maybe you telling us how good she looks in a thong…
By Craig also
June 12, 2007 9:09 AM | Link to this
Mr. jbm I usually just lurk here, and I rarely agree with you - but your comments today are - for the most part - right on. The embargo has hurt the cause of freedom in Cuba; it amazes me that so few of the South Florida Cuban folk are able to see that.
By jbmlaw
June 12, 2007 10:23 AM | Link to this
Coincidence, today is the 20th Anniversary of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-12-reagan-speech_N.htm
By jbmlaw
June 12, 2007 10:25 AM | Link to this
Hey Jim, where is everyone today? Are the AJC links working?
By patrick
June 14, 2007 1:29 PM | Link to this
You know Jim, every once in a while, when you take a breath between diatribes on commuter rail, you say something I can actually agree with.