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Saturday, June 23, 2007
Cuba will pay claims? Only in your dreams
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Cubans stand ready to compensate American businesses for property seized when Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, which could amount to $10 billion.
They stand ready, too, to pay $22 billion in debt to the former Soviet Union, which propped up the Cuban economy for more than two decades, ending 15 years ago.
The entire gross national product of Cuba in 2005 was $11.2 billion.
There are some caveats, though. Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, director of the North American Division of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, notes that 5,911 American claims have been recognized. She did not specifically say — and I neglected to ask — whether the Cuban government recognized them for payment. The claims for properties and businesses were certified in the 1960s by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States. Ferreiro said Cuba has been “prevented” from paying those claims by the embargo. But, she said, other international claims filed by Canadian, Spanish, French businesses have been settled. “We have compensated them all,” she said.
Ah, but there’s a catch.
The Russians, just now extending paltry sums of credit to Cuba, $355 million over 10 years, assert a claim to be repaid for the $22 billion loaned by the former Soviet Union before it broke up in 1991. But, say the Cubans, that withdrawal of Soviet support caused greater billions in damages to the island, suggesting that it should be written off.
While acknowledging the 5,911 American claims, Ferreiro insists that the American embargo has damaged the Cuban economy by $106 billion. Another Cuban government official, during an informal conversation later, stiffens noticeably and his tone hardens when discussing compensation claims of Cuban Americans. “Never,” he said. Those who fled to the United States were Cuban citizens when their property was nationalized and, like other Cubans, have no valid claim to restitution, he declares.
On these questions hinge the future of U.S.-Cuban relations after Castro. Cuban assets in the United States were frozen in 1963 and bank accounts that once totaled almost $270 million have been drained to pay court judgments.
After almost half a century chances are remote that anybody will get homes or businesses back — and, frankly, the cultures of Cuba and South Florida are so dramatically different that it’s hard to imagine any American, save the armchair revolutionary guilt-ridden about the abundant fruits of capitalism, could find satisfaction in the Cuban lifestyle.
Cuba has the transportation system and the lifestyle that Smart Growth zealots dream about — except that ordinary people devote years of their lives to waiting — waiting for hitched rides, waiting for overcrowded buses, waiting and walking.
Few have cars, and for the ordinary Cuban, those are the relics of pre-revolution Americana. Where else in the world is it possible to rent a ride in a 1952 Cadillac convertible with an up-to-date Toyota engine? Auto body filler and replacement parts designed and built by creative mechanics preserve Cuba as a living museum of 1940s and ’50s automobiles. Mostly, though, people walk — one of the reasons, to be sure, that life expectancy is 77.6 years. It’s 78 in the United States.
Cuba, for all its potential appeal to tourists, will not be a country that appeals to native-born Americans who’ve grown up accustomed to its lifestyles and options. It’s hard to imagine the young in today’s Cuba relating to old-line revolutionaries, and it’s equally hard to imagine people who have lived on food rations and inconveniences embracing South Beach.
“Transition,” says Ferreiro, turning the questioner’s description of the process now begun over slowly in her reply, “in Cuba, that word doesn’t say anything. It is a continuation … a very organized process without any changes.”
Pipe dreams abound. The dream that Cuban Americans can go back and reclaim property that’s now been occupied by two generations of Cubans. The dream that American businesses will get fair and just compensation for property taken. The dream that a totalitarian state can control a nation of individuals, once they are inspired to dream.
- Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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