Tema: Lift the Cuba Embargo?

The bill introduced in the Senate would allow Americans to visit the island freely. This first step toward lifting the Cuba embargo has brought up to date the interest in the subject.

The following excellent article makes solid points against lifting the embargo without meaningful changes in Cuba. The author lays out good reasons why lifting the embargo will benefit the Cuban dictatorship, no the Cuban people.


Lift the Cuba Embargo?
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y09/abril09/09_O_3.html

By Humberto (Bert) Corzo*
Miércoles, 8 de Abril de 2009

“It is necessary to impose financial, economic and material restrictions to dictatorships, so that they will not take roots for long years….Diplomatic and morals measures do not work against dictatorships, because these make fun of the Governments and the population”. Fidel Castro (Excerpt from the book “Fidel Castro and Human Rights”, Editora Política, Havana, Cuba, 1988)

The Washington Post surprising editorial endorses the idea of keeping the embargo until the regime takes steps toward democracy.


Coddling Cuba

Why do the members of Congress rushing to befriend the Castros ignore the island's pro-democracy movement?

Editorial, The Washoington Post
Thursday, April 9, 2009; Page A16

HALF A DOZEN members of the Congressional Black Caucus spent hours huddling with Fidel and Raúl Castro in Havana this week as part of a swelling campaign to normalize relations with Cuba. "It is time to open dialogue and discussion," Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) told a news conference in Washington after their return. "Cubans do want dialogue. They do want talks." Funny, then, that in five days on the island the Congress members found no time for dialogue with Afro-Cuban dissident Jorge Luis García Pérez.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/08/AR2009040803769.html?sub=AR

“Why do the members of Congress rushing to befriend the Castros ignore the island's pro-democracy movement?”

Because they have no interest in democracy. Neither there nor here.

Liberal Democrats seem to be abandoning human rights and democracy in many places. The rush for Cuban trade and family reunion while worthy and popular cannot mask the ugliness of the regime they are embracing. Last March, it was Secretary Clinton who abandoned China's dissidents and liberals, taking human rights off the table.

Maria Werlau has an excellent editorial in the Wall Street Journal in regards to US embargo of the Cuban dictatorship. Ms. Werlau is saying that only actions that will benefit all Cubans, not just the few with relatives, are good in the end.

Toward a New Cuba Policy
Neither engagement nor isolation have worked
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123958449490312295.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By MARIA WERLAU
APRIL 13, 2009, 2:21 P.M. ET

The ascendancy of Raúl Castro to Cuba's presidency has fueled expectations of reform in the 50-year-old dictatorship. Next week, President Barack Obama will be pressed on the issue at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad-Tobago.

It is a good time to acknowledge that neither the U.S. embargo nor engagement by the rest of the world have helped Cubans attain their rights. Sanctions, though ethically justified, can't work unilaterally; treating Cuba as a normal partner is immoral and counterproductive. A new unified approach is needed.

Just as the oppressed people of South Africa, Chile, and other tyrannies received international support, finding an effective approach to the Cuba problem is a shared duty. It is also in everyone's interest. A democratic, stable and prosperous Cuba would cease threatening the security of the region, slow the flow of Cuban refugees and provide better trade and business opportunities.

I bet that Obama does not back down on the trade embargo. He has thrown something out there, now it's up to Cuba to respond in kind, like release those political prisoners and let them stay in Cuba, unharmed. Raúl may release one or two, not all of them. The trade embargo will remain in place.

Keep the Embargo
http://ksky.townhall.com/columnists/PeterBrookes/2009/04/15/keep_the_embargo,_o

By Peter Brookes
townhall.com
Wednesday, April 15, 2009

In another outreach to roguish regimes, the Obama administration on Monday announced the easing of some restrictions on Cuba.

Team Bam hopes that a new face in the White House will heal old wounds. Fat chance.

Sure, it's fine to allow separated families to see each other more than once every three years -- even though Cubanos aren't allowed to visit America.

And permitting gifts to Cuban relatives could ease unnecessary poverty -- even though the regime will siphon off an estimated 20 percent of the money sent there.

In the end, though, it's still Fidel Castro and his brother Raul who'll decide whether there'll be a thaw in ties with the United States -- or not.

I bet that Obama does not back down on the trade embargo. He has thrown something out there, now it's up to Cuba to respond in kind, like release those political prisoners and let them stay in Cuba, unharmed. Raúl may release one or two, not all of them. The trade embargo will remain in place.

Obama: Be Patient on Cuba
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/carlos_alberto_montaner/2009/04/the_current_discussion_the_us.html

By Carlos Alberto Montaner*
The Washington Post
Madrid, Spain, April 15, 2009

The Current Discussion: The U.S. will lift travel restrictions on Cuba, but leave the larger trade embargo in place. Is that a smart move? Does it go far enough? Too far?

President Obama has done well by eliminating the restrictions on Cuban-Americans' travel to the island and on the remittances they can send. It is an intelligent political gesture that indicates that Washington would look with interest on a response from the Cuban government that contained some measure of aperture.

Those restrictions had been imposed upon the Cuban dictatorship in 2004 after the repressive spasm of spring 2003, when 75 peaceful dissidents were imprisoned and sentenced to long terms (up to 28 years) for crimes such as lending forbidden books, writing accounts about the Cuban reality in foreign newspapers, and requesting a referendum to ascertain the political preferences of society.

In reality, the purpose of those punishments was to amass a large group of hostages who could be traded for five Cuban spies caught by the FBI while they acted on American soil and sentenced to prison in U.S. courtrooms.

Should President Obama now eliminate the rest of the commercial restrictions imposed upon U.S. society in its relations with Cuba? The so-called "embargo" today is limited to two fundamental aspects: the access to credit, and Americans' practical inability to travel to Cuba, given that the Treasury Department forbids them to spend money in that "enemy territory."

Obviously, those two aspects of the embargo keep the Cuban government from gaining access to a considerable amount of resources that would help it to consolidate its position. On the other hand, the United States is Cuba's principal supplier of food, selling the island more than $700 million a year in agricultural products. It is also the island's main source of humanitarian aid, all of it from private sources, and is the only country in the world that has not imposed a visa embargo on the island. While the other world nations give pitifully few visas to the Cubans, the United States grants them 20,000 visas per year, while a more-or-less similar number of Cubans arrive illegally in the U.S. by sea or through various borders and manage to legitimize their situation after about a year of living in the country.

That means that, when it comes to Cuba, no other country in the world may give lessons in humanity to the United States. It also means that the prudent thing for the Obama administration to do now is to sit back patiently to see how things develop in Cuba, before determining what Washington should do.

Within the power structure in Cuba, there are forces that favor profound changes in the political and economic fields. That explains the recent ouster of none less than Carlos Lage, the nation's top vice president; Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister; and Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, the Communist Party's official in charge of international relations.

Practically everyone in Cuban society is aware that they are in an "end of regime" stage. Fidel Castro is a very ill 82-year-old man. His younger brother is 77 and known to be in less-than-fine health. Although they have made an effort, the Castro brothers have not managed to organize the transfer of authority, and we know that very few people still think that the system copied from the Soviet Union of the 1960s and 70s is a permanent way to organize the state and society. That system is condemned to disappear in Cuba, as it has disappeared everywhere else.

That is why President Obama should not, at this moment, lift the embargo. He would be sending the worst possible message to the Cuban reformers. He would be saying to them: "It makes no difference if the dictatorship doesn't change. The free world accepts the regime just as it is, without the need for a change of system." Exactly the type of message the small Stalinist minority needs to tell the Cubans: "See how right we were? There is nothing to change."

When would it be worthwhile for President Obama to make a new gesture?

First, after Fidel, the principal obstacle to the country's natural political evolution, disappears. Second, maybe after the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party, to be held in late 2009, so long as there are clear signs that the reformers have been heard. Washington should not take another step until it sees what happens in Cuba after those two episodes. To do so would be a costly imprudence for the Cubans.

It's up to Obama if we wants to make deals with him. However, Castro is not an elected leader and therefore does not legitimately represent the Cuban people. The 1940 constitution that both Batista and he violated makes that clear enough.

Castro Feeds on Cubans’ U.S. Cash Support as Obama Eases Limits

By Jerry Hart

April 17 (Bloomberg) -- The Cuban state pension that Juan Gonzalez-Corzo receives since he retired from a government job in 2003 makes life easier after more than 50 years of work.

So does the cash that comes regularly by wire from his son in West New York, New Jersey.

It’s part of an estimated $1.1 billion sent to Cubans last year by relatives and friends around the world, an amount equal to about 1.8 percent of the communist country’s 2007 gross domestic product.
“Most of the remittances end up used for consumption,” said Gonzalez-Corzo’s son Mario, 39, a Cuban-born assistant economics professor at Lehman College in New York City who has studied remittances and provided the estimates. “It helps.”

The money also helps the island’s $58 billion economy, as the Cuban government charges fees that take about 20 percent of exchange-wired dollars, Gonzalez-Corzo said.

That troubles U.S. politicians who say the transfers support the totalitarian state created by Fidel Castro in 1959 and now run by his brother Raul. President Barack Obama this week eased restrictions that had limited money transfers by Cuban-Americans, most of whom live in southern Florida.

“The Castro government will confiscate a high percentage of those dollars, further propping up a regime that suppresses human rights,” said Representative Kendrick B. Meek, a Democrat who represents parts of Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

About 735,000 people around the world -- more than half from the U.S. -- sent an average of $150 to friends or relatives in Cuba last year, according to a study by Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research organization. The cash sent in 2007 was equal to 42 percent of the island’s tourism income and 4.7 times more than its sugar exports, Gonzalez-Corzo said.

Link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aoNduw5GDRCY&refer=home

The article highlights the ingenious nature of the remittance business which is just as admirable as any organized crime scheme. People naturally want to help their families. The regime exploits this for its own benefit to the tune of billions of dollars annually.

The majority of those people who send money to Cuba send significantly less than what they were legally allowed to until the other day. It's because of this and the slow economy that I don't expect there to a sudden increase of new remittances to the island.