Category — Fidel Castro

Via Oxford Analytica:

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque visits Mexico on Thursday, in an atmosphere of improving bilateral ties.  Close historical ties between the two countries, arising from a shared revolutionary tradition, and similar challenges from close proximity with the United States, had suffered under the administration of former Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Things have changed since. Veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro has handed over the presidency to his brother, Raul, who is anxious to reduce the country’s dependence on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and focus on other relational relationships.  While Brazil has been at the forefront of this, Mexico is also a strategically important regional power because of its size and proximity, both to the island and United States. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who took over from Fox after narrowly winning elections in 2006, has pursued a much more low-key and pragmatic foreign policy than his predecessor. While ideologically and temperamentally very different to his Venezuelan and Cuban counterparts, he has sought to normalise relations with both.

The key current bilateral issue is likely to be immigration.  While Cubans do still seek to reach the Florida coasts in — often makeshift — boats, an increasingly popular alternative sees migrants travelling to the Mexican state of Veracruz, from where they make their way to the US border by land, availing themselves there of the ‘wet foot dry foot’ policy, which grants Cubans automatic residency.  This is much more difficult to control, and has led to significant numbers from elsewhere in Latin America pretending to be Cuban in a bid to secure entry to the United States.  Addressing the problem will require high levels of bilateral engagement and cooperation, and could be an issue on which the Cuban government could engage with the next US administration.

Indeed, another key factor on both sides will be preparing for dealings with US President George Bush’s successor.  While Senator Barack Obama appears more willing to engage with Havana than his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, engagement is likely whoever wins. Progress will necessarily be slow and hesitant, however, because of domestic political constraints in both countries. Mexico could be a key player in such a process, as a mediator and go-between.

Related posts

• Will Cuba Become a Global Ethanol Player? (0)
• Where’s Raul? (0)
• US intel analyzes video of Fidel (0)
• Twenty-two years of imprisonment (0)
• The World in 2008: Cuba (0)

A possible recovery of Cuba’s sugar industry through foreign investment is discussed in the following report from IPS:

Foreign direct investment in the sugar industry is acceptable to the Cuban government for producing alcohol and other derivatives, but it continues to be a topic that the authorities prefer not to talk about, at least in public, although experts regard it as desirable for the recovery of the industry.

At present there are seven joint ventures involving capital from Spain, Italy, Canada and Mexico, all of which concentrate on the diversification of the sugar industry, Liobel Pérez, the Sugar Ministry’s chief communications officer, told IPS.

Pérez said six of the joint ventures between Cuban and foreign capital are based in this Caribbean island nation, and one is based in Mexico, where it markets technological expertise and technical assistance for optimising sustainable sugar production.

Discreet approaches made some two years ago by foreign companies interested in investing in sugar production did not prosper. “Conversations were held, but they did not produce concrete results,” Deputy Minister Juan Godefoy of the Sugar Ministry responded to an enquiry by IPS, without elaborating. [Read more →]

Related posts

• Anyone for cocktails? (0)
• U.S. is 5th leading trade partner (0)
• The Monroe Doctrine: Circling the Drain (0)
• Regional security in the Americas (0)
• I see stars… (0)

Word cloud for CUBAPOLIDATA

Related posts

• No related posts.

Mara Salvatrucha gang members arrested by Honduran special police. (Photo: Reuters)

Several challenges will be posed to a transitional government once Castroism fades from existence (elements will certainly remain) and a semblance of democracy emerges. Organized crime will be one of them, particularly in the streets of Havana and other cities throughout the island, perpetrated by gangs.

The lessons learned (from strategy and tactics to combat) of the current gang and organized crime phenomena evolving in Central America and Mexico proves invaluable to a future transitional government in how to confront these internal security issues.

Dr. Max Manwaring (Professor of Military Strategy at the U.S. Army War College) has written an article titled: “Sovereignty Under Seige: Gangs and Other Criminal Organizations in Central America and Mexico” published in the Spanish edition of Air and Space Power Journal addressing the current security challenges posed by gangs and organized crime in the Americas.

He also wrote at the end of 2007: “A Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty: Gangs and Other Illicit Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs) in Central America, El Salvador, Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil“ published by the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College that is worth a read.

Manwaring points out in his excellent article, Sovereignty Under Seige:

Another kind of war within the context of a “clash of civilizations” is being waged in various parts of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and everywhere else around the world today. Some of the main protagonists are those who have come to be designated as first-, second-, and third-generation street gangs, as well as the more traditional Trans-National Criminal Organizations (TCOs) such as Mafia families, Illegal Drug Traffickers, Warlords, Terrorists, Insurgents, etc. In this different (“new”) kind of war, TCOs are not sending conventional military units across national borders or building an industrial capability in an attempt to “filch some province” from some country. These non-state actors are more interested in commercial profit and controlling territory (turf) to allow maximum freedom of movement and action. In addition to drug smuggling, these criminal organizations are known to have expanded their activities—among others–to smuggling people, body parts, weapons, and cars; along with associated intimidation, murder, kidnapping, and robbery; money laundering; home and community invasion; and other lucrative societal destabilization activities. That freedom of action within countries and across national frontiers ensures commercial market share and revenues, as well as secure bases for market expansion. The corrosive effects of the associated criminal violence and gratuitous cruelty of that freedom of movement also generates a different kind of clash of civilizations. It is not a clash of Western and Eastern cultures. Rather, it is a clash of values. It is a clash of values between Liberal Democracy and criminal anarchy.

What makes all of this into a new type of war is that the national security and sovereignty of affected countries is being impinged every day, and TCO’s illicit commercial motives are, in fact, becoming an ominous political agenda. Rather than trying to depose a government in a major stroke (golpe or coup) or a prolonged revolutionary war, as some insurgents have done, gangs and other TCOs more subtly take control of turf one street or neighborhood at a time (coup d’ street), or one individual, business, or government office at a time. Thus, whether a gang or another TCO is specifically a criminal or insurgent type organization is irrelevant. The putative objective of all these illegal entities—the common denominator that directly links gangs, other TCOs, and insurgents– is to control people, territory, and government to ensure their own specific ends. That is a good definition of insurgency, a serious political agenda, and a clash of controlling values.

[H/T: SWJ]

Related posts

• Of mobs and revolution (0)
• Bay of Capitalist Pigs (0)
• Without liberty, we cannot advance (0)
• US intel analyzes video of Fidel (0)
• Upsurge in violence (0)