Category — Brazil

Jorge Castañeda, former Foreign Minister of Mexico, has written an article (preview only) for Foreign Affairs in which he believes the key to a successful foreign policy in Latin America is to focus on four critical issues — Cuba, immigration, trade, and the “two lefts”.

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The Economist has a piece on the effects of the embargo and foreign investment in Cuba:

FOR almost half a century, the United States has imposed a trade embargo against Cuba. And yet it sometimes seems barely visible. Across the island, American brands are ubiquitous. Tourists can order a Coca-Cola (made in Mexico) in state-run hotels. Computers running Microsoft software have appeared in the capital’s few electronics stores. A fleet of Ford tankers refuel aeroplanes at Havana’s airport. Taking advantage of an exemption introduced in 2000, American farmers have become Cuba’s biggest source of food imports, a cash trade worth $600m a year. No wonder that some Cubans wonder whether the “blockade” which the government blames for nearly all of Cuba’s problems might be some sort of Orwellian trick. “Does it really exist?” asks a medical student in Havana. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

But plenty of companies that deal with Cuba have recently been reminded that the embargo is real. Last month, the United States’ Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is responsible for enforcing it, fined Minxia, a Maryland-based subsidiary of China’s MinMetals Corporation, $1.2m for dealing in Cuban metals. Gate Gourmet, a Swiss-American group, was ordered to pay $600,000 because it supplies in-flight meals to Cuba’s national airline.

Although the embargo has manifestly failed in its objective of removing Fidel Castro’s communist regime, in 1996 it was tightened by the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (better known, after the legislators who sponsored it, as Helms-Burton). This attempts to apply the embargo to foreign companies and individuals. Its extraterritorial pretension riles even many of America’s closest allies. It has notably been invoked to ban the directors of Sherritt, a Canadian firm which runs Cuba’s nickel mines, from entering the United States. (They included a former editor of The Economist). But in deference to those allies, the Act’s draconian Title III, which gives Americans who owned property in Cuba before the revolution the right to sue foreigners who now invest there, has been waived every six months, first by Bill Clinton and then by George Bush.

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Cuba, Brazil and Venezuela are among the nations whom have purchased arms and technology from Spain, per EFE.

Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce posted a report (doc) outlining the export and sale of armaments abroad.

Exportation to EU countries totaled €337 million Euros in 2007.

Exportation to Cuba in 2007, according to the report, was valued at €7.9 million Euros.  Small arms exported to Cuba were barreled at less than 20mm caliber, which included: rifles, carbines, revolvers, pistols, machine-gun pistols, machine-guns, and silencers.

[Photo: Ameli light machine-gun made by Spanish Santa Barbara Sistemas.]

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Charles Tannock, a British Conservative foreign affairs spokesman in the European Parliament, has written the following article published in the Tiapei Times about a new troika comprised of the presidents from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico and their quest for regional stability.

The rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages who had been held for years by Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas marks more than a turning point in Colombia’s long war against its drug-running, Marxist guerrillas. It also confirms the emergence of a new troika of Latin American leaders — Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Mexican President Felipe Calderon — who are set on finishing off Latin America’s destabilizing drug cartels and guerrilla movements, as well as isolating the region’s demagogic upstart, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Uribe’s status as one of Latin America’s historic leaders was assured even before the rescue of Betancourt and the other hostages. Uribe won an unprecedented re-election two years ago with an absolute majority in the first round of the vote. But it is Uribe’s resolve not to negotiate with the FARC over kidnappings, and instead to pursue relentlessly the armed insurgency that murdered his father. In the process, he transformed a country that was in the grip of drug barons and on the verge of becoming a failed state.

The professionalism of Colombia’s armed forces, coupled with Uribe’s popularity and a growing economy, has delivered, for the first time in three decades, normality to Colombia’s cities and, increasingly, peace and the rule of law to much of its vast jungle regions. Uribe’s relentlessness has brought on waves of defections from the FARC, which is now down to 9,000 guerrillas from a peak of 16,000 in 2001. Indeed, many FARC defectors now prefer to fight for their cause at the ballot box under the new left-wing Polo Alternativo Democratico.

But the benefits of Uribe’s apparent defeat of the FARC extend far beyond Colombia. The hostage rescue has also forced Chavez, still recovering from his failed power-grab referendum of last year, onto the defensive. The Uribe-Lula-Calderon axis appears set on keeping him there.

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Reuters/Brazil Online (via O Globo Online) reports Raúl Castro will visit Brazil at the end of the year according to a Brazilian government source.

The invitation was extended during President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s visit to Havana in Janaury.

The time frame of Raúl Castro’s visit was hinted in meeting between Lula and Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuba National Assembly, last Wednesday, in Planalto Palace. It is likely that the date will be December.

[Photo: EFE]

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