Aftermath of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. (Photo: AP)

Via The Economist:

“NEVER in the history of Cuba have we had a case like this,” President Raúl Castro lamented after two powerful hurricanes, barely a week apart, struck the island, severely damaging crops and leaving some 200,000 homeless. Miraculously, Havana, the capital, was left virtually unscathed, as were the main tourist resorts, the oil industry and nickel mining. But with estimated losses of $5 billion, one of the world’s last communist regimes is facing a daunting task.

The enormous damage sustained to the island’s food supplies, housing and electricity grid raises big questions about Cuba’s ability to get by without massive international aid. Two of the island’s most valuable export crops, citrus and tobacco, suffered big losses. Luckily, the tobacco harvest was already in, but some 3,000 curing sheds where the leaves are stored were damaged. Almost half the sugarcane fields were flattened. The coffee harvest in the east has also been badly affected.

The government has admitted that it cannot cope alone. “It is impossible to solve the magnitude of the catastrophe with the resources available,” said Carlos Lezcano, director of the National Institute of State Reserves. “The reserves are being tested. We shall have to prioritise.”

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike could increase pressure on Raúl Castro to accelerate reforms to loosen the island’s centrally-controlled economy, much as his brother, Fidel, was forced to do in the early 1990s after the collapse of Cuba’s subsidised trade with the Soviet Union. Back then, reforms briefly opened the economy up to private enterprise, but Fidel Castro slammed the door shut again once the economy had recovered. [Read more →]

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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 →]

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The Wall Street Journal tells the story of  Armando Valladares, author of Against All Hope which details his harrowing twenty-two year imprisonment as a political prisoner of the Cuban government:

In late December 1959, nearly a year after Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had been run out the country by a movement that had a goal of restoring the 1940 Cuban constitution, Fidel Castro was tightening his grip.

At the time, Armando Valladares was a 22-year-old government bureaucrat at the Post Office Savings Bank. One day a group from the Communist Party showed up in his office and put a sign on his desk that read “If Fidel is a communist, put me on the list. He’s got the right idea.”

Castro had not yet made public his communist intentions. But Mr. Valladares says that “the sign was part of the campaign by the party and by Fidel to prepare the population for communism, which most knew little about. The idea was that since Fidel had already made his name synonymous with the Cuban messiah, he must be right about communism.”

Mr. Valladares told his visitors that he didn’t want that sign on his desk. “Five or six days later, in the wee hours of the morning, they came to my house. My mother’s room was closest to the front door so she heard the knock and got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, the men pushed her out of the way and rushed into the house. I awoke with a machine gun against my temple.”

The young Valladares had a lot of company. Thousands were being rounded up. Some waited months for their trials. Many others were immediately marched before firing squads.

Mr. Valladares got his day in court within the week. The judge, he says, sat with his feet up on the desk reading a comic book and making jokes. The search of his home had produced “no evidence, no weapons, no propaganda opposing the state.” Nevertheless he was convicted as a potential conspirator against the Revolution and sentenced to 30 years. His cell mates applauded the decision, because the only other possible sentence was the death penalty.

[Read more →]

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Reuters reports:

The United States ranked among communist Cuba’s top five trading partners for the first time in 2007 despite the decades-old U.S. trade embargo, as U.S. agriculture sales increased by $100 million.

Trade data for 2007 posted on the Web site of Cuba’s National Statistics Office (www.one.cu) placed the United States fifth at $582 million, compared with $484 million in 2006, including shipping costs.

The United States, which began selling food to Cuba in 2002 under an amendment to the embargo, placed seventh in 2006 and 2005.

Revolutionary ally Venezuela and communist China were Cuba’s top trading partners at $2.698 billion and $2.457 billion respectively, with Canada placing third and Spain fourth, each at more than $1 billion.

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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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From The Economist print edition

Outsiders bet that bigger changes are on their way

THE diplomatic sanctions imposed by the European Union after Cuba jailed 75 dissidents in 2003 were hardly painful. They mainly consisted of restricting political contacts and inviting dissidents to embassy functions, prompting a boycott by Cuban officials that became known as the “cocktail war”. The sanctions were suspended in 2005. Nevertheless, the EU’s decision on June 19th to lift them was symbolically important. It was another small indication that as Cuba edges towards life after Fidel Castro, relations between the communist island and the outside world are evolving too.

The EU’s decision was a surprise. The socialist government in Spain—the largest European investor in Cuba—has long wanted closer ties. Last year its foreign minister began regular talks with his Cuban counterpart. But the former Communist countries of eastern Europe, together with Sweden, were reluctant to drop the sanctions while most of the dissidents arrested in 2003 remain in jail.

They were won over by the notion that things are starting to change in Cuba, especially since Fidel Castro formally handed over the presidency to his brother, Raúl, in February. Mainly this has involved small economic steps, such as dropping bans on Cubans owning various consumer durables and turning more state land over to private farming. In lifting the sanctions, the EU reiterated its calls for Cuba to release all political prisoners, implement the international human-rights covenants that it recently signed, and make “real progress towards a pluralist democracy”.

Cuba’s reaction to the EU’s move was itself telling. In an article on a Cuban website, Fidel Castro fulminated against “enormous hypocrisy” (because the EU also agreed a streamlined procedure to expel illegal migrants, who include many Latin Americans). Europe, he said, wanted “impunity for those who would hand [Cuba] over to imperialism”. But in an apparent sign that it is no longer taboo to disagree with the comandante, Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Pérez Roque, described the move as “a step in the right direction”.

The United States is unlikely to follow Europe’s lead. According to Caleb McCarry, whom George Bush appointed as his “Cuba transition co-ordinator”, Raúl Castro’s government would need to free all political prisoners, allow civil and political freedom and open “a pathway to free and fair elections” before America would relax its 46-year trade embargo. Such changes are unlikely as long as Fidel lives, and are not inevitable thereafter.

Any change in American policy therefore depends on the outcome of the presidential election. Barack Obama has said that he would reverse restrictions on remittances and family visits to Cuba imposed by Mr Bush. That might be a prelude to bigger policy changes. John McCain would maintain the existing policy.

As for Latin America, it has no appetite for isolating Cuba, says José Miguel Insulza, the secretary-general of the Organisation of American States. Since illness forced Fidel to turn over his powers two years ago, several Latin American countries have sought closer relations with Cuba. In January Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, visited the island with a string of businessmen in tow, signing trade and investment deals worth $1 billion.

Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has reversed his predecessor’s policy of speaking out against the lack of human rights in Cuba, and has restored his country’s traditionally close ties. Earlier this year Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s foreign minister, renegotiated $400m of debt on which Cuba had defaulted. Cultural exchanges have increased, and Mr Calderón is expected to visit Havana soon.

This closer embrace of Cuba mixes self-interest with calculation. In Mexico, as in the United States and Spain, Cuba is a domestic political issue. Some commentators argue that in repairing relations, Mr Calderón hopes to appease the left-wing opposition, which disputed his election victory in 2006. Instability in Cuba, just 135 miles (220km) away across the Yucatán Channel, could pose a security threat to Mexico, argues Luis Rubio, a political analyst.

Both Brazil and Mexico see business opportunities on the island, especially since Fidel’s successors are likely to be more open to foreign investment. And though they won’t say so publicly, diplomats from these countries see closer ties as a way of balancing the influence of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, who has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s main provider of aid. Unlike Mr Chávez, they will quietly support political liberalisation in Cuba, they say. They believe that Raúl Castro worries about Cuba’s dependence on Venezuela and China. Some officials in Washington accept this argument, and say they are happy to see Latin American democracies seeking influence where the United States cannot.

However, not everyone in Latin America or Europe takes that view. Supporters of the jailed dissidents were critical of the EU’s move. Over the past two decades, Latin American governments, egged on by outsiders, have signed international agreements that oblige them to support democracy and human rights in the region. In disregarding these when it comes to Cuba, both they and the EU are being irresponsible, says Jorge Castañeda, a former Mexican foreign minister.

What is certainly true is that those who argue for constructive engagement as a way to bring change in Cuba have little to show for it so far. But the American trade embargo has failed even more manifestly, as well as inflicting harm on ordinary Cubans. So far, change in Cuba has come in tiny, glacial movements. Many outsiders are betting that over the next year or two the pace will increase.

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