"Guinea pigs" in the "pressure cooker"

Looking ahead to the U.S. election, blogger Yoani Sanchez asks whether the United States should “raise a fist or offer a hand” to Cuba.  Whoever wins, she says, will encounter a changing Cuba, and the key issues to be resolved are among Cubans themselves.  Her discussion of U.S. policy is a little elliptical, but when she says that the embargo-forever crowd sees Cubans on the island as “guinea pigs” in a “pressure cooker,” her views are clear enough:

With the increased cash from remittances, the small businesses that emerged from Raul Castro's reforms were able to use the money coming from the north for start-up capital and to position themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of Cuban-Americans arrived at José Martí airport every week loaded with packages, medicine and clothes to support their relatives on the island.

Those who see the Cuban situation as a pressure cooker that needs just a little more heat to explode feel defrauded by these “concessions” to Havana from the Democratic government. They are the same people who suggest that a hard line – belligerence on the diplomatic scene and economic suffocation – would deliver better results.

Sadly, however, the guinea pigs required to test the efficacy of such an experiment would be Cubans on the island, physically and socially wasting away until some point at which our civic consciousness would supposedly "wake up." As if there are not enough historical examples to show that totalitarian regimes become stronger as their economic crises deepen and international opinion turns against them.

Your tax dollars at work

Great Western Malting Co. of Vancouver, Washington has paid a $1.3 million fine for selling barley to Cuba through a foreign affiliate, a transaction that would have been legal had it done so directly from the United States with a Treasury Department license.  Treasury’s description of the case is posted here (pdf).  (H/t Cubadebate.)

Raul in Moscow

Raul Castro continues his foreign travel in Moscow, where he met President Putin and the two looked for ways to deepen economic ties.  Putin sent his regards to “our great friend” Fidel Castro.

His visit to Vietnam, EFE reports, included discussions of increased economic cooperation but no details were disclosed. 

More interesting, judging from this report and this one, it looks as if the American Secretary of State and the President of Cuba may have coincided briefly in Hanoi and missed a chance to meet.  Maybe next time.

Odds and ends

·         A Florida foreign policy update, a little late: The state law that bars companies that do business in Cuba from bidding on state and local government contracts was blocked by a federal court, and the state law that bars the use of state university funds for academic travel to Cuba was allowed to stand by the U.S. Supreme Court.

·         FT’s John Paul Rathbone on a 1959 Errol Flynn documentary, Cuban Story, recently rediscovered and released in Britain.

·         New York Times: A derrumbe in Brooklyn.

·         The New York Times on rock climbing in Vinales.

Cuba's foreign investment law will be amended

A mid-level official announced at a conference in Havana that the foreign investment law will be revised by the end of the year. 

The party’s lineamientos, the economic policy blueprint, call for more foreign investment, but no new policies have yet been put in place to that effect.  This article doesn’t explain why or in which ways the law will be amended.  So it remains unclear whether Cuba will increase foreign investment by accepting proposals now on the table, or by changing its policies to make the investment climate more attractive. 

New aid from China

Raul Castro is visiting China, met his counterpart Hu Jintao, and signed eight agreements for loans and assistance to agriculture and other sectors, Granma reports.  Here are stories from Xinhua (English) and Granma. 

His trip also includes a visit to Vietnam.  A note on the April visit to Havana of Vietnam’s communist party chief here.

Odds and ends

·         Trabajadores on Cuba’s shrinking labor force; in 2018 there will be fewer Cubans of working age than dependents (young and old combined).

·         Trabajadores explains how to update residential property titles, a prerequisite to any transfer, by sale or otherwise.

·         The Council of State announces legislative elections October 21 and 28.

·      Cuba’s legislature will meet July 23, Granma reports, with no details about the agenda.  Rumored agenda items are tax and migration policies and a new cooperatives law.

·         Cuban New Yorker on a Chinese-Cuban restaurant, with a primer on Chinese immigration to Cuba thrown in.

U.S. democracy programs roll on

The U.S. government’s Cuba democracy programs extend beyond USAID; some are administered by the State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Bureau, known as DRL, which has just issued its latest request for Cuba grant proposals.  This one seeks to fund the usual activities: training of human rights activists, use of communications technology, social media, etc.  This part of the preamble sort of jumps out:

“Special thought and consideration should be given to the selection of consultants and other personnel who may be required to travel to Cuba.  To the extent possible, travel by U.S. citizens and permanent residents should be limited or excluded.  It is preferable that personnel who travel to Cuba speak Spanish fluently, possess solid understanding of the Cuban context, and have prior experience on the island, in order to maximize their effectiveness in this unique operating environment.”

I can understand that the government doesn’t want to repeat the Alan Gross experience of sending someone to attempt to operate covertly in Cuba, knowing no Spanish and little about the country.

What I don’t understand is the preference for foreign operatives, even over U.S. citizens or residents who are knowledgeable and fluent.  Either it means that the U.S. government believes that foreign nationals are less likely to be detected by Cuban state security, or it wants others to take all the risks.

The breakdown of 2011 funding for all these programs has been provided to Congress and posted on the Herald’s website.  The Herald’s story highlights the emphasis on communications technology and reports that equipment such as the “satellite phones” that Alan Gross installed (the BGANS systems, which create independent satellite Internet connection with WiFi) are no longer part of the program.

Meanwhile, if you really want to follow this program you should follow Tracey Eaton.  At Along the Malecon and Cuba Money Project he is providing more information on these programs than anyone else, such as:

• On USAID’s spending, which peaked in 2008; more here.

• A 2008-2009 program document from the International Republican Institute that includes discussion of BGANS, and more from IRI here and here.

• On USAID spending in Costa Rica here and here; on NED grants here.

The message in all this is that the United States remains very committed to the Cuba democracy programs and to carrying them out in Cuba by sending money, resources, and operatives. 

One may view that commitment, and USAID’s m.o., as great, or as the opposite.  But one can’t dispute that the consistent U.S. message here, from Bush to Obama, is that U.S. recognition of Cuban sovereignty is selective.  And if you think that the issue of sovereignty has something to do with the arrest and incarceration of Alan Gross, this is not good news for him.