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TABLE OF CONTENTS - OCTOBER 1998

1) Request for National Bipartisan Commission to review Cuba policy

2) Cuban exile groups use Radio Miami Internacional to reach Cuba

3) UN calls for end to U.S. embargo

4) New foreign trade credits and investment in Cuba

5) Disaster aid not wanted from U.S.

6) Controls inside Cuba

7) U.S. travel to Cuba, legal & illegal

8) Meetings on Cuba

9) Cuban Studies and Publications

UNDERSECRETARY ROGERS TO WEIGH BIPARTISAN COMMISSION PROPOSAL ON CUBA on Monday, November 16Former Under Secretary of State William D. Rogers will consider the request to President Clinton for a bipartisan study commission on U.S. Cuba policy at lunch at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, 13th floor. Reservation form for lunch is on the last page of this newsletter.

1) Ex-State Dept. & Pentagon Officials & Senators Ask Clinton for Bipartisan Cuba Policy Study. Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger Oct.13 wrote President Clinton on behalf of six other foreign relations experts to request a bipartisan commission to review U.S. policy on Cuba, similar to the Kissinger commission on Central America created by President Reagan in 1983 to clarify U.S. policy in that troubled area.

Urging colleagues to support it, Senator Warner (R-VA) noted there has been no comprehensive review of U.S.-Cuba policy since Eisenhower first canceled the sugar quota in 1960 and Kennedy imposed the first full embargo in 1962. Since the 1992 Democracy Act and 1996 Helms-Burton Act, “significant changes in the world situation...warrant a review of our U.S.-Cuba policy”, said Warner, citing the end of annual Soviet aid, 1998 visit of Pope John Paul II, and reports by U.S. delegations including members of Congress, the military, and the American Assn. of World Health.

Proposed commission tasks follow:

“Delineation of the policy’s specific achievements and the evaluation of

1) the national security risk of Cuba to the U.S. and the role of the Cuban government in international terrorism and illegal drugs,

2) ...indemnification of losses incurred by U.S. certified clai-mants with confiscated property in Cuba, and

3) ...domestic and international impacts of the 36-year U.S.-Cuba economic, trade and travel embargo on a) U.S. international relations with our foreign allies; b) the politi-cal strength of Cuba’s leader; c) the condition of human rights, religious freedom, freedom of the press..., d) health and welfare of the Cuban people; e) the Cuban economy; f) the U.S. economy, business and jobs.”

Signing the letter are former officials as follows: Sens. Howard Baker, majority leader, and Malcolm Wallop; Defense Sec. Frank Carlucci, Sec. State Henry Kissinger, UnderSec. State William D. Rogers, Asst. Sec. State Harry Shlaudeman, Sec. Agriculture John Block and Sec. State George Schultz. While Bill Ratliff (NY Times) said many of the signatories believe our policy should change, also joining the request are Republican Senators and others who voted for Helms-Burton bill and hope to assess its impact, including Senators Bond, Bumpers, Chafee, Dodd, Enzi, Grams, Habel, Jeffords, Kempthorne, Kerrey, Roberts, Santorum, Gordon Smith, and Thomas. Three Members of Congress have objected to it: Reps. Diaz-Balart, Ros-Lehtinen and Menendez.

2. Short-Wave to Cuba by Exile Groups on Radio Miami Internacional. A significant number of private sector organizations broadcast to Cuba for a fee via FCC-licensed Radio Miami Internacional (9,955 kilohertz), They include well-known exile organizations among others: the Asn. de Ex-Presos Cubanos, Caribe Llama Cuba, Cuban American Veterans Assn., Democratic and Independent Cuba, Directorio Revolucionario Democratico Cubano, CANF (Cuban American National Fdn.), Grupo de Apoyo a la Disidencia, Junta Patriotica Cubana, Partido Cubano de Renovacion Ortodoxa, Plantados Hasta la Liber-tad y Democracia en Cuba, Puente de Jovenes Profesionales Cubanos, Radio Roquero, Radio Vaticano, Sindicato de Trabajadores Electricos de Cuba en el Exilio, and religious programs. Jeff White, General Manager, says Radio Miami Internacional serves “the principal Cuban exile organi- zations” and invites other groups to join them (tel: 305-267-1728, e-mail: wrmi@compuserve.com).

3. UN Calls for End to Embargo. The UN General Assembly, for the seventh year, by 157 to 2 (U.S. and Israel), with 12 abstentions, called for an end to the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. Opponents cited harmful extraterritorial effects of a law they believe violates their sove-reignty, and maintain that unilateral measures will not improve Cuba’s human rights situation.

4. Trade Credits and Investment in Cuba Continue. $200 million in 1999 French credits will promote exchange of Cuban nickel and sugar for French agro-food products ($180 million in wheat, flour, other items) and capital goods to upgrade Cuba’s central electric system, France’s Finance Ministry has announced. This is $15 million more than the 1998 French line of credit which provided basic consumer goods as barter for Cuban commodities.

A $250 million Canadian-Cuban venture will for the first time let foreign tourists buy condominium time- share units on Cuba’s beaches over 10 years. The 2,000 luxury units will represent one of Cuba’s largest tourism investments.

And British Airways is talking with Cuba about launching direct London-Havana service before winter tourism begins (Reuters, Sept. 15).

5. Cuba Still Seeks Disaster Aid but not from the U.S. Government. Following Cuba’s July request for relief for drought losses in its eastern provinces, for which the WFP (World Food Programme) is raising $20 million, Castro on Sept. 28 devoted part of a 4-hour speech to rejecting U.S. partici-pation which he said would be “hypocritical” in view of the 40 year U.S. blockade. Then in September, Hurricane Georges damaged bananas, coffee, cocoa, yucca, rice and sugar. Thousands were mobilized to sow short-term crops and collect felled coffee beans. The Archdiocese of Miami called for aid to hurricane victims in all affected nations. CCD (Cuban Com-mittee for Democracy also seeks tax-deductible donations for relief distributions of the WFP. Checks can be sent by Nov. 15 to CCD at 1755 Mass. Av. NW #324, Wash. DC 20036.

6. Controlling Problems Within Cuba. Criminal activity continues. Juventud Rebelde, Communist Youth newspaper, says that Esteban Lazo, First Secretary of the Party, recently called publicly for punishing “delinquency pimps...even if we have to sin on the side of excess.”

Detentions also continue. Four U.S. officials were allegedly harassed in Havana by security agents at a Sept. 8 religious parade. Twenty protesting dissidents were also detained but released in a few hours (CUBAInfo, Oct. 1). And the trial of four leading dissidents, members of Concilio Cubano charged with sedition Sept. 24, 14 months after their arrest, will be held later this fall.

Finally, a Ministry of Finance and Prices crack-down, involving over 250,000 spot inspections of food outlets, caught over 100,000 violators of price regulations in the first six months of 1998. Both state store employees and self-employed sellers were fined (Reuters, Sept. 15).

OPINION CORNER. Jon Basil Utley lived in Havana when Fidel Castro came to power, and in South Ameri-ca for 15 years as businessman, journalist, and student of revolutions. A life-long anti-communist, he’s served as a director or advisory board member of many conservative organizations including Accuracy in Media, Council for Inter-American Security, and the Conservative Caucus. He calls for “Rethinking Sanctions”.

Economic sanctions on Cuba used to make sense. Today they don’t. When Havana was an outpost of the Soviet empire, exporting terrorists and training revolutionaries for an inflamed Latin American body politic, measures to isolate and weaken communist govern-ments were justifiable. Today that threat is over.

Today, there’s a lot of evidence about the long-term consequences of economic sanctions. They’re proven actually to reinforce dictatorial strengths, contribute to further destruction of middle classes, and cause terrible suffering among the innocent. Although measures against Cuba are nothing like as strict as those against Iraq, for instance, where a million people died from consequent starvation and disease, nowhere have they succeeded in changing a dictatorial government.

What sanctions can do is weaken nations’ economies and military infrastructure. This was once important when communism was a threat. We now have evidence from the collapse of communism how trade and competition weaken dictatorial controls. In East Europe we’ve seen how small time trades helped weaken the communists in Poland, East Germany, and Russia itself. Even East German, the strongest satellite, was partly subverted by aid and trade with West Germany.

The concept of sanctions comes about from America’s consistent confusion and conflicting misunderstanding of dictatorships. On the one hand, there’s the concept that, if people didn’t really support their governments, they could overthrow them as we did the English with a George Washington. From this came support for “democratic wars” fighting evil peoples variously called krauts, slants, gooks, etc. On the other hand is the fear that all dictatorships are like Stalin’s or Hitler’s. From the former concept comes the idea that foreigners can overthrow a dictator if we make their economic situation desperate enough. Such were U.S. pronouncements of policy about Iraq after the mid-east war. From the latter comes the concept that all dictatorships are omnipotent.

The reality is that most dictatorships are indeed weak forms of government without legitimate standing for their own peoples. That’s why Saddam Hussein relies upon villagers from his home town for top lieutenants, why most African dictatorships are tribal, and so on. Only communism gave a cohesive enough ideology to overcome this weakness. But no one believes in communism any more. The only thing going for it for a long time was the belief that it was the winning side.

One of the few sources of strength for dictators comes from the argument that they are necessary to defend their nation in times of crisis or war, just as Greek city states once voted in “tyrants” in times of foreign inva-sion or we ourselves suspend constitutional guaran-tees. Sanctions are such a threat, giving legitimacy to dictators. As citizens suffer, they can believe their main enemy is not at home, but in Washington. Another example is Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia, where sanctions have mainly served to destroy the Serbian middle classes and the opposition to the dictatorship. Sanctions also favor the political classes who become richer by controlling trade, smuggling, and many businesses which then don’t have to compete with foreign competition, thus preserving local monopolies.

The concept of economic sanctions first came from Woodrow Wilson, seeking a “humane” alternative to war. In Washington they are now a weapon favored as a costless way to show disapproval, short of firing off cruise missiles, as America searches for a cheap way to manage its foreign interventions. But they are very blunt tools which involve whole civilian populations. “Sanctions represent the opposite of a just war,” wrote Justin Raimondo in the Von Mises Institute newsletter. “From wars that only involve soldiers, we have moved to wars that only involve civilians.”

A final concern about economic sanctions: Many protectionists in Congress are happy to put them on one nation after another with no concern about long-term consequences for general free trade. Many see them as a way eventually to curtail free trade. Combined with continual state laws and grandstanding to political con-stituencies, they are all more nails in the coffin of free trade. Examples are New York laws against Swiss banks and Massachusetts laws against firms doing business in Burma. Yet free trade has brought about the greatest spread of prosperity and freedom to more nations than any time in human history.

Unfortunately, after so many years of prosperity, many people forget the reasons that we have it, as indeed America has benefitted tremendously from such trade.

For Cuba, American policy should be directed towards trying to separate Fidel Castro from his nomenklatura, giving them a way out rather than forcing them all into a corner. Such a corner today merely reinforces communist strength on the island and prevents the nation from evolving towards more freedom.

7. Americans Still Go to Cuba. Reports of tightened controls on unsanctioned travel to Cuba continue. Except for U.S. licenses granted for official business, to visit families or pursue clear objectives, “buying Cuban goods or services, with the exception of informational materials and a few other items is barred”, Gary Lee explained (Washington Post, Oct. 18). Lee names U.S. travel agencies offering legally sanctioned trips, also Canadian agents, Havana hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, some restaurants, and how to reach Canada’s Cuba Tourist Board (416-362-0700).

However, most of that Oct.18 travel section was devoted to “the growing number of Americans [going] there for vacations without...permission, usually...via a third country”, avoiding having their passports stamped at Cuban airports. If caught breaking the embargo and Trading with the Enemies Act face, they are fined up to $15,000, Lee said, reporting that about 50,000 Americans made surreptitious visits last year, while tourists from elsewhere doubled to 1.7 milllion since 1993.

Lee described decaying colonial splendor and art deco and nouveau, fine food at elegant restau-rants and simple eateries, mesmerizing dancers and singers, contrasting income levels (doctors’ $10/month vs. prostitutes’ support for large families) vs. outright poverty and panhandlers, and sagas of Santeria miracles, encounters with Fidel --stories which people he met poured out.

The American Association of Newspaper Editors is taking about 35 members on an authorized “fact- finding” trip Oct. 21-25. The group will meet U.S. officials and some high level Cubans. Individual members will make other appointments.

8. Florida Meeting on Industrial & Economic Development in a Free Market Cuba. Another USAID-sponsored “Cuba Transition” meeting called by the US-Cuba Business Council, jointly with the Univ. of Miami and Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, will be held at the Coral Gables Biltmore Tuesday a.m., Nov.10. Experts in industrial development will examine Cuba’s shattered infrastructure and industrial sectors to explore ways to rebuild Cuba as a free market, democratic nation able to compete globally, and role of U.S. business in such efforts.

Speakers include USCBC President Otto J. Reich; Pedro Freyre, co-chair of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Cuba Committee; UMiami Assoc. Dean Andy Gomez; Pres. of the Washing-ton Economics Group Antonio Villamil; Manuel Lasaga, StatInfo; Jorge Sanguinetty, President of DevTech; Jaime Suchlicki, UMiami; John LaCap-pra, Pres., Florida Ports Assn.; Two Babun, Pres., CubaCaribbean Devt; Orlando Cruz, Parsons Aviation. For information, call 703-241-0038.

9. Cuban Studies and Analyses. Several interesting publications have reached our desk:

A. Orbis, Journal of World Affairs (vol. 42 no. 4) contains assessments by distinguished experts on Cuba Libre! A Century On. Their perspectives on events in the “ocean of mischief” between Cuba and the U.S seemed worth digesting for you. Orbis is issued by FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Inst.), tel: 215-732-3774, e-mail: FPRI@aol.com.

McKinley’s intervention against Spain a century ago, Prof. Louis A. Perez, Jr., (UNC) writes, sought to obstruct Cuban efforts to achieve a true “Cuba libre” for which the U.S. doubted Cuba was ready. This goal contradicted “the moralistic rhe-toric of the Hearst Press” which favored independence. We tried to neutralize Cuban and Spanish claims of sovereignty and steal credit for Spanish defeat. The rankling Platt Amendment imposed in 1901 by the U.S. denied Cuba’s right to assume excessive debts or enter treaties with other coun-tries, as we asserted our right to intervene to preserve Cuban independence and a government able to protect life, property, and individual liberty. Cuba had to cede Guantanamo. Perez says Castro, 60 years later, built on these legacies, especially the perceived loss of independence.

In contrast, Rafael E. Tarrago (U.Minn.) views our 1898 intervention as The Thwarting of Cuban Autonomy, aborting a natural evolution toward autonomy and reconciliation with Spain, which might have flowed from 20 years of representative government and reforms promoted by Madrid, and which Cuba’s brief autonomous government and insurgents could have reinforced had the U.S. not intervened. U.S. hegemony “inaugurated an era of hemispheric mistrust where before the U.S. had been...the oldest sister nation.” Even after abrogating the Platt Amendment, the U.S. exercised “inordinate influence” in Cuba, and fostered a dependent mentality at all levels of society, culminating in Castro nationalism, Tarrago believes.

A century later, Michael Radu (Foreign Policy Research Inst.) defends our long-standing embargo of Castro’s Cuba and says it is in the U.S. interest simply to “wait Castro out”. Carter’s per-mission for Cuban-Americans to visit and send money was short-lived, quickly becoming the victim of Castro support for insurrections in Nicaragua and Grenada, his fueling of African dissidence, and the 120,000 Mariel immigrants who brought us criminal and dissident elements and resentment. Radu says the 1995 agreement on Cuban emigration, approval of private sector projects in Cuba, and expanded travel helped minimize discontent and let Castro survive the post-Soviet withdrawal. 1994 elections reinforced Congressional views that the embargo was still “the best instrument for pressuring...Castro in the direction of democratization, free markets, and respect for human rights.”

Radu details “mistaken” beliefs of some formerly anti-Castro conservatives who claim that flooding Cuba with tourists and goods and “engaging” Castro will subvert communism, Clinton’s efforts to “improve relations with Havana”, and concern by some U.S. firms that the embargo threatens future markets. He challenges politicoeconomic and humanistic arguments for lifting the embargo which added to regrettable confusion within the coalition between Cuban-American members of Congress and the “largest” Cuban-American organization, CANF.

In contrast, Wayne S. Smith (Johns Hopkins U) insists the embargo is counter-productive. Since the cold war, Cuba has been unimportant to us. Helms-Burton’s call for compliance with our go-it-alone policy threatens far more important relations with other countries. Smith asserts that Cuba has since 1977 offered to negotiate compensation for seized U.S. properties, and that it meets three U.S. conditions for normalization (give up revolu-tionary efforts in the hemisphere and sever military ties with the USSR, and Carter’s later call for removal of Cuban troops from Africa). He said Cuba has made progress on Carter’s requirement for greater respect for human rights (some politi-cal prisoners released). However, instead of rewarding progress in meeting U.S. demands, the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act tightened the embar-go, which the nearly “imperial” 1996 Helms-Burton Act only entrenched, galvanizing international criticism. Smith calls the ability of the embargo to force out Castro “simply a dream.”

Irving Louis Horowitz (Rutgers U.) says it is simplistic to credit the “powerful Cuba lobby in Congress and Florida politics” as the driving force behind U.S. policy. He analyzes factions now comprising the lobby: (1) academics, (2) business, (3) policy-focused think tanks, and (4) foundations and grant-makers. He notes that their personnel often overlap and many were lobbyists in the past. In contrast to 20 years ago, he says the Cuba lobby’s main characteristic now is disregard for the regime’s internal character and that the protracted sanctions debate has roiled the Cuban-American community, weakening efforts to overthrow a tyrant and failing to alter the fact that “the primary source of the impoverishment of the Cuban people is the communist system.”

Stepping back from contemporary debates, Mark Falcoff (American Enterprise Inst.) offers a dis- couraging perspective on the Dying Revolution and on what a post-revolutionary society will look like. While Castro touts the need to preserve the revolution’s putative achievements, Falcoff says he has let many of these be liquified (abolition of prostitution, free education, free medical care), reducing the revolution to its lowest common denominator: “defiance of the U.S” and its way of life, which appeals to all Americaphobes. Acceptance of small businesses could improve liveli-hoods but would “rupture [the] social fabric and undermine the whole rationale of the one-party state.” If Castro lasts until 2010 (50% of Cuba’s independent history!, he notes), Cuba’s traditions will be warped as Caribbeanization (poverty, structural inefficiencies, racial changes) replaces the Spanish era, contrasting with the views and means of Cuban-Americans and causing reassessment of lingering 1898 resentments.

Kenneth Weisbrode (Atlantic Council) reflects on the impact of America’s “imperial” era on Cuba and finds reasons to celebrate the centen-nial after all. With maturation in the early 1900s, sizable American expatriate communities evolved from early corporate hegemonies and military conquests into a full- fledged culture within Cuba in just one generation, were integrated into the local elites, and bequeathed characteristics different from those of formal expansionists and jingoists, with broader and more buoyant legacies than those left by wars and social revolutions that characterize conquests elsewhere. Weisbrode regrets that the creative and courageous inhabi-tants of this “informal empire” are dying out.

Editor Walter A. McDougall reviews “classically tragic elements” in U.S. relations with Caribbean countries and with Cuba in particular. These include enormous disparities in size and power, hostile Protestant and Spanish Catholic cultures, and the proximity which ensure that Cuba and the U.S. can neither march in step with nor be rid of each other. U.S. good will (“self-righteousness”) has wavered between paternalism and predation, he says, so use and abuse by some U.S. firms and individuals have spoiled Cubans’ efforts to uplift themselves and facilitate blame on the U.S.

B. City of a Hundred Fires by Richard Blanco is a small volume with appeal to Cuban-American nostalgia for the Cuban scene. He sees Cuban life in the lens of his parents’ exile and his own coming- of-age in culturally diverse Miami. The book is reported to be “pure delight,” ” the bread and wine of our language of exile,” “sad, tender, and filled with longing...like an old photograph.” (U. Pittsburgh press, $25, tel. 412-363-2456).

C. Cuba’s New Entrepreneurs: Five Years of Small-Scale Capitalism, by Phillip Peters and Joseph Scarpaci is a new study of Cuba’s private enterprise, issued by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute. A survey of 152 entrepreneurs led the authors to declare that “five years after [the liberalization of policy] began and two years after taxes were imposed, free enterprise is a robust sector of the Cuban Economy,” even though it employs only about 3% of the labor force and contributes less than 2% of annual tax revenue. For copies of the report, containing statistics, a list of restrictions on self- employment, and anecdotes of cuentapropristas who “represent part of a shift toward an economy that relies less on the state to provide gainful employment, write via e-mail to: peters@dgs.dgsys.com.

D. Jay Mallin’s Adventures in Journalism - A Memoir offers charming images, mostly of the author’s experiences in Cuba as a youth and later as a journalist. He paints Havana, other journalists, Hemingway, war and censorship, Castro and Guevara and protests, flight and Miami and counter- insurgency, Radio Marti, return visits in 1995 and 1996, and reports from other countries. It is listed at $15 by Kelbrenjac Publisher, 5415 Conn. Av. NW, Suite 219, Washington DC 20015.

E. Teo A. Babun has issued a Preliminary Study of the Impact of Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises in Cuba. He sees $21-39 billion in private investments as coming from privatization of Cuban state-owned assets to help reconstruct the island’s economy. Targeting 16 sectors, an abbreviated version of the 90+ page evaluation is available by e-mail at cubadata@icanect.net, or the full study for about $1500 from Cuba-Caribbean, tel. 305-379-1234.

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16, LUNCH WITH WILLIAM D. ROGERS. At the National Press Club, Gary Jarmin, Chairman of the U.S.-Cuba Foundation, will introduce former Under- Secretary of State William D. Rogers. Because they have been deeply involved in discussions about the request to President Clinton made by former top government officials and a number of members of Congress to appoint a bi-partisan commission to study U.S. policy towards Cuba, both men are well placed to weigh the need for such a study and the prospects for it to be appointed. Cuba-watchers from various points of view have expressed interest in such a review. We look forward to seeing many of you there.

Please mail the form below with your check by November 12. After that date, if you learn by phone that we still have space, we will accept faxed forms and take checks or cash at the door.

Sincerely yours,

Phoebe Lansdale, Executive Director, October 30, 1998

Editorial review: Henry Goethals