POLITICS-US/CUBA: Profit First, People Second, as Embargo Erodes

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 7 2000 (IPS) - The Republican leadership of the US Congress has bowed to both farm interests and the still-powerful anti-Castro lobby by clearing a bill that would conditionally permit US companies to sell food to Cuba and codify existing curbs on US travel there.

The measure, which emerged after weeks of internal debates among Republicans, was hailed as a victory both by US commercial interests which seek to repeal the 38-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, and by Cuban-American lawmakers from Florida who have been trying to maintain the embargo against a steadily rising tide of opposition.

“Despite all the pressure against us,” said Rep. Ileana Ros- Lehtinen, who hails from the Little Havana section of Miami, “we have achieved a tremendous victory by freezing the prohibition on US tourism to Castro’s Cuba.”

The final deal was hashed out Thursday among Republican leaders in the Senate and the House of Representatives as part of an amendment to the 2001 agricultural appropriations bill, which will be voted on and almost certainly approved by both houses next week. The bill also lifts curbs on the sale of food and medicine to other countries on the US “terrorism” list, including North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and Libya.

Minority Democrats serving on a House-Senate “conference committee” to negotiate a final version of the bill opposed the Republican proposal precisely because it did not end restrictions on travel to Cuba.

“I can’t believe the incredible arrogance of a government telling human beings where they can and cannot travel,” said Democratic Rep. David Obey. “This impinges on a basic human right.”

The Republican deal climaxes a dramatic year in US Cuba policy, much of it dominated by the saga of Elian Gonzalez, the six-year-old Cuban boy whose mother drowned last November while trying to reach Florida by boat. Elian eventually was reunited with his father in April after an early- morning raid by federal agents on the home of his Miami relatives who, backed by anti-Castro groups, had fought all the way to the Supreme Court in a legal battle to prevent his return to Cuba.

The vast majority of US citizens, according to public-opinion polls, strongly opposed the Miami family’s efforts to keep the boy from his father, and, when the Little Havana section of Miami exploded in anger after the federal raid, it appeared that the political clout of the anti- Castro forces had fallen to its lowest point ever.

Indeed, within just a few weeks after Elian’s eventual return to Cuba, the House of Representatives voted by a three-to-one margin to conditionally exempt sales of food and medicine from the embargo, while the Senate voted to permit sales of food and medicine to Cuba without restriction.

The House also voted 241-174 on an unrelated bill to bar the Treasury Department from enforcing the long-standing ban on travel to Cuba by US citizens.

In addition to growing anger with anti-Castro forces, the votes reflected the success of a three-year campaign by a coalition of different interests eager to broaden ties with Cuba. These included major business associations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, devoted to lifting unilateral US economic sanctions worldwide; farm groups eager to seek new markets in the wake of their loss of government subsidies; and an amalgam of church, development, humanitarian, and Cuban-American groups which long favoured increased contact and dialogue with Havana as the best way to promote liberalisation there.

While the administration of President Bill Clinton has gradually eased restrictions on US-Cuban relations, it stayed out of the debate. Vice President Al Gore, who hopes to succeed Clinton in the November elections, is running surprisingly strongly in Florida, a key battleground state, and has long been a hawk on Cuba. In an interview with the New York Times published Thursday, in fact, he described himself as a “hardliner on Castro ” who opposes “any openings to the Castro government”.

The coalition has been opposed mainly by the anti-Castro forces, led by the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), and its hard-line allies in the Republican leadership in the House. Recognising early on that it would have to compromise on the issue, these forces wanted to give as little away as possible in the negotiations which followed the July votes.

It appears now that their efforts largely succeeded, as the Senate Republican leadership acceded to their position, even though at least two Republican senators on the conference committee initially voted for an amendment which would have permitted unconditional sales and travel.

Under the measure that emerged from the conference committee, US companies may sell food and medicine to Cuba so long as such transactions are not financed by any US government agency, bank, or other financial institution. Significantly, that condition can be waived by the president for other countries on the terrorism list, but not for Cuba.

Given this restriction, most analysts feel their US sales to Cuba will be marginal at best. “It’s not likely to open up to any trade at all,” according to Wayne Smith of the Center for International Policy here and formerly Washington’s top diplomat in Havana. “If there’s no credit available from US banks, it will be very difficult to do.”

Moreover, Cuba itself said Thursday it will not buy food from US companies with such restrictions. “If this bill is approved under these discriminating and humiliating conditions,” the foreign ministry said, “Cuba will not carry out any trade transaction with the US.”

As for travel restrictions, the bill adds agricultural sales agents to a list of US citizens that includes academics and journalists to travel to Cuba. At the same time, however, it codifies existing restrictions – which until now could be waived by the executive branch on a case-by- case basis.

“Yesterday, the President had the power to modify the travel restrictions, and let more Americans go to Cuba to see the country for themselves,” said Geoff Thale, a Cuba analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human rights group. “With this language, the President loses that power and any move to let more Americans go to Cuba will require approval by both Houses of Congress.”

That will hurt Cuban-American families in particular, according to the Cuban Committee for Democracy (CCD). “Cuban-Americans who want to visit their relatives in Cuba will continue to be restricted and regulated in doing so,” said Elena Freyre, CCD’s director in Miami.

“I believe that Cuban-Americans who want to keep in touch with family members in Cuba are going to be extremely critical of the fact that their ability to visit loved ones is now frozen in statute,” said Dodd, who noted that US citizens now are free to travel to Iran, Sudan, and even North Korea.

“This really does thwart the will of the majority in public opinion and in Congress,” Smith said. “but I think people are really fed up. In the next one, two, or three years, the dam is going to break.”