Posted on 02/20/2003 12:05:16 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
HAVANA -- Texas twangs met sultry Spanish on Wednesday as nearly a dozen people from the Lone Star State went looking for opportunities here.
At the Melia Las Americas hotel, the American visitors heard about Cuba's tourism business, which mostly serves Canadian and European travelers.
But for Duncanville entrepreneur Charles Louthan, it was a chance to see Cuba's only golf course, which is in the beach resort town of Varadero.
"It needs a little bit of work," said Louthan, president of Texas Turf Systems. For him, that was a sign of hope because he wants to use this conference as an opportunity to sell turf to Cuba.
Cuban officials said they plan to build a handful of golf courses. So far, the only loophole in the U.S. trade embargo is for food and drugs, so he can't sell his services yet.
But those on this trip are hoping the embargo will be loosened soon.
While there's loud opposition to such a move in Florida, this group is on the other side of the issue.
For three days, American farmers and business and trade officials sat through a U.S.-Cuba Business Conference in Cancun and heard all about Cuba's economic potential.
They had a chance to see the island's need for everything from rice to oil exploration equipment.
But they also saw that many Cubans have little to spend.
"I knew they were economically depressed. I just didn't realize it was this bad," said Gary McGehee, a lamb and goat farmer from Mertzon, near San Angelo.
Walking the streets of Old Havana, a group of Texans and other Americans marveled at the city's historic beauty and its 1950s-era American cars. They sipped mojitos -- a traditional Cuban drink, smoked Cuban cigars they received as gifts, swayed to the sounds of salsa and mingled with locals.
The visit reinforced the consensus of the group of about 150 that the 40-year-old trade embargo should be lifted.
"I think it's a bad idea whose time has passed," said Ruben Bonilla, chairman of the Port of Corpus Christi.
Bonilla and two of the port's staff members met with Cuban officials this week to discuss shipping cargo from Corpus Christi to the island nation.
As of July 2001, the United States allowed Americans to sell food and agricultural products to Cuba, and since then, according to Cuban officials, contracts worth more than $250 million have been signed with American companies.
One of those benefiting from the recent change is Patrick Thacker, chartering manager for San Juan Navigation, a Bainbridge, Wash.-based ship owner and operator that has sent 20 ships to Cuba thus far. The first shipload of grain to leave the United States bound for Cuba sailed in a San Juan Navigation ship out of the Port of Galveston. About a half-dozen such ships have sailed out of Texas ports.
"The little bit of shipping that we've done has actually really benefited Texas," Thacker said as he stood in the Plaza of the Revolution.
Many people in the tour group insisted all Americans should be allowed to visit Cuba.
"It's an experience every American should have," said Bonilla, who favors a common market of the Americas, similar to the European Union.
Cuban officials and U.S. businesspeople who participated in the conference insisted that letting Americans travel to Cuba would improve the country's economy and in turn allow the nation to purchase more goods from its northern neighbor.
For some visitors, like Bonilla and McGehee, Wednesday marked the first time they've stood on Cuban soil.
McGehee, part of about a dozen visitors from Texas, commented that Cuba looked much like Mexico did in the 1950s.
However, for many of those who traveled to Cuba at dawn Wednesday and returned to Cancun at midnight, visiting the island had become routine as they continue to push for an end of the embargo.
John Peterlin, the Port of Galveston's marketing and administration director, commented on how much reconstruction has taken place in Old Havana since his last visit.
"Old Havana has changed in the last year," Peterlin said as he rode a tour bus past monuments and old buildings.
"That's what this is all about. It's about more people being able to visit so they can have the money to renovate something that's been falling down for the last 40 years. It's positive that scaffolding is up."
It's the communism stupid! Go hang out with Castro and the tourists, they'll be buying your goods and supporting the depression you found so appalling.
Cuban officials and U.S. businesspeople who participated in the conference insisted that letting Americans travel to Cuba would improve the country's economy and in turn allow the nation to purchase more goods from its northern neighbor.
How is that, when Castro can trade to his heart's content with most of the world? Hmmmm??
You negoiate with someone who has something you want. Bush understands that. Castro wants our dollars and he wants to buy goods on credit. Bush responded, hey - try out some freedom Castro and we'll talk about it. The ball is in Castro's court but the merchants just want the money in their pockets. They don't care if it's govt. backed loans that Castro will default on, they just want to get the money. The Left loves Castro and his repressive system. To them it's just fine to have an elite block ruling over the masses. It's what floats their boat.
Effort to weaken embargo of Cuba is axed from spending bill after veto threat
It would also supply Castro money with which he could better finance his program to export his brand of Communism to other parts of the world.
Arab advisers now are reinforcing a sizable contingent of Cubans in efforts to reorganize Venezuela's security services, assimilate its industries based on totalitarian models and repress a popular opposition movement. "What happens in Venezuela may affect how you fight a war in Iraq," Gen. James Hill of U.S. Southern Command is reported recently to have told his colleague at U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks.
"Chavez is planning to coordinate an anti-American strategy with terrorist states," says Venezuela's former ambassador to Libya, Julio Cesar Pineda, who reveals correspondence between the Venezuelan president and Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi about the need to "solidify" ties between liberation movements in the Middle East and Latin America and use oil as an economic weapon.
Exhorting his countrymen to return to their "Arab roots," Chavez has paid state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran and signed a series of mutual-cooperation treaties with the rogue governments whose operatives now are flooding into Venezuela. There they can blend into an ethnic Arab community estimated at half-a-million.
Last Jan. 10, 18 Libyan technicians flying in from Tripoli via Frankfurt, Germany, were received at the Caracas airport by Ali Ahmed, head of Libya's "Commission" in Venezuela. He was accompanied by the parliamentary whip of the ruling Venezuelan Revolutionary Movement (MVR), Cilia Flores. Nicolas Maduro and Juan Baruto, two other bosses of the MVR party militias (the Circulos Bolivarianos) who had paid an extended visit to Tripoli in 2000, also were on hand to smooth the way for the Libyans coming off Lufthansa Flight 534.
The Libyan agents were identified as: Alsudik Alghariy, Elmabruk Najjar, Koaled Adun, Zeguera Adel, Sherif Nagib, Abubaker Benelfgh, Nabiel Bentahir, Abdulfat Enbia, Waldi Majrab, Amhamed Elkum, Abdulgha Nashnush, Mohamed Romia, Abdurao Shwich, Abdulnass Elghanud, Ezzedin Barhmi, Abdulssa Seleni, Hassan Gwile and Mhemmed Besha.
The high level of security provided for the Libyans' arrival was intended to avoid the havoc of previous days when the entry of Iraqi and Iranian groups touched off a riot. As word of the landing of 20 Iranians had spread through Simón Bolívar International Airport on Jan. 8, crowds of infuriated travelers banged counters and cigarette urns and chanted "Get out! Get out!" to protest what many Venezuelans perceive as foreign interference in their country's affairs.
…………. Meanwhile, Iraqi VIPs, moving under the protection of Chavez's secret police -- the Department of Intelligence Security and Prevention (DISIP) -- came to the attention of Venezuela's regular military when government agents tried to use air-force planes to fly five of Saddam Hussein's agents into the interior of the country. Military pilots requested special clearances before allowing the Iraqis onto the C-130s.
Military sources also report that the recently arrived group of Libyans is billeted at the Macuto Sheraton Hotel in La Guaira, which they share with Cuban commandos who have been conducting strike-breaking operations around the nation's oil ports. Local units of the National Guard, the branch of the Venezuelan armed forces responsible for internal security, were reported to be refusing government orders to repress strikers.
According to Capt. Jose Ballabes of the merchant-marine union, the Cubans improvised floating concentration camps on board oil tankers, threatening officers and crews to get them to move the paralyzed vessels. When the Venezuelans still resisted, "such methods as sleep deprivation, often used against political dissidents in Cuba, are being systematically employed against our people," says Ballabes.
Sources in Venezuela's merchant navy name two of the Cuban agents on the tankers as Arturo Escobar and Carlos Valdez, who were presented as "presidential advisers" operating with DISIP. Venezuela's internal-security organization now is reported to be controlled by a command cell of undercover officers from Fidel Castro's military-intelligence service. Venezuelan sources say the Cuban operatives also run a computerized war room inside Chavez's presidential palace, Miraflores. It is in this war room that the repressive policies now afflicting the country have been planned, according to serving officers in the Venezuelan army, navy and national guard consulted by Insight.
The Libyans, like the Cubans, are specialists in military intelligence and security, but are described as computer specialists brought in to operate and reprogram crashed systems at the oil refineries, according to industry sources.
"The West must expect deepening relations between Venezuela and Islamic states," says professor Elie Habalian, a specialist in petroleum economics and a consultant to PDVSA President Ali Rodriguez Araque, who is identified by Venezuelan military sources as a one-time communist guerrilla chief. Aided by Cuban intelligence and Islamic workers, the government has managed to get oil production back up to 34 percent, a level sufficient to supply basic domestic needs. "It's a war between two models," continues Habalian, "one seeking total control over oil policy and the liberal international policy represented by PDVSA's previous management" effectively eliminated by the government, which has ordered the mass dismissal of 7,000 oil-company employees.
Interfacing of Venezuela's oil industry with the radical state systems also facilitates plans for a possible oil embargo against the United States in the event the military assault on Iraq is prolonged. While international oil experts consider such a scenario unlikely due to Venezuela's desperate need for export earnings, Venezuelan opposition leaders fear that Chavez could take advantage of a conflagration in the gulf to consolidate his dictatorship with the support of Cuban and Arab agents already in place.
"Chavez has violated the constitution on 34 counts and is moving to nationalize banking," says a leading member of Venezuela's business community. "He has packed the high courts with his judges, neutralized the army and turned the national assembly into a rubber-stamp parliament. All that's left to do is shut down the independent media and decapitate the opposition." According to this source, Chavez is most likely to move when world attention is fixed on Iraq.
……….. Undercover police officers report that the group has ties to a Hezbollah financial network operating from the Caribbean island of Margarita under Mohammed al Din, an important Chavez backer and a close friend of hard-line MVR deputy Adel el Zabayar Samara, a key link between Islam and Latin America's radical left.
The Caracas cell is involved in recruiting Venezuelan Arabs for terrorist indoctrination and military training at isolated camps in the country's interior and on islands off the coast, according to intelligence officers who claim that members of al-Qaeda are hiding out in Margarita. They say these members include Diab Fattah, who was deported from the United States for his possible connections with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Four Venezuelan officers investigating terrorist activities on the resort island were killed in 2001 when Chavez moved to dissolve DISIP Section 11, which had targeted radical Arabs. ***
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