The Cuba Policy Foundation is yet another Arca Foundation front to funnel money to pro-Castro groups. Arca is headed by Smith Bagley of Elian DNC fundraiser fame and Sally Grooms Cowal runs the CPA. Prior to that, she ran the Youth for Understanding organization that "housed" Elian and Castro's goons in D.C. until Clinton could send him back.
1/24/2002
The more things change in Cuba, the more it remains the same. To dispel any doubts about it, Fidel Castro has made it very clear that he is not contemplating any meaningful economic or political change in Cuba for the next one hundred years. When CNN’s Bernard Shaw interviewed the Cuban tyrant on October 22, 1995 he asked if he would retire in order to facilitate an economic recovery in Cuba, but he was adamant- he would not. When he questioned if he would allow another political party in Cuba, the dictator for life responded – not in one year, not in ten years, not even in 100 years. A Hitler’s fan, Castro is more modest, he is foreseen only 100 years forward not 1,000 as his German homologue. Evidently Castro thinks he will break the record of Methuselah!
Nevertheless, there is a rush of American investors interested in embracing Castro, regardless of the risks involved in dealing with a regime that has proved for 43 yeas to be a model of mismanagement and ineptitude. Castro has brought economic chaos to a country that, at the time he came into power in 1959, had one of the most solid economies and highest standard of living in Latin America and of most of Western Europe. The Cuban peso was a hard currency internationally accepted on par with the dollar.
Even though Cuba is the main terrorist base in this hemisphere and a mortal enemy of the U.S., there is a well-financed disinformation campaign by Castro’s agents and sympathizers in the West, and even by foreign investors, to end the U.S. trade embargo and promote American investments in Cuba. They allege that Americans are losing great business opportunities while the European and Latin American investors are reaping huge profits. Foreign investors, in connivance with Castro, participate in the distress sell out of the Cuban patrimony and the properties of American citizens that were once confiscated by the communist regime. They are involved, as stated by the Burton-Helms Bill, in the trafficking of stolen properties.
Another point to take into consideration is that in Cuba there is no private property and all the investments are “joint ventures” in which Castro is the controlling partner. Cuba is a country where there is no the rule of law, laws is frequently changed overnight according to the whims of the all-powerful tyrant. Like in a pact with the devil in which they come under his total and full control.
The foreign investors were lured by the promises of cheap labor and a work force without any right to protest, much less to strike. But, the devil’s deal went much farther; the foreign unscrupulous investors acquiesced to be involved in the worst exploitation of slave labor since Hitler’s times. The foreign investors could not hire the Cuban workers directly; they had to go through their business partner, Fidel Castro, who charged them seven to eight thousand dollars a year for each worker while paying the workers in Cuban pesos the equivalent of $180 a year. A 97% bribe, an extortion without parallel in the world!
The exploitation of the Cuban worker, together with the proceeding of money laundering from terrorism and drug trafficking, are the main sources of Castro’s huge fortune that places him among the richest chiefs of state in the world according to Forbes magazine. In the meanwhile the Cuban people are suffering the worse period of poverty and oppression ever experienced in its history.
American companies cannot deal with the Cuban government due to the compulsory bribery practices involved in any deal with that regime which implicates the breaking of the U.S. laws governing American business operating around the world.
Before jumping into Cuba’s economic black hole, American investors should be aware that according to "Euromoney” magazine the country investment risk survey, done in 1995, placed Cuba in 183rd place out of 187 countries, ranking it even below Somalia. “Why then, investors may ask, should they bother with Cuba in a world replete with opportunities and a more welcoming governments,” the Financial Times reported on June 30, 1995. The situation in Cuba is even worse today.
The French oil company Total, left Cuba after incurring great loses without finding a single barrel of oil. Likewise Fracmaster, a Canadian energy company, left for “lack of opportunities.” The powerful Spanish financial group, Endesa, with projects in Cuba of over $100 million dollars, also discontinued its association with Castro and sued his regime at the Chamber of Commerce in Paris for $12 million dollars for breaking contractual agreements. The Spanish Guitar Hotels group has also liquidated its investments in Cuba, and Castro’s closest associated Melia Hotels’ chain has closed about half of its numerous hotels in Cuba for lack of tourists. In spite of the enticing low rates, the tourist who goes once to Castro’s Cuba never returns unless he/she is a communist zealot.
Prospective investors should ask, what purchase power can people have whose average salary is less than $7 dollars a month? Although Cuba is in dire need of everything, how will they pay? Cuba’s international credit is nil after the regime stopped making payments on its $12 billion dollars debt to the Paris Club of European banks. Castro also owes over $3 billion dollars to Japan, about $9 billion to Spain, $1.28 billion to the now bankrupt Argentina, in addition to the billions owed to England, Canada and every other country which unwisely gave him a line of credit.
Castro has been very candid by repeatedly maintaining that he will never allow in Cuba any changes that may threaten his Stalinist scheme, much less to allow the free enterprise system. Don’t count on the protection of any law that favors foreign investment- in Cuba, nothing, according to Castro, is irreversible. Those who think they are going to reap quick profits in partnership with Castro, sooner rather than later, will find that they will loose their investments.
The American taxpayers should be aware that the foreign investors caught in Castro’s scam want them to assume the Soviet Union’s role of subsidizing the Cuban regime at the tune of $8 billion dollars annually, hoping that they may recoup some of their ill advised investments.
Forty-three years of tourism and Western credits have not brought freedom or well being for the Cuban people, in fact, it has further increased repression since the profits go directly to Castro’s repressive apparatus. Castro demands from the U.S. to unconditionally surrender its policy towards Cuba and some American politicians and multinationals are willing to oblige without any quid pro quo, just to appease the Cuban dictator.
The Cuban regime is economically, ideologically and morally bankrupt. Those who have been helping to keep afloat the Cuban tyrannical regime for over four decades will pay dearly when Cuba is liberated and return to the rule of law under a democratic government. The American taxpayers should not allow to be charged for unwise business deals made by corrupt companies. Honest American investors should be patient. At the end, they will receive the good will and the rewards for being one of the very few countries that remained in solidarity with the Cuban people’s plight for freedom and democracy during the most tragic period of that county’s history.
Castro's charade of pledging socialism to eternity should have put a stop to those trying to do business with Cuba at the expense of the American taxpayers. They should be ashamed if they have any sense of responsibility towards the hard worked and overburdened American taxpayers.