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By Les Kjos |
MIAMI, USA (UPI), March 10, 2005: The trip by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco to Cuba this week may be another indication among many that the Fidel Castro regime's economic plan is working.
The goal is to recover from the Soviet collapse and to weather the inevitable change in leaders.
In order to be ready for the transition after Castro's death, Cuba is tightening its political and economic controls.
The political crackdown was evidenced by the imprisoning of 75 dissidents last year. And the new economic policy includes taking the U.S. dollar out of circulation and taking the economy back into the hands of the government.
These new policies are an indication that Castro feels that -- with the help of Venezuela and China -- the nation has recovered from the disappearance of Soviet aid.
Castro said as much in a recent six-hour speech declaring an end to the liberalization of the 1990s.
Loans from the European Union and Canada also are helping, along with the shipments of agricultural products from the United States that have been going on for five years. Many agricultural states want to increase those shipments.
"Now there is a critical mass of support in Congress because Castro has had a brilliant foreign policy to counteract the traditional and anti-Castro lobby," said Hans de Salas del Valle, an associate at the University of Miami Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American studies.
"Cuba understands
that economics trumps U.S. politics in the long term," de
Salas said.There are few on Capitol Hill who said they believe there is any imminent danger to the 40-year trade embargo, at least until the end of President Bush's second term. But it is likely to be in danger after that.
One harbinger was the reaction to Bush's decision this year to stiffen requirements for trade with Cuba. Policy now requires cash for goods before they leave U.S. shores.
But within weeks a bill was filed in the Senate to reverse that policy. It has 24 co-sponsors evenly split between Republicans and Democrats and is given a good chance of passing.
The three-day visit by Blanco, a Democrat, is another show of defiance of the president's anti-Castro policies.
"We think Louisiana needs to be poised in the markets of the entire world,"
Blanco told reporters as she arrived in Havana Tuesday night. "We believe Cuba brings value and we should not ignore any value."
Cuba's troubles began with the fall of communism in Europe. Before that the Cuban government had complete control, discouraged tourism and foreign investment and banned the dollar.
In the 1990s the Castro regime was forced to open up slightly by legalizing the dollar, welcoming foreign investment and encouraging tourism. There was even some small-scale capitalism going on.
"The limited reforms were emergency measures to survive and rebuild the state," de Salas said. "They were always temporary. The government was never happy with the limited liberalization in the fragile condition in which the Cuban regime found itself."
Castro by now has survived the worst of the crises caused by the fall of the Soviet Union.
The flow of oil and other petroleum products from Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez and an economic relationship with China have been a key to the recovery.
China saw political and strategic reasons to court Cuba as an ally, partly because of his proximity to the United States.
Cuba found a market for its nickel and cobalt.
"In the last few years since 2000, $700 million in trade credits and loans have been issued to buy goods from China or for joint investment projects in both countries," de Salas said.
Europe has been providing short-term financing to the Castro regime, amounting to more than $1.6 billion through 2004. Because they are short term with high interest rates, they are attractive to European lenders.
Tourism and oil prospecting by the Europeans and Canadians also have been a positive factor for Cuba, de Salas said.
He said the Cubans hope the trickle-down effect will eventually help the standard of living.
"The majority of the Cuban people are living under desperate socio-economic conditions," he said. "They openly challenge the status quo."
But he said, "They likely will be appeased by an improved standard of living."
Not everybody agrees with the rosy view of Cuba's economic future, and some say the return to the economics when the country could count on Soviet support will backfire.
"What they are doing does not make economic sense," St. Thomas University economist Maria Dolores Espino told The Miami Herald. "They have decided what is important is (domestic) efficiency and not the (foreign) markets.
The problem is you can't be efficient without the markets.
"The bottom line is that it looks very bad in the long term," she said.
De Salas believes, however, that the succession will be pulled off by Castro's slightly younger brother, Raul.
"To have some notion of where Cuba will be at, it probably will be more like China and Vietnam than like Eastern Europe," he said