Greed lays bare the embargo's cruel hypocrisy
BY ANA MENENDEZ
amenendez@MiamiHerald.com
When it comes to dismantling the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba,
Republicans are succeeding where scores of big-talking Democrats have
failed.
It's the triumph of greed over ideology.
The first blow came in 2000. Led by Republicans Jerry Moran of Kansas
and Mark Sanford of South Carolina, the U.S. House allowed the sale of
food and medicine to Cuba. In the Senate, the successful anti-sanctions
champion was John Ashcroft, the Missouri senator who later became George
W. Bush's attorney general.
Seven years later it's business as usual.
In March, Sen. Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) reintroduced the Freedom to Travel
to Cuba Act. Among its co-sponsors is Larry Craig, Republican of Idaho,
who also wants to allow U.S. companies to look for oil in Cuba.
And the embargo?
''He thinks it's a failed policy of four decades,'' spokesman Dan
Whiting told me.
A steady stream of farmers, publicists and politicians -- notably
Republican Gov. C.L. ''Butch'' Otter of Idaho -- regularly drops into
Havana on ``trade missions.''
That's what the hypocritical embargo has come to: A corn farmer can go
to Cuba most any time, but a daughter who wants to visit her sick mother
in Havana has to wait three years between trips.
Maybe Miami Cubans should start planting corn in the backyard.
Sad. While the professional Castro bashers in Miami laud the Bush
administration's hard line on Cuba, members of their own party laugh all
the way to the bank.
In a global economy, bilateral embargoes are foolish. Even if you've
never driven a Hyundai or stayed at a Sol Meliá in the Dominican
Republic, you've likely done business with a company that does business
with companies that do business in Cuba.
''And we all know of Cuban-American business owners who would have to
acknowledge that many of their international customers or clients do
business in Cuba,'' Ignacio Sánchez ominously wrote in his resignation
letter to the Cuban Liberty Council recently.
Caught between the CLC and his work for the French company that wants to
build a tunnel at the Port of Miami, Sánchez, who helped craft the
Helms-Burton law that codified much of the embargo, chose to follow the
money.
Since my columns on the Port tunnel ran, I've received more than 100
letters and phone calls of support, many from Cuban Americans fed up
with hypocritical U.S. policies that hurt ordinary families while
boosting big business.
Helms-Burton is an attack dog with a muzzle. Its toughest provision has
been consistently suspended, first by Bill Clinton and now Bush.
What remains is mostly propaganda: The Cuban government, while
contracting to buy $1 billion in U.S. goods, still laughably calls the
flimsy embargo a ''blockade.'' And the diehards in Miami still laughably
call the whole charade ``effective.''
The embargo's cruelest contradictions reflect the lasting power of
Fidel. Its main provisions were set up by a Democrat, President John F.
Kennedy. It became the darling of Reagan-style conservatives. Now in its
twilight, pro-business Republicans take it apart to enrich themselves.
And all those liberals who for years campaigned for its end? They now
face the prospect of a Cuba overrun by U.S. agribusiness and tacky
hotels built by Spaniards and the Cuban military.
Hard to pick a winner. The loser award is easy: It goes to the millions
of ordinary Cubans who, whether on the island or in Miami, are still not
allowed inside a Havana hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment