Our Insane Cuba Policy, Havana Club Edition

Most people are under the impression that we really don’t have any dealings with Cuba, but in fact our continued entanglements with Cuba, on all levels, are many. The first time I went to Cuba, I was surprised to see some recognizable U.S. products, notably Coca-Cola. You can get a Cuba Libre in Cuba (rum and Coke), though, given the symbolism, I don’t think that’s what it’s called in Havana. The Coke I saw, of course, was not manufactured in the U.S., but by a firm in another country that licensed the product.

The U.S. and Cuba have generally respected each other’s trademark laws. Now though we may find ourselves in a trademark war with Cuba, as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has recently ruled Cuba’s right to the Havana Club name invalid, opening the door for Bacardi to begin selling rum under that name. Bacardi has invested heavily in lobbying for changes in U.S. law to make this possible, notably with large donations to the Republican Party, including the disgraced Tom Delay (R-TX). Last year’s “Bacardi Bill,” sponsored by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), paved the way for the ruling in Bacardi’s favor.

This of course opens the door for retaliation. There’s nothing to stop Cuba from manufacturing blue jeans, slapping a “Levi’s” label on them, and selling them cheap to anyone who will buy them. There’s a reason we’ve respected Cuban trademark law till now, and why many U.S. firms have registered their own trademarks in Cuba, even if they can’t sell anything there. But for some people, it does not matter – all that matter is sticking it to Fidel. Said Feeney:

And any time I can take a shot at Fidel Castro and his minions, I do it. This is another well-deserved pummeling.

So look for Havana Club to show up at a liquor store near you. And keep an eye out for U.S. firms being forced to spend millions to defend their copyrights abroad if Havana decides to retaliate. So goes our ever nutty Cuba policy.

The Problem of Property in U.S.-Cuban Relations

The BBC and a few other news outlets have picked up on recent statements by Raul Castro and U.S. State Department officials to suggest that there is a hint of rapprochement in the air. I doubt it, as the song and dance on both sides is a very old one. On the one hand, the U.S. says “maybe” to normalization, but only with political reform in Cuba. As the BBC reports:

Washington has renewed a four-year-old offer to lift its trade embargo on Cuba if Havana embraces democratic reforms. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said the offer was "still on the table" if the Cuban government would
"begin a political opening".

And on the other side, Raul says normalization would be fine, but the U.S. can make no demands that interfere with Cuba’s sovereignty.

At this juncture, they should be very clear that it is not possible to achieve anything in Cuba with impositions and threats. On the contrary, we have always been disposed to normalize relations on an equal plane. What we do not accept is the arrogant and interventionist policy frequently assumed by the current
administration of that country.

Same dance, different day.

One of the most difficult issues in any effort at normalization, both practically and emotionally, is the question of property ownership. The U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission has registered property claims against the Cuban government worth between seven and eight billion dollars, both commercial and residential property. Many U.S. companies could potentially claim properties in Cuba, though with nearly fifty years of mergers and acquisitions, some of them would have to sue each other before they could sue Cuba. Many don’t want to bother, but some do (and wouldn’t you just know United Fruit would be one of them):

"There has always been a hope that, post-Castro, this claim would translate into something of value, and Chiquita's position has consistently been that we expect the claim to be honored," said Michael Mitchell, spokesman for Chiquita Brands International, the Cincinnati company that subsumed United Fruit.

Chiquita/UF’s claim is worth $87 million.

For many exiles, this is a central issue – they want their homes back. In almost every case, those homes have been occupied by other people for decades, people who the Cuban government has given property titles to. These homes are mostly subdivided and terribly dilapidated. They say smell has the strongest memories, and even though I’m sitting in Nashville, TN, I can smell the musty air typical of a Havana tenement right now. The exiles have their own memories, and their desires are quite understandable. But no Cuban government, whatever its makeup, is going to evict thousands of Cubans into the streets. Indeed, there are many exiles who recognize this, and even more of their children do. But there are enough who will insist on making claims that this issue could clog up the court system for years and slow down renewal of political and economic ties significantly.

When will you know that Havana and Washington are serious about rapprochement? When they start making serious moves to resolve the property claims issue.

My Name in Lights

Imagine my delight when I saw this headline:

• Theron Defends Cuba Movie

See, the "T" in "Dr. T" stands for "Theron," and my research is on Cuba....

Anyway, East of Havana looks like it might be interesting. I'll reserve judgment on the politics until I've seen it - what a concept!

This Can't Be Good

From Agence France Presse by way of the Mumbai Mirror:

• Cuba, Venezuela join US ‘axis of evil’

Venezuela and Cuba are now going to get the same kind of exceptional treatment from our intelligence services that Iran and Korea already do, getting special intelligence managers that no other countries get. I don't like the looks of this. And why is it that I have to learn about this from the Mumbai Mirror? (Thanks, Dotso!) The only other place I found this was the Gulf Times out of Qatar. Isn't the fact that the Bush Administration views Venezuela to be as great a concern as Iran important news? At least as much as who killed JonBenet?

Smuggling Not-so Illegal Immigrants

One of the oddest results of our Cuba policy (and there are many, many odd results) is the human trafficking game in the Florida Straits, which the Christian Science Monitor notes is back in business after a brief pause in the wake of Castro's illness. Just like with any other group of would-be immigrants without visas, there are the desperate refugees, border patrols (carried out mainly by the Coast guard), smugglers with their exorbitant fees, high speed chases, and even violence and death. Ah, but the ending can be very different. We have a "wet foot, dry foot," rule - Cubans caught at sea get sent home, while Cubans who make it to land are rarely sent back, and can become legal permanent residents of the United States in one year. This gives a whole new meaning to "race to the border!" U.S. authorities are making a show of cracking down, but as long as Fidel is alive and Florida is a swing state, the policy will remain in place. So welcome to America, our unnamed 20 new residents. The Florida Straits' most dangerous game continues.

Your Daily Dicator News: Cuba and Chile Update

The Washington Post is keeping us up to date on our Latin American dictators today. Down in Chile, the Supreme Court has stripped Augusto Pinochet of immunity in a $27 million tax fraud case. In a word – good. They got Capone on tax evasion, and it’s good enough for Pinochet. I know, the wingers will scream, “But he saved Chile from Allende!” Look, overthrowing Allende was a political act, and only the sovereign people of Chile can decide whether it was justified or not. But the 17 years of brutal, criminal dictatorship were not justified by anything that happened during the brief reign of Allende. No matter what your enemy does, you are still under obligation to adhere to the rule of law. You are not justified in torturing terrorists. You are not justified in wantonly killing civilians because your enemy has done the same. As was explained to most of us at a young age, “He did it first!” is not a sound moral argument.

A bit closer to home, Raul Castro has emerged from his hibernation and seen the United States’ shadow. Raul told the Cubans that shortly after his brother’s illness became public, he called up tens of thousands of militia and reservists. Why? "We could not rule out the risk of somebody going crazy, or even crazier, within the U.S. government."

Dear Washington D.C.: Did you notice what just happened here? The Cuban government faces a crisis and what does it do? It tries to scare the Cuban people into thinking the United States might do something “crazy.” Do you know what everyone in Cuba calls the embargo? “El bloqueo”? What’s a “bloqueo? It’s a blockade. What’s a blockade? Why, it’s an act of war. Who actually benefits from the embargo? It’s not Washington, and it’s not the exiles. The embargo has failed mightily to oust Fidel Castro. It sure as heck ain’t the Cuban people who have benefited. Who then? One man- Fidel Castro. From the beginning, Fidel has told the Cubans that the United States was at war with Cuba, and the embargo has been exhibit “A.” Why is the economy so bad? El bloqueo. Why can’t we have elections? El bloqueo. Why must we repress dissent? El bloqueo – don’t you people know we’re at war?

Drop the embargo. I know your feelings got hurt back in 1959, but that was a long time ago. The embargo is Fidel’s crutch. It gives him an excuse for everything that’s wrong, and lets him strut about as the nationalist hero facing down the big, bad imperialist yanquis. Get rid of the embargo, and flood the island with Americans, with American dollars, and with American values. Make the old man irrelevant.

It’s past time – drop the embargo.

Accountability in Higher Ed

Tomorrow the meetings start, followed by a few days of registration, and then classes begin. It’s that time of year again. Question is – what exactly will I and my colleagues and my students accomplish this year? There’s a great article in the September Washington Monthly by Kevin Carey called “Is Our Students Learning?” that gets at just that question – and the inability of most people to answer it.

There are no widely available measures of how much learning occurs inside the classroom, or of how much students benefit from their education. This makes the process of selecting a college a bit like throwing darts at a stock table. It also means that colleges and universities…feel little pressure to ensure that students learn.

Carey’s article is aimed mainly at elite schools, pointing out that their reluctance to publish data on student outcomes makes it impossible to assess whether their high-priced services are really worth it. But elite schools are not the only ones where this is an issue. At all levels, it’s very hard to get real data that would enable prospective students to judge whether a particular school will in fact provide them with a good education. I can’t believe that this will last. As tuition rises everywhere (more about that in a later post), parents, students, and legislators are understandably demanding to know if all that money is accomplishing anything. It’s just a matter of time before every school in the country has to start publishing data on teaching effectiveness – and that’s when things will start hitting the fan, so to speak.

I for one welcome it. We need to have our feet held to fire. Sure, it’ll be more work for me and my students, but I got into this business to teach, dang it (oh, and to have summers off). Accountability is a must, and it will spur better teaching everywhere. And here’s where I have a small bit of agreement with the wingnuts. I don’t think competition can improve public schools like they think it will, but I do think it will work for higher education (it’s a question of universal vs. selective enrollment, mainly). Publish those scores – I’m ready.

Does Castro Like it This Way?

It's not often you seem someone in print moving away from the predictable storylines about Cuba. [eds. note - Gee, this is turning into an all-Cuba blog. Need to hit some other topics.] Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post makes a suggestion you don't often see in print:

It finally dawned on me that Fidel Castro likes Cuba the way it is, a glorious shambles with myriad inefficiencies and problems...I think he likes a system in which everyone has a roof, though it's leaky, and surgeons live next to bricklayers in crumbling tenements.

This is Fidel as an idealistic socialist - better to be poor together than to have the rich lording it over everyone else. It's an interesting idea. I'm used to thinking of Fidel first and foremost as a self-described nationalist, someone willing to sacrifice economic prosperity in order to defy the United States. Robinson seems to support the idea that Castro did not pursue the Chinese model, economic reform coupled with continued authoritarianism, because he was "appalled by what he saw in modern China -- a growing gap between rich and poor.” I tend to believe that has something to with it. I also think that Fidel realizes that a Cuba with free market reforms is a Cuba potentially flooded with U.S. dollars, U.S. investors, U.S. tourists, and U.S. values. I say "potentially" because I'm not sure we'd be smart enough to drop the embargo. In such a Cuba, Fidel would be increasingly irrelevant, and he knows it. If only the people who set our Cuba policy could figure that out.

If They Had Just Asked the Historians

Or some other academic who studies Cuba. The New York Times has a piece today about how the stability of Cuba's government in the aftermath of Fidel Castro's illness is surprising some experts.

The decline of Fidel Castro, who turned 80 on Sunday and appeared in photographs for the first time since his unspecified intestinal surgery last month, was supposed to be a kind of second Cuban revolution. The notion, put forward by Cuba specialists for years, was that the entire system hung on one man.

Which specialists? Ginger Thompson, who penned the article, doesn't tell us. While certainly Fidel looms large in Cuba, and his hyperactivity and micromanagement are well documented, the idea that he alone manages and controls that country is a serious distortion. Whenever I go to Cuba, someone inevitably asks me when I get back, "Did you see Fidel?" (I did - once. He whizzed by in his motorcade.) But Fidel depends on the loyalty of the military and the Party to govern Cuba. It is that loyalty, and the ability of any successor to inherit that loyalty, that determines the stability of the regime. His current health crisis suggests that the regime is more stable than his most optimistic opponents had hoped. Damián Fernández, an academic who understands Cuba better than most, notes the consequences of this misunderstanding.

"We were ill-prepared for the eventuality of continuity rather than change,” said Damián Fernández, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, referring to policy makers in Washington and Miami. “All our policies have been built on a foundation of wishful thinking. Now we are confronted with reality, and it’s not what we had hoped it would be.”

I don't know what will happen when Fidel leaves the stage for good. Nobody does. But I do know who will decide what happens. It will be the middle level Party cadres and military officers, people who have come of age since the Revolution. These people have not enjoyed the prosperity of the Miami Cubans, nor, for the most part, have they been able to benefit much personally from the tourism dollars that have poured into the country in recent years. Their willingness to sacrifice for Fidel, for the ideals of the Revolution, or perhaps simply to do what they must to survive in a police state, has kept the regime in power through difficult times. Whether that will continue post-Fidel is anybody's guess.

Young Fidel

And here I thought there was nothing to write about. The New York Times has printed some excerpts from a series of letters Fidel Castro wrote while in prison after the attack on the Moncada barracks. These letters have recently been translated and will soon be published in new collection. The anti-Castroites will have fun with some of them, this quote in particular.

Third, maintain a deceptively soft touch and smile with everyone. Follow the same strategy that we followed during the trial; defend our points of view without raising resentments. There will be enough time later to squash all the cockroaches together.

No doubt his critics will see in this proof that he had always planned to install a Soviet style dictatorship in Cuba, all claims to the contrary. I for one find any efforts to discern what Fidel believed and when he believed it to be pointless. The only man who truly knows has proven himself to be highly unreliable witness - we can only judge by what he actually did, and when he did it. It is the portrait of young Fidel as a misogynist that is more interesting to me. His deep anger that his wife, left alone with their young son, while Fidel was in jail, would take a job with the government he so loathed, is a sight to behold.

This is a machination against me: the basest, most cowardly, most indecent, the vilest and intolerable. Mirta is too level-headed to have ever allowed herself to be seduced by her family, agreeing to appear in the Government employee roster, no matter how hard her economic situation. I am sure she has been miserably slandered... Only an effeminate like Hermida at the lowest degree of sexual degeneration would resort to these methods, of such inconceivable indecency and unmanliness.

For Fidel, it was his honor that mattered, not his wife's ability to put food on the table. That Fidel is an extraordinary egoist is hardly a secret, though I suspect this attitude towards his wife had as much to do with traditional machismo as it did with his own personality. His homophobia is also likely a cultural artifact as much as a personal one, and sheds a small amount of light on the Cuban regime's generally hostile attitude towards homosexuals. We should not, of course, assume that the writings of a man at 27 teach us much about that man at 80. The value of these letters for understanding the present is limited, but they will no doubt be dissected thoroughly down in Miami nonetheless.

Our Biological Foreign Policy

Out of the Washington Post, we hear that Thomas A. Shannon Jr., assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, sees the beginning of the end in Cuba. Conceding that the U.S. government doesn't know much about Fidel Castro's condition, Shannon argued that Fidel's absence from view was a sign that his illness was serious, and that efforts at a transition were already underway.

But Shannon predicted the regime would have a rocky time outlasting Castro. "Ultimately, this transfer won't work," he said. "Ultimately, there's no political figure inside of Cuba who matches Fidel Castro."

One of the most preposterous aspects of our policy towards Cuba is that it is strictly biological - we are waiting for the old man to die, and we aren't going to take one constructive step until he does. As if it weren't bad enough that we were stuck with a failed policy, we’re also incompetent about it. After all these years of waiting for Fidel to die, shouldn't we have better intelligence on his health? Seriously, if our entire policy towards Cuba is based on Fidel's heartbeat, shouldn't we know a whole lot about that heartbeat? I'm shocked, actually. When Tony Snow confidently stated a few days ago that Fidel was not dead, I assumed it was based on inside information. But that makes me guilty of believing for one moment that this administration was both competent and truthful - my bad.

Well, if Gerard Depardieu is against it....

This is curious. The Cuban government is cracking down on satellite TV (and no, that's not the Depardieu reference, but it'd be good enough for me). They're trying to prevent Cubans from picking up U.S. TV. Normally, the Cuban government cracks down whenever the U.S. puts the screws on, but this looks more like jittery nerves. They don't want the Cubans listening to people in Miami speculating about Fidel being dead, or speculation about dissention in the Cuban military or the Party, or any speculation about a post-Fidel democracy. More than Raul staying in hiding, this is a sure sign of nervousness amongst the Cuban leadership. (GD is down at the bottom of the linked story.)

Watching a Man Drown

There was a time when I could say I liked Christopher Hitchens. My father gave me a copy of Letters to a Young Contrarian, which I enjoyed a great deal. I particularly admired his skewering of Mother Teresa. But as many have noted, the slide had already begun by then, and he continues to spiral downward. Slate, perhaps for the same mysterious reasons they employ Mickey Kaus, keeps handing him more rope. His latest is an analysis of what's happening in Cuba right now. Cuba is my research field, so with some trepidation I took a gander. It's not that his analysis is insane - in simplest form, he asserts that Raul's ascension to the top slot, be it temporary or not, signals the culmination of a long build up of the political power of the military in Cuba. All well and good. But this, this is nonsense:

If there had been a military coup in any other Latin American or Caribbean country, even a fairly small or obscure one, I think it safe to say that it would have made the front page of the newspapers. But the military coup in Cuba—a nation linked to ours in many vital and historic ways—has not been reported at all.

The reason it hasn't been reported is because, to the best of anyone's knowledge, it hasn't happened yet. Is Fidel dead? Nobody knows. Was he pushed aside in palace coup and his illness has been staged? Nobody knows. Is Raul right now in a mad scramble to take advantage of Fidel's illness so as to pull off a palace coup? Nobody knows.

All of these things are possible of course. But Hitchens takes it for granted that the U.S. press is refusing to accept the obvious, when nothing, in fact, is obvious at all. I suppose picking on Hitchens is far too easy. But most American know nothing about Cuba, and so his uninformed declarations can shape a lot of people's thinking, at a moment when we need to be better informed about Cuba, not less. I have long said we need to be more creative in how we deal with Cuba, but not to the point of writing fiction.