Center for a Free Cuba

November 26 2001 | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
by Frank Calzon

After his 42 years in power, Americans have no illusions about Fidel Castro. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster, sent thousands of Cubans to kill and get killed in Africa, criminals and mental patients to Florida and spies to monitor Florida military bases. In Tehran a few months ago, Castro said that Iran and Cuba would bring the United States to its knees.

The discussion is not about Castro, who rejected U.S. offers of assistance, but about helping the Cubans after a terrible hurricane, about selling him food and medicine and about the alleged profits to be made.

The devil, however, is in the details. According to the law, Havana can now make those purchases in the U.S. But will that food help the Cubans devastated by the hurricane? If the past is any indication, food and medicine will go first to tourist facilities where Cubans are not allowed, to the regime’s security forces, to the Communist Party and to government dollar stores at inflated prices.

According to Pax Christi Netherlands, the Catholic human rights organization, “Donation of goods directly to the Cuban state without sufficient external monitoring [has generated] serious complaints regarding the reliability of the state channels. Several examples of appropriation of public funds and llegitimate distribution of humanitarian aid were reported. For example, a French NGO donated a large quantity of dental paste to be distributed among poor Cubans. It eventually ended up in the state-run `shoppings’ that charge high dollar prices.”

The Pax Christi report distributed earlier this year indicated that “the shelves in state-run pesos shops are often empty and the products in the dollar shops are beyond the reach of the average Cuban” Cuba’s media are government-controlled, and there are no independent unions or civic institutions. What external monitoring can we expect on Castro’s distribution of his purchases?

The situation is so bad that the Humanitarian Aid Office of the European Union that has channeled millions to the island “will slowly withdraw from Cuba [because] aid could no longer be characterized as complementary to the basic social and medical services, but merely tended to replace these services.”
Havana has yet to allow the shipment of tons of food by Miami’s Catholic churches.

The record is not encouraging. After Hurricane Lili, years ago, Castro rejected tons of food because donors had written on the packages, “With love from Cuban exiles.” Around that time, an American cardinal told me that a substantial part of shipments to Cuba were being “diverted” to the military. The Pax Christi report says that a German organization promised funds for a project to repair rundown houses in Havana, but “in the end the ministry rejected the proposal.

“The regime regards the work of “non-state organizations as a form of competition that has to be restricted.” This January the Ministry of Health in two provinces forbade doctors to prescribe medicine not available in government pharmacies, but available in Catholic churches “under penalty of severe sanctions.”
Little help will get to the most needy, unless the U.S. insists on distributing humanitarian assistance directly to the Cubans by American institutions such as the Red Cross.

Be that as it may, what about the American agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies that welcome the sales?
Castro says he wants to buy U.S. medicine from its hated enemy, when medicine is available cheaper in Canada. For Castro buying and paying are not the same thing. France, due to Cuba’s non-payment, cancelled a grain shipment of more than $100 million last year. South Africa and Thailand no longer provide credits or export insurance. Eastern European governments have tried for years to obtain payment on their Cuban debt. Havana will not pay the Russians for a debt incurred to the Soviet Union, “a nation that no longer exists.” European banks continue to attempt to “reschedule” their Cuban debt and Havana has one of the worst credit ratings in the world.

If businessmen believe they can make a buck profiting with the misery of the Cuban people, there is no legal way to prevent it. But let them take their chances. Current law prohibits U.S. government loans or export insurance.

This is as it should be. The U.S. taxpayer should not subsidize the last remaining anti-American communist regime in the world.

The road to hell is not the only one paved with good intentions.

Frank Calzon is Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes human rights and democracy for Cuba.

November 7, 2001 | The Miami Herald
by Frank Calzon

Harvard scholar and former New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts. Not a bad concept to keep in mind now that Cuban government officials claim that the reason for including Cuba on the list of terrorist nations is total nonsense; that the inclusion of Castro’s Cuba among Iraq, Libya, Iran and other unsavory characters is motivated by U.S. domestic politics.

Sixteen anti-embargo activists, including Princeton professor Alejandro Portes and John Hopkins University visiting professor Wayne Smith agreed, charging that Castro is on the terrorist list due to the unwillingness of the United States to offend elements of the Cuban-American community.

Is Castro’s Cuba a terrorist state?
Biological weapons are of no minor concern for Americans today. Castro’s bankrupt regime has spent more than $1 billion to set up a scientific infrastructure that, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in 1998, could support an offensive biological-warfare program. In 1995 the U.S. Office of Technological Assessment included Cuba among 17 countries believed to possess biological weapons.

Last year Ken Alibeck, former deputy director of Biopreparat, the Soviet Union’s biological-weapons program, revealed that a few years after Castro’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1981, Cuba had one of the most sophisticated genetic-engineering labs in the world.

A few days ago the University of Miami School of International Studies released a report, Castro and Terrorism: A Chronology. It says that:
Castro refused to join the other Ibero-American heads of state in condemning ETA terrorism at the 2000 Ibero-American Summit in Panama and slammed Mexico for its support of the summit’s statement against terrorism.

This summer Colombian officials arrested IRA members Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan and accused them of training the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Connolly had been living in Cuba as the representative of the IRA for Latin America.

Argentine-born Cuban intelligence agent Jorge Massetti helped funnel Cuban funds to finance Puerto Rican terrorists belonging to the Machetero group. The Macheteros hijacked a Wells Fargo truck in Connecticut in September 1983 and stole $7.2 million.
Illich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos the Jackal and responsible for numerous terrorist acts in Europe in the 1960s and ’70s trained in Cuba.

Black Panther leaders in the 1960s received weapons training in Havana. Does any of that have anything to do with the influence of Cuban Americans? Were exiles responsible for the expulsion of Castro’s diplomats from Paris and London who were linked to Carlos the Jackal? Do exiles explain why Castro supported Puerto Rico’s Macheteros, charged with terrorist acts there and on the mainland? Were exiles responsible for his training of the Faribundo Marti Front, El Salvador’s terrorist group, or for Uruguay’s Tupamaros, known for targeting Americans?

One day the archives of Cuba’s intelligence service will be opened just like the KGB’s and East Germany’s Stasi’s. Then details will be known, as well as the names and activities of Castro’s “agents of influence” in the United States. But if history is any indication, they will say they fell for the romance of the revolution, that they could not have imagined such a regime and such a tyrant. They will go on with their lives, just like the old Stalinists who saw no difference between Stalin’s Russia and Great Britain and who claimed, while it mattered, that Stalin’s terror was simply an invention of the Russian exiles in Paris.

Frank Calzon is Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes human rights and democracy for Cuba.

September 26, 2001 | The Miami Herald
by Frank Calzon

Is it possible for a small group of terrorists to bring about the planning, coordination, reconnaissance and execution of the Sept. 11 attacks without logistical support of a foreign government?
President Bush no doubt will try to obtain an answer to that question as well as the reasons for two fatal failures in U.S. intelligence and airport security.

The failure of intelligence cannot be explained away by acknowledging the difficulties inherent in intelligence work and the high proficiency of the terrorists. The administration must review current intelligence scope and methods, including self-imposed constraints on American intelligence operations overseas.

Americans are not in favor of giving up basic freedoms and turning their country into a police state. Fortunately, there are steps that could be taken, without impinging on fundamental freedoms to enhance U.S. intelligence, although some conveniences in air travel will have to be curtailed.

The attacks brought two basic facts to the consciousness of Americans who have come of age believing in the invulnerability of this country: that despite America’s best intentions, there is evil in the world; and the notion that “bad things happen to good people only when they give offense” is not a good basis for survival.

Americans now understand that each act of terrorism that goes unpunished gives comfort to those entertaining similar deeds
. The constraints put on the intelligence agencies since the 1970s forced the United States to rely on technology while minimizing the work of agents on the ground. In the Middle East and elsewhere, this could be fatal.

How would the FBI monitor Mafia activities if it could not establish relations with criminal elements? How is U.S. intelligence to identify threats to American lives if by executive order it cannot develop relationships with unsavory, even murderous actors? Now Israel’s behavior, despite its tragic outcomes at times, suddenly is seen in a different light.
What are Bush’s options?

Order the gathering of information on those engaged in anti-American terror and ask foreign governments and international organizations to help bring them to justice.
Order bombing campaigns that could result in many casualties, the so-called collateral damage.
Bush, however, does not have the power to order the execution of foreign leaders who are behind the terrorist network. Yet, wouldn’t it be more humane and effective if those involved in the training, financing and support of terrorist groups were denied the expressed U.S. assurance that their lives are not necessarily at risk?

The job of intelligence agencies is to save American lives. In the future, we could see attacks not against buildings but against nuclear-power plants or in combination with biological and chemical agents to kill millions.
Saddam Hussein has said that he does not need an atomic weapon to wreak havoc on the United States, that there is a “friendly” government that can do it for him. Who are his allies? And which ally has the willingness, historical record, technological capacity and geographic advantage to carry out such unspeakable deed?

There should be no statute of limitations for those responsible for the attacks or for others (as in the case of Nazi war criminals) who have committed horrific crimes, even if many years ago. American victims of terrorism and the commitment of an aggrieved nation require no less.

Frank Calzon is Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes human rights and democracy for Cuba.

August 13, 2001 | The Miami Herald
by Frank Calzon

On July 26, the 48th anniversary of the start of Fidel Castro’s revolution, the U.S. House of Representatives voted not to implement the law that bars American tourists from traveling to Cuba.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., introduced the measure. Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart, R-Fla., told El Nuevo Herald that Flake explained to him that he had become interested in the topic “after a lobbying visit by Cuban dissident Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz.”

Sánchez, whom I consider my friend, stated in a press release distributed in Washington by the Center for International Policy that, “To maintain the restrictions on travel to Cuba favors only the Cuban regime.” If this is so, why did the Havana regime immediately celebrate Flake’s proposal.

Castro allowed Sánchez to travel to Miami to attend his son’s funeral. The Center for International Policy blames Washington for many of Cuba’s problems, while it ignores much of Castro’s repression. Sánchez’s lobbying is important because he lives in Cuba. Cubans on the island who support continuation of the embargo as a form of pressure to secure respect for human rights live under the threat of imprisonment.

Let us refresh our memories. In 1989, when the end of Soviet subsidies plunged the regime into its worst crisis, Castro was forced to allow some adjustments in the economy. In what became known as “the special period,” Cubans were permitted to work on their own (though with many restrictions) in trades such as carpentry, barbering, etc.

They also were permitted to open restaurants at home — paladares — with no more than 12 seats. The possession of dollars — until then a crime punishable by jail — was legalized. These reforms were conducted solely and exclusively because the regime’s very survival was at stake. When the government deemed that the situation had improved a bit, it redoubled its repression. There was a return to the arrest and daily harassment of dissidents; Cubans again were imprisoned for “crimes” as serious as buying a chicken from a farmer; the number of cuentapropistas — self-employed workers — declined by more than 30 percent.

Yet, Castro still is desperately seeking dollars and favors a lifting of the embargo and the long-awaited injection of millions of dollars brought by tourists. Castro, who stopped paying his country’s debt in 1986, now wants loans from the World Bank. Sánchez, leader of a human-rights organization on the island, played a key role in the US House’s approval of Flake’s amendment, which was part of an appropriations bill.
Sánchez has a serious responsibility on his hands and would do well to use his influence to inform some American politicians about the following:

All business dealings with Cuba are joint ventures between the regime and the foreign investor. Cubans are not allowed to be partners.

Castro receives millions of dollars through labor fraud. Foreign investors are not allowed to hire workers on their own. The regime does the hiring. The foreign companies pay the regime between $8,000 and $9,000 a year for each laborer, and the regime pays the laborer the peso equivalent of $15 a month — about $180 a year.

In Castro’s segregated hotels, Cubans cannot rent rooms even if they have dollars, nor can they enter the restaurants, beaches or clinics set aside for foreigners.

Tourism earnings are not like the family remittances sent from abroad to ordinary Cubans. Tourism-generated income goes directly to the regime’s coffers to strengthen the police and armed forces. Gaviota, Cuba’s official tourism agency, is a front for the Cuban armed forces.

Cubans need an exit permit from the regime to travel abroad. As in the old Soviet Union, Cubans also need a permit to move from one city to another within the national territory. Cubans who live abroad need a permit from Castro to visit their native land.

Castro confiscates all property of every Cuban who emigrates, down to the electrical appliances and furniture. Air fare and all immigration paperwork inside Cuba must be paid in dollars by the relatives abroad.

Ideas have consequences. Did Elizardo Sánchez err when he lobbied Congressman Flake? Did he take into account the correlation of strength (of resources) between the regime and the domestic opposition? Will tourists risk their skin to defend freedom? Will tourists bankroll with their dollars an increase in the repression? Let’s pray to God that I’m wrong and that my friend Elizardo Sánchez won’t have to regret his candid lobbying. Meanwhile, he should think how he’s going to explain the affair to the dissidents who are in the regime’s horrid cross hairs.

Frank Calzon is Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes human rights and democracy for Cuba.

April 16, 2001 | The Plain Dealer, Cleveland
by Frank Calzon

The campaign to lift the U.S. embargo against Fidel Castro has resumed. Economic sanctions are out of fashion and some believe lifting the embargo will save the achievements of the revolution, while others say that American tourism and trade will bring freedom to Cuba.

Both groups could not be right, and both could be wrong. Some Central Europeans believe that although radio broadcasts and solidarity with the dissidents was important, Western loans and tourism propped their Communist regimes, which otherwise would have collapsed much earlier.

But agribusiness in the Midwest believe there are huge profits to be made by trading with Havana, opening the way to profitable business with the likes of Libya and Iraq. Last year, Congress lifted sanctions on sales of agricultural products and medicine to Cuba. No sales have materialized. And Castro, who suspended payments on his foreign debt in 1986, would like to have U.S. exports paid by U.S. taxpayers in the form of subsidized credits (to Castro) and export insurance to American businesses.

Since the 1960s, when Castro expropriated U.S. and Cuban businesses, Washington has banned all trade with Cuba. Castro now lures businessmen by telling them that they are losing deals. But according to a recent U.S. International Trade Commission report, “U.S. sanctions with respect to Cuba had minimal overall historical impact on the U.S. economy” and “even with massive economic assistance from the Soviet Union, Cuba remained a small global market relative to other Latin American countries.”

The commission estimates “that U.S. exports to Cuba in the absence of sanctions, based on average 1996-98 trade data, would have been less than 0.5 percent of total U.S. exports. And that “estimated U.S. imports from Cuba… excluding sugar (U.S. sugar imports are government regulated) would have been approximately $69 million to $146 million annually, or less than 0.5 percent of total U.S. imports.”

The report, requested by Congressman Charles Rangel, (D-NY) and a long-standing opponent of sanctions, says “U.S. wheat exports to Cuba could total between $32 million and $52 million annually, about one percent of recent U.S. wheat exports.” But consider this: France recently withheld a shipment of grain due to Castro’s inability to pay for earlier transactions, canceling $160 million in new credits to Havana. Chile is attempting to establish “a payment plan” for a $20-million debt for mackerel imports from last year. South Africa, according to the Johannesburg Sunday Times is “frustrated” by Havana’s failure to settle a $13-million debt, and the Trade and Industry Ministry will not approve credit guarantees to Cuba until the debt is settled.

Since 1986 Castro’s Western creditors (Canadians, French, Spanish, etc.) have attempted to recover at least part of their loans amounting to more than $10 billion. Havana refuses to repay Moscow’s loans, saying that debt was to the Soviet Union, “a country that no longer exists.”

One of the best-kept secrets about the American embargo is that it has saved millions of dollars for U.S. taxpayers. Due to the embargo there are no American banks in the Paris Club, a consortium of creditors. Otherwise U.S. banks through their allied in Congress would have found a way to hit U.S. taxpayers for their losses in Cuba.

According to the report, rice exports to Cuba would be worth between $40 million and $59 million, increasing the value of U.S. rice exports from 4 to 6 percent: “U.S. exporters would be highly competitive with current suppliers.” But it cautions that Castro’s trade decisions are based on politics, not on economic efficiency. Castro is unlikely to give the Americans the market share that he gives his ideological allies: China and Vietnam.
Furthermore, the United States should expect to supply Cuba between $40,000 and $72,000 thousand worth of tropical fruits annually. The fruit exports would be geared entirely to Cuba’s foreign tourists in the special hotels reserved for them.
Castro’s trade partners become apologists for the regime, fearful of anything their governments could say that could endanger their investments in Cuba. They have found out the hard way. Louisiana rice and Illinois wheat producers should stop assuming that “selling” to Havana is synonymous with getting paid. U.S.

Tax payers should be wary
Castro desperately needs credits and subsidies. Washington is under pressure from agri-businessmen. If we accept the estimates of $100 million per year total exports, five years from now the American taxpayer would have guaranteed $500 million in credits that would be repaid with their taxes. Real money in all places - except Washington.

Before extending Castro credit, Americans should visit any street corner in downtown Manhattan and observe a game often played there called three-card monte. It consists of convincing the player that he knows exactly where the card carrying his money is-until it disappears. In this game, the gambler takes his chances. Where trade with Castro is concerned, the U.S. taxpayer will be left holding the losing card.

Frank Calzon is Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes human rights and democracy for Cuba.