BY EMILIO MORALES
The pathetic scene of seeing Díaz-Canel meeting with these businessmen recalls the scene of 'The Godfather', when Batista met with US businessmen.
Fulgencio Batista meets with American businessmen in a scene from Francis Ford Coppola's 'The Godfather'. ALAMY
The recent celebration at the National Hotel in the Cuban capital of a commercial forum between American businessmen related to the Havana regime with executives of Cuban state companies and government officials publicly shows the desperation that the regime has to try to find new ways of financing. The meeting, at first glance, looks like an attempt to obtain a breath of oxygen that keeps the Havana regime alive on its already insurmountable deathbed and an opportunistic attempt by certain characters who try to make their fortune at the expense of the misery that the Cuban people suffer today.
However, a big question comes to the minds of Cubans in the face of such a disconcerting and disappointing event: Does this meeting organized on the run aim to stir up propaganda to encourage a new thaw? Or is it the resurgence of the stabilization strategy that for many years the spy Ana Belén Montes inoculated the US establishmentwith laying out a red carpet to the Cuban regime as a "containment barrier" in the face of a possible chaotic crisis of the system that would generate a sudden avalanche of hundreds of thousands of Cuban migrants to the United States? What is really behind all this?
To get into the matter and be able to unravel this skein, it is necessary to remember that the Biden Administration in its announcement of its change of policy towards Cuba made it very clear – or at least that was how it expressed it – that its new policy towards Cuba was aimed at empowering the Cuban people in three fundamental lines: 1. Study how to provide Internet access to Cubans; 2. Find ways to get remittances to Cubans without them going through the companies that belong to the business structure of the Armed Forces; and 3. Allow the investment of U.S. companies together with private companies on the island.
Of these three lines, only the one relating to remittances has been fulfilled. The Internet has not been touched, leaving on the table the issue of allowing U.S. companies to make investments with the Cuban private sector. However, for everyone it is clear that in Cuba there is no private sector, it would be very naïve to think that it really exists. So the first variable that has to solve this equation is how the conditions are going to be created for a private sector on the island.
Very simple, for there to be a private sector in Cuba there must be a free enterprise market, under a rule of law with separation of powers. That does not exist today. Today what exists is a mafia in power that controls and decides who, where, how and under what conditions you can have an SME or make an investment in the country.
It is precisely this mafia that has organized this forum in collusion with these businessmen related to the Havana regime. The Cuban self-employed do not have a legal organization that protects and represents them to be able to hold a forum like this. Very simply, there is no legal framework on the island that allows and promotes it, the Cuban regime does not suit it, it is not interested.
It is obvious that for Cubans on the island it is impossible to open companies spontaneously. The system is not designed for them, but for the oligarchic mafia. Such companies must be approved by various government bodies, and it is the State that decides to whom the favor is granted, in which sector and under what conditions. Those who are finally authorized are usually people related to the Government. Even so, these companies cannot import or export products and services directly; To do this, they must use state-owned companies that charge 20% for management. Moreover, these "private" entities may have dollar accounts, but can only dispose of them to make payments for import and export processes.
In what context is this meeting with North American businessmen organized?
This meeting takes place in the most vulnerable scenario that the Cuban regime has had in the last 63 years. Scenario that is the result of the decadence of the regime and the measures implemented by the government team headed by Miguel Díaz-Canel in the financial sector and the retail sector, which have been totally disastrous. First the MLC stores then the implementation of the Ordering Task and now the exchange market. The three measures have become a deadly cocktail that has dealt the death blow to the moribund Cuban economy.
Today the country is drowning in bankruptcy, with the tourism industry stagnant, with declining exports and the death of the sugar industry. The population lives overwhelmed by shortages of food, medicine, galloping inflation that seems to have no end (devouring a salary in a couple of lunches), and the constant impact of blackouts due to the collapse of the national electric power system. The external debt grows rapidly due to the regime's bad practice of not paying, which has led it to lose its main credit lines. Even their political partners China and Russia no longer give them credits.
This crisis situation has generated hundreds of protests by thousands of citizens throughout the country, which have been strongly repressed. On the other hand, three years ago investments seem to have disappeared from the commercial radar of the Cuban market. The business environment for foreign companies based in the country is more than gloomy. The Cuban regime owes them hundreds of millions of dollars. Right now Cuba is a very high-risk market. The current situation of foreign investors on the island is chaotic and tense. Many do not know what to do about the financial corralito that prevents them from repatriating capital. Those who already have a contract do not decide to invest in the face of the magnitude of the multisystem crisis. And those who are already in the market, operate at a loss and try to produce as little as possible to justify maintaining and not losing the investment, hoping that a miracle will happen or that the system finally collapses and a system of free market economy and citizen freedom.
In this context, the Cuban regime tries to exacerbate the false American dream of investing in Cuba, encouraged by the announcements made weeks ago independently by the governments of Cuba and the United States. Those announcements suggested that a new thaw could be brewing behind the scenes. If so, it would be a wrong US policy. Above all, in light of the experience of the previous thaw implemented by the Obama Administration and that had the unhappy end of the brake that the regime put on reforms, the siege on the movement of entrepreneurs and the sonic attacks on US diplomats.
In its new attempt to attract American businessmen, the regime has given handouts to allies who for years have tamed fortunes at the expense of the misery of the Cuban people to lobby the United States. Both the regime and these genuflected characters try to sow the cliché that certain sectors of the Cuban economy – tourism, energy, agribusiness, food production, real estate, mining, biotechnology ... – present attractive investment possibilities. In turn, this cliché is inflated with the false argument that companies from Canada, Spain, Great Britain and other countries in Europe and Asia enjoy advantages for "being the first", for knowing the terrain, having the true relations with power and dominating the invisible rules of the game that move business on the island – an argument sown by the anti-embargo lobby.
However, no matter how much propaganda is used to stir up a new thaw attempt, it will eventually become a spurious and futile exercise, because it will get nowhere. Just to mention one significant aspect, it is enough to know that the Cuban market begins with a great disadvantage in terms of financial freedom: the island occupies the 172nd place of a list of 184 nations. Among the categories used to evaluate countries and make up this international ranking are property rights, financial freedom, rule of law, labor freedom and fiscal health.
What comes after this circus?
At the moment it has not been reported in detail what results were reached in that meeting between oligarchs and front men. The only thing that has transcended is the announcement of a second staging of this circus for next November, when it was announced that Cuban-American businessmen will attend the International Fair of Havana, which will be held from November 14 to 18, in which for the first time in 38 editions of this event they will have their own panel. North American companies will also participate.
It is obvious that this first meeting held in Havana a few days ago served to cook what will be presented in November at the afore mentioned Havana Fair. However, this fictitious panorama that is trying to build clashes with the pure and crude reality of the increase in citizen protests, as reflected in the recent report published by the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts (OCC), which shows that there were 589 citizen protests in the month of October, a number similar to those that occurred in July 20211.
Figure 1. Series of citizen protests in Cuba, September 2020 - October 2022.
Source: Cuban Observatory of Conflicts. (OCC).
As long as the crisis continues to escalate and repression and intimidation are the government's only responses to the growing number of protests, things can spiral out of control. In this context, official irrationality and repressive brutality inflame citizen sensitivity and open the door to an escalation of violence between the repressed people and the repressive forces of the regime that could lead to a popular uprising unprecedented in the history of the country in the last 63 years.
U.S. and Cuban-American businessmen related to the Havana regime have chosen the worst moment to show their ties and intentions in a fateful honeymoon held recently at the National Hotel in the Cuban capital. This event happens while the country is falling apart and the desperate population tries to escape the misery and repression unleashed by the regime, which can no longer meet their basic needs for food and health.
The pathetic scene of seeing Díaz-Canel meeting with these businessmen reminds me of the scene from the movieThe Godfather, when Batista met with American businessmen to imply that he was in control and that there were many investment opportunities on the island. The protagonist Michael Corleone saw, on his way to the meeting, how a militant of the July 26 Movement blew himself up and blew up a police car. Michael understood that investment possibilities were not possible, that the country would soon end up in anarchy. Days after assuring that Cuba was an ideal destination to invest, Batista fled the country with his relatives and loaded with suitcases full of money.
A scene like this could happen in Havana in the coming months. The conditions are given, it is enough that any event triggers this possible scenario. Abominable events such as the one that occurred a few days ago with the sinking of a boat on the coast of Bahia Honda by a border guard ship could be the spark that makes the island burn in the four cardinal points. The Biden Administration should be attentive to these events and circumstances before taking wrong steps in its new Cuba policy. I think it is prudent and wise to remember that new policy of empowerment is toward the Cuban people, not to save the regime in Havana.
