National Post , July 6, 2004

Turning a blind eye to a favoured despot
(Even as Cuba is abandoned by long-time allies for its human rights
violations, Canada continues to display affection for Fidel Castro's one-man
state. In a three-part series, Isabel Vincent explores our trade, tourism
and geopolitical interests in the Caribbean nation.)
by Isabel Vincent

CIEGO DE AVILA, CUBA - For Canadian visitors who pour into this central
Cuban city of 150,000 on twice-weekly tours organized by the Cuban
government, one of the highlights is riding in a horse-drawn buggy.
"This is wonderful," one enthused recently as she waited in a queue of Cuban
schoolchildren dressed in neatly pressed maroon-and-beige uniforms. "We're
back in the 19th century. What a great adventure!"
What many of the tourists don't realize is that the buggies are more than a
quaint attraction. For many Cubans, they are essential transportation, first
encouraged as a substitute for gas-guzzling cars in the 1970s. Their use
intensified after Cuba's "Special Period" of near economic collapse, when
Cuban leader Fidel Castro urged people to use bicycles and horses to save
gasoline.
The buggies may also be an apt metaphor for Canada-Cuba relations, which,
like Ciego de Avila, seem a throwback to another era.
Many of the 400,000 Canadians who visit every year to lounge in the sun and
drink watery rum at the Caribbean island's sprawling, all-inclusive resorts
rarely see its bleak realities. Many, in fact, seem almost determined to
overlook the institutionalized inequities of the country. Canadians, like
Canada's government, are eager to be friends with Cuba -- and willing to
ignore inconvenient truths in the process.
Most Cubans are locked in a daily struggle for survival. They live in
crowded Soviet-style apartment blocks or crumbling houses from the colonial
era, subsisting on an average wage of 300 Cuban pesos ($12) a month.
True, the Cuban government provides free education and medical care, and a
monthly ration of rice, beans, some protein, plus milk for children. But the
subsidies only meet about 40% of an adult's dietary needs, according to the
government's own Web site. To make up the shortfall, Cubans must resort to
state-run dollar stores, where only U.S. currency is accepted, or private
and state-run farmers' markets at which half a kilogram of pork costs more
than a week's wages.
Moreover, in a country that is generally praised for its universal health
care, hospitals are falling apart, patients must buy their own sutures on
the black market and it is almost impossible to find common medications such
as Aspirin and antibiotics.
"Everyone knows Cubans suffer because of the U.S. embargo," said Julie, a
Canadian tourist who recently spent two weeks at a resort here.
But the 42-year-old embargo placed on the Communist island by the United
States is only part of the problem, Cuba experts say.
"Clearly, isolating a Caribbean country from its natural trading partner
causes economic damage, but Cuba's economy is fundamentally run by Cubans
and the economic problems it faces are the government's own doing," said
Philip Peters, vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a non-partisan
Washington-based think-tank that studies Cuba. "The embargo compounds the
problems, but it is not the only issue facing the Cuban economy."
Today, Cuba trades with just about every country in the world, including the
United States, where Havana is allowed to buy products for cash, taking
advantage of a special humanitarian loophole in the embargo.
Though it blames the United States for most of its problems, many are the
result of an inefficient, centrally run economy that is chronically short of
cash. Cuba was propped up for years by aid from the Soviet Union, but since
that was withdrawn, it has failed to find a way to replace it.
One problem is the one-man government that has not changed in more than 40
years. Though Ottawa disapproves of dictatorships in principle, Canada has
treated Castro as a friend, dating from a visit by former prime minister
Pierre Trudeau, who embraced the president-for-life to the rage of the
United States.
Today, many Canadians still regard the ageing Cuban ruler as a hero, even
though he oversees a repressive one-party state that rolls over all
opposition and sentences critics to life in prison for seeking modest
reforms.
"Canadians are the first anti-Americans and the best, and much of their
policy toward Cuba is simply based on anti-Americanism," said Mark Falcoff,
a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and
author of Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro's Legacy. "In Cuba,
Canadians see a great non-competitive advantage and a place for a cheap
holiday."
As a result, Canada seems out of step as other countries distance
themselves, in diplomatic and political terms at least, from the
increasingly isolated Cuban dictator.
The European Union criticized Castro last year for his brutal crackdown on
independent journalists and dissidents. Offended, Cuban government officials
have refused to meet EU envoys on the island. Recently, EU representatives
further angered Castro by openly visiting some of the families of jailed
dissidents.
Last year, in its harshest crackdown since the 1959 revolution, the
government jailed 75 prominent dissidents. Cuba, a country of 11.3 million
people, now has more journalists in jail than does China, a country with 100
times the population.
Mexico, Cuba's greatest ally in the Americas, has also hardened its dealings
with the Communist island. Mexico voted against Cuba at a UN meeting on
human rights in Geneva in April, a vote that produced fistfights in the
halls of the UN building.
The response was swift. In his annual May Day speech, Castro singled out
Mexico, accusing President Vicente Fox of reducing his country's foreign
policy to "ashes."
In turn, Mexico accused the Cubans of interfering in its domestic affairs
after high-ranking Communist party officials travelled to Mexico to meet
prominent opposition leaders without going through the proper protocol. In
May, Mexico recalled its ambassador from Havana.
Peru, another former ally, followed suit after Castro criticized it for
voting against Cuba in Geneva.
But Canada has remained steadfast, even as Castro has cracked down on
dissidents and blocked the tiniest economic openings. For his part, the
Cuban leader has refrained from lashing out at Canada -- even though Ottawa
was among the sponsors of the human rights motion voted on in Geneva.

One of the attractions to Ottawa is opportunity.
According to John Kirk, a Cuba expert at Dalhousie University in Halifax,
the backbone of Canadian policy has remained relatively unchanged since
Canadian entrepreneurs first sailed to Cuba in the 18th and 19th centuries
to sell salt cod, lumber and potatoes and to buy sugar and rum.
"The relationship is essentially driven by trade, with a great boom in
economic activity after 1993," he said, referring to the period after Russia
cut off more than US$4-billon in annual aid. To make up the shortfall,
Havana began opening the island to foreign investment.
According to Statistics Canada, Canadian investment in Cuba reached
$830-million in 2003. Canada is Cuba's second-largest source of foreign
investment, with Canadian companies working in joint-venture operations with
Havana in mining and oil and gas exploration. More recently, Canadians have
moved into tourism, Cuba's largest industry, which brings in more than
$2.6-billion a year for the government.
"Canadian investment strategy in Cuba seems to be based on getting a
foothold in the country before Castro falls and the Americans come pouring
in," said Hans de Salas, research associate at the Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.
French, German, Mexican and Spanish companies are also investing in Cuba in
the belief the United States will eventually be forced to relax its embargo
and the island will be flooded with thousands of American tourists.
But the nagging question for Cuban-Canadians, many of whom have settled in
Canada in recent years, is this: Why does Canada continue to embrace what
they see as one of the world's worst dictatorships?
"Canada has a very contradictory relationship with Cuba," said Ismael
Sambra, president of the Cuban-Canadian Foundation, a small anti-Castro
lobby group trying to change Canadian government policy. Modelled on the
Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami, the Canadian group lacks the
influence of its U.S. counterpart, which was formed by Cuban exiles after
the 1959 revolution and continues to dictate U.S. government policy on Cuba.
"We just don't understand how Canada can practise a policy of constructive
engagement with a mafioso and an assassin," said Mr. Sambra, a former
journalist in Cuba who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for speaking out
against the Castro regime. Ottawa intervened and got him released halfway
through his term.
Members of the Canadian foundation say they do not understand why Canadians
generally support Cuba, even as the Cuban government has reneged on millions
of dollars in payments to Canadian companies, a shortfall that has been made
up by Canadian taxpayers.
For the past several years, more than $26-million a year has gone to cover
Canadian exports to Cuba that Castro could not or did not want to pay for.
Another creditor is Mexico, which is owed more than US$400-million.
The cash-strapped island has been buying abroad on credit since the Russian
pullout. Most countries know they will never be paid in full, so they use
Cuba as a dumping ground for outdated and expensive goods. China unloads
thousands of defective appliances, which the government then resells for a
huge markup at the dollar stores.
However, the island has a very different relationship with the United
States. In an effort to pressure Washington into lifting the embargo, Castro
has taken advantage of a humanitarian loophole created in response to a
hurricane in 2000 that allows him to buy U.S. goods for cash.
"Castro has been very clever in courting the farm states and even certain
Republicans," said the Institute for Cuba's Mr. Salas.
Most of Castro's purchases end up in dollar stores or in resorts catering to
foreign tourists. They are rarely distributed to his people as humanitarian
aid.
Castro "really no longer cares about the [U.S.] politicians and is
determined to influence change by lobbying business people," Mr. Salas said.
It is a policy many Castro regime critics worry will dilute the message they
want to emphasize: Cuba is a dictatorship where people are terrified of
speaking out.
Even Cubans living abroad admit they are careful in what they say about the
regime if they have relatives still living on the island.
"If you start criticizing Cuba, you will never be let back in there to see
your family," said Abdiel Hernandez, a Cuban-Canadian who left seven years
ago. "My wife keeps telling me to stop speaking out against the government,
but I want people in Canada to know the truth."
He believes many Canadians have outdated views of life in Cuba. "Many people
I talk to say it's a paradise where everyone is looked after, health care is
free," Mr. Hernandez said. "But it's just not the case."
Moreover, Castro, who opened up the state-run economy by allowing people to
run small businesses, is planning a massive crackdown in October on the
150,000 individuals granted licences to drive taxis, open family-run
restaurants and run mechanics' shops.
The government plans to ban self-employment in 40 categories and will not
issue any more licences for home-based restaurants, pizza stands,
bed-and-breakfasts or mechanics' shops. It also plans to crack down on
self-employed clowns, flower vendors, booksellers and magicians.
"The only way you can survive here is if you have relatives in Miami or you
work with tourists," said Darci, who lives in Ciego de Avila but works at a
resort in Cayo Coco, more than an hour away.
Remittances from the United States are one of the biggest foreign investment
earners for Cuba, bringing in more than US$1-billion a year. But recently,
U.S. President George W. Bush tightened sanctions, limiting family visits
between the United States and Cuba to once every three years instead of once
a year, and lowering the authorized daily amount per family visit on the
island from US$164 to US$50. Remittances from Cuban-Americans are limited to
US$1,200 per year per family.
People without relatives abroad must resort to other means of earning a
living. In Ciego de Avila, a pediatrician rents out his family's vintage car
for weddings. Other Cuban professionals peddle cigars to tourists or work as
unlicensed hairdressers or handymen.
"Cuba sells an image to Canadians," Mr. Sambra said. "The government makes a
big deal about free health care, but there is nothing free in a country
where people don't get a proper salary. Any Canadian who thinks it is a
paradise should spend some serious time there."

© National Post 2004


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