As Hurricane Ike left Cuba earlier this week it became clear that the island had suffered a one-two (three) punch from not just Ike, but Hanna and Gustav in less than 2 weeks time. Gustav roared through Western and Southern Cuba, flattening the Isle of Youth to the south and laying waste to Pinar del Rio province in the west. Pinar del Rio is home to some of the best farmland in Cuba, including Cuba’s lucrative tobacco crop.
Image from NYT of Hurricane damage
The hurricanes have hit Cuba just as Raul Castro is trying to get his most significant “reform” off the ground in Cuba. Cuba has, for too long, been importing as much as 80% of the food its population consumes, right down to sugar and citrus. Meanwhile, world food prices have skyrocketed, forcing the Cuba to spend almost twice as much as last year just to feed its people.
So, Raul Castro has put emphasis on the resucitation of Cuban agriculture, by de-centralizing government regulation and assistance, inviting more private farmers and cooperatives to take over unproductive lands, and providing government stores for the purchase of farm equipment and supplies (rather than continue with the useless practice of bureaucratic assigment of such supplies, which never arrived on time or in the right quantities anyway). But instead of slashing its domestic outlays for food, Cuba will in fact have to pay more to replace lost food stores and crops. Well, Cuba is not exactly flush with cash. It’s main earners are nickel (the price of which is down 40% from last year), tourism (which has faltered but has eventual promise), health services exports (which Hugo Chavez trades Cuba for cheap oil), and of course, cigars.
Now I am not suggesting a collapse like what we saw after the Soviet Union pulled out of Cuba, but this is going to be a serious setback not just for the “new” government but for all Cubans. And Fidel Castro, who is apparently alive and kicking, penned an article last week in Granma newspaper describing in great detail the devastation, and another underscoring the real challenges Cuba now faces after Hurricane Ike. Think what you will of Fidel Castro, but he’s never been one to generalize vaguely.
Now, the United States has made a nice offer of $100,000 in aid to Cuba, with the condition that it be distributed by nongovernmental organizations. I am all for democracy and freedom, but is this really the most efficient way to get help to the people all over Cuba? Perhaps if the government weren’t well organized to deliver relief–afterall, Ganaivo, Haiti is completly disconnected except by sea, which is where the U.S. navy comes in with aid, and offloads it. But Cuba is actually known for its ability to safely evacuate hundreds of thousands of Cubans quickly. No Cubans died in Hurricane Gustav, despite a truly massive wallop, and four perished in Hurricane Ike (600 have died in Haiti).
Think back to the case of Burma and its horrible military junta, which clearly was incapable of helping its people but refused to let anyone in to help recover from the cyclone several months ago. So, did the United States refuse to deliver aid into the arms of the Burmese dictatorship? What do you think?
Finally, it is worth noting that families wishing to look in on and help their relatives in the Hurricanes’ aftermath, are still subject to inhumane U.S. restrictions on travel to the island. Cuban Americans can only go to Cuba to visit immediate nuclear family (to Cubans, and most latino families, your immediate family spans three degrees of separation) one time every three years with no exceptions for humanitarian reasons, emergencies, deaths in the family, etc. There has been a lot of opposition in Miami to the policy, which was tightened in 2004, but now even the Cuba government’s harshest critics on the island are calling on the Bush administration to suspend these restrictions and let families help families in this time of crisis. Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban emigre himself, writes in the Miami Herald:
To propose, as the only option, something that the administration knows the Cuban regime is going to reject is playing politics with Cubans’ suffering……
Instead of rushing to help our brethren, some in the Cuban-American community have engaged in the old, tired and increasingly sterile political debate.
Can we for once put the Cuban people first? This is the perfect opportunity to inject ethical considerations into a debate from which they have been absent for a long time. Can we continue to allow the end to justify cruel means? Can we expect to justify one wrong because the Cuban government commits another?
The majority of the Cuban-American community is increasingly fed up with the continuing ineffective and worn out diatribe.
Meanwhile, Cuba has received other offers (presumably without conditions) from Brazil, Russia (which sent ships over with aid), China, Vietnam, Mexico, and of course Venezuela has made some sort of unprecedentedly generous offer — I am guessing he offered to annex Cuba? –that maybe we’ll hear more about later.
Inform Your Consent 