Why Won’t Joe Biden Take On Cuba?
By Mary O’Grady, 1/23/22, Wall St. Journal
During his press conference last week Biden was asked to comment
on U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. He riffed on
Central America, said he’d spent “a lot of time talking about” Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and incoherently referenced
Chile and Argentina. He went on to express concern about the
shrinking number of democracies in the world.
Yet strangely the president never mentioned the region’s heart
of darkness, the 63-year-old military dictatorship in Havana.
Cuba’s intelligence and security apparatuses direct the repression
in Venezuela and Nicaragua and support the one-party state in
Bolivia. Cuba is actively trying to undermine democratic
institutions in Colombia, Peru and Chile. At home it uses
torture, imprisonment and exile to put down dissent.
Liberty in the region can’t be secured without taking on totali-
tarian Havana. Biden’s failure to give priority to the task is
alarming. It’s why, despite the historic July 11 uprising, the
hope for a Cuba libre that welled up last summer is fading.
Socialism preaches the common good but in real life it’s hard to
find a more money-grubbing lot than ruling socialists. See Cuba.
The island economy is in shambles and the outlook is dire. Yet
the most powerful (and hated) man in the country—the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Gen. Luis Alberto Lopez Calleja—has responded to the humanitarian crisis by circling the wagons to protect his own
billion-dollar empire.
At issue is the 70% fall in dollar remittances from the U.S. over
the past two years. Lopez Calleja is the former son-in-law of Raul
Castro and owner of the Cuban military conglomerate GAESA. He wants
the world to believe that cratering remittances are the fault of
U.S. sanctions. In fact, full dollar remittances could restart
tomorrow if he'd allow Cubans to receive them.
The island has been heavily dependent on remittances for over two
decades. For most of that time Cubans could change greenbacks
into “convertible” pesos, which had the same buying power in
govt stores as the dollar. A floating—and worthless—peso was
still used to pay workers. But the CUC, as the dollar-equivalent
currency was known, allowed Cubans who could get it to improve
their living standards.
Eventually the CUC became a problem for the regime because it
printed too many of them. They began to trade in the black market
at their devalued price. Separately, in 2013, when Cuba loosened
travel restrictions outside the island, entrepreneurs began lugging
goods from abroad to sell at home. As informal markets flourished,
the govt was losing control and, more important, missing out on
the capture of hard-currency revenues for itself.
In 2019, the military tried to put a stop to this by cracking down
on travelers returning to the island with merchandise. It also
mandated the use of govt-issued debit cards in govt stores, where
steep markups are routine. The military, through its financial
institutions, continued to seize remittance dollars and issue
overvalued pesos to the intended recipients. The Miami-based
Havana Consulting Group estimates that remittances to Cuba from
the U.S. in 2019 totaled $3.7 billion.
In Oct 2020 the Trump admin began prohibiting the flow of
remittance dollars thru Fincimex, a shadowy company owned by the
Cuban military, or other military-owned companies. Western Union,
the most popular money business serving the island, responded by
closing Cuba operations. On Jan. 1, 2021, the Trump admin added
the military’s Banco Financiero Internacional to its restricted list.
This has deprived Lopez Calleja of hard currency when credit from
China, Russia and Venezuela has been reduced and tourism is in
the tank. Last year the regime retired the CUC and, in a last-
ditch effort to scare up real money hidden in mattresses, imposed
a deadline for exchanging dollars. It now issues only floating
pesos and in December acknowledged that official 2021 inflation
would reach 70%. In October it said the black-market peso exchange
rate implied a surge in the price level of 6,900%.
For Lopez Calleja this homemade mess offers another way to
control dissent. Scarce food goes to the compliant while “counterrevolutionaries”—including teenagers—are beaten up,
locked up, denied employment and medical care, and otherwise made
to suffer extreme privation. Meantime, an army of propagandists
and useful idiots in universities and media around the world
continue to insist that the hardship is caused by U.S. sanctions.
The Biden admin could counteract the regime’s disinformation by
launching a high-profile campaign in favor of a transparent
pathway for Cubans to receive dollar remittances directly like
other nations do.
Lopez Calleja would refuse, of course, because as one Cuban who
knows the general puts it, “Luis Alberto doesn’t like to share.”
But that’s all the more reason to make it an issue.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-wont-joe-biden-take-on-cuba-havana-dollar-remittances-poverty-inflation-pesos-black-market-luis-alberto-lopez-calleja-gaesa-11642970188
Why Won’t Joe Biden Take On Cuba?
By Mary O’Grady, 1/23/22, Wall St. Journal
During his press conference last week Biden was asked to comment
on U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere. He riffed on
Central America, said he’d spent “a lot of time talking about” Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, and incoherently referenced
Chile and Argentina. He went on to express concern about the
shrinking number of democracies in the world.
Yet strangely the president never mentioned the region’s heart
of darkness, the 63-year-old military dictatorship in Havana.
Cuba’s intelligence and security apparatuses direct the repression
in Venezuela and Nicaragua and support the one-party state in
Bolivia. Cuba is actively trying to undermine democratic
institutions in Colombia, Peru and Chile. At home it uses
torture, imprisonment and exile to put down dissent.
Liberty in the region can’t be secured without taking on totali-
tarian Havana. Biden’s failure to give priority to the task is
alarming. It’s why, despite the historic July 11 uprising, the
hope for a Cuba libre that welled up last summer is fading.
Socialism preaches the common good but in real life it’s hard to
find a more money-grubbing lot than ruling socialists. See Cuba.
The island economy is in shambles and the outlook is dire. Yet
the most powerful (and hated) man in the country—the fair-skinned, blue-eyed Gen. Luis Alberto Lopez Calleja—has responded to the humanitarian crisis by circling the wagons to protect his own
billion-dollar empire.
At issue is the 70% fall in dollar remittances from the U.S. over
the past two years. Lopez Calleja is the former son-in-law of Raul
Castro and owner of the Cuban military conglomerate GAESA. He wants
the world to believe that cratering remittances are the fault of
U.S. sanctions. In fact, full dollar remittances could restart
tomorrow if he'd allow Cubans to receive them.
The island has been heavily dependent on remittances for over two
decades. For most of that time Cubans could change greenbacks
into “convertible” pesos, which had the same buying power in
govt stores as the dollar. A floating—and worthless—peso was
still used to pay workers. But the CUC, as the dollar-equivalent
currency was known, allowed Cubans who could get it to improve
their living standards.
Eventually the CUC became a problem for the regime because it
printed too many of them. They began to trade in the black market
at their devalued price. Separately, in 2013, when Cuba loosened
travel restrictions outside the island, entrepreneurs began lugging
goods from abroad to sell at home. As informal markets flourished,
the govt was losing control and, more important, missing out on
the capture of hard-currency revenues for itself.
In 2019, the military tried to put a stop to this by cracking down
on travelers returning to the island with merchandise. It also
mandated the use of govt-issued debit cards in govt stores, where
steep markups are routine. The military, through its financial
institutions, continued to seize remittance dollars and issue
overvalued pesos to the intended recipients. The Miami-based
Havana Consulting Group estimates that remittances to Cuba from
the U.S. in 2019 totaled $3.7 billion.
In Oct 2020 the Trump admin began prohibiting the flow of
remittance dollars thru Fincimex, a shadowy company owned by the
Cuban military, or other military-owned companies. Western Union,
the most popular money business serving the island, responded by
closing Cuba operations. On Jan. 1, 2021, the Trump admin added
the military’s Banco Financiero Internacional to its restricted list.
This has deprived Lopez Calleja of hard currency when credit from
China, Russia and Venezuela has been reduced and tourism is in
the tank. Last year the regime retired the CUC and, in a last-
ditch effort to scare up real money hidden in mattresses, imposed
a deadline for exchanging dollars. It now issues only floating
pesos and in December acknowledged that official 2021 inflation
would reach 70%. In October it said the black-market peso exchange
rate implied a surge in the price level of 6,900%.
For Lopez Calleja this homemade mess offers another way to
control dissent. Scarce food goes to the compliant while “counterrevolutionaries”—including teenagers—are beaten up,
locked up, denied employment and medical care, and otherwise made
to suffer extreme privation. Meantime, an army of propagandists
and useful idiots in universities and media around the world
continue to insist that the hardship is caused by U.S. sanctions.
The Biden admin could counteract the regime’s disinformation by
launching a high-profile campaign in favor of a transparent
pathway for Cubans to receive dollar remittances directly like
other nations do.
Lopez Calleja would refuse, of course, because as one Cuban who
knows the general puts it, “Luis Alberto doesn’t like to share.”
But that’s all the more reason to make it an issue.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-wont-joe-biden-take-on-cuba-havana-dollar-remittances-poverty-inflation-pesos-black-market-luis-alberto-lopez-calleja-gaesa-11642970188
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