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Vol. 19, No. 6 June 2011 In the News U.S. experts debate impact of economic Coming food crisis? reforms approved at VI Party Congress University of Florida’s Bill Messina warns BY LARRY LUXNER had been ignoring the restriction. of chaos as food prices take off ...Page 3 hile the Cuban government eases limits Some 310,000 Cubans are now licensed to on private businesses, moves to cut tax- work in the private sector, according to an arti- Wes for mom-and-pop restaurants and cle in the Communist Party daily Granma. That Let the court decide gradually opens the door further to foreign includes 50,000 people in food production and Supreme Court may rule on Fla. law ban- investment in beachfront golf resorts, Cuba ex- sales, 39,000 working for private businesses and ning academic travel to Cuba .......Page 4 perts in Washington and elsewhere are equally 14,000 taxi drivers and other transport workers. busy debating what all of this really means. At a recent Inter-American Dialogue break- The current flurry of activity began in mid- fast in Washington, three Cuba experts offered PCC to ‘evaluate’ reforms April, when delegates to the VI Party Congress their opinions on the island’s latest reforms. January 2012 conference to discuss next meeting in Havana approved a long list of lin- “One view is that this really amounts to very step in economic reform ...............Page 6 eamientos or guidelines for economic reforms. little, if anything at all. Cuba has embarked on Proposals to legalize the sale of real-estate reforms at different moments in time, and has and private cars got plenty of media coverage always dismantled them when the economy Brazil eyes sugar sector worldwide, though they haven’t been passed improved. And this time is no different,” said Brazilian giants take a look at Cuba’s neg- into law yet. Nor has a plan to grant small-busi- American University scholar Robert Pastor. lected sugar industry ....................Page 7 ness loans to individual entrepreneurs or create “The second view is that this represents a sea a wholesale market on the island. change and will lead to a very different Cuba. I On the other hand, on May 27, the govern- tend to be both an optimist and a skeptic, especi- Newsmakers ment announced it would allow private restau- ally of government promises and dictatorships.” Mark Entwistle, Canada’s ex-ambassador rants to serve up to 50 diners at a time, up from Pastor, who accompanied former President the previous limit of 20, though many in Havana, has turned his passion for Cuba paladares See Reforms, page 2 into a full-time career ....................Page 8 A veggie comeback Eager U.S. investors eye Cuba potential Vegetables: a bright spot in Cuba’s other- wise bleak farming sector ..........Page 10 from oil to microloans, trade to telecom BY TRACEY EATON The meeting was timely, coming just days Key players to watch he discovery of petroleum off the coast of after Cuba’s Communist Party released the final A blow-by-blow description of who’s who Cuba would “probably impact U.S.-Cuba version of its guidelines for economic reform. Trelations” more than any other single The 313 “lineamientos” call for a larger pri- among Cuba’s leadership ...........Page 12 event of the past 10 or 15 years, says energy vate sector, fewer government subsidies and a maven Jorge Piñón. push toward decentralized decision-making. Business briefs “If oil is found, it will make Cuba energy-inde- Cuban officials make clear they are not aban- doning socialism, but merely “updating” their China to expand Cienfuegos oil refinery; pendent. It won’t depend on Venezuela,” Piñon said. “You’d be sitting at the table with someone economic model and don’t intend to unleash C&T to fly San Juan-Havana .......Page 14 you can’t push around economically anymore.” capitalism on the island. Piñon was one of eight industry experts who Those plans coincide with the Obama admin- Dissident ‘Antúnez’ spoke at a May 10 conference co-sponsored by istration’s decision to step up “people-to-people” contacts in Cuba and loosen some travel restric- Jorge Luís García Pérez: ‘We’re hostages CubaNews and the law firm Gray Robinson. Fifty business executives attended the event, tions. In fact, changes on both sides of the Flor- of the dictatorship’ .......................Page 15 titled “Changes in the United States and Cuba: ida Straits have heightened expectations among The Impact on Florida.” It was held at Gray U.S. executives hoping to trade with Cuba. CubaNews (ISSN 1073-7715) is published monthly Robinson’s Tampa office, with the participation The Cuban economy has struggled since the by CUBANEWS LLC. © 2011. All rights reserved. of several attorneys from the firm. breakup of the Soviet Union more than two Subscriptions: $479 for one year, $800 for two years. Experts discussed a range of topics including decades ago — and the discovery of oil could For editorial inquires, please call (305) 393-8760 or help Cuba turns things around fast, Piñon said. send an e-mail to: [email protected]. energy, agriculture, telecommunications, travel, trade, real estate and microlending. See Tampa, page 3 2 CubaNews v June 2011 Antonio Blanco, speaking of the Sixth Party fees and money spent while visiting the Reforms — FROM PAGE 1 Congress, said it represents a “milestone” in island,” he said. “The exclusion of this group Jimmy Carter on his recent trip to Cuba, says Cuban history — the last one to be presided from economic discussions is quite odd.” over by the generation that has held power on such reforms would be relatively meaningless Arturo López Levy, a former political ana- the island for half a century. lyst for the Cuban government who now in any other country in Latin America, but “But if the policies now adopted prove to be teaches Latin American politics at Denver that “for Cuba, it’s very significant.” inadequate, the consequences will be very University, said there’s been a dramatic shift Among other things, the Castro regime has significant in the short, medium and long in Cuba from promoting a “battle of ideas” to leased one million hectares of land to 120,000 term for almost everyone involved,” Blanco a focus on making the economy work. farmers, opened up 178 categories of jobs to warned his Washington audience. the private sector and announced that it The FIU scholar cited a recent interview ECONOMIC OPENING, YET POLITICAL CONTROL would lay off more than a million state work- with Pavel Vidal Alejandro, a researcher at “The Party Congress opened the door to ers and eliminate subsidies.” the University of Havana’s Centro de Estudios substantial economic reform, but paradoxical- “More important than these reforms was Sobre la Economía Cuba, whom he called ly elected a very conservative Politburo for its the rationale for the reforms,” he said. “The “one of the best minds in Cuba.” implementation,” he said. “If there’s a mes- “He says that he has a sage to the United States, it’s that the U.S. lot of doubts about the needs to learn to live with this ambiguity. We institutional capacity of will see a move towards important economic Cuba to implement the changes, but at the same time, an iron will to lineamientos, if they are keep the one-party system in place.” really going to be adopt- Asked about the potential real-estate boom ed,” Blanco noted. “Being that could result from the end to prohibitions able to stay in a hotel on the buying and selling of houses and apart- room in your own country ments, López said that “most reformists in and getting a cellphone Cuba would like to open as much as they can, are all positive things, but using houses and cars as collateral for loans the big question is, where to develop private business. But others want is the country going?” to go slower. They are trying to prevent direct sales of cars to people.” WHAT ABOUT THE EXILES? The bottom line, said the academic — who “If we concentrate on has often been criticized for defending the short-term questions like Cuban government — is that “no matter how how many more military much some of them want to liberalize the officers are in the political economy, the leadership is the result of a con- Denver University’s Arturo López-Levy speaks at Inter-American Dialogue. bureau, or how many vergence of the military high command and measures have been party bureaucrats. Cuban economy is inefficient and deficient. adopted, we lose perspective of what’s hap- “Both groups agreee on the convenience of Therefore, what’s needed is an incentives sys- pening in the medium or long term,” he said. preserving the one-party system and the tem, a reduction of the security net to encour- Furthermore, said Blanco, the Castro monopoly on government bureaucracy. And age people to produce.” regime “has a long tradition of shelving and it’s wrong to assume they’re improvising. Pastor suggests that the biggest obstacle to forgetting previous decisions.” They have a plan for at least the next 5 years: implementation of the reforms may come “Vertical mobility in Cuban society has to go on the economic reform track as much from the Cuban people themselves — not to been mostly granted on the basis of personal as they can while keeping political control.” q mention the United States. and ideological loyalties, while Washington-based journalist and photographer “They’ll be losing their jobs, without ration Larry Luxner has edited CubaNews since 2002.

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