Testimony before House Agricultural Committee: The Reality of Trade With Cuba

There are times in the course of a public discussion when one comes across a presentation that encapsulates ones argument that the only thing you can do is point to it and say "What he said."  This is my reaction to Mauricio Claver-Carone's testimony on Capitol Hill on September 14, 2016. I have touched on these issues in the past and how they will negatively affect U.S. taxpayers, but his testimony is the best encapsulation of the most important points surrounding this policy debate. Below is Mauricio's full statement taken from his Capitol Hill Cubans blog.

Mauricio Claver-Carone testifying before the House Committee on Agriculture

Testimony House Agriculture Committee: 'American Agricultural Trade With Cuba'

The following is today's testimony by Mauricio Claver-Carone during a hearing of the House Agriculture Committee on 'American Agricultural Trade With Cuba':

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member and Members of the Committee.

It's truly a privilege to join you here today to discuss important and consequential issues surrounding U.S. agricultural trade with Cuba. I commend you for including a dissenting voice on this panel.

My name is Mauricio Claver-Carone and I'm the Executive Director of Cuba Democracy Advocates, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to the promotion of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Cuba.

My testimony will be divided into two parts. First, I would like to present key facts regarding agricultural trade with Cuba and highlight the counter-productive trends we are seeing since President Obama announced a new policy of unconditional engagement with the Castro regime on December 17th, 2014. Second, I would like to focus on the issue of financing agricultural sales to Cuba, which I understand is a priority for my fellow panelists, with the good faith and disposition to find common ground.

The Reality of Trade With Cuba

As you are surely aware, pursuant to the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (‘TSREEA’), the sale of agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices to the Castro regime in Cuba was authorized by Congress, with one important caveat – these sales must be for “cash-in-advance.” Prior to that, the export of food, medicine and medical devices to the Cuban people had already been authorized under the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 (‘CDA’).

This is an important distinction that needs to be made, for in order to have a productive discussion about agricultural trade with Cuba, one should understand how the island’s totalitarian regime conducts business.

In most of the world, trade means dealing with privately-owned or operated corporations. That's not the case in Cuba. In Cuba, foreign trade and investment is the exclusive domain of the state, namely the Castro regime. There are no "exceptions."

Here's a noteworthy fact: In the last five decades, every single "foreign trade" transaction with Cuba has been with a state entity, or individual acting on behalf of the state. The state's exclusivity regarding trade and investment remains enshrined in Article 18 of Castro's 1976 Constitution.

Since the passage of TSREEA in 2000, over $5 billion in U.S. agricultural products have been sold to Cuba. It is an unpleasant fact, however, that all of those sales by more than 250 privately-owned U.S. companies were made to only one Cuban buyer – the Castro regime.

As the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (‘USDA’) own report on Cuba notes, “The key difference in exporting to Cuba, compared to other countries in the region, is that all U.S. agricultural exports must be channeled through one Cuban government agency, ALIMPORT."

ALIMPORT is an acronym for Empresa Cubana Importadora de Alimentos, S.A. It is a subsidiary of Cuba's Ministry of Foreign Trade and serves as the sole procurement agency for U.S. agricultural products. Throughout the years, the Castro regime has ensured the Ministry of Foreign Trade is run by senior officials from Cuba's intelligence services (known as Directorio General de Inteligencia, or ‘DGI’). The current Minister of Foreign Trade is a DGI official, Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz, who is the son of Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, a historic Castro family confidant and founder of Cuba's counter-intelligence and state-security services.

Hence another unpleasant fact: All business decisions in Cuba are based on the political and control-based calculations of the Castro regime -- not on market forces. If the Cuban people enjoyed property rights to establish their businesses and were allowed to freely partake in foreign trade and investment – my testimony today would be very different.

ALIMPORT primarily supplies government institutions, and the Cuban military's hard currency retail stores (known as Tiendas de Recuperacion de Divisas, ‘TRDs’), hotels and other facilities that cater to tourists and other foreigners.

So let’s immediately debunk a myth: Financing agricultural transactions with Cuba is not about assisting small and midsize farmers on the island, but about financing a monopoly of the Castro regime.

Again, as the USDA itself recognizes: “U.S. food products will be sold and delivered to Alimport, which will take control of the imports at the Cuban point of entry, manage distribution throughout Cuba and coordinate payments. Consequently, U.S. agricultural firms planning on doing business with Cuba need to learn to negotiate and transact business with the Cuban government through Alimport.”

As a result, we already know what any further lifting sanctions towards Cuba would look like. TSREEA sales from the U.S. and business ventures with other nations exhibit the model: A mercantilist system whereby commerce is simply a tool to benefit and strengthen its totalitarian regime.

President Obama’s Policy Changes Have Proven Counter-Productive

President Obama’s policy of unilaterally easing sanctions has proven to be counter-productive for agricultural sales to Cuba. But before focusing on those figures, it’s important to note how President Obama’s new policy has broadly proven to yield counter-productive results.

For example, since December 17th, 2014:

· Political arrests have intensified. Throughout 2015, there were more than 8,616 documented political arrests in Cuba. Thus far, there have already been over 7,935 political arrests during the first eight months of 2016. This represents the highest rate of political arrests in decades and nearly quadruples the tally of political arrests throughout all of 2010 (2,074), early in Obama’s presidency.

· A new Cuban migration crisis has unfolded. The United States is faced with the largest migration of Cuban nationals since the rafters of 1994. The number of Cubans fleeing to the United States in 2015 was nearly twice that of 2014. Some 51,000 Cubans last year entered the United States and this year’s figures will easily surpass that. The numbers of Cuban nationals fleeing the island have now quintupled since President Obama took office, when it was less than 7,000 annually.

· Castro’s military monopolies are displacing "self-employed" workers. There are fewer licensed "self-employed" workers in Cuba today than in 2014. In contrast, Castro's military monopolies are expanding at record pace. The Cuban military-owned tourism company, Gaviota S.A., announced 12% growth in 2015 and expects to double its hotel business this year. Even the limited spaces in which “self-employed” workers previously operated are being squeezed as the Cuban military expands its control of the island's travel, retail and financial sectors of the economy.

· Internet "connectivity ranking" has dropped. The International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) Measuring the Information Society Report for 2015, the world's most reliable source of data and analysis on global access to information and communication. ITU has dropped Cuba's ranking to 129 from 119. The island fares much worse than some of the world's most infamous suppressors of the Internet suppressors, including Zimbabwe (127), Syria (117), Iran (91), China (82) and Venezuela (72).

· Religious freedom violations have increased tenfold. According to the London-based NGO, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (‘CSW’), last year 2,000 churches were declared illegal and 100 were designated for demolition by the Castro regime. Altogether, CSW documented 2,300 separate violations of religious freedom in 2015 compared to 220 in 2014. In the first half of 2016, there have already been 1,606 separate violations of religious freedom.

· Democracy’s regional foes have been emboldened. President Obama’s unconditional recognition and engagement of the sole remaining dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere has sent a message to Castro’s allies in the region that there are no consequences for rogue and undemocratic behavior. Hence the recent militarization (with Cuba’s support) of Venezuela's regime and the parliamentary coup in Nicaragua.

Agricultural sales have not escaped this downward trend.

Over the years, in this same Committee room, I have heard testimony professing that an easing of sanctions; re-defining of “cash-in advance”; improving U.S.-Cuba relations; and an increase in travel to the island, would benefit U.S. farmers. And, as we all know, since December 17th, 2014, the Obama Administration has engaged the Castro regime and extended a litany of unilateral concessions.

As part of these concessions, the Obama Administration has redefined “cash-in-advance”; eased payment terms for agricultural sales; American travel to Cuba has increased by over 50%; Cuba’s GDP grew last year by over 4%; diplomatic relations were established; and endless U.S. business and trade delegations have visited Havana.

Yet, U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba plummeted by nearly 40% in 2015. During the first quarter of 2016, the slide continued, as ALIMPORT purchased only $63 million in U.S. agricultural products. That is an additional 21% percent drop from the same period in 2015. These are the lowest numbers since the United States authorized agricultural exports to the Castro regime in 2000.

Of course, those who understand how the Castro regime operates are not surprised -- for it has long used agricultural sales as a tool of political influence.

As a 2007 report of the U.S. International Trade Commission (‘ITC’) confirmed: "Alimport reportedly initiated a policy in 2003 that limited or ceased purchases from U.S. companies that did not actively lobby the U.S. government for changes to laws and regulations regarding trade with Cuba. Purchases are also allegedly geared to particular U.S. States or Congressional districts in an effort to heighten local interests in pressing the Administration to normalize trade with Cuba."

Today is no different. The Castro regime wants the U.S. Congress to lift tourism, financing and investment sanctions that would overwhelmingly benefit its military monopolies, so it is putting on the squeeze.

Financing Agricultural Sales to Cuba

We will surely hear testimony today about Cuba being one of the U.S.’s largest export markets pre-1959 and how we need to “recapture” it. Politics aside, I would caution that Cuba’s economy is nowhere near the same today as it was throughout its pre-1959 history, when it was free-market oriented, with a dynamic private sector, property rights, and among the largest middle class and highest per capita income in Latin America at the time. Today, Cuba is a totalitarian dictatorship, with a centralized control economy and the lowest per capita income in Latin America.

We will also surely hear testimony about Cuba purchasing rice from Brazil and Vietnam, instead of from the United States, as a result of the prohibition on U.S. financing for agricultural sales. But I would caution that Brazil and Vietnam’s rice sales to the Castro regime are heavily state-subsidized and made pursuant to political arrangements. They are not based on competitive terms and rates. I would further argue that the recent downfall of the socialist government in Brazil -- and its shady financing deals with the Castro regime that are currently under investigation by the Brazilian authorities -- may lead to a bigger increase in U.S. rice sales to Cuba than anything the U.S. Congress could do.

Finally, we will surely hear many theories and estimates about how much more money one commodity sector or another -- or one state or another -- can make from exports to the Cuba, if U.S. sanctions were further eased or lifted. However, as we’ve learned from the dramatic decline in agricultural sales figures over the last year -- despite the Obama Administration easing of sanctions and establishing diplomatic relations with the Castro regime -- that is hardly guaranteed.

Let me be absolutely clear. Those of us who support sanctions and oppose the financing of transactions with the Castro regime do not do so with the intent of harming American farmers. Conversely, I know that American farmers do not seek to sell their products with the intent of supporting or subsidizing the Castro regime.

American farmers are the best in the world and we all share their desire to establish and expand markets. As a matter of fact, I’m sure Cuban-Americans in Florida consume more rice than any amount ever sold to Cuba pre- or post-1959. However, the agricultural groups represented here today remain steadfast in their desire for the financing of agricultural sales to Cuba and there is even legislation before this Committee to that end.

But any such proposition must be weighed by serious factual considerations regarding the troubling structure of Cuba’s business entities (military-run monopolies), its beneficiaries (the Castro family and regime cronies), the rights of its victims (both Cubans and Americans), and whether such practices are in the U.S.’s security interests.

Thus, the question comes down to: How to authorize private financing for U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba without subsidizing its derelict regime and in a manner consistent with U.S. security interests and the rights of victims?

We are obviously not going to resolve this challenge today. But hopefully, this discussion can be helpful in understanding each other’s concerns and in highlighting important safeguards that could address broader policy implications.

These safeguards fall into three categories:

1. Protect American Taxpayers.

Cuba ranks among the world's worst credit-risks and debtor nations. Moody's Investors Service gives Cuba's sovereign debt a Caa2 rating, which translates into "very high credit risk."

Despite highly publicized (and politicized) debt forgiveness concessions from Russia and the Paris Club, Cuba still owes upward of $75 billion to a long international list of creditors. As recently as 2010, Reuters reported how Cuba “failed to make some debt payments on schedule beginning in 2008, and then froze up to $1 billion in the accounts of foreign suppliers by the start of 2009." That should make anyone unwise enough to leave money sitting in a Cuban bank account reconsider.

And just a few months ago, on July 8th, 2016, General Raul Castro stated, in his own words: "I should recognize that there have been some delays in current payments to creditors."

I am confident we all agree that American taxpayers must not be exposed to any direct bailout of the Castro regime. It is for this reason that TSREEA includes a prohibition (Sec. 7207(a)) on United States assistance, which reads:

“No United States Government assistance, including United States foreign assistance, United States export assistance, and any United States credit or guarantees shall be available for exports to Cuba.”

But American taxpayers should also not be exposed to any indirect bailout of the Castro regime. Thus, TSREEA should further be supplemented by a prohibition in the Internal Revenue Code that would prevent any losses stemming from commercial transactions with Cuba’s regime -- pursuant to Obama’s policy changes -- from being deducted when calculating business taxes.

2. Protect American Victims of Stolen Property.

According to the Inter-American Law Review, the Castro regime’s confiscation of U.S. assets was the “largest uncompensated taking of American property by a foreign government in history.” Unfortunately, President Obama's policy of expanding business transactions with the Castro regime is already encouraging American companies to traffic and exploit properties stolen from other fellow Americans. Any expansion of such transactions by the U.S. Congress would further expose American victims.

There are nearly 6,000 unpaid, certified claims, worth nearly $7 billion arising from the Castro regime’s confiscation of American-owned business and properties. They include many of the ports and other infrastructure used for agricultural exports to Cuba.

American farmers understand the importance of property rights. Property is the very core of farming. As such, it is easy for farmers to appreciate the injustice of having your property stolen, and then coopted, exploited and marketed to someone else to the benefit of the thief. This injustice must be corrected and resolved for the victims. Part of that solution will involve restitution from those collaborators who have knowingly benefited from the theft. The injustices occurring today in Cuba regarding confiscated property must be resolved; U.S. law promises that it will, and it is not just the Castro regime that is on the hook.

It is for this reason that Section 103 of the 1996 Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act (‘Libertad Act’) contains a prohibition on the indirect financing of Cuba, which states:

“No loan, credit, or other financing may be extended knowingly by a United States national, a permanent resident alien, or a United States agency to any person for the purpose of financing transactions involving any confiscated property the claim to which is owned by a United States national.”

The American victims of stolen property in Cuba must not only remain protected from any financing involving their property, but they should be provided recourse.

Unfortunately, President Obama is denying any recourse -- through his waiver of Title III of the Libertad Act -- to Americans who are now seeing their property rights trampled upon by other fellow Americans. That used to be unimaginable. If the Obama Administration is unwilling to protect the rights of grieved Americans, then a private right of action should allow for the victims to do so directly through the rule of law.

As such, the U.S. Congress should pass legislation to end the President’s waiver authority over Title III of the Libertad Act and grant Americans the legal standing to pursue justice.

3. Prevent Support for Cuban Military Entities.

Today, the Cuban military owns and operates one of the largest conglomerates in Latin America, known as the Grupo de Administración Empresarial, S.A., or GAESA. Its portfolio includes companies that dominate ports, trade zones, tourist attractions, restaurants, hotels, real estate, retail stores, currency exchanges, gas stations, airlines, and other transportation services. Its head, Gen. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas, is Raul's son-in-law.

Far from empowering Cuba’s small sector of "self-employed" residents, the Castro regime is taking full advantage of President Obama's new policy to accelerate the military's holdings of every entity poised to benefit from current U.S.-Cuba relations.

As an Associated Press report this weekend confirmed: “the [Cuban] military's long-standing business wing, GAESA, assumed a higher profile after Gen. Raul Castro became president in 2008, positioning the armed forces as perhaps the prime beneficiary of a post-detente boom in tourism. Gaviota, the military's tourism arm, is in the midst of a hotel building spree that outpaces projects under control of nominally civilian agencies like the Ministry of Tourism. The military-run Mariel port west of Havana has seen double-digit growth fueled largely by demand in the tourism sector. The armed forces this year took over the bank that does business with foreign companies, assuming control of most of Cuba's day-to-day international financial transactions, according to a bank official.”

Let there be no doubt, the Cuban military is already encroaching into the U.S. agricultural trade sphere, which is currently under the direction of the nominally-civilian Ministry of Foreign Trade. However, if Congress were to authorize any financing for agricultural sales to Cuba, I guarantee that GAESA would absorb ALIMPORT as swiftly -- with no legal process and lack of transparency -- as it recently did Habaguanex, S.A. and Banco Financiero Internacional. (Both were the focus of the AP story referenced in the prior paragraph).

With great foresight, just a few months after President Obama announced his new Cuba policy, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (Cal.), and the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, U.S. Rep. Mac Thornberry (Tex.), anticipated this trend and introduced the Cuban Military Transparency Act (H.R. 2937), which seeks to ensure that any increase in resources to Cuba -- pursuant the Obama Administration's recent policy changes -- truly reach the Cuban people and are not funneled through the Castro regime's armed forces.

After all, these are the same Cuban armed forces that recently held a stolen U.S. Hellfire missile for nearly two years; that have been caught twice internationally-smuggling heavy weaponry, including the worst sanctions violations ever to North Korea; that oversee the most egregious abuses of human rights in the Western Hemisphere; that are subverting democracy in Venezuela and exporting surveillance systems and technology to other countries in the region; that welcome Russian military intelligence ships to dock in their ports; that share intelligence with the world's most dangerous anti-American regimes; and of which three senior Cuban military officers remain indicted in the United States for the murder of four Americans.

As such, I would urge that this important piece of legislation, introduced by your national security counterparts, remain the priority of any Cuba policy consideration by the U.S. Congress.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my testimony. Again, I thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to continuing this important discussion and working in furtherance of our common interests.

Cuba: Change for the preservation of the dictatorial status quo

More things change the more they remain the same

Reforms seek to preserve central planning. Eusebio Leal loses autonomy to military 

The Associated Press broke the "news" on August 16, 2016 that the Castro regime would sacrifice the well being of Cubans in order to hang on to power. The communist dictatorship remains committed to maintaining a centrally planned economy, it also will not permit property or wealth concentration, and will "gradually" advance internet service: 

"Cuba's ruling Communist Party released a new set of economic guidelines Tuesday that emphasize the slow-moving and limited nature of the country's reforms amid a sharp national economic downturn. The guidelines "recognize the objective existence of market relationships," but they also restate Cuba's commitment to a centrally planned economy. The 274 rules say concentration of property and wealth will not be permitted and promise to advance internet service only "gradually, according to our economic possibilities," in one of the world's least-connected nations. They update a document that laid out President Raúl Castro's vision of economic reform at the Cuban Communist Party's twice-a-decade congress in 2011."

This should not surprise anyone. Five years ago when the so-called reforms were initially announced I made the following conclusion that remains true today.

"If there is one lesson over the past 52 years it is that political considerations have priority over economic considerations in order to preserve the regime. When it is convenient to decentralize in order to survive the regime will do that as it did in the early 1990s and as it appears to be doing today. At the same time when things improve and regime survival depends on the re-centralization of economic control at the expense of economic growth as was the case in the late 1990s and through the 2000s they will do that as well, but the important consideration is that the Cuban people are tired of this regime and want change."

 Since 1959 the Castro regime has carried out numerous changes in the service of two goals: entrenching the communist dictatorship in power and perpetuating its rule. Now the regime continues to consolidate economic control in the military. The latest victim in this trend is Eusebio Leal Spengler and his Office of the Historian of the City of Havana (OHCH) that according to The Miami Herald "rescued at least one third of the buildings in the historic heart of the Cuban capital and won lavish international praise" in the 1990s during the special period. Leal had autonomy but that has been upsurped by the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), a holding company controlled by the Cuban military.

Democratic Senator Robert Menendez speaking on the floor of the United States Senate gave a more detailed analysis of GAESA on October 17, 2015:  "Raul Castro named his son-in-law, General Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez Callejas, as head of GAESA, which stands for Grupo de Administracion Empresarial, S.A or translated Business Administrative Group.  GAESA is the holding company of Cuba’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Cuba’s military.  It is the dominant driving force of the island’s economy.  Established in the 1990s by Raul Castro, it controls tourism companies, ranging from the very profitable Gaviota S.A., which runs Cuba’s hotels, restaurants, car rentals and nightclubs, to TRD Caribe S.A., which runs the island’s retail stores.  GAESA controls virtually all economic transactions in Cuba."

In short the Castro family and the military control and run the economy in Cuba.  They are now consolidating economic control directly to perpetuate themselves in power with the help of the Obama administration. Meanwhile the human rights situation is worsening, religious repression is exploding along with violence against activists,

Why travel to Cuba is no carnival ride

Normally, travel broadens the mind but what about visiting a totalitarian state?

American tourists pass by the Ministry of the Interior in Cuba

Traveling to Cuba under the Castro regime should be a subject for serious reflection and not to be taken lightly for a number of reasons that are not immediately evident. First and foremost the tourism industry in Cuba is run by the military and intelligence services.

These reflections would also be useful for visits to other totalitarian regimes because they use many of the same tactics. Visitors are often kept in areas geared to tourists providing them a Potemkin village experience. However that does not mean that information on health and security will be accurate and it can still place tourists at risk. 

In the case of both Cuba and North Korea, businessmen who have engaged the regime in business ventures are rotting in prison. There is no independent judiciary and all is subject to the objectives of the dictatorship. One can become a pawn of the regime to advance the dictatorship's agenda as was the case with Alan Gross who spent five years in a Cuban prison and as is now the case of University of Virginia student Otto Frederick Warmbier sentenced to 15 years hard labor in March of 2016 in North Korea for supposedly removing a political banner from a hotel. 

Seeing the Real Cuba or the Potemkin Village?
Two important questions that arise are how useful are trips to places like Cuba in ascertaining the reality on the ground? What has happened in the past when tourists visiting a totalitarian regime take the lead in public diplomacy?
 
Visitors to totalitarian states become targets of both the state security service and the propaganda ministries. These regimes will pull out all the stops to show themselves in the best light possible and make sure that high profile visitors have a great time but within a reality fabricated by them. It has paid back with big dividends in the past with a partial list including: Lincoln Joseph Steffens, Charles Lindbergh, Jane Fonda, Linda Ronstadt, and Dennis Rodman that wittingly or unwittingly became agents of influence after visiting totalitarians.

Singer Linda Ronstadt visited Cuba and got the Potemkin Village tour

 Linda Ronstadt presents a textbook example of this phenomenon in a August 18, 2014 AZCentral interview where she gives talking points on the Cuban Adjustment Act and reveals that she had traveled to Cuba to further legitimize her claims:

"We allow Cubans to come in and say that they're refugees. Well, in Cuba — I've been there, you know — people are fed, people are housed, people are clothed. There isn't violence in the streets. 

Ronstadt had spoken more extensively about her impressions of Cuba in a 2003 interview in City Pulse:

It’s an amazing country. I’ve been all over Latin America. And it’s the only Latin American country I’ve been in that didn’t have armed troops on the street, there weren’t homeless people everywhere, and kids had school uniforms and had schoolbooks paid for and had their health paid for. There’s things going on in Cuba that we don’t know about, and that’s mainly because of the Miami Cubans, they just absolutely won’t – they are absolutely closed-minded. They hate Fidel Castro, they won’t even hear about some of the good things he’s done, and they don’t want anyone else to know about it, either. It’s a total propaganda device and they’ve blanketed this country with propaganda about Cuba, huge amounts of which are untrue.

The reality that Cubans know on and off the island is far different, but also there are respected international human rights bodies and organizations that would dispute everything in the above statement. Sadly, the Cuban government successfully manipulated this talented and legendary singer who had The Eagles as a backup band into an agent of influence for their regime. 

This is has been going on for a long time and the techniques of hospitality are so refined that one need not be an ideological fellow traveler to be converted.  These totalitarian tactics are ideologically neutral and the language used by those taken in by it remarkably similar.

How tourism can unwittingly turn one into an agent of influence

Charles Lindbergh in Nazi Germany with Hermann Göring

Charles Lindbergh, visited Germany five times between 1936 and 1939. Lindbergh was taken on tours of airfields and factories, lavishly entertained by Air Marshal Hermann Göring, and awarded one of the Third Reich’s highest civilian honors. Lindbergh wrote to the banker Harry Davison, “With all the things we criticize, he [Hitler] is undoubtedly a great man, and I believe has done much for the German people.  Following the 1936 Olympics in Berlin that further legitimized the Nazis, Lindbergh's wife offered the following perspective on Hitler to her mother in a August 5, 1936 letter:      

"Hitler, I am beginning to feel, is a very great man, like an inspired religious leader -- and as such rather fanatical -- but not scheming, not selfish, not greedy for power, but a mystic, a visionary who really wants the best for his country and, on the whole, has a rather broad view."

When Germans failed to achieve the Thousand Year Reich Hitler had wanted the German dictator issued the Nero Decree on March 19, 1945 ordering the infrastructure of the country to be destroyed effectively sentencing the German people to death by destroying water supplies and shelter. Not only did Nazi Germany order the extermination of the Jewish people at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 but three years later Hitler wanted to do away with the German people when they did not achieve his goals. 

Did the Lindbergh's travel provide them with an advantage over Winston Churchill, for example who did not visit Nazi Germany, on the real nature of the German government? Remember that the Lindbergh's were not Nazis but had been manipulated during their five visits to Germany but had as did many others the "advantage" of saying that they had special knowledge because of those visits. Churchill's counsel in the 1930s to take a hard line against Nazi Germany went unheeded and the consequences were catastrophic. In 1945 in a speech to the Belgian Senate and Chamber, Winston Churchill described how one day Franklin Roosevelt asked him what should we call this war? To which the British Prime Minister responded the Unnecessary War because it easily could have been prevented.

Totalitarians whether Nazi or Communist have a track record of effectively using tourism, athletic events, and academic exchanges to present their regimes in a way that historically legitimized them and covered up their hostile objectives often with disastrous results not only for their own countries but the international community as a whole. An excellent accounting of these practices and their impacts on national and international politics is found in Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims that should be required reading for anyone traveling to Cuba, China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Vietnam.
 

Center of image mugshots of Dr. Carlos & Elsa Alvarez: Castro spies at FIU

Targeting and recruitment by the Cuban intelligence service

The friendly sounding "Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP)" claims to encourage visitors to see the real Cuba for themselves and works to educate visitors about the "real Cuba" while debunking criticisms of the 56 year old dictatorship. The reality is far more sinister.  According to counter intelligence expert Chris Simmons the "ICAP’s intelligence collaboration with the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) dates back over three decades. It is not a DI entity per se, but is believed to be roughly 90% DI-affiliated due to a large pool of collaborators who serve the small team of ICAP-embedded DI officers." A past president of the ICAP was indicted for drug smuggling into the United States in 1982.  In 2014 the FBI published a report detailing how Cuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents. This is not new and has been going on for decades with some major successes by the Castro regime that compromised national security and cost lives.

At Florida International University psychology professor Carlos Alvarez who was the associate professor for educational leadership and policy studies, and his wife Elsa Alvarez, counselor for the psychological services department were arrested by the FBI on January 6, 2006. Professor Alvarez conducted trips to Cuba with young professionals in the late 1990s in what was billed a conflict resolution project.  Alvarez was sentenced to five years in prison and his wife to three years in prison on February 28, 2007 for conspiring to act as unregistered Cuban agents.

 Tourism funds Cuban military 

A large chunk of the Cuban economy is run by the company Gaviota that deals with tourism and is controlled by the MINFAR (the military)  and Castro’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT) that runs a hotel chain, an airline, taxi company, marinas, shops, restaurants and museums and is under the control of another general. The tourist group Cubanacán was founded at the beginning of the 1980s and is also under military control. This means that tourist dollars go directly to strengthening the Castro regime's repressive apparatus.

The first American ship to cruise from the United States to Cuba in over half a century is partnering with Havanatur that is heavily penetrated by Cuban spies from the Ministry of Intelligence (MININT).Christopher P. Baker in his travel guide Havana explains the nature of the staff that tourists will be encountering.

"The Cuban government looks with suspicion  on U.S. travelers entering on religious or humanitarian licenses, and U.S. "people to people" programs are handled exclusively by Celimar, a division of Havanatur that is said to report to MININT and is heavily laden with ex-MININT staffers."

Secondly, since Cuba is a totalitarian communist dictatorship that is the tenth most censored country on Earth according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, information of interest to traveler is often unavailable or misrepresented.

Don't trust the water

The Cholera out break that was announced in July of 2012 and spread across the island with official reports emerging from Camaguey, Granma, Guantanamo, Havana, and Santiago de Cuba was not reported immediately in the official press.  The Cuban government's lack of candor in reporting on outbreaks of contagious diseases such as cholera and dengue goes back decades and should give travelers to Cuba cause for concern. International media in Cuba are cautious about reporting bad news from the island. Journalists in Cuba have ample reason to fear being expelled having seen colleagues such as Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs and Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of Mexico's El Universal all expelled in 2007 from there for offering reporting that although bending over backwards not to offend still ran afoul of the regime.

News of the Cholera outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of Cuba, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to the reporting of the illegal independent press in the island. The state controlled media did not confirm the outbreak until days later on July 3, 2012. The BBC reported on July 7, 2012 that a patient had been diagnosed with Cholera in Havana. Meanwhile the dictatorship stated that it had it all under control. 

If you get sick don't count on the healthcare being free in Cuba. New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana during the summer of 2013 and was billed $4,700 from the government hospital. A total of 12 tourists have been identified who have contracted cholera in Cuba.

Jailed for 7 months for breaking silence on Cholera outbreak

Public Health Whistle blowers silenced

Calixto Martinez, the independent journalist who reported the cholera outbreak on July 13, 2012, was imprisoned in September of 2012 in horrible conditions and released in April of 2013 for informing the public about the healthcare threat and the poor government response. Amnesty International had declared him a prisoner of conscience in January of 2013.
 
This type of repression against whistle blowers reporting on health threats in Cuba that could endanger tourists has been going on for a while. For example, in 1997 when a Dengue epidemic broke out in Cuba the dictatorship tried to cover it up. When a courageous doctor spoke out he was locked up on June 25, 1997 and later sentenced to 8 years in prison. Amnesty International recognized Dr. Desi Mendoza Rivero as a prisoner of conscience. He was released from prison under condition he go into exile in December of 1998. The Castro regime eventually had to recognize that there had been a dengue epidemic.

Albert Romero killed in Cuba in 2015

Cuba is not crime free

Cuba is a travel destination that has an under reported record of tourists murdered or gone missing. Tampa Bay Times is reporting that Alberto Romero (age 39), a Tampa based marital and family law attorney, was killed in Cuba while visiting extended family on January 8, 2015. He was killed along with close family friend Hector Mario Cruz Naranjo. The two men were tied up, beaten, stabbed and in the case of the Cuban American attorney one hand was severed according to the source. Martí Noticias obtained a copy of the death certificate. There have been other cases. 


Cubans and the children of Cubans discriminated against
The Castro regime does not recognize the U.S. citizenship of  Cuban-borns and their children born in the United States charging them hundreds of dollars more than their U.S. born counterparts to enter Cuba. Worse yet the United States government accepts the differential treatment of their citizens because of their national origin providing a warning on their US Embassy in Cuba website.

The Government of Cuba does not recognize the U.S. nationality of U.S. citizens who are Cuban-born or are the children of Cuban parents.  These individuals will be treated solely as Cuban citizens and may be subject to a range of restrictions and obligations, including military service.  

This is why on Sunday, the Democracy Movement will sail on May 1, 2016 to protest that Cubans should have the right “to freely enter and leave the national territory without there being a discriminatory visa process,”

The question 

There is also an ethical question providing hard currency to a system that is actively repressing its own populace and no matter how little it may be, it is helping a totalitarian state. If you are going to travel to Cuba and put hard currency into dying communist institutions that prolongs the life of the dictatorship then you have to ask yourself what would serve as a counterbalance to that? What does purposeful travel to Cuba look like? One could argue that it looks like this: members of the Miami-based non-governmental organization, the Cuban Democratic Directorate, traveled to Cuba in 2002 and took humanitarian assistance to Cuban dissidents and signed the Varela Project in the living room of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.

Courageous human rights activists from Europe and Latin America have risked all to assist Cuban human rights defenders. Is this something that you'd be willing to do? Would you be ready to assume the consequences?

Some things to think about and read up on.