Content provided in partnership with

OUR VIEW

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Apr 16, 2008

CUBAN REFORMS

MARK PROGRESS

But free markets not likely any time soon

Of itself, the change was not quite as significant as it seemed to be at first glance. Cuba was not legalizing private property or even moving toward anything that might be deemed an actual market in real estate. All the notice on Friday in the official gazette of the Cuban Justice Ministry did was to expedite the process whereby government workers who had lived in (and rented) government-owned homes can get property titles to those homes and pass them on to their heirs. According to Reuters, such homes were slated to become privately owned under existing law, but the process was a bureaucratic nightmare.

Most Popular Articles in News: The Ten Best Laptop bags; Tata plans cheapest-ever car for Indian market; GLOBALIZATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT OF THE THIRD WORLD; Corn is good for you; Corn is not only a tasty treat, but also a cereal that ...; THE 50 BEST STYLISH HANDBAGS TO CARRY; More »

Still, it's a step in the direction of recognizing private property, which had been virtually unheard of during the more than 50 years that current Cuban leader Raul Castro's older brother Fidel ran Cuba. And it hasn't been the only step in loosening up government control over the economic lives of Cubans.

Cubans are now allowed to own cell phones and computers (though hardly anybody can actually afford a computer). The ceilings on government salaries have been lifted. And Cubans are now allowed to stay at hotels that had formerly been reserved for foreigners (although again, hardly any Cuban could actually afford to do so).

Cuba is also allowing, for the first time in memory, people to work small plots of land as private farmers rather than undertaking all agricultural production on large-scale government-operated collective farms. Pilot programs have shown that private farmers, even with tiny plots, are more productive than collective farms, and the authorities now figure that expanding the program, putting more plots of unused land into the hands of private farmers, could do a great deal to ease Cuba's chronic food shortages.

"In and of themselves, they don't amount to much," said Roger Fontaine, a State Department Latin American specialist during the Reagan administration who teaches Latin American history and politics at the Institute of World Politics. But if Raul keeps introducing small steps in the direction of market-oriented economic activity, "it could have an important cumulative impact over time," he said.

Fontaine also believes the fact that Raul Castro is introducing even these small reforms tells us something about the real condition of long-time Cuban caudillo Fidel Castro. "I can't see Fidel approving of private ownership of computers or privatizing government housing," he noted.

Cuba was hardly a free-market paradise under Castro's predecessor, the dictator Fulgencio Batista, nor is it likely to become one any time soon. But small steps in that direction could be difficult to reverse.

A key question is how long Raul Castro, who at almost 77 is rumored to have health issues himself, will last, and whether he can control the pace of reform once it gets under way. Reform accelerated beyond Mikhail Gorbachev's capacity to control it in the old Soviet Union, and, in Cuba's case, Raul has no logical successor. A window to a freer Cuba could be opening, if only a bit at a time.

DEMOCRATS WRONG ON TRADE

It's sad, really. For most of the last century, the Democratic Party, as the most significant advocate of an internationalist perspective in American politics, understood that promoting international trade was a key aspect of being an internationally oriented world power that valued multilateral relations. With its latest action on a proposed trade agreement with Colombia, however, it has confirmed its new role as an insular, xenophobic party with a knee-jerk suspicion of foreigners, responding to and reinforcing arrant ignorance about how the world works.

The House of Representatives, prodded by majority leader Nancy Pelosi, recently changed the existing rules to delay, perhaps indefinitely, consideration of an agreement that was signed in 2006 and revised in 2007 in response to stated concerns of House Democrats. Under the "fast track" authority under which the treaty was negotiated, the House was required to take up a trade treaty and vote it up or down, without amendments, within 60 days, giving the Senate another 30 days to do likewise. But the new rule gives the House Speaker complete discretion as to timing.

The hostility to this agreement makes no sense. Some trade pacts raise a realistic fear that cheaper goods from foreign countries will flood the U.S., destroying or outsourcing the jobs of workers in competing U.S. industries. But U.S. tariffs on imports from Colombia are already close to zero. The effect of this agreement would be to reduce Colombian tariffs on U.S. goods. Increasing exports to Colombia would create jobs in the U.S. rather than destroy them.

Opponents also argue that Colombia isn't doing enough to deter and punish the political murders of trade union leaders in Colombia. There's no question such murders occur in that notoriously violent country, but they declined to 39 last year from a high of 275 in 1996, thanks in part to a concerted effort by the Colombian government.

OUR VIEW

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Apr 16, 2008

Find Research Guides for:

Find Featured Titles for: Reference

Most Popular Articles in News

Most Popular Publications in News