The Miami Herald, 19th October, 1998

ABUSES IN CUBA
Few talk about how Cubans are exploited as foreign investment grows politically chic. he heart-wrenching documentary film by Nestor Alemendros and Jorge Ulla, Nobody Listens, 10 years ago described human-rights abuses in Cuba and the world's seeming indifference to them. Unconscionably, the same title applies today as eager foreign investors ignore the Cuban government's flagrant exploitation of its own workers.

The latest in the parade to suck profits out of the sad island are the Canadian, Spanish, British, and Monaco capitalists developing real estate jointly with Cuba's totalitarian government. Want an oceanfront time-share in Varadero or a condo in Havana's swanky Miramar district? No problem.

Cuban Canadian Resorts International, of Canada, is spending a cool $250 million building 2,000 hotel rooms, time-shares, and condominiums in four beach communities. There's also a plethora of foreign ventures putting up luxury apartments in Havana's best neighborhoods. Real Inmobiliaria of Monaco, for one, has a two-bedroom, 1,400-square-foot unit on 42nd Street between Third and Fifth avenues that's going for only $447,000. The only catch to buying: You can't be Cuban.

That's right, ordinary Cubans are estranged in their own country. All those well-meaning foreigners who claim to wish to improve conditions for Cuba's workers fail to mention that the only employer allowed is the Cuban government itself. So while those foreigners pay the Cuban government in dollars for Cuban workers, the near-slaves get paid a pittance in weak Cuban pesos.

Not that long ago, the world looked aghast at, and supported sanctions against, South Africa's brutal apartheid regime. Yet the United Nations again condemns the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba. And now it is politically correct to promote investment that aids and abets Fidel Castro's dictatorship and its own brand of apartheid con salsa.

Cuba's government forbids its people from freely eating, drinking, or staying at resorts built for foreign tourists. It bars Cubans from legally investing or owning as foreigners do, or even organizing independent trade unions. While foreigners get central air conditioning, satellite television, 24-hour security, and swimming pools, Cubans get ration cards, crowded tenements, dilapidated buses, and no civil freedoms.

Cuba's pathetic failure of a government is prostituting its nation's assets and people, and big-money vultures are eager to collude in the exploitation. The embargo on commerce with Cuba has reined in U.S. investors so far. But anti-embargo fever is growing.

Just this week Sen. John Warner, R-Va., called for a bipartisan commission to review U.S. policy toward Cuba. That sounds innocuous enough. But we wonder about hidden agendas when Sen. Warner's heavyweight supporters, such as former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Lawrence Eagleburger and former Sen. Malcolm Wallop, represent big corporations whose interest in Cuba may not be exactly selfless.