Sun, May 19, 2002 page11

• US can't end trade embargo with Cuba

  BAD BLOOD Although Americans freely trade with other communist counties such as Vietnam and China, they continue to cut their close Carribean neighbor almost no slack

  • CUBA
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  The signal came in loud and clear at the control center at the 16th-century Morro Castle overlooking all of Havana.

  It was the captain of the Express, a Liberian cargo ship carrying poultry and eggs from the US, some of it supplied by Cherokee Trading Co in Conyers.

  

  Cuban port traffic manager Barbaro Gonzalez at his station in the 16th-century Morro Castle which guards the port of Havana, unfurls an American flag for welcoming US cargo ships that has not been used in 43 years.

  PHOTO: NY TIMES

  "Proceed for four or five miles and keep your position," Barbaro Gonzalez, the traffic manager for the Port of Havana, radioed back.

  Gonzalez peered through his telescope and said: "It's a big one. And it's moving fast."

  Half an hour later, the mammoth blue-and-white ship sailed in from the calm sea past the Cuban capital's picturesque shoreline and into the Bay of Havana. The Express has made four other 36-hour trips from ports of call along the Mississippi and Louisiana coastlines since US food shipments began arriving in Cuba last November.

  A strict trade embargo has prevented US ships from docking at Cuban ports for the last 40 years. In 2000, Congress approved humanitarian sales of food and medical supplies, though Cuban President Fidel Castro refused to buy American because the sanctions prohibit credit and Cuba must pay in cash.

  But after Hurricane Michelle caused US$1.8 billion in damage to the Caribbean island last November, Castro accepted Washington's offer of assistance. Since then, US$101 million in US goods have been sold to Cuba, said Pedro Alvarez, president of Alimport, a Cuban import company. The shipments are usually brought in on vessels sailing under the flag of another nation.

  "There is a strong interest on the side of US farmers to sell their products in Cuba and gain back that natural market," Alvarez said.

  But as chicken leg quarters, turkey breasts and eggs from farmlands across America are being unloaded at the Port of Havana's Container Terminal every 10-15 days, President Bush is pledging an even tougher US policy toward Cuba.

  Amid growing momentum in Washington to end the trade embargo and after former President Jimmy Carter's call to do so during his unprecedented visit, Bush said Wednesday he wants to clamp down on "one of the last great tyrants left on earth."

  Bush plans to unveil his Cuba policy Monday and visit with Cuban-American exiles in Miami, many of whom vehemently oppose easing sanctions.

  Supporters of the embargo say the US should not engage with Castro's Communist regime.

  Failed policy

  Opponents argue that the embargo hurts poor Cuban citizens and has failed in its expressed intent to bring down Castro, who took power in 1959 through revolution.

  Carter follows a stream of members of Congress who have visited Cuba, met with Castro and left calling for an end to the embargo. A growing number of farm state lobbyists and business representatives argue that since the US has full relations with Communist regimes in Vietnam and China, then Cuba should be no different.

  "The embargo is a big [strategic] mistake for the United States," said Oscar Espinosa Chepe, an independent economist in Havana who often analyzes the collapsing Cuban economy on Radio Marti, the anti-Castro radio station operated by Miami's Cuban exiles.

  "This policy falls into the hands of the hard-liners in Cuba and gives them an alibi. So when people say things are very hard in Cuba, they turn around and blame the embargo."

  In the meantime, Chepe said, the average Cuban, who earns no more than US$10 to US$15 a month, is paying for the lack of free enterprise and open markets that has turned the country into a nation of beggars. Cuban monthly pensions are less than the US$3.20 a carton of American eggs costs here.

  That's why more than US$1 billion flows each year from Cuban-American communities into the hands of relatives and friends on the island who cannot eke out a living on their salaries alone.

  Following the ruin of the sugar cane industry, Castro vigorously promoted tourism, Cuba's top industry these days. But ordinary Cubans cannot enjoy the plush hotels, resorts and services reserved solely for foreigners.

  "It's a terrible situation here," said Chepe, who lost his diplomatic and banking jobs for openly voicing his ideas. "We Cubans are treated like third-class citizens in our own land."

  High shipping costs

  Alejandro Gonzalez, the commercial manager for a company that represents the US shipping company Crowley Liner Services, said that from a purely business standpoint, it makes sense for there to be a normalization of relations.

  "Right now we have to buy most of our chicken and eggs from Europe, Canada and Brazil. This increases the freight price," he said.

  Crowley, based in Jacksonville, Florida, handles all the containerized food shipments that leave US shores, including the 23.2 tonnes of turkey that came in Thursday from Georgia's Cherokee Trading Co.

  Cherokee is not the only Georgia company exporting poultry to Cuba.

  Vicky Cox, export sales representative for Latin America for Gold Kist Inc, a poultry producer based in Atlanta, said her company made its first shipment to Cuba in January. A second shipment is expected at the end of the month.

  But the process is nowhere near easy.

  The ban on extending credit to Cuba means transactions have to be carried out in cash.

  To receive a shipment, Cuban importers have to exchange thousands, if not millions, of dollars for euros in France, where it is converted back to dollars and sent to the US. And all within 40 hours. "We are paying through French banks," Alvarez said. "The documents have to go through France as well, and everything has to happen within the time that it takes the ship to get here."

  "All this trouble to often go just 90 miles," said Barbaro Gonzalez, the maritime traffic manager.

  As the Express pulled into port to unload its 55 containers, Gonzalez pondered the four decades of enmity between his country and the "norteamericanos."

  He looked at all the flags folded neatly in wooden cubbyholes and came to the one that said "Estados Unidos" -- US. The flag once flew on a pole outside the office, to welcome incoming vessels.

  He took it out and unfurled it to reveal rust-colored water stains on the white cloth of the Stars and Stripes.

  "We haven't used it in 40 years because no ships from America ever came," Gonzalez said. "I hope one day soon we will."

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