The transition to a democratic, capitalist Cuba is underway now! The big Cuban familes (Bacardi, etc.) are already planning business in Cuba…and the mafia (the Siciclian branch) has the casinos already lined up.
No, it certainly WON’T be 1957 in Cuba-but cuban communism is finished when Fidel and Raul shuffle off this mortal coil.
And Castro + Communism + Guevara = orders of magnitude worse.
Actually the only thing the Cuban government has owned up to is a “temporary” succesion which is not the same thing. There is a real marking of time going on Cuba right now, just waiting for a real succesion or a return to power of Fidel.
The point is, there was no uprising, no mass exodus, no mass panic, no mass excitement of any kind, in Cuba. (There was some in Miami.) It will be the same when Castro kicks. Any change in the system will be cautious and gradual. It won’t be like Eastern Europe in 1989-90 at all.
And Cuba, even if liberalized and democratized and opened to private enterprise, will still be in some sense a socialist society five years from now (more so than China, probably, and much more so than any country in Europe).
I agree with you.
I hear this all the time. The mafia is just waiting to open casinos in Cuba! Except, why exactly would the mafia be in any better position to open casinos in Cuba than any other company?
The only reason the mafia used to run casinos is that they used to be illegal. That and casinos are a cash business that were useful for laundering money, same as laundromats and vending machines, which is why all the vending machine companies used to be mobbed up.
They have no particular expertise in running businesses. Casinos in the US aren’t run by the mafia anymore, they are all run by real literal legitimate businessmen. Casinos will only be run by organized crime if casinos are illegal or quasi-legal. People used to travel to Cuba to gamble in mob-run casinos back in the 50s because casinos were illegal just about everywhere in the US, and were technically illegal but winked at in Cuba.
Given that completely legal non-mob casino gambling is available in just about every state in the US, plus just about every Carribean island, why exactly would you expect that the Sicilian mafia would end up building and running casinos in Cuba? Why not the multinational corporations that run legal casinos everywhere else? What makes Cuba such a fertile ground for mafiosi to operate? That it was fertile ground for mafiosi back in the 1950s, and when Castro dies Cuba will instantly revert back to the way it was in the 1950s? Sorry, but times have changed. The mafia doesn’t run casinos anymore.
Any new casinos in Cuba will be run by the Cuban government in partnership with some multinational company. And this will occur whether Cuba remains a socialist one party state or a liberal democracy, because the money those casinos will generate will be too much to keep out of. The days when organized crime operated casinos and paid off government officials to look the other way are over. Nowadays the government officials let the casinos operate openly and get their cut out in the open. There is no competitive advantage for mafiosi.
And for Christ’s sake, I wish people would understand that foreign investment in Cuba is happening RIGHT NOW, just not from US companies. The idea that when Castro dies US companies are poised to swoop in and take over is just nonsense. Tourism is a huge business in Cuba TODAY. It’s just that the tourists are Canadians and Europeans rather than Americans.
I sometimes feel like John the Baptist shouting this same thing to the wilderness. For some reasons Americans are the ones that seem to be the hardest to convince. Canadians already know that it’s not that difficult to do business there, I’m pretty sure Canadian mining companies operate in Cuba. And Spain’s Sol Melia runs most of the hotels, and Mexico owns 49% of ETECSA Cuba’s telephone company.
Right. There will be a huge celebration among the MIA-xiles but then what? The USA is not exactly in the greatest of footings to try to strictly enforce a rule of * “no rebuilding aid until all properties and all profits thereof revert to their 1959 owners!”*.
And nothing tells us the younger generation will NOT go before ol’Gramps and say: “Sorry, viejo, you left 40 years ago, I was born in the USA, so was I, my wife and MY children… WE have NO scores to settle.”
Or, perhaps he’s only mostly dead.
And the Cubans have settled the claims of Canadians who had interests there in 1959. From this site:
The government of Cuba made good on the claims of Canadians over land and businesses seized by Castro in the wake of the revolution. Do Americans not know this? Perhaps they could have got the same treatment if they kept relations with Cuba open.
Part of the issue is that it’s not just the claims of 1959 Americans for 1959 American property, but the claims of 1959 Cubans who are now naturalized Americans (and an important voting/donor bloc in high-electoral-value Florida).
I know I’m painting with a broad brush, but the defining characteristic of the Cuban-American community is a deep, burning hatred of Fidel Castro. Cuban-Americans will not settle for anything less than full economic sanctions while El Jefe is still breathing. Once you understand that, America’s policies regarding Cuba start to make a lot more sense.
This may be true of the original emigrants, but it is becoming much less so among second generation Cubans and those who have emigrated more recently.
From here
Exactly right, the Cuban community is not monolithical. I don’t have the exact numbers but the majority of Cuban exiles are now post 1980, with many family members still in the island, and most send regular remittances of money and visit their family regularly, something the earlier generation of exiles did not do as much (both money remittances and visits were prohibited by the Cuban government until 1979, so you can’t really blame them).
I realize I’m always drawing these parallelisms, but to me it sounds like some people insists in treating all Cuban “exiles” as a monolithical thing, when you actually have three groups:
-
original exiles. Similar to the people who ran out of Spain in 1939. Lots of political and economic hatred there. They may have obtained nationality in another country, which in the eyes of those still in Cuba kind of renders any claims moot. If you’ve been able to claim that you “renounce any ties with another country,” you very well oughta renounce them!
-
their children. Who don’t remember Cuba and who may or may not have strong links with the local Cuban-whatever comunity… but whose interest in going back to Cuba is more along the lines of “to a Sol Meliá” than to stay.
-
current emigrants, not to be mistaken with exiles. Like the people who left Spain for Germany in the 60s, it’s not so much a matter of “el Jefe is a pain” as one of “my cuate, I want to eat frijoles every day!” The newfound freedom is bitchin’ nice, but the real reason to leave was economical, not political.
And of course, there’s many other people who don’t exactly fit into any of those little boxes. People are always bigger than any people-box we can draw.