What will happen when Castro dies?

[BrainGlutton]

@Lemur866

Scrivever: Yes, it would be logical to allow the importation of cheap Cuban sugar to replace our expensive (by world market prices) corn syrup. Except that we already have stiff tariffs on the importation of sugar from the world market to protect Archer-Daniels-Midland from competition with unscrupulous third world sugar farmers, who deviously undercut US corn syrup producers by growing sugar cane in a climate where it grows well and also by living in poverty. How can a rich multinational agricultural corporation compete with impoverished third world farmers? It can’t, and expecting it to compete is patently unfair.

We also have tariffs to protect South Florida sugar farmers (the ones whose unsustainable agricultural practices are gradually despoiling the Everglades) from Cuban competition. Tariffs, and also state subsidies and tax breaks. A couple of years ago there was a state referendum to take the special breaks away from “big sugar,” and the sugar growers put on a commercial featuring a couple of small-scale, family sugar farmers moaning about what this would do to them. We do have some of those but they’re quite atypical – most sugar acreage in Florida is cultivated plantation-style by huge agribiz corps, using cheap migrant labor (Haitians, Jamaicans, etc.). Naturally these sugar growers support keeping up economic sanctions on Cuba – but if those sanctions should ever produce their intended result and knock Castro out of power, leaving no arguable justification for keep up the trade barriers that keep Cuban sugar out of U.S. markets – well, I wonder how they would react to that.

[Steve_MB]

@BrainGlutton

Also, as I noted above, Cuba might remain socialist, in some sense, even if Castro dies and the Communist Party falls from power – meaning, among other things, that any post-Communist Cuban government is not likely to pay reparations to families whose property was nationalized after the revolution. That could be the Miami Cubans’ new single-issue – keep economic sanctions in place until reparations are paid! But they’ll find that issue has much less traction with non-Cubans than the current trade embargo, which is defended on the much more compelling grounds that it might hasten the end of a totalitarian regime.

For that matter, even if the new government was run by the ghost of Adam Smith, how long would it take to recover to the point of being able to pay reparations?

[rippingtons_fan]

@Sampiro

Let me preface by saying that I’m not by any stretch an expert on Cuba, but I have been reading about it a good bit lately and am anxious to learn more. If you have any recommendations for books, articles or films (documentaries or otherwise) based on Cuba under/before Castro, please suggest them.
When the Castro brothers are dead (which can’t be THAT long since they’re all pushing 80), what do you think will happen to Cuba? Will the communist state survive the Castros or will it become capitalist? Will American investors pump billions into the island (as so many foreign investors have been praying for years) or will the embargo continue? Will most of the exilio community in Miami, Spain and the rest of the world return to the Patria or continue their lives abroad? (Also, the children and grandchildren who have been born in America to those who emigrated from Cuba- do most consider themselves more American or Cuban?)

Thanks for any input.

There’s a website were you can get a close look a Castro’s insignia of rank and other Cuban insignia. The website is called Rank Insignia of the World. You can find it at www.rankinsignia.info
Just click on the Central America section, then click on the Cuban flag.
All of the illustrations are in colour and very well drawn.
I know that it’s rather obscure info for a lot of people, but it is an interesting website.

[BrainGlutton]

From the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba):

On June 14 2002, amid giant pro-revolution demonstrations involving more than 75% of the total population, a national referendum adopted an amendment which began “The Socialist Revolution rescued Cuba from a humiliating imperialist domination and turned it into a free and independent nation founded on the close unity, coorperation and consensus of a learned and rebel people who have defended themselves from the aggressions of the most powerful empire that the history of humanity has known”. This was in response to repeated statements by US President George W Bush that Cuba’s socialist revolution had to overthrown before there could be a normalisation of relations.

Of course, we have no way of knowing how honest the vote-counting was in that referendum . . . but this is still a factor of which we should take notice. The Cuban people, post-Castro, might actually want socialism (in some form).

[Padeye]

@BrainGlutton

We also have tariffs to protect South Florida sugar farmers … from Cuban competition.

Forgive my ignorance but how can tariffs matter when we have a trade embargo agaisnt Cuba?

[BrainGlutton]

@Padeye

Forgive my ignorance but how can tariffs matter when we have a trade embargo agaisnt Cuba?

Sorry, I misspoke. But the point remains: If Castro fell, and there was talk of ending the embargo – I wonder how Florida sugar growers would react to that?

From http://www.weblog.nohair.net/archives/000372.html:

The sugar subsidy programs are the most egregious. Consider this, US prices for sugar are kept at two to three times world level. The amount of domestically produced sugar exceeds domestic demand by 4-10 fold, requiring the USDA to stockpile huge amounts or, basically, give it away as food aid. The subsidy to US producers reduces their net production costs, without which they would be one of the highest cost sources of sugar. United States tariffs and price controls keep domestic sugar prices around 22 cents a pound. In most of the rest of the world, sugar sells for eight cents a pound. The programs have drastically reduced imports from developing countries. The sugar industries in the Caribbean Basin and other low-income countries have been crippled, with a loss of 400,000 jobs in Caribbean countries alone.

The cost to US consumers has been estimated to fall between 1 and 4 billion dollars a year. The overall economic loss, net of benefits to US producers, probably lies between 100 million and 1 billion dollars per year. The direct costs to taxpayers are the direct cost of subsidies paid to sugar growers, moneys paid to growers in land set-aside programs, payments to farmers at the same time to drain wetlands and expand arable acreage, the increased cost of sugar and sugar-containing products, costs to the Army Corps of Engineers for maintenance of the dikes and canals in south Florida, and costs of Everglades restoration and other abatement projects, among other things. Indirect costs have been the collapse of the Florida Bay shrimpery, once the world’s most productive, and the Florida Gulf Coast sponge industry.

At http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/BODY_SC019 and http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/SC056, you can read a brief history of U.S. subsidies and protections to the sugar industry.

[Patty_O_Furniture]

@BrainGlutton

Sorry, I misspoke. But the point remains: If Castro fell, and there was talk of ending the embargo – I wonder how Florida sugar growers would react to that?

Well, Castro fell today. I predict he will die from pneumonia while in the hospital recovering from his broken bones.