In the midst of growing tension with the United States, a high-ranking Cuban diplomat has revealed to the alternative left-wing outlet Drop Site that Cuba is willing to offer a lump sum as compensation for the American properties nationalized or expropriated by the then still nascent Cuban Revolution during 1960, whose current total value—with interests—is estimated at around 9 billion dollars. This is a historic issue that for successive U.S. administrations has been a sine qua non one for advancing any understanding with Havana, and, in fact, it is among those that the so-called Helms-Burton law specifies must be settled for a Cuban government to be considered "democratically elected", so then a U.S. president can proceed to end the relentless sanctions regime that I understand began with Eisenhower. (Although formally it was Kennedy who activated its current regulatory configuration relying on the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the Trading with the Enemy Act, and other prerogatives.
"[A] democratically elected government in Cuba ... is a government which" necessarily must have demonstrated "progress in returning to United States citizens (and entities which are 50 percent or more beneficially owned by United States citizens) property taken by the Cuban Government from such citizens and entities on or after January 1, 1959, or providing full compensation for such property in accordance with international law standards and practice[,]" reads the act. "[Cuba made] lump sum agreements with the six governments whose property was nationalized [here], all of them had compensation schemes, all of them were compensated with the exception of the U.S.," Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio told Drop Site, going back to history. But that now, in this context where The Atlantic is once again pitching the possibility of an armed operation, Cuba putting this on the table is highly relevant.
This, as I said in a previous post, is an issue that can and should be discussed as part of bilateral negotiations. And, again, history is a teacher, because if in 1960 Cuba said that its capacity to compensate depended on the maintenance or restoration of its sugar quota in the U.S. market, de Cossio ties the possibilities of an economically exhausted country such as the Island is today to a somewhat massive relaxation of the economic asphyxiation policy. Last Saturday, the national power system totally collapsed for the second time in a week, showing how much the extraordinary oil siege that—in broad daylight—the Trump administration has de facto instituted is pushing the country to the limit.
The fundamental question remains: Will the United States settle for a Cuba that is willing to negotiate historic and sensitive issues like this one of claims for nationalized properties, or even— who knows—that of U.S. citizens given asylum here who are wanted by U.S. justice, and installs a market economy but without changing the political regime and its top leadership? This last aspect is what defines everything, and it does not seem very likely to me that the Cuban administration will give in and compromise the revolutionary legacy in the way that U.S. media keep hammering. Then, if the (immediate) goal of the White House coincides with that of the Miami hardliners and hawks, then at some point—as The Atlantic has recently suggested—a military action in Cuba will take place. Stay tuned.
Source for the photo in the cover.
