The Washington Times
July
11, 2004
FORUM: Bush right on
remittances, travel to Cuba
I take strong exception to the comment published in last Sunday's
Forum. The measures enacted by the Bush administration generated a
bitter Castro reaction. Nobody who knows Fidel Castro's record thinks
he is one bit concerned about the Cuban family. That is nonsense. He is
complaining because those measures affect him.
On June 8, 2004, The communist newspaper Granma
carried an unsigned message, evidently written by Mr. Castro himself,
which complained about the impact of these measures and related them to
the revelations during in a Senate Banking Committee hearing on May 2
that Cuba had laundered $3.9 billion at the Swiss bank UBS.
During the hearing, the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York revealed UBS was fined $100 million for violating the
agreement itsigned to manage a deposit for the exchange of new
banknotes. Not only had UBS failed to live up to the terms of the
agreement that forbade using the deposit for transactions with
countries subject to U.S. sanctions, but it had sent false reports over
seven years to hide its actions.
In linking the Bush measures toward Cuba with
the New York Fed actions, the Castro regime revealed its real fears.
Cuba was depositing old banknotes in UBS as part of a money laundering
scheme that depended precisely on the so-called mulas, as well as
yachts and planes, carrying currency to Cuba from the drug traffic. The
drug traffic generates up to $100 billion a year in banknotes and the
capos pay from 25 percent to 28 percent discounts to convert those
banknotes into legitimate money.
For years, the U.N. Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean, and more recently the Inter-American
Development Bank (IADB), had fed the myth Cuban-Americans were sending
up to $1.2 billion a year to relatives in Cuba. This is mathematically
and politically impossible.
It is the IADB that has raised the issue of the
mulas as the favored means of remittance delivery. In their
computations, they estimate that as many as 4,000 mulas make 20 trips
each year from Miami to Cuba carrying $10,000 in each trip to attain a
total of $800 million, which added to their estimates of other delivery
methods permit them to arrive at a total of $1.194 billion for 2003.
This estimate assumes 80,000 trips a year out of Miami carrying illegal
currency to Cuba.
Most likely, a smaller number of remittance
mulas are tolerated by Mr. Castro merely to provide cover for the drug
money laundering ones.
The FBI and the Home Security Department must
be asleep at the wheel for this intense traffic between Miami and
Havana to remain undetected. Remember that Cuba is in the State
Department list of terrorist states?
To reach such a level of remittances, it would
be necessary for 400,000 Cuban-American households to remit $3,000 a
year or whatever combination you want to make. However, that ignores
the fact that according to the U.S. 2000 Census there were only 474,000
Cuban-American households. That is, to reach such a total 80 percent of
them would have to remit an amount more than twice what is allowed by
the law.
Since the majority of exiles came several
decades ago, most have all their families here and send little or
nothing to Cuba. Since in 1990 there were 392,000 households reported
in the Census, new arrivals in the last decade, who are likelier to
have family links with Cuba, added only 82,000 households.
On the Cuban side, the political feasibility of
Mr. Castro allowing 400,000 households of relatives of "gusanos"
(worms, the label applied by the regime tothose who migrate) to enjoy
such incomes is very unlikely. At official exchange rates, $3,000is
equal to 78,000 Cuban pesos. This is a substantially higher income than
that of a medical doctor, about 3,000 pesos a year, a hospital
director's 6,000 or a policeman who makes 7,200. Those loyal to the
regime would resent seeing so many families of the revolution's enemies
enjoying such outrageous incomes. Mr. Castro cannot afford to
antagonize those who support him to that extent.
Ironically, Paolo Spadoni, the author of the
piece responded to here, seems the intellectual author of the measures
he now criticizes. Last year he presented a paper at the Annual Meeting
of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), in which
he proposed as one option for U.S. decision-makers "to strengthen
current restrictions on travel and remittances by significantly
reducing the number of U.S. citizens authorized to visit the island and
the amount of money the Cuban-Americans can send legally to their
families. While such a policy may be unpopular and quite expensive to
implement, it makes no sense to make exceptions for a specific group of
U.S. citizens that channel into Cuba more hard currency than any other
group."
Well, Paolo, what are you complaining about?
Apparently, President Bush listened to you. Or, are you a Kerry
flip-flopper?
ERNESTO F. BETANCOURT
Bethesda, Md.