Cuba’s Mariel Port New Opportunities for the Island

Cuba's Mariel Port: New Opportunities for the Island

June 18, 2013

Haroldo Dilla Alfonso*



HAVANA TIMES — Pedro Monreal is the type of analyst who takes his time

to join debates in Cuba and who always brings something worthwhile to

the table. He has done this again with his most recent article, "The

Post-Panama Era: New Opportunities for Cuba", published in issue 232 of

Cuba's Espacio Laical journal last May.



The article, which I suggest everyone read, discusses how Cuba, for the

first time in a very long time, is now in a position to carve out a good

slice of the global market for itself, availing itself of the Mariel

Port, an area for the transshipment and distribution of goods located at

a dynamic commercial passage that can connect the easternmost end of the

island with the coasts of the United States, Europe and South America.



It is indeed a unique opportunity. The broadening of the Panama Canal,

aimed at allowing the passage of larger vessels with cargos up to three

times larger than was hitherto possible, has made the Caribbean a point

of commercial confluence and a location that has not enjoyed as much

activity since the time of trade with the West Indies.



However, many ports in the Caribbean (such as those in Kingston, Ponce,

Santo Domingo's Punta Caucedo, Barbados' Freeport and Cuba's Mariel), as

well as in Central America and the eastern coast of the United States,

are competing for this opportunity.



For Cuba – particularly for Havana and its commercially dynamic

coastline, which stretches from Mariel to the Varadero-Cardenas region –

this could mean a qualitative leap forward, not only economically, but

politically as well. The reason is that such a commercial route could

become an incentive for the gradual normalization of relations between

Cuba and the United States.



One need not fully agree with Monreal to appreciate the insightful

nature of this argument, for, if there is anything we can be sure of, it

is the fact that the only way Cuba will ever secure the indispensible

normalization of its relations with the United States is by offering the

latter a sufficiently attractive economic incentive.



In other words, by offering tangible benefits in exchange for measures

that will inevitably spell a political cost. The oil card, which Cuba's

leadership thought would be the magic key to those doors with rusted

hinges, proved to be non-existent. The question now, evidently, is

whether this new commercial relationship will suffice, if the offer that

Cuba's Mariel Port represents can decisively shift the geopolitical balance.



There is one, vital point Monreal fails to address: the consensus of

Cuba's political elite. Though it is true that, in terms of magnitude,

this commercial opportunity could be compared to the events surrounding

the Haitian Revolution of 1792, it is also true that, at the time, the

country was ruled by a colonial elite with a very clear conception of

what society should be like, and that this society began to be

constructed before the slave revolt of Saint Domingue.



If one studies the history of Cuba's western region (whose commercial

center was the city of Havana), one invariably comes across episodes in

which its different communities accomplished great feats to secure their

insertion in the global economy.



One such feat was achieved in the 16th century, when these industrious

settlements were capable of shouldering the burden of supplying the

country's marine fleets, whose crews often outnumbered the local

populations, with provisions. The other, mentioned by Monreal, took

place in the 18th century, when these same settlements took the island's

technological and cultural development to new heights, albeit at the

expense of intense slave labor.



Today, such a consensus no longer exists, I'm afraid. At base, Cuba's

political elite agrees that it must remain in power, but not on what it

must do to overcome the obstinate stagnation the country endures or

about how to stop its attendant demographic hemorrhaging.



It goes without saying that such a consensus within the Cuban leadership

would also be of the essence for a broader social consensus, needed to

undertake that process of national reconstruction we are not even able

to imagine today.



That Cuba's political elite is divided on many issues is a fact one can

appreciate even in the most banal details of the slow, dispirited reform

process which Raul Castro has likened to the "slow but sure" gait of a

turtle.



I feel that looking to Cuba's port of Mariel as an opportunity, as

Monreal does, is to regard the future with far more conviction and

optimism than is afforded by that rather inarticulate and contradictory

list of wishes we have agreed to call Cuba's "new guidelines."



(*) An authorized Havana Times translation of the original posted by

Cubaencuentro.com.



Source: "Cuba's Mariel Port: New Opportunities for the Island - Cuba's

Havana Times.org" - http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=94835