Mariel - A Port For If And When They Eliminate the Embargo

Mariel: A Port For If And When They Eliminate the Embargo / Arnaldo

Ramos Lauzurique and Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

Posted on October 24, 2013



Havana, Cuba, October, www.cubanet.org – This coming November 1st the

legislation published in the Official Gazette regarding the Mariel

Special Development Zone will go into effect. As usual with the regime,

the Council of State and of Ministers, and the Ministers of Science,

Technology and the Environment, or Finance and Prices, of Interior and

Labor, and of Social Security will also issue their corresponding

regulations. A more than 30-page binder of regulations, very difficult

to assimilate, even by the writers themselves.



But what it does make clear is that Cubans living on the island have no

right to invest, they can only serve as workers.



There are some features which are obvious and which ensure that the Zone

is not intended for now, but for the future; there appears to be

something like a hope for an understanding with the Americans, because

it could be a base for ships to enter the United States of America,

coming from Panama Canal.



However, it does not address how they are going to attract a massive

infusion of capital, technology and the transfer of goods to the nearest

principal market, the U.S., without having resolved the embargo.



Will it benefit ordinary Cubans?



The Zone covers 180 square miles and could be determined only by persons

having a knowledge of cartography, on a map, that in order to show the

site details a footprint consisting of points, which in turn are

coordinates. The municipality of Mariel is only 150 square miles,

ranking 139th in the country in size, and the local population that

would benefit would be very few, since the whole of the province

Artemisa has just over half a million people.



Perhaps the reason for choosing this Zone was to reduce the impact on

the population of such a large area of foreign businesses, although

thinking that no immediate development is expected.



The payment for a workforce will be agreed upon between the designated

Cuban entity and the concessionaire in Cuban pesos (CUP), considering

jobs of similar complexity in the demographic area of the foreign user,

salaries paid to workers in Cuba and the expenses incurred by the

employer in management to guarantee the supply of a qualified workforce,

which involves recruitment, selection and training among other aspects.



Separating Cuban workers from the money they earn is guaranteed, when

it's stated that wages paid will start from a minimum, equivalent to the

average wage at the end of the previous year in Havana province, at the

time negotiations occur. It is clear in the legislation that neither the

workers nor the unions will participate in these negotiations, as there

isn't the slightest attempt to address the working class and its

representatives.



The Zone is subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers, giving

them wide autonomy, and making no specific reference to its command

structure. Presumably, it's principal leaders are already designated,

because the chief is equivalent to a minister, with great power; but

nothing has been disclosed.



We can get an idea of the decision-making power of the Chief of the

Office, at the national level, in the fact that he has the power to

summon the bodies of the Central Administration of the State and of the

governing bodies of each of the activities that take place in the Zone;

and relations with the Provincial Assembly of Artemis and local

governments are not subordinate, implying that these governing bodies

lose almost its jurisdiction in the Zone.



Although we will have to wait to find out the extent all these changes

will have on that Zone, it is clear that within it the the long road

from socialism to capitalism is circumvented, which as we know well is

not built.



Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique and Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello



From Cubanet, 22 October 2013



Source: "Mariel: A Port For If And When They Eliminate the Embargo /

Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique and Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello | Translating

Cuba" -

http://translatingcuba.com/mariel-a-port-for-if-and-when-they-eliminate-the-embargo-arnaldo-ramos-lauzurique-and-martha-beatriz-roque-cabello/