Cuba for Foreigners

Cuba for Foreigners / Miriam Celaya

Posted on March 31, 2014



HAVANA, Cuba – On Saturday 29 March 2014 the Cuban Parliament "will

debate" in a special session period the new Foreign Investment Law,

another desperate attempt by the regime to attract foreign businessmen

who choose to risk their capital and ships where those of others have

already been shipwrecked.



This time the scenario and the circumstances are markedly different from

the decades of the 90s, when the fragile and dependent Cuban economy

touched bottom and the government had no other alternative but to

reluctantly open it to foreign capital, creating then a Foreign

Investment Law that granted some legitimacy and limited guarantees for

investors.



Hugo Chavez's rise to power in Venezuela at the end of this same decade

came to the rescue of the regime with new subsidies that allowed

backtracking on the opening to capital and the small private family

businesses that arose in the midst of the privations of the period.



Paradoxically, 15 years later, the critical socio-economic and political

situation in Venezuelan situation, which threatens to collapse the

Bolivarian project, once again closing the sources nourishing the Cuban

government, strongly affects a new search for foreign capital because

this is the only way the system will survive, but the investors are

reluctant and skeptical given the absence of a legal framework to

protect the invested capital.



It is rumored that the recent visit of José Ignacio Lula Da Silva to

Cuba , concerned about the risk of elevated investments from Brazil and

the delay of the government of the Island in updating the Foreign

Investment Law, was the definitive touch that made the Cuban cupola

decide to push its approval, postponed several times. There are also

unofficial rumors about the freezing the Brazilian investments in the

Mariel Special Development Zone, and the approval of new credit to the

Cuban side, until there are adequate legal safeguards. The agreements

are no longer based in solidarity, but rather on purely capitalist

financial and commercial relations.



Propaganda at the Recent International Trade Fair of Havana



The new Foreign Investment Law in progress, therefore, is to "strengthen

the guarantees of the investors," while it "also contemplates the total

tax credits and exemptions in determined circumstances, was well an

increased flexibility with regards to customs, to encourage investment,"

according to the statements from José Luis Toledo Santander, president

of the Standing Committee of the National Assembly of People's Power

which, "deals with the Constitutional and Legal Affairs," (Granma,

Saturday March 17, 2014, page 3), elements not covered in the Law.



Also the high official declared that the draft presented to the

deputies,"established the priority character of foreign investment in

almost all sectors of the economy, particularly those related to

production." Clearly, a self-employed person is not the same thing as a

capitalist entrepreneur, in case anyone had any doubts.



In the preparatory process, which according to the official press has

been developing throughout the country, participating along with the

deputies have been "specialists, functionaries from the municipal and

provincial governments, representatives of international legal

consultants and consultants from important businesses; in general people

who could support the discussion." (Emphasis by this author.) A plot

behind closed doors of which some harmless notes have reached the

national media, but the common people are nothing more than this

conglomerate of spectators incapable and prevented from making some

"contribution" and should swallow the pill as the olive-green

filibusters stipulate.



The "main concerns and contributions of the deputies" in the so-called

process of analysis and discussion of the draft on the Island revolved

around "the labor rights of the Cubans who work on these projects, the

terms for the investment and the protection of the National Patrimony,"

omitting the fundamental question: the privileging of foreigners over

what should be the national rights of Cubans. A details that recalls

that "Carolina Black Code" that in 1842 recognized the doubtful rights

and privileges of slaves such as corporal punishment not exceeding 25

lashes, and the prize of freedom in exchange for the betrayal of fellow

slaves.



Almost 40 years of experience in parliamentary simulations allow us to

anticipate that, like all the previous laws "discussed," this one will

also be unanimously approved by the choir of ventriloquists from the

from the orchestra seats in the headquarters of the farce, the Palace of

Conventions, on March 29th. For now, many of the parliamentarians have

conceded that the new Law "is in complete harmony" with the economic

adjustments drive by the General-President in his process of updating

the model, another experiment that—indeed—will allow him, through

capital, through capital, the solving of the ever pressing problems of

building socialism.



Miriam Celaya



28 March 2014



Source: Cuba for Foreigners / Miriam Celaya | Translating Cuba -

http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-for-foreigners-miriam-celaya/