Cuba Enjoys Ties With Caribbean Neighbor

[Judi Lynn]

Cuba Enjoys Ties With Caribbean Neighbor
By BEN FOX
Associated Press Writer

August 9, 2006, 4:12 AM EDT

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Looking for foreign aid after his election, Haitian President Rene Preval stopped in Havana. When Trinidad's prime minister needed heart surgery, he twice turned to Cuban doctors. And when the U.N. held its annual vote to denounce the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, the Caribbean Community trade bloc gave its unanimous support.

In sharp contrast to the bitter U.S.-Cuba divide, relations between the Cuban government and the rest of its neighbors have never been warmer -- a situation highlighted by reactions to the surgery that required Fidel Castro to relinquish power temporarily.

Caribbean leaders, even from nations that had Cold War differences with Cuba, sent get-well-soon messages to Castro, while the U.S. government offered encouragement to the ailing leader's opponents and Cuban exiles danced in the streets of Miami.

"We pray for President Castro and we wish him God's blessings," said Prime Minister Kenny Anthony of St. Lucia.

The friendly relations stem in part from small-state admiration for Castro's defiance of the United States, which also has strong ties throughout the region. But there's also gratitude for Cuban assistance, in medical care and education, to Caribbean nations despite the communist government's financial struggles.
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-cuba-friendly-neighbors,0,92541.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Akim]

1. In Sharp Contrast to the Past

In sharp contrast with Cuba's relations with its Caribbean neighbors before the Revolution. Throughout the so-called Republican era (1902-1958), Jamaicans and other blacks from the Caribbean were contracted as slave labor in Cuba; horribly abused (worse so than native blacks); and, indeed, segregated in labour camps which were patrolled by gunmen from United Fruit.

[wakeme2008]

2. Thanks for the Info and Welcome to DU

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

3. Did not know about this.

Undoubtedly you're aware, then, that Caribbean workers were also taken to the Cuban family Fanjul's sugar plantation they built (at U.S. taxpayers' expense on swamp land prepared for them by the U.S. Corps of Engineers) where they were treated viciously, brutally, kept terrified witless, paid virtually NOTHING, and covered by CBS News in a long special program, many years ago, written about in countless magazine articles, and finally sued for their profound abuse of their workers.

Alfie and Pepe Fanjul also own a plantation in the Dominican Republic where, I presume, this criminality against humanity is still ongoing.

Photos of one of their parties in the D.R., taken from the Social Diary.



Pepe on the left.



Alfie on the left.

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/socialdiary/2005/01_18_05/socialdiary01_18_05.php

Articles on the Fanjuls:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pubs/cashingin_sugar/sugar08.html
http://www.mariebrenner.com/articles/bigsugar/fan1.html

Thank you so much for the information on Caribbean workers being conscripted to work in Batista-era Cuba, maintained by the United Fruit thugs. I hope to learn much more about this in time. Thank you.

[Akim]

4. The Dominican Republic Is the Right Place for the Fanjuls

Yes, the Dominican Republic is the right place for the Fanjuls.

Dominican dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, inspired by Hitler and Spanish Falangists, started a "race war" against Haitians in the mid 1930s. In one day, his army is supposed to have killed 35,000 defenseless Haitian migrant workers. Of course, Trujillo was a "Good Neighbor," so the U.S. had no problem training his Army.

Trujillo himself was black as was Batista, although both disclaimed their black heritage and tried to pass as white. For his part, Trujillo claimed to be descended from Spanish marqueses and Batista's daughter in fact married a Spanish marques.

As an interesting sidebar: Batista's father was Dominican and Trujillo's grandfather was Cuban.

[Say_What]

5. OMG it's the f*ck'n FanGHOULS....

makes me wanna :puke: :puke: :puke:

and when Monica and Bill were playing games in the Oval Office, Bill had to interrupt the fun to take a phone call from Alfie.

<clips>

Sweet Rewards

....To take one simple example: On Presidents' Day in 1996, Bill Clinton told Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office that he "no longer felt right about their intimate relationship, and he had to put a stop to it." According to the Starr report, Clinton "hugged her but would not kiss her." Lewinsky remembered that at this point the president got a phone call from somebody named "Fanuli." According to White House records, the caller was Florida sugar magnate Alfonso Fanjul Jr. The call came through at 12:24 p.m., and Clinton returned it less than 20 minutes later. He and Fanjul then spoke for 22 minutes, from 12:42 to 1:04 p.m. -- an eternity in presidential time.

Why call the Oval Office on a federal holiday? Had the media bothered to follow up, reporters quickly would have discovered that, a few hours earlier, Al Gore had announced in Everglades National Park a plan to levy a penny-a-pound tax on Florida sugar growers. The money raised would go toward a $1.5 billion effort to clean up the Everglades, polluted primarily by years of sugarcane runoff. Florida was set to be a key battleground in the upcoming presidential race, and according to one poll, most Floridians wanted to make sugar growers pay for their own mess -- hence the Clinton-Gore plan. This wasn't the sugar industry's only worry. The House was debating a measure, inserted into the 1996 farm bill, to phase out the industry's federal price support program -- a subsidy worth an annual $1.4 billion. Gore's proposal apparently sent a message to sugar barons: Don't take White House support for granted. Or: Make it really worth our while to support you.

As Mother Jones reported in our last list of the top 400 contributors, the Fanjul family pumped a total of $900,000 (including $128,080 from company executives) into the political system in the 1995-96 election cycle. For example, in April and October of 1995, Fanjul attended two White House kaffeeklatsches. Shortly after each, the Democratic National Committee received $40,000 in soft money, sent in $5,000 and $10,000 chunks on the same day by several different Fanjul companies. This precaution to evade disclosure also sent a clear message to Clinton: Fanjul was a player who could deliver.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/ednote/1998/11/ednote.html

[Akim]

6. Impossible to Grow Cane Sugar in U.S. Without Slave Labor

The fact is that it is impossible to grow cane sugar profitably in the U.S. without slave labor.

The question then is:

Shall its cultivation continue to be allowed or should it be prohibited?

I am for outlawing it.

Sugar is a poison.

If we must suffer from obesity, decay our teeth and feed our diabetes, let it be with corn sweetener.

Unlike sugar, corn sweetener isn't made with blood.

[Say_What]

7. At the expense of US citizens (health and tax dollars) the FanGHOULS

call the shots with the feds. One brother gives to the Repukes the other to the Dems. They are the type of Gusanos that came out of US dictator Batista's Cuba--sorta like the Bacardis. Here's an article about the $60 million a year in subsidies they receive from the feds each year. The article refers to them as the First Family of Corporate Welfare.

<clips>

...In this case the beneficiaries are the Fanjul family of Palm Beach, Fla. The name means nothing to most Americans, but the Fanjuls might be considered the First Family of Corporate Welfare. They own Flo-Sun Inc., one of the nation's largest producers of raw sugar. As such, they benefit from federal policies that compel American consumers to pay artificially high prices for sugar.

Since the Fanjuls control about one-third of Florida's sugar-cane production, that means they collect at least $60 million a year in subsidies, according to an analysis of General Accounting Office calculations. It's the sweetest of deals, and it's made the family, the proprietors of Casa de Campo, one of America's richest.

The subsidy has had one other consequence: it has helped create an environmental catastrophe in the Everglades. Depending on whom you talk to, it will cost anywhere from $3 billion to $8 billion to repair the Everglades by building new dikes, rerouting canals and digging new lakes.

Growers are committed to pay up to $240 million over 20 years for the cleanup. Which means the industry that created much of the problem will have to pay only a fraction of the cost to correct it. Government will pay the rest. As for the Fanjuls, a spokesman says they are committed to pay about $4.5 million a year.

How did this disaster happen? With your tax dollars. How will it be fixed? With your tax dollars.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:B2tLZ9tCc0sJ:cnn.whitecaphosting.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1998/11/16/sweet.deal.html+fanjuls+%2Blabor+%2Bflorida&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2&client=firefox-a

[Judi Lynn]

8. Great article for anyone who is unfamiliar with the Fanjuls.

From the article:

Migrant-labor organizations and legal-aid groups in Florida have long waged an ongoing battle with the Fanjuls and other growers over the abysmal conditions. Greg Schell, an attorney with the Migrant Farmworkers Justice Project in Belle Glade, Fla., contends that of all the growers, the Fanjuls have treated their workers the worst. "They are in a class by themselves," he said.
(snip)

This is well worth the time reading.