An Information Service of the Cuba Transition Project Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies University of Miami

 

José Azel*

     Following his diplomatic overture to the Cuban government, President Barack Obama, in his Port of Spain press conference, indicated that he now expected the Castro government to respond in kind, and even suggested how they could do so: “There are some things that the Cuban government could do. They could release political prisoners. They could reduce charges on remittances to match up with the policies that we have put in place to allow Cuban-American families to send remittances. It turns out that Cuba charges an awful lot, they take a lot off the top.” The President’s reference is to the 20% surcharge fee that Cuba imposes on remittances sent by Cubans in the United States to their family members on the island.

     In his response to President Obama’s suggestion, Fidel Castro has sought to justify the onerous fees as his latest version of income redistribution claiming that: "Not all Cubans have family members overseas that send remittances. To redistribute a relatively small portion to benefit those most in need of food, medicines and other goods is absolutely just.”

     In the context of Fidel Castro’s demagoguery, his response would not be particularly significant except for the fact that it is a thinly veiled effort to play the Cuban race card by pitting those that receive overseas remittances against those that do not. He is once again casting himself as Cuba’s Robin Hood, this time with sinister racial overtones.

     Today, over 60% of Cuba’s population is black or mulatto and few have family members overseas. On the other hand, the vast majority of Cuban exiles are white. The natural consequence is that most Cubans receiving remittances from family members in the United States are also white. For years this condition has contributed to tensions in the island between those receiving remittances, and thus able to purchase more goods, and those that do not receive remittances.

     An unintended consequence of predominantly white Cuban-American travel to the island, and remittances to and from an overwhelmingly white segment of the population will be to exacerbate the racial economic divide in Cuba. By playing the race card as he has, Fidel Castro seeks to mitigate the potentially destabilizing effect on his regime of the new U.S. travel policy. He has justified his tax on remittances as a means of providing for those Cubans (mostly black) that do not receive remittances from overseas. This politically astute rationalization will play nicely to his various international constituencies. It is also a cynical and hypocritical effort to dichotomize and co-opt the Cuban population along racial-economic lines.

      Unnoticed are the facts that in Castro’s racist regime only 8% of the Council of Ministers (President and Cabinet Members), are Afro-Cubans; Black representation in the senior leadership (Politburo) of the Communist Party is only 17%, and even lower (4%) in the Executive Committee (Secretariat) of the Communist Party. Black and dark-skinned multiracial Cubans make up nearly 70% of the state-run labor force, and yet they hold only 5% of the most desirable jobs in Cuba’s hospitality industry catering to international tourists.

     The irony is that Cuban demographics suggest that if free and fair elections were held in Cuba, the island’s democratically elected leader would be Afro-Cuban; hopefully someone with the character and courage of Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, who in 2007 was presented, in absentia, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation's highest civil award, and is currently wasting away in Castro’s prisons. Afro-Cubans do not need Fidel or Raul Castro as their protectors or tax collectors. What all Cubans need is the opportunity to elect their next leader- in all likelihood an Afro-Cuban- in a democratic process.

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*José Azel is a senior research associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami. Dr. Azel was an adjunct professor of international business at the School of Business Administration, University of Miami. He holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in business administration and a Ph. D. in international affairs from the University of Miami.