A US and a Cuban flag hang from the same balcony in Old Havana, Cuba, on Friday, December 19, 2014. (PHOTO: AP)
By:Mark Wignall
ONCE Barack Obama took office as US president in early 2009 he was not yet cast in the light of the 'Kenyan socialist' that the far-right wingnuts had made him out to be in later years. That said, many expected that he would have moved to end the long and fruitless embargo imposed on Cuba, but few of us knew when and by what means he would have approached it, faced as he has been with a Congress unpretentious in its dislike of his very name.
Far-right media hacks leading the GOP into its long night away from the US presidency will be having new conniptions as Obama confirms in their puny minds just how much of a 'socialist' he is. Even harder on them is that he will have the word historical firmly attached to his name long after he demits the presidency.
Those who would want to continue the fruitless holdout are, like the dying voices of the aged population of Cuban dissidents living in Florida, without a solution. Many would still desire a huge military invasion of Cuba by US forces. To Obama and many others, the grand game of chicken had to end. It had outlasted its usefulness.
Here in Jamaica we have been talking about grand plans for a logistics hub for years and, in our inaction, the worst news that could ever happen is the lifting of the embargo, or at any rate, the process to ending it. Since Independence, we have lifted the general level of education of our people. But the Cubans, with less at their disposal, have done a far better job of educating and training their people.
Some may not like the price that had to be paid in attaining that goal -- the socialist rigidity and the proscription of many freedoms that we in Jamaica take for granted. In hindsight, it appears that Fidel Castro -- love him or hate him -- knew that the day had to come when America would come to its senses and begin to normalise relations with its island neighbour and allow Cuba to re-enter trade relationships with America's international partners.
But what is there in this new deal that will hand any automatic advantage to us? What are the negatives and do they outweigh any positives?
The very obvious one is tourism. Our home-grown hoteliers will now get the chance to stamp their own brands in Cuba, even as the US-based and European hoteliers will jump at the action that is expected to start humming in Cuba.
With the Cuban population quite strong on the STEM areas -- science, technology, engineering, and mathematics -- the island will be a natural draw for manufacturing start-ups. Think of a Chinese carmaker setting up in Cuba and having that island as its main western hub to the huge market in the Americas.
The Cubans will be hungry for work in hotels and in these plants, and it is not expected that salaries will be immediately high. One suspects that the new Cuban leadership after the Castros have left the scene will want to offer attractive tax holidays to the first wave of new business that lands in the island.
Where does that leave Jamaica? What is the main reason holding back Jamaica from diversifying its tourism product, quadrupling its room count and taking in 10 million tourists each year? Crime!
Compared to Jamaica, Cuba is almost totally crime-free. That may not last too long as criminality has a way of following capital. The main advantage, though, is that about two generations of Cubans have grown up to appreciate the common good and the role of personal and collective discipline, something sadly lacking in Jamaica.
Our eco-tourism product was always dependent on Jamaica having rates of crime that we could live with. The Cubans will want to rapidly move into that area and not just take up the slack that we failed to generate, but they will have to opportunity to grow that market by huge amounts.
Although I expected that there will be Congressional pushback in the US, it is apparent that those in favour of Obama's move will swamp the old voices who want to attach themselves to an era long gone. On the political front there will be many negatives holding back the GOP as their anti-Cuban stance takes of the face of being anti-Hispanic. The Republicans need to tread carefully on this.
Dr Lloyd Cole, who began to make the pitch to Government about setting up a dry dock and allied facilities -- essentially a logistics hub -- from 1990 called me recently. And, although he had good news in terms of how far he had progressed in getting and MOU and government lands leased to jump-start the huge project, he was nevertheless distraught that we had allowed the Cubans to catch us with 'our pants down'.
Since 2009, he had been warning the authorities that Obama was expected to end the embargo before he demitted office. Indeed, he needed that second term to secure his place on the historical rolls. Cole warned all who would listen that we had to act before 'freedom' came back to Cuba.
The authorities stopped listening to him and continued to talk their talk about their grand plans. Just talk.
Now a huge wedge has just been lodged between the talk and the inaction with the Cuban re-emergence into the world of business and international trade. The time we did not have, and never had, has now slipped from our hands, and our neighbour island to the north of us will pretty soon see business as more important than empty talk of solidarity.
Years ago, Brasco Lee who is a bit of an expert in agricultural matters told me that the fruit we had developed, the ortanique, had been copied by the Cubans and they were calling it the Cubanique. What can we grow that the Cubans cannot grow tenfold? What will we have to sell them that they will not soon source or develop on their own?
If they begin to develop thousands of acres of cannabis, we will be in a pickle, as they and the rest of the world would pass us by on the chase to develop medical marijuana.
President Barack Obama is an internationalist, and his action on Cuba was simply the right thing to do. His actions, however, will set us back unless new thinking from a new breed of young Jamaicans immediately begins to generate ideas to either combat the Cuban rebirth or develop workable ideas to integrate our business with the new picture which will emerge.
It may just suit us to hitch our wagon to the Cuban star.
observemark@gmail.com
