John Negroponte backs Cuban oligarchs

He is considered one of the specialists still alive with a higher record of participation and direction of covert activities of U.S. administrations in the past 50 years.

In the letter to President Obama he states that he has an “unprecedented opportunity” to boost a “significant advance” using his executive power to include changes in the policy with its neighbor “at a time that public opinion about Cuba leans to a higher interaction with the Cuban people while applying pressure on the Cuban government on issues of human rights”.The proposal conforms to regulations designed to soften application of the blockade, of the United States. The initiatives es is aimed at extending support to the civil society in Cuba and take advantage of the incipient private sector in the process of reforms of the Cuban economic model.
They propose increasing the number of licenses for travel by NGO representatives, the business, financial, academic and official sectors of the U.S. directed to support private initiatives in all fields of services and production in Cuba and support educational programs of technical training for those purposes.

The prohibition of travel of U.S. citizens to Cuba deprives the Island of a substantial economic income that could have an important impact for its short term development. The restitution of this right, while being an act of justice for citizens of the U.S. is also a moreeffective measure for tearing down the so called embargo (blockade). But in this point the writers are loathe to forward proposals regarding this subject.
Another group of measures would be to aid by sending capital for independent activities in the island and authorizing financial services donated by U.S. institutions and export of necessary merchandise.
An unprecedented measure is the authorization of sale and use of equipment and technology of info-communications done through general licenses through an overall license the same as the existing
transactions for agricultural products and advises the president Obama to establish a serious debate with Cuba as counterpart on mutual security and humanitarian concerns, such as national security, emigration, confronting drug traffic, among others.

This Program is not the first of its kind to propose alternatives to the Cuban government for “independent” sectors. During the 90s the administrations of President Bill Clinton launched a scheme of exchange called from People to People mostly aimed primarily at culture to reach civilian society with the so called Track 2 that complements Track 1 in measures of blockade and harassment of Cuba intending to punish the island in a very difficult context of the economy during the crisis that followed the collapse of the USSR and
socialist camp.

The paradox was that total liberty of artists and intellectuals to develop their exchange projects and travels of ongoing cultural policy with the United States – that led to extremes of absolute ignorance of the institutions of the country – the quality and professional training of Cuban professional artist, the immense majority with a
broad experience of working abroad that usually slips through the reaches of subversive programs.

It seems that the plans of the 90s designed under the influx of the fall of the USSR and Socialist camp were only effective within the real socialism that was an obtuse restrictive cultural policy in those countries. If a political commissary was found behind the son orchestras in Cuba and delegations abroad had been done through careful political planning as was customary in those countries the result would have been different.

The current package of proposal, different from the one applied in the 90s does not mention a goal of traditional cultural and academic sectors. In its place it refers to the particular initiative of the economy qualified as an essential factor for a transition towards capitalism and for its insertion in the globalized international economy.

Also, with the disappearance of Soviet and European socialism and the construction of capitalism, we find examples that must have stimulated the hopes of the inspirers of the proposal.
The restorers of the Russian bourgeoisie arose from the so called "nomenklature" of the high bureaucrats of triumphant soviet power and who amass large fortunes trafficking and appropriating State goods during the dissolution and privatization of the economy of the USSR in 1991.
Many of these were corrupt businessmen heading the large factories of the USSR and ended up as owners when the signal was given, without rules or order for the disintegration and privatization of the productive foundation of this country.
The Russian people called them contemptuously “oligarch and are welcomed with their enormous wealth in the business spheres and high society where there was no limit to exhibit their capital and glamour of the “old comrades” who were the new rich of the new millennium, a form that would lead to envy of the millionaire classes of the United States and Europe.

This reality could have inspired hopes that a similar metamorphosis would be produced in Cuba in the future when it no longer was the historical leader in front of the country and the new generations could take this road.

Fidel warned of the danger of a possible irreversibility of the Revolution on November 17 in 2005 in a speech delivered in the University of Havana when he said “This country can self destruct, this Revolution can destroy itself but not be them, us yes, we can destroy it and it would be our fault.”

President Raúl Castro in the Cuban Parliament on December 23, 2011, defined the existence of what he qualified “as those corrupt bureaucrats with posts occupied through simulation and opportunism that use their positions still occupied to amass fortunes, hoping for an eventual defeat of the Revolution.

In the analysis of the open letter to Obama, it doesn’t also raise prejudices and suspicions regarding the specific sector chosen and announced, for sure, as the alleged actor in the installation of capitalism in the island. There is no need to play this role with the white collar corrupt people but lose the direction of the
changes of our economic model as it advances also in the theoretical concept of the changes and maintains opinion and interests of the people, as explained by the Cuban President.

The answer if this initiative is implanted is easy to guess.
Repeatedly the Cuban leadership has made public its willingness to hold talks on the basis of equality, above all in the differences between both countries, without prior conditions.

For now, it is favorable that some U.S. institutions mention the error of its policy on Cuba despite perhaps the wishes of the veteran John Negroponte, from his retirement with his colleagues although still
favoring, somehow, the Cuban oligarchs.

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