Cuba is stirring; the US can help its people prosper

opinions

February 20, 2012 - 12:00 AM

A real estate boom of sorts is lifting spirits in Cuba but is falling far short of meeting the housing needs of its 11 million people. Last November Raul Castro, president, allowed the legislature to pass legislation that made it possible for Cubans to buy and sell houses for the first time in 50 years. The dramatic change also made contractors legal.
Here is an example of what those changes mean to the Cuban people, most of whom live on $20 or less a month: Carmen Martinez is a 41-year-old single mom who lives in a house that would have been torn down as a public nuisance in Iola or most any other U.S. community years ago. Its roof collapsed 15 years ago. The bathroom has no plumbing. The kitchen consists of a sink with no taps and two oil drums full of water.
Martinez has made a deal with a contractor. He agreed to fix up her house if she will let him build an apartment for himself as a second story.
“It was as if a ray of light had come down from the sky,” she exclaimed as she expressed her delight to a New York Times reporter.
Before Castro’s liberalization of the law she had no hope of improving her dwelling. She would have lived in it until the rest fell down. Now she might get in out of the rain. She plans to add a bedroom for her teenage son.
Cubans who know, estimate their country needs somewhere between 600,000 and 1,200,000 additional dwellings — apartments or houses — to meet the need. Right now there are 100,000 applicants on the waiting list for government hostels.
The current “boom” is being fueled primarily with outside money. Cubans with relatives in the U.S. or some other country have access to the money it takes to buy the over-priced houses on the market are buying, but there is a limit to that source of capital. Foreigners are still not allowed to own Cuban real estate. The number of rich uncles willing to donate $100,000 to $1,000,000 to the Cuban nephew is small.

A SOLUTION, however, exists. What Cuba needs is money. The logical way to lift its economy and create a land worth living in is for Cuba and the United States to reconcile so that Cuba can once again sell sugar and other crops to the U.S. and profit from the dollars that American tourists would spend every winter enjoying Cuba’s tropical weather and beautiful beaches.
Our nation should take the lead. We have no strategic reason to continue a Cold War policy, which lost its relevance when the USSR collapsed more than 20 years ago. We have much to gain by dropping all of the trade and travel barriers that have played such a heavy role in Cuba’s poverty and by treating our island neighbor — well, as a neighbor, because it’s the right thing to do.
It is, of course, true that much of Cuba’s misery is self-inflicted. Cubans won’t be able to create satisfying lives for themselves until they shake off the shackles of a totalitarian government that remains determined to dictate every aspect of their lives.
It is the opinion of many, however, the most direct route to that new day lies in opening Cuba to the U.S. and the rest of the world so the people there can learn by direct contact a much better way exists to run a society than the one which Fidel Castro forced upon them with his perpetual revolution.
The power to start that democratic revolution lies in Washington, D.C.

— Emerson Lynn, jr.

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