From the London Review of Books
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, met in February with Raúl Castro’s grandson at a Caribbean Community (CARICOM) meeting on the island of St Kitts. Venezuelan oil deliveries to Cuba had already stopped, following the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro by the US. Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump ordered a blockade of any oil deliveries to the island regardless of their origin, though he has since allowed a Russian tanker to deliver a shipment – the first since January.
The meeting in St Kitts was followed by negotiations between representatives of Cuba and the US. Little has been revealed about what was discussed, but Cuba has said it’s willing to pay a lump sum in compensation for the confiscations it carried out in the early 1960s, to be distributed by Washington to the roughly six thousand claimants (both businesses and individuals). The Cuban government has previously reached similar agreements with Canada, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and France, though the sums involved were much smaller.
Both sides will find it easier to reach agreement on economic than on political matters. In recent years the Cuban government has made several concessions to the private sector, though it has often later gone back on them. Nevertheless, the private sector currently controls most retail business; the state’s monopoly on foreign trade has weakened as private enterprises have been able to import more goods from abroad; and, most important, there has been a substantial increase in the number of privately employed Cubans, who now make up about a third of the labour force. A law allowing the creation of mixed private-public enterprises was recently passed, although the practical effects of the policy remain to be seen.
Samuel Farber was born and raised in Cuba and has written numerous books and articles about that country as well as the Russian Revolution and American politics. He is a Professor Emeritus of the City University of New York (CUNY) and resides in that city.
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