Cuba and the United States: the Claims Game

August 21, 2015
Cuba and the United States: the Claims Game

by Robert Sandels

Editors’ Note: We originally published this important piece by Robert Sandels eight years ago. Yet, as the political and economic relations between the US and Cuba enter a new phase, the issues raised by Sandels about the rush to assert financial claims against Cuba for property seized after the Revolution are perhaps even more critically relevant today.–JSC / JF



In 2005, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded Creighton University a $750,000 contract to study how to collect on claims against the Cuban government for property confiscations, most of which were carried out in 1959 and 1960.

The resulting report, issued in October, reinforces the suspicion that the claims were never meant to be resolved but simply added to the store of weapons useful for the giant Cuban makeover that is supposed to happen after the death of Fidel Castro. The report is also likely to be soon forgotten. Even USAID appears not to take the study seriously since it cut the project from two years to one and halved its budget.

But no matter, the report is not worth the money. To begin with, it lists as its outside advisors five organizations of dubious acquaintance with objectivity on Cuban issues. They are, the US military (Southern Command) and four anti-Castro NGOs: the Cuban American Bar Association; the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy; the Cuba Study Group; and the Cuba Transition Project, another recipient of USAID money.

One need look no further than the first paragraph of the report’s executive summary to see that the Creighton scholars hurried to surrender their credibility by associating their proposals with the US campaign to overthrow the Cuban government. The model they propose for adjudicating property claims is “a central feature in the U.S. Government’s proactive planning for Cuba’s transition to democracy,” and “responds to the requirement of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Helms-Burton) Act.” [1] This legislative confection is, of course, the imperial blueprint for eliminating the Cuban government and imposing a US-dictated market economy.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/21/cuba-and-the-united-states-the-claims-game/