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Cuba: The Morning After--Confronting Castro's Legacy
Cuba The Morning AfterConfronting Castro's Legacy Author:Mark Falcoff Since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago, many Americans have debated whether or not the United States should finally lift the trade embargo on Cuba and engage in full diplomatic relations with the Castro regime. Mark Falcoff's new book, Cuba the Morning After: Confronting Castro's Legacy argues that this controversy is a w... more »aste of time. He believes that Cuba is finished as a country-a situation which lifting the embargo cannot and will not change. However, he adds, a permanently impoverished Cuba is bound to represent unanticipated problems for the United States. Falcoff explains that in 1958 Cuba was at the top of the Latin American range in most indices of development-urbanization, services, health and literacy. Much of its prosperity was based on a favorable place reserved for its sugar harvest in the U.S. domestic market. Since then the Cuban quota has been divided up among other countries, and sugar itself is no longer a particularly valuable commodity. Meanwhile, Cuba's antiquated sugar industry is near collapse; last year Fidel Castro was forced to shut down almost half the country's mills. Today, like most Caribbean islands, Cuba survives on tourism and remittances. But, as he explains, neither of these things can replace the old U.S. sugar quota or even the $6 billion annual subsidy the island received for three decades from the Soviet Union. Although many assume that when Fidel Castro has passed from the scene the island will be transformed into a capitalist paradise thanks to the return of a successful and prosperous exile community in the United States, Cuba the Morning After argues that the island has changed far too much over the last four decades. Cuba's revolutionary past cannot be unlived, since it occupies so large a space in its modern history. But neither can communism sustain the expectation and needs of eleven million people. This is the permanent tension around which Cuba the Morning After is built. A Cuba unable to earn a legitimate wage on the world market will be a prime candidate to export its internal crisis to the United States-starting with possibly uncontrolled outflows of migrants, and widening to encompass drugs and international criminality. Falcoff calls on both critics and advocates of current U.S. policy to consider these prospects before it is too late.« less