New patron for Castro?

QUIÑONES ROBERTO ÁLVAREZ

 Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez.

The Castro regime is immersed in an intense propaganda and diplomatic offensive in order to present in October their usual draft resolution in the UN General Assembly to condemn the US trade embargo on Cuba.

This time, however, Havana has broader aspirations. You want to get support to achieve the US is Venezuela's replacement as patrons of Castroism. He knows that Beijing and Moscow will not give to Cuba 10,000 million dollars a year and that for reasons of language is impossible to place 40,000 Cuban doctors in China or Russia to confiscate the salary.

When you start this aggressive campaign Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in Havana the media (without blushing): "The blockade is the main cause of the problems of our economy, is the main obstacle to our development." He added that between April 2015 and March 2016 the country lost 4,960 million dollars because of the "lock", which rose to 125.873 million the amount of damages caused by the US since 1962.

And in the last figure is the detail. Given the devastating crisis in Venezuela, undoubtedly the regime wants, more than the cessation of the "lock" itself, that Washington pay compensation that would be made a long - term subsidy to keep the economy afloat and perpetuating dictatorship.

Moreover, the figures provided by Rodriguez do not fit if some simple accounts are removed. It is true that Cuba can not normally trade with the US, although it can buy food and medicine, the most sensitive areas for the population. But the self -employed could export to the US itself all that were able to produce, as the law only prohibits embargo Cuba purchases of goods and services produced by state enterprises.

That is, the hypothetical losses unable to export to the US will be subtracted hypothetical exports could make a normal private sector in the island. In other words, if the Castro free themselves productive forces Cuba could sell to the US billions of dollars.

In addition, state enterprises can export their products and services to 193 countries on the planet other than the US. Cuba can not obtain credit from banks or the US government, but could receive the rest of the world if the country would produce enough to pay them. The regime does not pay even the interest of the principal providing it.

The island can not import from third countries products containing more than 10% of US components, but it usually occurs with computers and sophisticated technologies such high prices that Cuba can not buy. The Government contends that the equipment for the water sector out more expensive because it has to import from faraway China and not the US (with lower freight), but concealed that almost all those equipment produces USA precisely in China and from there the matter too.

US keeps Cuba

The embargo bans tourist travel to Cuba, but thanks to the holes made by Obama in 2015 traveled from the US to the island more than 600,000 Cubans and Americans. The "empire" was the second largest source of tourists to Cuba after Canada, and tripled the number of Germans (175,264 visitors), which ranked third.

With "lock" and all, in 2015 the island received from the northern neighbor more than 6,000 million with the aforementioned travel, remittances, parcels, payment of surcharges on tickets, passports, renewals, permits, and the usual "bites "in Cuban customs.

This financial contribution tripled gross tourism revenue (1,940 million) and exceeded exports of goods of Cuba, barely 3,900 million. By 2016, this contribution will rise from 7.000 million. In other words, the island received more US money in those 11 months, which "lost" according to the Chancellor of the regime. What we are talking lock then?

The regime should be ashamed that Cuba today exports less goods Dominican Republic, which in 2015 sold 9,898,000 products by being a much smaller country and whose gross (GDP) Domestic Product was seven times lower than Cuba before the Castro regime.

And half a century ago that the island stopped exporting coffee, pineapple, fruit, meat, bull zebu stallions, and many other agricultural products and livestock in the 50s made Cuba a major food exporter. For example, before Castroism producing up to60,000 tons of coffee, but in the 2015-2016 harvest produced 5,687 tons (10 times less), according to the Ministry of Agriculture.In 1957 the country imported 29% of food consumed and in 2015 imported more than 80%.

Cuba today exports less goods than the mid-twentieth century and focuses on four basic products: nickel, sugar, snuff, rum and pharmaceutical products (16% of total). The latter is the only value - added export item that has incorporated the regime in nearly 60 years. What does export are doctors, which slaves, to seize their salaries.

The cause of this economic disaster is not exogenous but endogenous: the socialist amazing inability to generate wealth. Cuba suffers from an incurable parasitism that comes in the DNA system designed by Karl Marx and worsened by Fidel Castro. That parasitic condition prevents you support themselves and live on charity.

What did with 215.000 million?

And speaking of alms, with the same vehemence that Castro demanded compensation to the US, they should explain what they did with the 115,000 million dollars donated by the USSR from 1962 to 1991. And where were to stop 100,000 million donated by the Venezuela Chavista . No country receiving grants 5,000 million annually for 45 years can talk about astronomical losses, but inability to produce.

China, Russia, the European Union, Japan and other countries support the elimination of the embargo, but to take advantage of cheaper labor work of the Americas (monthly $ 24 compared with $ 59 in Haiti) and turn Cuba into a great maquila for export at low prices to the US and worldwide.

If it comes claims, Washington should quantify everything that has stolen the Cuban regime to the US for nearly six decades to pirating products and licenses for billions of dollars.

To begin remember the most watched program of the Cuban TV and popular esprit Creole christened Meeting with the Yuma (film Saturday), with stolen Hollywood films. The expensive films of the best American filmmakers like Spielberg, Coppola, Lucas, Kubrick, Scorsese, Eastwood and many others, are exhibited in theaters and on Cuban TV. The long blue Avatar figures were seen on the island while the rest of the world. The State thus raises millions of pesos, but pays nothing for these films.

Computer software and programs of the government, the Communist Party and all Cubans are pirated US, like antivirus systems, etc. Music television program Sector 40 was that of James Bond movies. All entities in the country illegally use patents, licenses, copyrights, trademarks, conferences, documentaries and exclusive videos of scientific, technological, cultural, US character. That, plus US properties confiscated in 1959 and 1960.

If that amount of money was compared to a true figure of losses caused by the embargo Castro who probably are owed to theUS.