Support Cuba’s dissidents, commissioners

Posted on Friday, 02.10.12
The readers’ forum

Support Cuba’s dissidents, commissioners

Among Cubans and Cuban Americans, a number of foreign companies have earned a place in the “hall of infamy” for their outright complicity with the Castro dictatorship. These include Spain’s Sol-Melia hotel chain and Canada’s Sherritt mining company for profiting from long years of the Castros’ apartheid brand of tourism and exploitation of Cuba’s natural resources.

However, Brazil’s Odebrecht construction conglomerate is now placing itself in a reprehensible class of its own. Foreign companies that seek to do business in Cuba generally recognize they must choose either to profit from the monopoly of the Castro dictatorship or from Cuban Americans in Florida’s free market.

In the 1990s, Sol-Melia and Sherritt shamefully chose the Castro dictatorship, giving up opportunities in Florida. Odebrecht feels it is duly entitled to both.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff traveled to Cuba last week to promote the company’s business arrangements with the Castros’ dictatorship. These include enlarging the Port of Mariel, which Raúl Castro considers the single most important project to ensure the economic survival of his regime, and a new 10-year agreement to revitalize the island’s moribund sugar industry. During her trip, Rousseff made a point of shunning Cuban dissidents and even refused opportunities to criticize the Castros’ human-rights record.

Meanwhile, a couple hundred miles to the north, for more than a decade Odebrecht has been seducing Miami-Dade County commissioners, taking in more than $4.8 billion in taxpayer dollars — much of it from Cuban-American victims of its business partners in Havana.

The company has been awarded contracts on projects ranging from the seemingly interminable reconstruction of Miami International Airport, to building the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Art and a no-bid contract to build Florida International University’s stadium — complete with an Odebrecht skybox.

Its seduction has been so effective that Miami-Dade County commissioners jumped through legal hoops last year to give Odebrecht a $57 million contract to strengthen the cargo wharves of the Port of Miami. Commissioners sought to justify the contract by asserting Odebrecht was the lowest bidder. But it wasn’t.

The lowest bidder was actually a U.S. company — American Bridge Company. It didn’t get the contract because of a “local preference” that favored Odebrecht despite the extra expense. How could that be?

Only in Miami-Dade County can a Brazilian company be given preferential treatment (at extra cost to taxpayers) over a U.S. company. It was an award that fuels suspicion and feeds nasty stereotypes. This charade has gone on long enough.

Rousseff, in support of Odebrecht, didn’t hesitate to shun Cuban dissidents seeking political and economic reform. The time has come for Miami-Dade County commissioners — a majority are Cuban-American — to shun Odebrecht in support of those dissidents. As they do so they may find they’re also helping U.S. companies.

Mauricio Claver-Carone, director, U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, Washington, D.C.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/10/2635363/support-cubas-dissidents-commissioners.html#storylink=misearch
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