Ventura draws harsh rebuke for Cuba trip Rob Hotakainen Star Tribune Washington Bureau Correspondent
Published Sep 7, 2002
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gov. Jesse Ventura's plan to travel to Cuba to promote trade drew a harsh rebuke from the Bush administration Friday, with a top official saying U.S. visitors end up getting used "as props" by Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Otto Reich, the State Department's assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere, said he will encourage Ventura to cancel the trip, scheduled for Sept. 25-28. With no private markets in Cuba, he said, any trade only benefits Castro.
"It is not in our interests to have a hostile terrorist state continue in power 90 miles from our shores," Reich said during a State Department news briefing. "And it would be one of the greatest ironies in history if the wealth of the American private sector is what keeps that failed government from finally collapsing."
John Wodele, Ventura's spokesman, said he hates "to burst Mr. Reich's stretched bubble, but his position is not in sync with the majority of Americans." He questioned how Reich, "with a straight face," could say there are no business opportunities in the country.
"What's wrong with finding out if there is?" he said, adding that the Cuban trade embargo has not worked, "so why not try something different?"
Ventura has been invited to attend the U.S. Food and Agribusiness Exhibition in Havana, the first of its kind licensed by federal authorities. Exhibitors will pay for his travel expenses, and Ventura plans to use the trip to promote the sale of Minnesota-produced food and agricultural products.
Ventura has been an outspoken advocate of free markets, even testifying before Congress to promote liberalized trade with China. U.S. food and agricultural products, including Minnesota corn, were exported to Cuba in December for the first time since 1959 under a new federal law creating an exception -- for food and medicine exports -- to the long-standing ban on trade with Cuba, according to Ventura's office.
Reich suggested that Ventura and the business officials accompanying him try to visit Cuban prisoners. He said that Ventura and business leaders will not be allowed to see any signs of Cuba's gross human-rights violations.
"These business people, who I'm sure are honest, hardworking Americans, have to understand that they're not going to a typical Caribbean island," he said. "They're going to the last totalitarian communist regime in this part of the world."
Reich described Cuba as a country where people risk their lives to escape, putting babies on rafts made of inner tubes. If Ventura goes to Cuba, he said, the governor should ask Castro why ordinary Cubans can't go to the same hotels where the Minnesotans will be staying, or why they can't go to beaches where only foreigners can go, or why Cubans can't elect leaders in free elections.
"That's what Ventura should ask Castro, not how many soybeans you can buy from us," said Reich.
Reich called Castro "a self-declared enemy of the United States" and said that Cuba has "a potentially offensive bioweapons capability, which we can't ignore."
Reich said the Bush administration is willing to lift the Cuban trade embargo only when the country has made political changes. Until then, he said there is no private sector for U.S. businesses to sell their goods.
"It's Castro who will determine who receives those goods," Reich said. "See, there is no private sector in Cuba, and that's what President Bush says. He can defend doing trade with China, because in China today, you do have a private sector."
Reich said agribusiness firms that want to do business with Cuba are being unrealistic.
"How can anybody realistically think that a country whose per-capita income is $20 a month represents a major agricultural market for the United States?" he said.
Minnesota-based Cargill is one of the companies involved in the Cuban exhibition, but spokeswoman Sara Thurin Rollin said Cargill had no comment on Reich's remarks.
John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York, who is assisting Ventura in planning the trip, said that Reich "has obviously been out of the private sector for too long."
He said that 236 U.S. companies -- 10 or 11 of them from Minnesota -- will be involved in the trade exhibition, including Land O' Lakes and Hormel. Last year, he said, Cuba ranked in the top quarter of countries to which U.S. companies exported agricultural products -- 52nd among the 228 nations.
"If Cuba is insignificant at 52nd, what is Poland? What is Vietnam? What is Hungary?" Kavulich said.
Reich, who was born in Cuba and left the country in 1960 at age 14, compared Castro to Adolf Hitler. Reich's father, an Austrian refugee, fled Europe because of Hitler, and Reich said that totalitarian leaders "use the same phrases, the same thoughts, but, worse than that, the same tactics."
Asked what message he would give to members of the Minnesota business community in Cuba, Reich said: "First of all, I would ask them not to participate in sexual tourism, which is one of the main industries in Cuba." He said Castro has called Cuban prostitutes "the healthiest in the world, and he's promoted this kind of exploitation of women and children."
"You're kidding me?" Wodele said of Reich's statement. "He said that? . . . Holy cow." Wodele said Reich's remarks were "inappropriate at best."
Ventura's trip comes as Congress considers lifting the trade embargo with Cuba, an idea that has won backing from many in both parties.
Sen. Mark Dayton, D-Minn., is among those who want the embargo lifted, as long as it doesn't allow the export of anything that could be used for military purposes.
"If the governor -- at nonpublic expense -- can advance that cause, then so be it," Dayton said.
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