March 29, 2004

Dear Sir,

Please allow me to respond to a letter printed in your column by Mr. Sal Cantarella, which was responding to a recent letter of mine on the topic of Bermuda's relations with Cuba.

Mr. Cantarella asked where I got my statistics, I'm sure being the intelligent person he is, Mr. Cantarella can competently use the Internet. A simple search for Cuba's trading partners will produce much information.

As far as the US helping Cuba with agricultural products, the US did not do any favours for Cuba as the products were not donated they were sold. This is an economic, not social arrangement. Remember I did say trading partner, which implies an economic relationship.

Let's face facts, one of the reasons there are US economic sanctions against Cuba is because Castro caused the April 16, 1961 CIA led Bay of Pigs invasion to fail, which was approved by John F. Kennedy during his first three months in office. This failure caused a major embarrassment to the Kennedy Administration. There are some other potential reasons for these sanctions and I would suggest you go to the following web page, read its contents and decide for yourself: www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/ USEconomicSanctions_Cuba.html

I still contend that the US is two-faced in that it challenges a small nation like Bermuda in its cultural relationship with Cuba yet does nothing with regard to the relationships that Venezuela, Spain, China, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Mexico, France and Russia have with Cuba.

There have been many who mention the human rights violations of Fidel Castro, yet what actions, economic or otherwise, has the US taken against China and North Korea? Further, what actions did the US take against South African under the apartheid regime? The US only does what it feels will be in its own economic interest. As an example, it is becoming more and more apparent that Iraq had nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, it was about oil, plain and simple.

Mr. Cantarella, with regard to bully tactics, talks about international relations. Are you implying that because the US is the only super-power that it is okay for it to use bully tactics? International relations are supposed to be just that relations and relations are supposed to be two-way not the larger directing, that is dictatorship.

Mr. Cantarella talks about the enormous about of money the US spends in Colombia on drug interdiction at the source. He says that "maybe if other countries would provide the same type of moral and economic assistance, maybe the flow of these drugs would be reduced."

The US would have us believe that it is so good at fixing the global problems yet it cannot fix its own. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars in Colombia it should spend those funds at home to curtail demand, which will automatically reduce supply. But I guess that is the typical US attitude: "We are never wrong, our problems are caused by somebody else".

Mr. Cantarella, let's be realistic, Cuba does not need any of Bermuda's tourism knowledge. According to the World Tourist Organisation, in the year 2003 there were 21.1 million tourists that visited the Caribbean and of the number 2.9 million or 14 percent visited Cuba. In that same year Cuba had 59,000 hotel rooms, Bermuda has roughly 3,000 rooms. Now imagine what would happen if the US removed the economic sanctions, today. Bermuda would not know what a tourist looked like. International investment continues in Cuba and there is nothing that the US economic sanctions can do to stop it. Over the next four years there are expected to be an additional 10,000 rooms added to the inventory at a total investment of in excess of $1 billion. There are some 40 airlines that provide service into Cuba. What could Cuba learn from Bermuda with regard to tourism? Absolutely nothing.

So in closing, I still see nothing with Bermuda having a cultural exchange programme with Cuba. If the US does not like it, so what? Is Bermuda supposed to only do what the US wants it to do? Unfortunately Bermuda is still a dependent territory of Great Britain and Great Britain needs to sign-off on any international relationship that Bermuda has and in this case it did so. So what is the big deal about how the US feels? Let the US talk to Great Britain.

GUILDEN M. GILBERT, JR.

Nassau, Bahamas