Reasons to end Cuba boycott

Reasons to end Cuba boycott

Dallas Morning News: What happens in Cuba normally stays in Cuba, largely because the communist government is so effective in tightly controlling every facet of life on the island. So it’s big news whenever the government eases that grip, as it did recently by enacting the most significant property-ownership reforms since the 1959 revolution.

Raul Castro, brother and presidential successor to longtime dictator Fidel Castro, declared that Cubans will be allowed to own, buy and sell property — a first for the island since 1959.

For Americans accustomed to life in the capitalist world, it might be easy to dismiss such a development as no big deal. But in Cuba, the state has long held the role of buyer and seller of property and keeper of profits

The reforms mean that billions of dollars in property soon could become marketable. Suddenly, thousands of Cubans will experience a level of newly created wealth unlike anything in their experience. An instant middle class is poised to emerge.

End the boycott

It is time to end the boycott and allow U.S. companies to dive in to a Cuban market starved of American goods and services.

Our reasoning is simple. It is clear from the results of the U.S. boycott of Cuba, in effect since 1962, that economic sanctions have utterly failed to budge the Communist regime from power. But the potential flood of U.S. dollars from commerce and tourism, combined with the new easing of property laws for Cubans, holds much greater promise of overwhelming the island’s strained and archaic economic structure.

Of course, all of this depends on whether the Castro government honors its promises. But Cubans are ready to awaken from a 50-year economic slumber. The time has never been riper for the United States to seize opportunity and end the boycott.