receive profits for that merchandise which their representatives sell there, and do very well for themselves while having always lobbied to keep the embargo in place and all ordinary U.S. citizens OUT of Cuba. Nice work, if you can get it.
From the ending of the article posted above:
South Florida represents a Cuban settler state within the United States. It counters its interests against those of the dominant society, with the society's ignorant acquiescence. The Miami-based Cuban-Americans and their Cuba-based families have used U.S.-Cuba policy, the embargo representing the power of the nation for their own self-interest, and in order to attain a comparative advantage vis a vis the rest of the American population.
Since 1960, commitment to overthrow of the Cuban government has functioned as U.S. foreign policy on Cuba, a policy now controlled informally by south Florida Cuban-Americans. The Cuban-American ethnic enclave assumed the political power needed to turn south Florida into an autonomous Cuban settler state inside U.S. boundaries, so that the embargo does not get applied to the Cuban-American enclave. The enclave barons use the embargo to secure, for themselves, a protection of the Cuba trade monopoly. This challenges stated U.S. national interests.
Camouflaged by ubiquitous anti-Castro rhetoric, the Cuban-American entrepreneurs have manufactured a lucrative business with the island, regulated by the very government they pretend to hate. The rightwing congressional representatives pretend to fight for every law to punish the "Castro regime" while in practice turn a dead eye to the growing trade that helps Florida's and Cuba's economy. Preserve the embargo, but make an exception for Cuban Americans.
By recognizing the facts about this trade, the White House might become inspired to lift the embargo -- a move to benefit all Americans. U.S. government revenue would grow from opening trade and travel with Cuba. In the process we might also regain a missing piece of U.S. sovereignty!
It's also important for more people to be aware that all Cuban landowners were offered full compensation by the Cuban government long ago, and those who moved to the U.S. declined to accept it, many of them imagining the U.S. would send soldiers to kill and be killed grabbing the country back from the people of Cuba, and reinstalling the racist, brutal, filthy government which had been in place there which triggered the revolution in the first place.
That arrangement was offered to landowners based upon the fair market value upon which their property had been taxed prior to the revolution. Other owners who lived in other countries, like Canada, and Latin American countries, settled with the Cuban government long, long ago. The ones here turned their noses up at the idea, whereas other owners took the money and moved on.
The very idea they can continue to lobby to keep natural-born U.S. citizens from being able to legally visit Cuba without specific government permission is a true blob of spit in the face both to U.S. citizens here, and the citizens of Cuba, against whom this evil economic war has been conducted since the 1960's.
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