NOTES
The aff will want their Neoliberalism and other neg K files for
extensions. The neg will want their answers to these Ks and their
critical neglect neg for the case debate.
More neg cards for the “Expropriation Bad DA” are coming in the
next wave.
AFF
1AC
Plan
The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce
its claims against Cuba for the expropriation of United Fruit Company
property.
Advantage One – 1AC
Contention One: A Banana Republic
The U.S. government maintains claims against Cuba for property
nationalized during the revolution. The value of these claims is
disputed, particularly the United Fruit company’s sugar plantations—
Ashby, JD from Seattle University Law School and PhD from the University of Southern
California and MBA from the University of Edinburgh, Spring 2009
(Timothy, “U.S. Certified Claims Against Cuba: Legal Reality and Likely Settlement Mechanisms,”
University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, 40 U. Miami Inter-Am. L. Rev. 413, Lexis)
Between 1959 and 1961, the Cuban government nationalized almost all U.S.-owned assets on
the island. Such properties included 90% of all electricity generated in Cuba, the entire telephone
system, most of the mining industry, oil refineries, bottling plants, warehouses, and over two
million acres of land, including [*414] up to 80% of the rich traditional sugar lands. Expropriated
assets also comprised hotels, commercial properties, private residences, artworks, insurance
policies, bank accounts, and ships. As American corporate and private entities controlled
two-thirds of the Cuban economy, this was the largest uncompensated taking of American
property by a foreign government in history. These nationalizations were the primary cause of the
U.S. embargo that has remained in place for nearly half a century.
Remarkably, the initial U.S. response was supportive of the first wave of agricultural nationalizations. In June 1959, U.S
Ambassador Philip Bonsal delivered a diplomatic note to the Cuban government recognizing "that under international law
a state has the right to take property within its jurisdiction for public purposes in the absence of treaty provisions or other
agreements to the contrary," and stated that the United States "understands and is sympathetic to the objectives" of the
land reform program because it "can contribute to a higher standard of living, political stability and social progress." n1
However, the note also reminded the Cubans that the right to take foreign-owned property was coupled with an obligation
to pay "prompt, adequate and effective compensation," and expressed "serious concern" regarding "the adequacy of the
provision for compensation to its citizens whose property may be expropriated." n2
The Cuban government responded promptly by a diplomatic Note dated June 15, 1959, recognizing its obligation under
Cuban law (notably, rather than international law) to provide prompt and adequate compensation, but suggested that this
could be delayed due to the country's "chaotic economic and financial situation," and the "imbalance in the balance of
payments between the United States and Cuba." n3 The Cuban reply also made allusion to the MacArthur agrarian reform
in Japan as a case model of provision of compensation in bonds. On October 12, 1959, the U.S. replied saying that
Japanese bonds had been applied to Japanese landholders, not foreigners, and was therefore not a valid precedent. n4
[*415] During the second wave of foreign asset nationalizations, n5 the Cuban government reiterated that it was too poor
to pay compensation promptly or in cash, reinforcing their intent to primarily use bonds for settlement. n6
Two principal Cuban laws enabled the expropriations. The first was the 1959 Agrarian Reform Act, which authorized
compensation for property takings related to the sugar industry in the form of redeemable twenty-year "Agrarian Reform
Bonds" with an annual interest rate not to exceed 4.5% to be financed out of the annual budget. n7 The second was Law
851 of 1960. This law authorized compensation for property takings of U.S. nationals in the form of thirty-year government
bonds with an annual interest rate of 2%. n8 For real property, Cuban law allowed for compensation to include a 15%
profit and actual expenses in addition to the base value for vacant residential lots, and a 12% profit for lots suitable for
commercial use. n9
Contrary to most published sources, Cuban law did not restrict compensation to bonds. Law number 588, which
established the procedure for expropriating rural properties after the chaotic process of earlier takings stated, "payment to
the owner is made by INRA [National Institute of Agrarian Reform] in cash, Agrarian Reform Bonds or certificates thereof."
n10 Although no [*416] bonds were known to have been paid as compensation to U.S. nationals, the American owners
of six expropriated sisal mills were reportedly paid $ 1.3 million in cash with the balance (50%) promised in bonds. n11
III. Valuation of the Nationalized Properties
The Cuban Government used declared taxable value (the value of assets listed for tax purposes
in October 1958) as the official value for compensation purposes. n12 This worked to the new
Cuban government's advantage, as the value of the land was based on the owners' own
assessment for tax purposes. n13 As can be imagined, declared values were very low, and the
amount of indemnification calculated on this basis did not burden the public budget. n14 This value
was deemed to be the peso equivalent of approximately $ 1 billion. n15 All parties recognized that the market value of
confiscated properties was much higher than the book value. n16 For example, Chase Manhattan Bank had a 1960
certified claim of $ 7.5 million for eleven confiscated Cuban branches, the bulk of which claim was for expropriated
securities rather than real estate. The last appraisal of any Chase branches was made in March 1960 and applied only to
the Havana office. This appraisal valued the premises at $ 165,000, and the necessary adjustment to bring the book value
for that property to market was stated as $ 54,800. Fidel Castro declared publicly that bond payments would range from $
15 to $ 45 per acre, equating to just one-fourth of the 1958 value of rural agricultural properties. n17
In 1960, during one of the largest of the multi-phased expropriations of sugar lands, the
United Fruit Company informed the Cuban government that it valued its nationalized land
at approximately $ 90 million. In reply, the Cuban government asserted that the United Fruit
lands were worth instead approximately $ 17 million [*417] (in 1960 U.S. dollars). The Cubans
therefore deemed the property to be worth approximately 19% or less than one-fifth of the
amount claimed by the original owner. n18
In late 1960, the U.S. embassy in Havana (which remained open until relations were broken in January 1961) was tasked
by the State Department to provide a valuation of American assets in Cuba. The Embassy relied on book value as
reported by owners of the assets, even though the State Department had earlier stated the value of U.S. property to be an
estimated $ 1 billion based on Cuban tax valuations. n19 In August 1961, the U.S. Commerce Department published the
figure of $ 956 million as the value of American property taken by the Cuban government. n20 This amount was published
by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Time Magazine and other domestic and international media.
IV. The U.S. Cuban Claims Program
In 1964, the U.S. Congress established a Cuban Claims Program, authorizing the Foreign
Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC), a unit of the U.S. Justice Department, to consider
claims of U.S. nationals against the government of Cuba for their property losses. The
certification process was an ex parte evidentiary proceeding before the FCSC, and the claimant
had to submit documentary evidence regarding the confiscated underlying assets in order to
prove value. The FCSC evaluated the validity and amounts of property claims, and its findings
were certified to the Secretary of State for possible use in future negotiations with the Cuban
government.
Of the 8,816 claims filed, the FCSC certified 5,911 as valid and worth $ 1.82 billion. Although the
Cuban Claims Act did not expressly authorize the inclusion of interest in the amount allowed, the
FCSC determined that simple interest at a 6% rate should be included as part of the value of
the claims it certified. n21
With interest, the U.S. claims that Cuba owes nearly two billion
dollars for United Fruit’s property.
[NOTE: $90 million in 1960 at 6% annual interest is $1.97 billion today.]
These claims will never be paid – Cuba is under too much debt
Ashby, JD from Seattle University Law School and PhD from the University of Southern
California and MBA from the University of Edinburgh, Spring 2009
(Timothy, “U.S. Certified Claims Against Cuba: Legal Reality and Likely Settlement Mechanisms,”
University of Miami Inter-American Law Review, 40 U. Miami Inter-Am. L. Rev. 413, Lexis)
Cuba's debt was $ 16 billion at the end of 2006, of which the majority of obligations are in
default. n67 The price range quoted for Cuban debt on European exchanges is wide. Trade debt is quoted as low as
2% of face value, whereas medium-term loans currently [*430] trade at up to 17% of face value. n68 A possible
"benchmark" to use in valuing U.S. Certified Claims is Cuban Unrestructured Debt, representing various types of claims.
These types of obligations are currently trading on the London market at between 5.5% and 11% of face value. n69 Due
to their similar risk factors to debt instruments, Cuban claims would probably trade at a steep discount to their nominal
value.
A special situations fund would have to acquire a large aggregate amount of claims and hold them until a time in the
future - a "window of opportunity" - when it could settle the claims via a debt-for-equity or debt-for-property swap with the
Cuban government. Cuba is known to have negotiated at least two debt-for-asset swaps with private concerns (Mexican
and Argentine) to settle sovereign debt purchased at a steep discount. The fund would have to legally remove the claims
from U.S. jurisdiction to (a) counter the risk that the U.S. Government could take the claims from private owners under the
Doctrine of Espousal and settle them arbitrarily in the frenzy to quickly normalize relations with Cuba; and (b) to allow the
fund to accept Cuban property as compensation, which is currently prohibited to U.S. nationals unless authorized by
OFAC.
XI. Conclusion
The precedent of U.S. claims programs suggests that the federal government will eventually enter into bilateral settlement
negotiations with Cuba as part of a broader diplomatic effort to normalize relations. While Helms-Burton and other
sanctions legislation would present a legal impediment for the Cuban government (which will probably not be "democratic"
in the U.S. sense, but will likely follow the Vietnamese or Chinese model of a one-party, officially socialist state with a
market economy), such laws could be repealed or amended. n70
[*431] Cuba has no realistic means of paying cash compensation to settle U.S. claims unless
the negotiated amount was a mere pittance to achieve an accord and satisfaction under
international law. According to Ambassador Stuart Eisenstat, former U.S. Secretary of State for
Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs, and Special Envoy for Property Claims in Central
and Eastern Europe, who was President Clinton's special envoy on Cuba: "Settling the thousands
of claims pending against Cuba should not be much of an obstacle to normalization -when that
day finally comes. Given Cuba's poor economic state, any compensation received by
claimants may be little more than token payments." n71
United Fruit originally purchased its sugar plantations for $817 –
thanks to the U.S. military occupation of Cuba
Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, January 2011
(Mary-Alice, “Capturing a moment in revolutionary history,”
http://www.themilitant.com/2011/7502/750250.html)
The expropriation decree included the Preston sugar mill and all US-owned property on
the plantation. United Fruit was to receive compensation of 6,150,207 Cuban pesos* in twentyyear Agrarian Reform bonds paying an annual interest of 4.5 percent. The same terms were
given other big landowners expropriated under the 1959 agrarian reform law. That law set a limit
of roughly 1,000 acres on individual landholdings, transferred property in excess of that limit to
the new government, and granted sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and squatters title to the land
they tilled. Interest on the agrarian reform bonds was to be paid from the sugar “quota,” the
amount of Cuban sugar guaranteed for sale each year in the United States. Compensation was
based on the assessed value of the holdings of United Fruit and other big landowners, which in
turn was based on the value the companies themselves had declared for tax purposes a year and
a half earlier, in October 1958.¶ In face of outraged cries from Washington and other imperialist
governments and their mouthpieces—“Confiscation!” screamed the headline in Time magazine’s
June 1, 1959, issue—Fidel Castro explained the necessity of the revolutionary government’s land
reform in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 1960.¶ “In our
country [the land reform] was indispensable,” the Cuban leader told the delegates, speaking over
the UN’s marble rostrum to revolutionary-minded working people and youth around the world.
“More than 200,000 peasant families lived in the countryside without land with which to
plant essential foodstuffs. Without agrarian reform our country could not have taken the first
step toward development,” he said—toward solving “the great unemployment problem on the
land” and “the frightful poverty that existed in the rural areas of our country.”¶ As to the
compensation paid to the expropriated capitalist families, Castro said, “Notes from the U.S. State
Department began to rain down on Cuba. They never asked us about our problems [or] their
responsibility in creating the problems. They never asked us how many died of starvation in our
country, how many were suffering from tuberculosis, how many were unemployed.” Instead, he
said, the State Department “demanded three things: ‘prompt, adequate, and effective
compensation.’ Do you understand that language?” Castro asked. “That means, ‘Pay this
instant, in dollars, and whatever we ask.’ ”¶ The arrogant response of the owners of United Fruit
to the Cuban government’s compensation offer was no different. While the giant corporation
had “acquired” its vast landholdings for well under a penny an acre (some $817 all told!)—at
the turn of the twentieth century, when the island was under direct US military occupation—
its owners demanded that the Cuban government pay them more than $56 million for the
expropriated land.¶ A few months later, in retaliation against the expropriation of US-owned
properties and other measures taken by the revolutionary government in the interests of Cuba’s
working people, the US rulers ended all sugar imports from Cuba. With that unilateral act,
Washington rendered null and void redemption of the bonds. The US government’s abolition of
the quota was soon followed by a full-fledged economic embargo of Cuba that remains in
effect to this day.
That purchase was the culmination of a political strategy of
“Americanization” to undermine and discredit local landowners—
J.A. Sierra. 2012. undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology at the California Institute of
Integral Studies (CIIS), Masters program in information technology at Colorado Technical
University (CTU) Online. “On the Importance of Oriente Province.”
http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/race/Oriente.htm
In the previous two centuries, Oriente had seen a variety of crops, including bananas, Cacao, fruit
orchards and coconut groves, vegetables and tobacco. There were also a number of cattle
ranches. When U.S. businessmen started eyeing the island looking for bargain basement prices,
Oriente was a very attractive "opportunity."¶ Soon the business and political environment began
to favor the powerful companies and moneyed interests scoping out and scooping up the island.
Local planters and businessmen, for example, had a difficult time borrowing the money they
needed to get their properties back in shape after the very destructive war of independence.¶
The big sugar companies were buying up as much land as they could, but many owners
had difficulty producing official titles for their land, and the courts consistently ruled
against the local interests.¶ "More than simply a transition from the traditional to the modern,"
wrote Robert B. Hoernel in Latin American Studies, "Oriente's society underwent revolutionary
change as a result not only of foreign influence but also of foreign control and design calculated
to produce both modernization and 'Americanization'."¶ As sugar production increased,
so did land concentration, and as foreign investment grew in Oriente, the number of farms
and landowners diminished. By 1912, the sugar estates in the Guantánamo Valley
belonged to 10 sugar mills, all foreign.¶ "Oriente's revolution in sugar was a foreign
undertaking," wrote Hoernel, "carried out by foreign finance and worked by predominantly
imported labor, while the province was not a colony, but an important part of the new republic."
United Fruit epitomized the racist views and imperial practices of the
U.S. in the Caribbean—
Colby, Jason. No date. PhD from Cornell University 2005. Speciality: U.S. International
Relations, Modern American History, Latin America, Caribbean. “The United States and the
Caribbean 1877-1920.” http://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/empirebuilding/essays/united-states-and-caribbean-1877%E2%80%931920
Yet, the US government was not the only force shaping the Caribbean. In fact, during the first three
decades of the twentieth century, private US enterprise remained the predominant influence,
and none was more powerful than the United Fruit Company. The firm had its roots in the spread of US entrepreneurs in
Central America and the Caribbean in the late nineteenth century. Part of its beginning lay in the person of Minor Cooper Keith, who had played a key role in
constructing the Costa Rican railroad in the 1870s and 1880s. Employing primarily Jamaican migrants, he developed both the labor system and commercial
farming techniques that would come to define United Fruit’s operations. Parlaying Costa Rica’s financial troubles into a favorable contract, Keith made himself the
virtual sovereign of the country’s Caribbean coast. In 1899, he combined his interests with the Boston Fruit Company to found United Fruit.¶ Formed in the
the new firm benefited from Washington’s new imperial presence in the
region. Over the next decade, it expanded its operations aggressively in Central America as well
as Cuba. Following the US government’s seizure of Panama, the company found itself competing with Washington for West Indian
laborers, while sharing many of the racial and imperial views of US officials. Indeed, like the US
government in the Panama Canal Zone, United Fruit maintained strict racial segregation in
its enclaves. As one former manager explained:¶ the Jamaican Negro . . . with his “cocky”
attitude tended to offend American racial sensibilities. . . . To avoid complications, therefore, a
strict color line is drawn. All persons of color must always give the right of way to whites,
and remove their hats while talking. A rule also forbids any laborer from entering the front
yard of any white man’s residence. ¶ When resistance from its black workers threatened United
Fruit’s authority, the company sought to build a divided workforce by recruiting local Central
Americans. It also relied upon regional dictators for favorable treatment. In Guatemala, it maintained a
close relationship with President Manuel Estrada Cabrera, whose brutal rule lasted from 1898 to 1920. ¶ By the 1920s, United Fruit had
become the most powerful economic force in the region and the largest agricultural enterprise in
the world. And while the firm’s regional dominance would give way to the US government’s growing influence during World War II, United Fruit’s
immediate aftermath of the war,
history remained a testament to the critical role played by private enterprise in the transformation
of US–Caribbean relations.
Afro-Cuban resistance was met with U.S. military intervention –
claims of corporate property were central to the unconscionable
violence that unfolded
Tulia Falleti. No date. Associate Professor of Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the
Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. “Armed rebellion
against the Cuban government”
http://diaspora.northwestern.edu/mbin/WebObjects/DiasporaX.woa/wa/displayArticle?atomid=242
Led by the leaders of the Partido Independiente de Color (Independent Color Party) Evaristo Estenoz and Pedro Ivonnet, the rebellion was
designed to force Cuban president, José Miguel Gómez (1909-1913), to repeal the Morúa law which had been passed in 1910 and
outlawed the formation of political parties on racial lines, therefore banning the Partido Independiente de Color. Morúa himself was a
mulatto. Just six months before the presidential elections of November, 1912, Estenoz thought that an armed uprising was the last possible
resource that the Partido Independiente de Color had to fight against the Morúa law. On May 17, Estenoz arrived in the province of
Oriente from a trip to the United States, and with his arrival the rumors of a black uprising spread. On May 18, the Cuban newspaper 'La
Lucha' attributed an uprising in the town of Sagua la Grande in the province of Santa Clara to the Partido Independiente de Color. Although
some uprisings took place in the provinces of Santa Clara and Matanzas--in the center of Cuba--mass arrests of party leaders and
suspected sympathizers aborted all prospects of a coordinated national rebellion, and the movement was confined to the Southeastern
province of Oriente. While Afro-Cubans constituted 30% of the total population nationally, they comprised over 40% of the Oriente
the socio-economic
situation of the Afro-Cuban population in Oriente had rapidly deteriorated as a
consequence of the expansion of sugar plantations and mills that eliminated communal
lands and small farms. Afro-Cubans also saw their socio-economic condition worsened due to
the increase of population and the introduction of cheaper labor from Haiti and Jamaica (López,
1986). Consequently, black protesters in Oriente attacked what they saw as the sources of
their oppression and impoverished state: foreign property, cane fields and sugar mills.¶
population. (Data from 1907 Census in Fermoselle, 1974, p. 89; and Velasco, 1913, p.77). Furthermore,
Meanwhile, the newspapers repudiated the action of those men that, as one editorial would say, "had chosen to stop being Cubans, to be
only blacks" ('La Lucha,' La Habana, May 27, 1912, p. 1) and stimulated the panic of a 'Negro uprising' among the white population. Whites
President José Miguel Gómez suspended
constitutional guarantees in the province of Oriente and organized his aides to form volunteer
civilian militias against the black movement, supplying arms and ammunition. His goal was to
exterminate the black movement, and prevent military intervention by the United States (due to
the Platt Amendment of 1901 the U.S. had the right to intervene militarily in Cuba to
protect U.S. citizens and their property in the island).¶ In sum, although almost no armed protest occurred
outside of Oriente, the whole island was overcome with fear of a black takeover. "Government forces suspected the
entire Afro-Cuban population of collaborating with the rebels. Blacks and mulattoes found in the
fields were considered rebels, unarmed peasants were believed to have hidden their guns, and
all were treated without mercy. Black men and women living in towns and villages were assumed
to serve as spies for the independientes." (Helg 1995, 221) The army and militias persecuted,
arrested, and killed Afro-Cubans all over the island. They were killed and left unburied on the
sides of the roads or hanging in trees as symbols of the official forces' strength to repel the
rebellion.¶ But the harsh repression of the black movement did not prevent the U.S. from sending
troops to Cuba. In June 1912, the U.S. landed more than 1,500 marines in the districts of
Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba to protect U.S. estates and mines. The U.S. marines did
not participate in the repression of the 'independientes,' but their presence in Oriente indirectly contributed to the
anti-black sentiment and violence. The 'independientes' were seen as anti-Cubans who might
facilitate U.S. intervention.
in the countryside fled towards more secure places in towns and cities.
Advantage Two – 1AC
Contention Two: “Corporations Are People, My Friend”
As a result of its indefensible actions in Cuba, United Fruit reinvented
itself as Chiquita—
Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, January 2011
(Mary-Alice, “Capturing a moment in revolutionary history,”
http://www.themilitant.com/2011/7502/750250.html)
In April 1960, a year after the first of the revolution’s two deepgoing agrarian reform laws began
to be carried out, a group of sugar cane farmers and agricultural laborers working one of the vast
plantations of the United Fruit Company and nearby farms wrote a letter to the National Institute
of Agrarian Reform (INRA). They asked the revolutionary government to do something about
United Fruit’s refusal to share the water it piped to its domains with workers and farmers who
lived on or near their property.¶ A few weeks later, an INRA delegation visited United Fruit’s
offices at the company’s Preston sugar mill in what is today Holguín province. They presented the
farmers’ and workers’ request for access to water. According to an account by INRA’s executive
director at the time, Antonio Núñez Jiménez, the company’s answer “was an insolent ‘No.’ ”¶ The
next day, in response, Prime Minister Fidel Castro signed an order expropriating the more than
270,000 acres, nearly 425 square miles of Cuban land, held by United Fruit—a name that had
become so hated throughout Latin America that the company later decided to reinvent
itself as Chiquita Brands International. The wealthy US capitalist families who own the
corporation had extensive landholdings throughout Central America and the Caribbean,
including in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Panama, whose rulers had so often been
subordinated to imperialist interests through a combination of bribery and, when
necessary, naked force.
Chiquita has inherited United Fruit’s claims against Cuba as if the
corporation itself is a person—
Kushner, novelist whose mother lived in the United Fruit dominated town of Preston, 2008
(Rachel, Telex from Cuba, Kindle 4776-4782)
Feelings run high. Just sit at the Teresita for one lunch rush and you’ll get the drift. People who
feel that everything was stolen from them, and just because it’s been almost fifty years now
doesn’t mean they have forgotten. They haven’t. Nor have the companies. A company is like a
person in that it has a memory, its own institutional memory. A company can wait and
anticipate with more patience than a person. There are pending claims against the Cuban
government that the Cubans ignore. Mining concerns like the old Nicaro Nickel Company keep
meticulous account of what they lost. United Fruit became United Brands became Chiquita.
CEOs came and went. The claim lives on, in a black binder somewhere at the Justice
Department— $ 350 million at this point, with inflation. After every last person who worked for
United Fruit is long dead and gone, still, the company will fight to get its assets back.
“Corporate personhood” is capitalism at its most excessive. It has
enabled complete corporate domination – resistance is key—
Moyers, PBS journalist and former White House press secretary, 2012
(Bill, “Fighting Back Against Corporate Personhood,” http://www.truthout.org/article/item/6319:fighting-back-against-corporate-personhood)
Rarely have so few imposed such damage on so many. When five conservative members of the
Supreme Court handed for-profit corporations the right to secretly flood political campaigns with
tidal waves of cash on the eve of an election, they moved America closer to outright plutocracy,
where political power derived from wealth is devoted to the protection of wealth. It is now official:
Just as they have adorned our athletic stadiums and multiple places of public assembly with their
logos, corporations can officially put their brand on the government of the United States as well
as the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the fifty states.
The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission giving “artificial entities” the same
rights of “free speech” as living, breathing human beings will likely prove as infamous as the
Dred Scott ruling of 1857 that opened the unsettled territories of the United States to slavery
whether future inhabitants wanted it or not. It took a civil war and another hundred years of
enforced segregation and deprivation before the effects of that ruling were finally exorcised from
our laws. God spare us civil strife over the pernicious consequences of Citizens United, but
unless citizens stand their ground, America will divide even more swiftly into winners and losers
with little pity for the latter.
Citizens United is but the latest battle in the class war waged for thirty years from the top down
by the corporate and political right. Instead of creating a fair and level playing field for all,
government would become the agent of the powerful and privileged. Public institutions, laws, and
regulations, as well as the ideas, norms, and beliefs that aimed to protect the common good and
helped create America’s iconic middle class, would become increasingly vulnerable. The Nobel
Laureate economist Robert Solow succinctly summed up results: “The redistribution of wealth in
favor of the wealthy and of power in favor of the powerful.” In the wake of Citizens United,
popular resistance is all that can prevent the richest economic interests in the country from
buying the democratic process lock, stock, and barrel.
America has a long record of conflict with corporations. Wealth acquired under capitalism is in
and of itself no enemy to democracy, but wealth armed with political power—power to choke off
opportunities for others to rise, power to subvert public purposes and deny public needs—is a
proven danger to the “general welfare” proclaimed in the Preamble to the Constitution as one of
the justifications for America’s existence.
Amazingly, the current corporate takeover is the legacy of the United
Fruit company. It was the first dominant multinational corporation
and created the Cuban missile crisis, taking us to the brink of nuclear
war—
Chapman 2007 Peter Chapman, author of “Jungle Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed
and Revolution”, a narrative history of the United Fruit Company, “Rotten Fruit,” 5/15/2007,
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/778739c4-f869-11db-a940-000b5df10621.html#axzz2ZFJYsS7z
United Fruit had dominated business and politics in Central America. It was the first truly
multinational modern corporation, spreading the spirit of liberal capitalism . As well as
harvesting the region’s fruit, however, the company wielded formidable influence over small nations,
which were often ruled by corrupt dictatorships. United Fruit gave the world not just bananas, but
also ”banana republics.”¶ It emerged that Black, a devout family man, had bribed the Honduran president,
Oswaldo Lopez Arellano, with $1.25m to encourage him to pull out of a banana cartel which opposed United
Fruit. The story was about to come out in the US press. United Fruit’s Central American plantations were also struggling
with hurricane damage and a new banana disease. Facing disgrace and failure, Black took his own life. His death was
shocking, not least because he had the reputation of a highly moral man. Wall Street was outraged, the company’s shares
crashed and regulators seized its books to prevent ”its further violation of the law”. The company subsequently
disappeared from public view and was seemingly erased from the collective mind.¶ United Fruit may no longer
exist, but its legacy on world affairs endures. Its activities in Cuba, where it was seen as a
symbol of US imperialism, were significant in the rise of Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution of
the late 1950s. Its participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, in a vain attempt to overthrow
Castro, led to the Cuban missile crisis. As the world stood on the brink of nuclear holocaust ,
few could have imagined it had anything to do with bananas .¶ United Fruit began life in the 1870s
when Minor Cooper Keith, a wealthy young New Yorker, started growing bananas as a business sideline, alongside a
railway line he was building in Costa Rica. Both ventures took off, and by 1890 he was married to the daughter of a former
president of Costa Rica and owned vast banana plantations on land given to him by the state. The bananas were shipped
to New Orleans and Boston, where demand soon began to outstrip supply. ¶ Keith teamed up with Andrew Preston, a
Boston importer, and in 1899 they formed United Fruit. Bananas sold well for their tropical cachet: they were exotic, a
luxury only affordable to the rich. But the rapidly rising output of United Fruit’s plantations brought down prices. The
company created a mass market in the industrial cities of the US north-east and Midwest. The
once bourgeois banana became positively proletarian.
Runaway multinational corporations make extinction inevitable –
Latian American debt is key
Robinson, 2008 (William I. Robinson, professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, “Latin
America and Global Capitalism: A Critical Globalization Perspective” pg. xii-xiii)
The truth, as Hegel said, is in the whole. That said, if there is any one caveat to highlight here, it is that in a slim volume
such as this simplification is unavoidable. I can only shine a spotlight on a select few of the trees that make up the forest
and must inevitably omit entirely a look at other trees, no matter how much they may be integral to the forest. In the end,
any intellectual endeavor is open-ended: a work in progress. My approach—to look at Latin America as a whole—
inevitably understates complexity and divergence and overstates the extent to which general statements can be made.
There is no single, homogenous Latin America. Nonetheless, the exercise remains valid—
indeed, useful and vital—insofar as there are underlying structural shifts that have produced clear
region-wide patterns of change. There is a general pattern across all of Latin America of transition to
global capitalism, even if each country and region has experienced this transition on the basis of its own particular
constellation of social forces, historical circumstances, and contingent variables. I am concerned in the present study with
identifying this underlying unity among varied patterns of change, with extrapolating from divergent experiences to
uncover these general patterns and categories of events—such as the spread of nontraditional exports, the rise of
transnational capitalists from among the region's dominant groups, the debt crisis and the preponderance of
global financial markets, and the upsurge of new resistance movements across the region. These
general patterns point to underlying causal processes of capitalist globalization. Returning to the dual
themes of crisis and critical globalization studies, there can be little doubt that we are living in troubling times
in the "global village." The system of global capitalism that now engulfs the entire planet is
in crisis . There is consensus among scientists that we are on the precipice of ecological holocaust,
including the mass extinction of species; the impending collapse of agriculture in major
producing areas; the meltdown of polar ice caps; the phenomenon of global warming; and the
contamination of the oceans, food stock, water supply, and air. Social inequalities have spiraled
out of control, and the gap between the global rich and the global poor has never been as acute as it is in the early
twenty-first century. While absolute levels of poverty and misery expand around the world under a new globalsocial apartheid, the richest 20 percent of humanity received in 2000 more than 85 percent of the world's wealth while the
remaining 80 percent of humanity had to make do with less than 15 percent of the wealth, according to the United
Nation's oft-cited annual Human Development Report (UNDP, 2000). Driven by the imperatives of over accumulation
and transnational
social control, global elites have increasingly turned to authoritarianism,
militarization, and war to sustain the system . Many political economists concur that a global economic
collapse is possible, even probable. In times such as these intellectuals are called upon to engage
in a critical analytical and theoretical understanding of global society: to contribute to an
understanding of history and social change that may elucidate the inner workings of the
prevailing order and the causal processes at work in that order that generate crisis. They are also called upon to expose
the vested interests bound up with the global social order, the discourses through which those interests are articulated,
and the distinct alternatives to the extant order that counterhegemonic agents put forward. Intellectual production
is always a collective process. Let us not lose sight of the social and historical character of intellectual labor.
All those scholars who engage in such labor or make knowledge claims are organic intellectuals in the
sense that studying the world is itself a social act, committed by agents with a definite
relationship to the social order. Intellectual labor is social labor; its practitioners are social actors; and the
products of its labor are not neutral or disinterested. In recent years I have proposed a rationale and minimal guidelines
for critical globalization studies and have called on intellectuals to "exercise a preferential option for the majority in global
society" (Robinson, 2006c). Globalization is not a neutral process. It involves winners and losers
and new relations of power and domination. We need organic intellectuals capable of theorizing the
changes that have taken place in the system of capitalism, in this epoch of globalization, and of providing
to popular majorities these theoretical insights as inputs for their real-world struggles to
develop alternative social relationships and an alternative social logic—the logic of majorities—to that
of the market and of transnational capital. In other words, critical globalization studies has to be
capable of inspiring emancipatory action, of bringing together multiple publics in developing
programs that integrate theory and practice .
Topicality
“Economic Engagement”
“Economic engagement” with Latin America takes three forms: (1)
foreign aid, (2) debt relief, and (3) opening new markets
Sullivan, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, 2008
(Daniel, “Deepening U.S. Economic Engagement with Latin America,” http://20012009.state.gov/e/eeb/rls/rm/2008/106426.htm)
This afternoon, however, I want to focus on the positive story over the last eight years–the
continued broadening and deepening of the United State’s economic relationship with Latin
America and the world–and the need to continue to work to enhance those links to ensure that
our economies continue to prosper.
I want to talk specifically about our economic engagement with Latin America and put that
engagement in the context of the Bush Administration’s broader economic development and
trade initiatives. We believe we have an extremely strong record in these areas, although it is not
an element of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy record that gets much attention from the
media.
In 2002, the President laid out the intellectual framework for our international economic and
development policy in the U.S. National Security Strategy. A key element of this strategy was to
“ignite a new era of global economic growth through free markets and free trade, and to expand
the circle of development by opening societies and building the infrastructure of democracy.”
Over the last seven years, we have worked steadily to implement this vision using a variety of
tools. We refer to this as our Total Economic Engagement, or TEE strategy, using in a
coordinated manner all elements of our economic policy and development tools to foster
economic growth with key countries and regions of the world. This strategy has had a positive
impact in many areas of the world. I want to highlight three broad initiatives of our TEE strategy
that have had a positive impact in our Hemisphere.
First, we have revolutionized our approach to development assistance. In 2002 world leaders
gathered at Monterrey, Mexico and agreed to significantly increase development assistance,
while developing countries would focus on implementing more responsible economic policies.
To implement this “new compact” for development, the Bush Administration–with bipartisan
support in Congress–has dramatically increased U.S. official development assistance (ODA). In
fact, the Bush Administration has launched the largest ODA increase since the Marshall Plan,
and we met our Monterrey Commitment to increase ODA by 50% three years early.
The numbers speak for themselves. In the last year of the Clinton Administration, U.S. ODA
averaged about $10 billion. Between 2001 and 2006, it has averaged about $22 billion. This
historic increase has manifested itself in different ways. For example, the Bush Administration
has quadrupled our development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa.
U.S. funding to combat HIV/AIDS under the President’s PEPFAR initiative will exceed $18 billion
over the initiative’s first five years. This amount is as much as the rest of the world’s governments
combined. And for the next five years, the President has requested an additional $30 billion.
Already, PEPFAR is saving lives and bringing hope to millions afflicted with HIV/AIDS.
We also have launched a five-year, $1.2 billion program to combat malaria and we continue to
provide more than half of all global food aid.
Under our Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) initiative, we have further implemented the
Monterrey Consensus by working in partnership with recipient governments to establish
assistance compacts that focus on their key priorities. At the same time, the MCC supports only
governments that rule justly, invest in people, and promote economic freedom. In this way, we
have generated an “MCC effect” that spurs MCC and even non-MCC recipients to undertake
responsible and effective economic policies.
This record of revolutionizing development assistance has been a key part of our engagement
with Latin America. For example, with strong bipartisan support, U.S. foreign assistance to the
region has nearly doubled since the start of this Administration from $862 million in fiscal 2001 to
over $1.5 billion in fiscal 2008.
The United States has committed nearly $1 billion in aid to El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua,
Paraguay, Guyana and Peru’s MCC Compacts and threshold programs. This MCC engagement
focuses on working with these countries to eliminate corruption, promote transparency, improve
health care and education, and build infrastructure to connect people, businessmen and farmers
to national and international markets.
A second element of this strategy that I would like to highlight is debt relief. The Bush
Administration has provided strong global leadership on debt relief by supporting two major
initiatives -- the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief
Initiative (MDRI)–that are expected to provide over $110 billion in debt relief over time to 33
heavily-indebted poor countries.
Latin America has been an important part of this debt relief strategy. Since the beginning of
the Bush Administration, we have led efforts through international financial institutions to provide
more than $17 billion in debt relief to the poorest countries in the region.
A third element of our TEE strategy that I would like to highlight has been to open markets–
bilaterally, regionally and globally. The President’s intense focus on promoting open markets and
free trade has taken many forms.
Advantage One – Ext.
Racism – Ext.
Racism in Latin America was in part due to the United Fruit
Company’s desire to control masses of people and their cultures
Ryan 12 – Carolyne Ryan Review of Colby, Jason M., The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in
Central America. H-Empire, H-Net Reviews. November, 2012. Online: http://www.h net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=37515
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Colby focuses on the United Fruit Company as his main corporate case study, and he chooses Costa Rica and Guatemala as his primary national case
the United Fruit Company imported
labor control strategies learned in North America–he highlights labor segmentation or division between racial groups of workers–and adapted
them to Central American and Caribbean circumstances in order to “play one race against the
other” (p. 6). In Costa Rica and Guatemala, United Fruit hired West Indian laborers, whose racial differences from Hispanic workers undermined united labor organizing in
studies, though he also sets these cases in Central American and Caribbean context. Colby argues, in brief, that
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but which also contributed by the 1920s to a wave of Hispanic nationalism redolent with anti-black xenophobia and anti-
United Fruit was forced to come to terms by the mid twentieth century
with the same anti-black racism and Hispanic nationalism that it had helped to create ; fears that had once
imperialist sentiment. Ironically, Colby argues,
strengthened its empire now undermined its power as Central American nations associated United Fruit with black immigration and resisted the company’s attempts to gain more
land and control.
American Domination / Imperialism – Ext.
American supremacy in the Caribbean gave way to an
accommodating political model for the expansion of American
companies, which fostered repressive regimes and poor economic
conditions.
Bucheli, Marcelo. 2006. Associate Professor Department of Business Administration University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Good dictator, bad dictator: United Fruit Company and¶ Economic Nationalism in Central America in the Twentieth Century”
http://www.business.illinois.edu/Working_Papers/papers/06-0115.pdf
By the 1930s United Fruit had consolidated its power as the world’s major banana ¶ producing
and marketing company. The company, established in 1900 after the merger of several banana, steamship, and railroad companies eliminated all its competitors ¶
through aggressive acquisitions or merciless price wars. From the 1920s, United Fruit ¶ controlled more than 70 per cent of
the banana business followed far behind by the New ¶ Orleans-based Standard Fruit Company. ¶ United Fruit created its “Banana
Empire” during times of unchallenged American ¶ political supremacy in the Caribbean. In the
early 20th century, the Central American and ¶ Caribbean countries gradually fell under the
American economic and political sphere ¶ after the US paid some of these countries’ foreign debt with European powers, some of ¶ the secured with
customs collections. This operation shifted the region from the sterling ¶ area into the dollar area, securing US economic hegemony.xii In their reports on Central ¶ America, the British could not
avoid acknowledging their lack of power to deter the ¶ increasing American influence in the region.xiii In addition in 1907, the US organized a ¶ conference in Washington where the Central
American republics signed the General ¶ Treaty of Peace and Amity in which the countries committed themselves to nonintervention in their neighbors affairs, constitutional reforms prohibiting reelections, and ¶ non-recognition of non-elected governments.xiv Although the democratic elements of the ¶ treaty were largely ignored, it consolidated the US position as the only power in the ¶
The overwhelming American dominance in the region led the Central American ¶
politicians to follow an accommodating policy towards the United States. The different ¶ republics
competed for an American approval by repressing left-wing opposition or ¶ blocking any social
reform that would threaten the privileges of the traditional upper ¶ classes, while at the same time
opened their doors to American investment. This political model of accommodation inevitably
led to the creation of repressive regimes and poor ¶ economic conditions for the majority
of the population.xv¶ United States also achieved its political preeminence in Central America
by direct ¶ military intervention. Whenever one of the American ally regimes or American interests
¶ was in danger, the US did not dither about sending its armed forces, without fearing ¶ serious
confrontation. Before 1945, the US had already invaded Honduras (1903, 1907, ¶ 1912, 1919, 1924), the Dominican Republic (1903, 1914,
1916), Haiti (1914, 1915), ¶ Nicaragua (1907, 1909, 1915), Cuba (1906, 1912, 1917), Panama (1912, 1918, 1925), ¶ Guatemala (1920), and El Salvador (1932).xvi
The Caribbean had become an American ¶ Mare Nostrum giving the US companies the
confidence to expand their business in that ¶ region. ¶ The political process that assured the
American political domination in Central ¶ America and the Caribbean was done simultaneously to
what Mira Wilkins calls the ¶ “spillover” of American companies into that region. According to Wilkins, after the ¶
Caribbean Basin. ¶
Spanish-American war (1898), the American companies started operating in Mexico, ¶ Central America, and the Caribbean as if they were natural extensions of the United ¶ States.xvii In addition
to these favorable political conditions, United Fruit enjoyed an ¶ ever-growing demand for bananas in a tariff free system in the US that encouraged ¶ increasing investments in the producing
areas.xviii
United Fruit created a hatred for the US in Latin America and
contributed to the factors creating the Cuban missile crisis
Chapman ’07 Peter Chapman, author of “Jungle Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution”, a
narrative history of the United Fruit Company, “Rotten Fruit,” 5/15/2007, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/778739c4-f86911db-a940-000b5df10621.html#axzz2ZFJYsS7z
Despite its ugly reputation, United Fruit often made philanthropic gestures. The hapless Eli Black played a part in coining
the term ”corporate social responsibility” when, in reference to earthquake relief sent to Nicaragua in 1972, he extolled the
company’s deeds as ”our social responsibility”. And in the 1930s, Sam Zemurray donated part of his fortune to a
children’s clinic in New Orleans. He later gave $1m to the city’s Tulane University to finance ”Middle American” research;
he also funded a Harvard professorship for women. Philanthropy, however, did not prevent United Fruit’s
abuses, and, in the 1950s, the US government decided it had to act. The company’s activities had caused
such anti-US feeling in Latin America that leftwing revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro and Che
Guevara had prospered. And so Washington began to take away some of United Fruit’s land.¶ Ironically,
Castro had benefited from the presence of United Fruit in Cuba. His father, a sugar planter, leased land from
the company, and had made enough money to afford a good upbringing for his children. Guevara had fought
both United Fruit and the CIA during the Guatemalan coup; he maintained thereafter that Latin America had no choice but
”armed struggle”. At New Year 1959, Castro and Guevara seized power in Cuba and kicked out the USsupported regime of Fulgencio Batista.¶ Like an ailing dictator, United Fruit lashed out - and nearly took the
world with it. In 1961, it lent part of its Great White Fleet to the CIA and Cuban exiles in the US who
were plotting to overthrow Castro. When the Bay of Pigs invasion failed, Castro, fearing another
attack, ushered in armaments from the Soviet Union, prompting the missile crisis of 1962 .
United Fruit bribed their way into the school system to preach the
benefits of bananas, assumed it was their duty of the ‘intelligent
minority’ to control the ‘unthinking group mind,’ and has funded
coups and overthrown governments all to maintain its control
Chapman ’07 Peter Chapman, author of “Jungle Capitalists: A Story of Globalisation, Greed and Revolution”, a
narrative history of the United Fruit Company, “Rotten Fruit,” 5/15/2007, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/778739c4-f86911db-a940-000b5df10621.html#axzz2ZFJYsS7z
Although the banana was diseased, United Fruit marketed it as a product that exemplified good health. Banana diseases
did not affect humans, and the fruit was said to be the cure for many ills: obesity, blood pressure, constipation - even
depression. In 1929, United Fruit set up its own ”education department”, which supplied US schools
with teaching kits extolling the benefits of the banana and the good works of the company. Meanwhile,
United Fruit’s ”home economics” department showered housewives with banana recipes. ¶ One of United Fruit’s most
successful advertising campaigns began in 1944, designed to boost the banana’s profile after its scarcity during the war. It
featured Senorita Chiquita Banana, a cartoon banana who danced and sang in an exuberant Latin style. Senorita Chiquita
bore a close resemblance to Carmen Miranda, the Brazilian entertainer who, in her ”tutti-frutti” hat, wowed Hollywood at
the time. Sales soon regained prewar levels.¶ By the 1960s, the banana had become an inseparable
accompaniment to the morning cereal of most American children. And today, in countries such as the US and
Britain, it has ousted the apple as the most popular fruit. In the UK, figures indicate that more than 95 per cent of
households buy bananas each week, and that more money is spent on them than on any other supermarket item, apart
from petrol and lottery tickets.¶ Over the years, United Fruit fought hard for low taxes and light regulation. By the
beginning of the 20th century, troublesome anti-trust laws had been passed in the US to crack down on business
behaviour such as price-fixing and other monopolistic practices. Taxes on large corporations were increased to
fund welfare benefits in the US and fully fledged welfare states in Europe. But, with a centre of operations far from the
lawmakers of Washington DC, United Fruit largely avoided all this.¶ The company also gained a
reputation as being ruthless when crossed, and acted to remove governments that did not comply
with its wishes. United Fruit had first shown its tough nature in the invasion of Honduras in 1911, which was
planned by Sam ”The Banana Man” Zemurray, a business partner of United Fruit who later headed the company.
Efforts by Zemurray and United Fruit to set up production in Honduras had been blocked by the Honduran government,
which was fearful of the power it might wield. United Fruit was not so easily deterred. Zemurray financed an invasion, led
by such enterprising types as ”General” (self-appointed) Lee Christmas and freelance trouble-shooter Guy ”Machine Gun”
Molony. Thanks to United Fruit, many more exercises in ”regime change” were carried out in the
name of the banana.¶ In 1941, the company hired a new consultant, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward
Bernays, who had adapted the early disciplines of psychoanalysis to the marketplace. Bernays is known as the ”father of
public relations” following his seminal 1928 book, Propaganda, in which he argued that it was the duty of the
”intelligent minority” of society to manipulate the unthinking ”group mind ”. This, Bernays asserted, was
for the sake of freedom and democracy.¶ United Fruit had become concerned about its image. In Central America, it
was commonly known as el pulpo (the octopus) - its tentacles everywhere. In the US, United Fruit’s territories
were seen as troubled and forbidding. Under Bernays’ guidance, the company began issuing a steady flow of
information to the media about its work, rebranding the region as ”Middle America ”.¶ In 1954,
Bernays exercised his manipulative powers to get rid of the Guatemalan government . Democratically
elected, it had taken some of United Fruit’s large areas of unused land to give to peasant farmers.
Bernays’ response was to call newspaper contacts who might be amenable to the company view.
Journalists were sent on ”fact finding” missions to Central America and, in particular, Guatemala, where they chased false
stories of gunfire and bombs. In dispatches home, Guatemala became a place gripped by ”communist
terror”.¶ The company looked, too, to friends in high places, both in the corridors of power and in the offices where the
big decisions were made. During the Guatemalan crisis, John Foster Dulles, one of the world’s most esteemed
statesmen, was secretary of state. His brother, Allen Dulles, was head of the CIA. Both were former legal
advisers to United Fruit. Together, the Dulles brothers orchestrated the coup that overthrew
Guatemala’s government in 1954
United Fruit Overvalued – Ext.
United Fruit placed an insane value on their land
Ashby ’12 Dr. Timothy Ashby, a leading expert on international compliance and trade, attorney
Dr. Timothy Ashby has been involved in assisting governments and companies with postcommunist transitions since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Currently the CEO of Federal Regulatory
Compliance Services, an international risk mitigation consultancy, “Investing in Cuba: Another
Vietnam?”
Also in 1960, during one of the largest of the multi-phased expropriations of sugar lands, the United
Fruit Company [now Chiquita Brands] informed the Cuban government that it valued its nationalized
land at approximately USD 90 million. In reply, the Cuban government asserted that the United
Fruit lands were worth instead approximately USD 17 million (in 1960 US dollars). The Cubans therefore
deemed the property to be worth approximately 19% or less than one-fifth of the amount claimed by the original
owner.¶ ¶ Spain’s USD 350 million in claims were eventually settled for about USD 40 million in 1994.¶ Incidentally, of
the past 43 claims settlement programs concluded by the US government, very few provided
compensation for the full certified amount of the confiscated asset – and none paid the full amount
of interest. Also, with the exception of Vietnam, none of the post-1975 international settlement agreements provide for
any interest – not even nominal interest
Hypocrisy – 2AC
Ashby ’12 Dr. Timothy Ashby, a leading expert on international compliance and trade, attorney
Dr. Timothy Ashby has been involved in assisting governments and companies with postcommunist transitions since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Currently the CEO of Federal Regulatory
Compliance Services, an international risk mitigation consultancy, “Investing in Cuba: Another
Vietnam?”
As you probably know, sovereign states can expropriate the assets of foreigners, but they have to
pay compensation. Ironically, the US expropriated the assets of exiled Tories during the
American Revolution and never paid a penny of compensation, even though the Canadian
descendants of those people have sought payment up until recently.
Root Cause of Cuban Embargo
The root of the embargo is the U.S’ anger at Cuba for the 1960
expropriation
IBP, USA 01 – International Business Publications, May 1, 2001, “Cuba: Foreign Policy & Government Guide,
Volume 1
Relations between the United States and Cuba deteriorated rapidly as the Cuban regime expropriated
U.S properties and moved toward adoption of a one-party communist system. In response, the United States imposed an
embargo on Cuba in October 1960, and, in response to Castro’s provocations, broke diplomatic relations on January 3, 1961. Tensions
between the two governments peaked during the 1962 missile crisis. One of the major reasons for the imposition of the
embargo was the Cuban government’s failure to compensate thousands of U.S companies and
individuals whose properties, large and small, were confiscated after the revolution. The Cuban
government specifically targeted and took properties owned by U.S nationals. Under the Cuba
claims program in the 1960’s, the U.S Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC) certified 5911 valid claims by
U.S nationals against the government of Cuba. The Castro government also took property from thousands of Cubans, some of
whom have since become U.S citizens. The United States embargo against Cuba (described in Cuba as el bloqueo, Spanish for
“the blockade”) is a commercial, economic, mental, physical, emotional, and financial embargo partially imposed on Cuba in October
1960. It was enacted after Cuba expropriated the properties of United States citizens and corporations
and it was used to strengthen to a near-total embargo in February 1962.
Root Cause of Cuban Revolution
United Fruit exploited workers and lied, and even inspired Castro’s
anti-American resentment
Kushner ’03 Rachel Kushner, contributor to the anthology She’s a Bad Motorcycle: Writers on Riding (Thunder’s Mouth, 2002), and
her art writing has recently appeared in Artforum, Art and Text, the Believer, and Grand Street. She is currently working on a novel about
Americans living in pre-revolutionary Cuba, “Leftovers / Exploring Cuba’s Sugar Bowl,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 11 Flight Summer 2003,
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/11/kushner.php
My mother, in her preteen years when she was a regular at Preston, remembers going to the United Fruit department store to purchase her
Cubans were not
the armed company guards who manned the
gates at one end of La Avenida and admitted only those nonwhites with badges proving they
worked as gardeners, butlers, cooks, or laundresses for one of the American families on the row. In its many films and
publications, the United Fruit Company claims to have paid its workers a higher salary than any Cuban-run sugar operation, and the
company insists that its employees, given housing and plots to garden, were relatively better off than the
average rural Cuban. But a former cane cutter recalls the Americans as cheap, the pay terribly
low and the labor backbreaking, and says he lived on boiled yucca during the dead season, which
lasted eight months of the year. Mill workers, relatively better off than cane cutters, could take a
draw from next season's pay to buy inflated-priced goods from the company store, but as a result
they often worked through the cane-crushing months only to receive no pay; checks arrived with stars in
place of a monetary amount, and workers joked about being "four-star generals." ¶ ¶ Fidel Castro grew up on a farm in Biran,
twenty kilometers southwest of Preston. His father Angel raised sugar cane for United Fruit, and as a teenager Fidel was
fascinated by—and excluded from—the Americans' privileged lifestyle. In speeches, he still
mentions the company's vast enclave, which seems to have had a great impact in shaping his
anti-Americanism.
first Little Lady box set: soap, lotion, eau de cologne, and shampoo. And she often swam in the company pool.
allowed in the Preston swimming pool; rather, they remember
Solvency
Debt Forgiveness Good
Debt cancellation is the first step to dismantling the capitalist and
imperialist system set up via European domination
The South Centre ’06, an intergovernmental policy think tank of developing countries established by a treaty at
Geneva, January 1, 2006, “Third World Debt: a Continuing Legacy of Colonialism,”
http://www.argumentations.com/Argumentations/StoryDetail_840.aspx
The economic challenge to this law of the affluent powers has gradually materialized thanks to
decolonization. Professor Louis Henkin neatly summed up the position of third world States, declaring that
international law cannot survive the decline of European domination; nor can it govern a community of nations the majority
of which are not European, do not participate in the development of the law and whose interests differ from those of the
other nations. ¶ Addressing the sixth special session of the General Assembly, in his capacity as President of the Fourth
Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, the Algerian Head of State said in this regard:¶ “It would be highly
desirable to examine the problem of the present indebtedness of the developing countries. In this
examination, we should consider the cancellation of the debt in a great number of cases and, in other
cases, refinancing on better terms as regards maturity dates.”¶ The
main consequences of the practices
described are a multiplication and exacerbation of the difficulties encountered by developing
countries. The chief victims are of course the deprived social groups, whose means of subsistence
are diminished; it seems that there is nothing to stop these populations from sinking into absolute
poverty. There is every reason to believe that the perpetuation of the developing countries’ debt is
the result of a deliberate policy, the sole purpose of which is to stifle any effort to improve the
economic and social situation of these countries and their populations .¶ There can be no doubt that the
already frail economies of the developing countries will be hit harder still by international financial
imbalances; these imbalances will increase so long as the structures of the world economy are characterized by
unequal trade relations. Moreover, everything suggests that if the status quo is maintained, debt will become a
formidable stick with which to bring developing countries to heel, while providing their ruling
classes with a means of safeguarding their position and serving as advocates - if not architects - of
economic policies that will have catastrophic implications for the vast majority of the world’s
poor populations.¶ The current debt management process will also enable the transnational
corporations to put paid to any notions that the debtor countries might have about affirming their
sovereignty and determining their own path to development. Because of the role it plays nowadays, debt
is a terrifying instrument of domination that transnational companies wield against developing
countries to dangerous effect. Mention must be made here of the failure of the Bretton Woods institutions to acquit
themselves of their primary task of creating and maintaining a balance among the various actors in international economic
life in the higher interests of humanity. This failure, coupled with the policies of the transnational corporations
and the selfishness of the developed States, has led to the creation of two harmful and
destructive practices, namely, structural adjustment programmes and, more recently, the
devaluation of developing countries’ currencies.¶ These are the conditions in which globalization
of the economy is taking place, a process that, in addition to marginalizing the poor, is a source of
imbalances constituting an insurmountable obstacle to the establishment of a new world
economic and social order. ¶ It should be recalled that cancellation of the debt of colonized countries was raised
long ago in New Delhi, at the Second Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. At the 58th
plenary meeting, Mr. Louis Nègre, Minister of Finance of Mali, said that many countries could legitimately
have contested the legal validity of debts contracted under the auspices of foreign powers; adding that, beyond
purely legal considerations and rightful claims, he wished to ask the developed creditor countries, as a test
of their goodwill, to cancel all debts contracted during the colonial period by interests that were
essentially not their own, and for whose servicing their States were unjustly responsible.
South Africa forgave Cuba’s debt, the U.S should do the same
Nicholas 10 – writer for the Liberation Newspaper, December 19, 2010, “South Africa to forgive Cuba’s debt”
http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/south-africa-to-forgive.html
Pres. Jacob Zuma of South Africa announced recently that his country would provide a $30 million
credit package to Cuba. He also stated that South Africa would forgive the $161 million debt of the island
country. Zuma’s opponents have spoken out against this aid, claiming that it will not help the South African economy. South
Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers, however, supports the debt forgiveness. Zuma, who wound
up a two-day state visit on Dec. 7, announced other measures to boost trade and investment between the two countries, including
$14.6 million from the African Renaissance Fund. South Africa gave Cuba seeds and fertilizer to help restore Cuban agricultural
production after the 2008 hurricane. Cuba has also helped South Africa by opposing the apartheid government and sending health
workers after the fall of apartheid. South Africa has stood against the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba.
Cuba would not need this help if U.S. imperialism was not constantly trying to crush Cuba.
Debt is a colonial tool used to inhibit human rights and prevent the
sustainable development of countries mired in human misery, famine
and disease
The South Centre ’06, an intergovernmental policy think tank of developing countries established by a treaty at
Geneva, January 1, 2006, “Third World Debt: a Continuing Legacy of Colonialism,”
http://www.argumentations.com/Argumentations/StoryDetail_840.aspx
The burden of debt renders the numerous problems affecting third world countries
insurmountable and is thus a serious impediment to the realization of all human rights .¶ ¶ For almost
half a century, the developing countries have been confronted with grave economic, political and
social problems that pose a danger to the very existence of their populations and consequently
prevent individual human rights from being realized or protected. These problems, and this situation as a
whole, are the result of the debt owed by these countries and the related debt-servicing requirements.¶ Debt
has thus become not only a means of pushing these countries into extreme poverty, but also a
tool for domination and exploitation, phenomena that one might have supposed to have
disappeared along with colonialism. Worse still, it has facilitated a transition from public to private
colonization, virtually a return to slavery as we knew it in the nineteenth century.¶ Debt prevents
any form of sustainable human development, political stability or security.¶ Debt, this scourge of the
twenty-first century, obviously has an adverse impact on human rights, both collective and individual. Owing to its adverse
effects, the debt of third world peoples remains an insurmountable obstacle to economic and social development. It is at
the roots of the extreme poverty with which billions of individuals are struggling . It should be
remembered that 20 per cent of the world’s population possess and enjoy the world’s wealth, while
80 per cent are mired in misery, famine and disease, held captive by negative debt management
and chronic imbalances in the world economy.
International law has organized a colonial system in which debt is
multiplied as countries try to pay it off, forever trapping them with the
burden
The South Centre ’06, an intergovernmental policy think tank of developing countries established by a treaty at
Geneva, January 1, 2006, “Third World Debt: a Continuing Legacy of Colonialism,”
http://www.argumentations.com/Argumentations/StoryDetail_840.aspx
The history of third
world debt is the history of a massive siphoning-off by international finance of the
resources of the most deprived peoples. This process is designed to perpetuate itself thanks to a
diabolical mechanism whereby debt replicates itself on an ever greater scale, a cycle that can be
broken only by cancelling the debt.¶ The problem of debt must be examined from a historical perspective while, at the same
time, bringing out its legal aspects, particularly its origins as perceived in positive international law, which now sees the debt as illegitimate.¶
The developing
countries’ debt is partly the result of the unjust transfer to them of the debts of the
colonizing States, imposed on the newly independent States when they acceded to international
sovereignty: in 1960, the external public debt of these countries already amounted to US$ 59 billion. With the additional strain of an
interest rate unilaterally set at 14 per cent, this debt increased rapidly. Before they had even had time to
organize their economies and get them up and running, the new debtors were already saddled
with a heavy burden of debt.¶ Thus, for example, the Lester Pearson Commission estimated that by 1977 debt-servicing alone,
i.e. the annual repayment of principal and payment of interest, exceeded the gross amount of new lending by 20 per cent in Africa and 30
per cent in Latin America. ¶ In other words, the
new loans that a developing State felt obliged to enter into for
development purposes could not be used for development and were not even enough to cover
the ¶ servicing of existing debt.¶ Developing States will in future have regularly to take on new debt, not
for investment, but for repayment. This situation is the result of the application of an unjust system of
international law. The legal order created by the old international society may have appeared neutral or impartial, but in reality it led
to failure of the law to intervene, enabling the strong to crush the weak . It was in fact a permissive legal
system, a colonial system institutionalized at the 1885 Conference of Berlin on the Congo .
2AC & Misc.
AT: QPQ CP
Cuba has historically refused to accept conditions for debt relief they don’t want to risk social-spending cuts
The Economist ’01 The Economist Magazine, May 17 2001 http://www.economist.com/node/624002
A third problem concerns Cuba's refusal to accept any conditions in return for debt relief. Although
Cuba belongs to the World Trade Organisation, it is not a member of any international lending
body, such as the IMF or World Bank. Though the government has stuck rigidly to its own target for the fiscal deficit (of less than 3% of
GDP), Mr Castro refuses to contemplate any plan that would result in social-spending cuts in a
country proud of its education and health systems.
Demanding accommodations from Cuba replicates the worst
practices of the United Fruit Company— and justified direct military
intervention—
Bucheli, Marcelo. 2006. Associate Professor Department of Business Administration University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Good dictator, bad dictator: United Fruit Company and¶ Economic Nationalism in Central America in the Twentieth Century”
http://www.business.illinois.edu/Working_Papers/papers/06-0115.pdf
By the 1930s United Fruit had consolidated its power as the world’s major banana ¶ producing
and marketing company. The company, established in 1900 after the merger of several banana, steamship, and railroad companies eliminated all its competitors ¶
through aggressive acquisitions or merciless price wars. From the 1920s, United Fruit ¶ controlled more than 70 per cent of
the banana business followed far behind by the New ¶ Orleans-based Standard Fruit Company. ¶ United Fruit created its “Banana
Empire” during times of unchallenged American ¶ political supremacy in the Caribbean. In the
early 20th century, the Central American and ¶ Caribbean countries gradually fell under the
American economic and political sphere ¶ after the US paid some of these countries’ foreign debt with European powers, some of ¶ the secured with
customs collections. This operation shifted the region from the sterling ¶ area into the dollar area, securing US economic hegemony.xii In their reports on Central ¶ America, the British could not
avoid acknowledging their lack of power to deter the ¶ increasing American influence in the region.xiii In addition in 1907, the US organized a ¶ conference in Washington where the Central
American republics signed the General ¶ Treaty of Peace and Amity in which the countries committed themselves to nonintervention in their neighbors affairs, constitutional reforms prohibiting reelections, and ¶ non-recognition of non-elected governments.xiv Although the democratic elements of the ¶ treaty were largely ignored, it consolidated the US position as the only power in the ¶
The overwhelming American dominance in the region led the Central American ¶
politicians to follow an accommodating policy towards the United States. The different ¶
republics competed for an American approval by repressing left-wing opposition or ¶
blocking any social reform that would threaten the privileges of the traditional upper ¶
classes, while at the same time opened their doors to American investment. This political
model of accommodation inevitably led to the creation of repressive regimes and poor ¶
economic conditions for the majority of the population.xv¶ United States also achieved its
political preeminence in Central America by direct ¶ military intervention. Whenever one of
the American ally regimes or American interests ¶ was in danger, the US did not dither about
sending its armed forces, without fearing ¶ serious confrontation. Before 1945, the US had
already invaded Honduras (1903, 1907, ¶ 1912, 1919, 1924), the Dominican Republic (1903, 1914, 1916), Haiti (1914, 1915), ¶ Nicaragua (1907, 1909, 1915), Cuba
(1906, 1912, 1917), Panama (1912, 1918, 1925), ¶ Guatemala (1920), and El Salvador (1932).xvi The Caribbean had become an
American ¶ Mare Nostrum giving the US companies the confidence to expand their business in
that ¶ region. ¶ The political process that assured the American political domination in Central ¶
America and the Caribbean was done simultaneously to what Mira Wilkins calls the ¶ “spillover” of
American companies into that region. According to Wilkins, after the ¶ Spanish-American war (1898), the American companies started operating in Mexico, ¶
Caribbean Basin. ¶
Central America, and the Caribbean as if they were natural extensions of the United ¶ States.xvii In addition to these favorable political conditions, United Fruit enjoyed an ¶ ever-growing demand
for bananas in a tariff free system in the US that encouraged ¶ increasing investments in the producing areas.xviii
AT: Eliminate Claims Entirely CP
Perm – the CP is simply an instance of the plan – you can reduce to
zero
American Heritage Dictionary http://www.answers.com/topic/zero
zero out
To eliminate (a budget or budget item) by cutting off funding.
To reduce to zero.
AT: Radical Anti-Capitalist Alternatives
Perm – Do Both – the 1AC carries on the proletariat fight against
foreign corporations stretching back to the colonial period
Huizer 78 – Gerrit Huizer, Director of the former Third World Centre (currently the Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen CIDIN) at the Radboud University of Nijmegen in The Netherland, The Role of Peasant Organizations in the Struggle Against Multinational
Corporations: The Cuban Case, page 339
In some cases resistance to change by the corporations and their increasingly violent reaction against legitimate demands has led to an escalation to the
peasant and worker resistance against them. The resistance of the peasants organized by Viet Minh against Michelin and other foreign powers is probably
the most notorious, but also certain peasant movement, e.g., in the Philippenes and Cuba, which later became more or less violent revolutionary
movements, should be mentioned. The
process by which moderate, legalistic, peasant interest groups, in their demand for justice
an outright revolutionary movement as a reaction to the intransigence of the
established elite and the corporations is well illustrated in the case of Cuba. As in several other Latin
American countries, in Cuba the struggle of peasants against large estates and corporations has a tradition which goes
back to the colonial period. In Cuba it started particularly after the introduction of railways around 1830 made the cultivation of sugar cane
and recognition of rights, became
profitable. The owners of sugar estates then started to extend their lands aggressively at the cost of the small tobacco-producing farmers, through eviction
the armed struggle for independence
started in 1868, the peasants joined this movement. Although this struggle was repressed, many peasants
and usurpation. Peasant resistance was initially sporadic and isolated. When, however,
participated again in the Mambi army, in the revolution 1895 against the Spanish regime. As a counteraction the peasants were “concentrated” by the
colonial regime in villages; because they
lost even more lands through this form of eviction, they joined more massively
The Americans took more and more power in
the liberation struggle until it ended because of the American intervention.
Cuba, replacing the colonial forces. Instead of institutionalizing the armed forces of the liberation as a national army, as was proposed by the Cubans,
they created the Guardia Rural (Rural guards) with elements that were not identified with the peasantry. Supported by this Guardia Rural, the
process of eviction of peasants from communal lands and small private plots went on, creating more and
more plantations in the hands of American companies or individuals.
AT: Immigration Reform DA
No backlash – Chiquita needs immigration reform to survive
Warner, CBS reporter, October 29 2010
(Melanie, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-44041860/undercover-boss-chiquita-ceoagrees-with-stephen-colbert----americans-dont-want-farm-jobs/)
In an interview with BNET, Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, who appears on CBS' Undercover
Boss this Sunday, has laid out a compelling, and often overlooked, argument for why we need a
plan for comprehensive immigration reform. Without Hispanic immigrants, he says, Chiquita
would stop functioning.
Pushing for reform no matter what
Warner, CBS reporter, October 29 2010
(Melanie, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-44041860/undercover-boss-chiquita-ceoagrees-with-stephen-colbert----americans-dont-want-farm-jobs/)
Aguirre, who spent 24 years at P&G before coming to Chiquita, says he knows there's no easy
solution to the politically charged issue of immigration, but he says it's something that desperately
needs to be addressed since much of his workforce, at least for the immediate future, is going to
be coming from Mexico, not Milwaukee.
AT: State-Focused Anything
The United Fruit Company was so powerful it stretched beyond the
state – only the 1AC confronts both state and corporation
Kepner, Charles. 1936. “The Banana Empire: A Case Study of Economic Imperialism.” Pg. 341-342
Whatever mutual assistance is rendered by the United States and the United Fruit Company to each other in attaining their respective
political and economic ends is of minor importance in comparison to the great fruit company's ability to attain its own economic ends
The banana empire is not primarily an aggregation of mutually interacting
governmental and industrial agencies, but the expansion of an economic unit to such size and power that in itself it assumes
many of the prerogatives and functions usually assumed by political states. The United
Fruit Company, rather than rely upon the State Department to pull diplomatic wires, trains its own
political representatives to deal with Caribbean governments. The corporation, which not only
monopolizes the banana trade in the most important producing regions but also owns or controls
railroads, docks, steamships, radio, housing facilities, leading wholesale and retail stores and
other enterprises, and which also controls the livelihood of many business men, farmers,
laborers and professional men, can speak with such force that politicians accede to its
will.¶ Moreover, the United Fruit Company is unquestioned lord of most of the banana industry today,
through its own economic and political strength.
since its three chief rivals have been silenced in one way or another. In 1929 it purchased the largest of these rivals, the Cuyarnel Fruit
Company. In 1931 the Atlantic sold its Jamaican and Cuban properties and ships to the Banana Company of Jamaica, Ltd., controlled by
the Standard Fruit, and Steamship Corporation, and ended the rest of its activities by going into receivership. Today the Standard, with
which Di Giorgio is now closely allied, still exists nominally as an independent firm. We have seen, however, that rather than challenge the
the United's partial
ownership of the International Railways of Central America; with its close connection with various
banks; especially the First National Bank of Boston; with Victor M. Cutter a director of the Electric
Bond and Share Company, which controls utilities in various Caribbean nations, the United Fruit
Company has strong potential allies. In the United States its subsidiary, the Fruit Dispatch Company, has excellent
United's domination it appears to work in close harmony with the banana empire.13 Moreover, with
transportation arrangements and controls much of the banana market, while clever advertising, extending even to medical, and child health
The ruler of this vast empire does not need
to run to the State Department every time it comes to loggerheads with Caribbean governments.
magazines, appeals to the imagination and support of the consuming public.
AT: Aesthetics Anything
United Fruit painted the Cuban landscape to organize an atmosphere
of dominance over the poor
Kushner ’03 Rachel Kushner, contributor to the anthology She’s a Bad Motorcycle: Writers on Riding (Thunder’s Mouth, 2002), and
her art writing has recently appeared in Artforum, Art and Text, the Believer, and Grand Street. She is currently working on a novel about
Americans living in pre-revolutionary Cuba, “Leftovers / Exploring Cuba’s Sugar Bowl,” Cabinet Magazine, Issue 11 Flight Summer 2003,
http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/11/kushner.php
At the Preston dock, company sugar boats tied in offshore and launches and pleasure yachts bobbed. A popular yachting
destination was Cayo Saetia, an uninhabited island with pristine white sand beaches that was ideal for company picnics
and fishing excursions, when United Fruit executives and their sons pulled great, dripping octopi and vermilion-hued
lobsters from its clear green water. Cayo Saetia was a former United Fruit citrus orchard, abandoned by the company
during the 1920s sugar boom, when the motto "Cane is King" was born. By the 1950s, only one remnant of
United Fruit's presence in Cayo Saetia lingered: an enormous, boarded-up plantation manager's
house, its faded exterior painted the trademark ochre yellow. ¶ Documentation as to why United Fruit
chose this particular color is scarce, but the company began using it in the late teens and early twenties,
in both Preston and nearby Banes, its other big sugar-mill town. An agricultural trade journalist named Irene Aloha Wright
visited Cayo Saetia in 1909, just before United Fruit purchased the land, and she described the
plantation manager's house as white. As the company annexed privately owned fruit and sugar
operations—exploiting opportunities in a turn-of-the-century Cuba that was newly freed from
Spanish colonial rule—the striking, easy to maintain yellow paint was a way to demarcate
acquired territories as part of the United Fruit empire. The company bought huge quantities of paint at a
wholesale price, cut it with DDT to safeguard against malaria, and then distributed it among its Cuban holdings, which by
the 1950s included 330,000 acres—over 90 percent of the arable land in the Nipe Bay region. The color branding of
company towns seems to have had many useful effects for promoting corporate ideology. For the Cuban workers, the
paint emphasized the fact that the land was entirely foreign-owned. And for the American
executives, their luxurious homes may have underscored their position at the top of the town's
pecking order, but beyond the magenta bougainvillea and white oleanders, the exterior walls of their
dwellings were United Fruit yellow, an unavoidable reminder that the good life was offered by,
and contingent upon, the graces of their powerful employer . Most people know something of United Fruit's
history and scandals, its sponsorship of Guatemala's 1954 coup, or the CEO who drove the company into bankruptcy in
the 1970s and, facing personal financial ruin and the allegation of bribing foreign governments, charged through a 44thstory office window overlooking Park Avenue. Lesser known, but exotic in its own way, is the bygone world of day-to-day
life in a sugar-mill town like Preston, whose colonial culture all but vanished in 1960, when Cuba's sugar mills were
nationalized. Memories of Preston differ dramatically by the color and class of the person who is speaking. My late
grandmother, Mary Lou Drosten, a National Lead executive's wife who came to Preston from nearby Nicaro to shop and
socialize, boasted in one of her letters of attending a ladies' luncheon hosted by the United Fruit manager's wife, a Mrs.
Smith, whose sumptuous home, my grandmother wrote, "out-Hollywoods Hollywood." Guests sat on the screened,
jalousied veranda in bentwood chairs listening to the United Fruit radio news as diffuse midday light filtered through the
wooden slats. The butler appeared with highballs as the news was ending with the usual United Fruit market quotes, and
then the women adjourned to the dining room for a lunch of duck, tender green peas, almonds, and champagne.
NEG
Pay Off Claims CP – 1NC
The United States Federal Government should implement a 10% free
on all American transactions with Cuba and use the revenues for a
settlement fund for expropriated American properties in Cuba.
It’s mutually exclusive – the plan drops the claims, the CP fulfills
them.
A settlement fund solves the case – it pays the remaining claims with
commercial taxes instead of imperialist demands on Cuba – but it
avoids appeasement and maintains credibility of the international
claims process in response to expropriation
Tomargo ’12. Mauricio J. Tomargo, 14th Chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement
Commission, recognized authority on international law with particular expertise in international
claims law and claims against foreign sovereigns, such as Iraq Claims, Cuba Claims, and Lybia
Claims, “A Process to Begin Settling American Certified Claims Against Cuba,” 2/28/12
http://www.pobletetamargo.com/the-pt-law-blog/international-claims/settle-american-claimsagainst-cuba
The current commerce and travel being transacted between Cuba and the United States
should be subjected to a fee to be used to settle the debt Cuba owes our fellow Americans
with certified claims. Settling and paying these claims will achieve a goal of both the proCuba sanctions and the anti-Cuba embargo supporters, while simultaneously removing a
significant obstacle to making progress in U.S. - Cuba relations. This proposed solution calls for
imposing at least a 10% fee on the value of all transactions between the U.S. and Cuba, including
travel, sales or transfer of goods, services, and commodities, and remittances. Funds raised from
this fee will be used to create a settlement fund at the Department of the Treasury. Americans
with certified claims can tap this settlement fund for payments to fully satisfy the debt owed to
them, including interest, in accordance with the certified claim issued to them by the Foreign
Claims Settlement Commission, at the Department of Justice
Resolving these claims is neither a pro nor anti economic sanctions proposal. It simply helps
fellow Americans, who have been forgotten in this Cuba policy debate, find justice and peace at a
time when many of them could use this compensation to find closure and start anew. There are
5,913 certified and pending American claims against the government of Cuba which are currently
valued at over $7 billion that have gone unpaid for over 50 years. These claims are based on
real and personal property expropriated by the communist government of Cuba without
compensation. These claims were all evaluated and certified by the Foreign Claims Settlement
Commission, which I chaired for eight years, under the first and second Cuba Claims Programs.
Claims programs are not designed to remain unpaid for 50 years. Frankly, having the Cuba
Claims Program go unpaid for 50 years makes a mockery of the international claims
process. Typically these programs are settled after a few years and, while it may take a little
longer, half a century sets a new and untenable precedent for future claims programs.
International standards on expropriation are key to global investment
and free trade –
DiMascio, JD from Duke University, and Pauwelyn, Professor at the Graduate Institute of
Internatioinal Development Studies in Geneva, January 2008
(NONDISCRIMINATION IN TRADE AND INVESTMENT TREATIES: WORLDS APART OR TWO
SIDES OF THE SAME COIN?, American Journal of International Law, 102 A.J.I.L. 48, Lexis)
Although national treatment provisions were included in even the earliest BITs, what mattered in
the first decades (1960s to 1980s) were rules on expropriation and other minimum standards.
National treatment in the investment context gained prominence only in the late 1990s. Developing-country hosts of
foreign investment gradually increased their domestic standards, often exceeding the original benchmark set by earlier
international minimum standards. As the treatment of domestic investors thereby rose above the "mere" international
minimum, the discipline of national treatment gained importance and attracted investors' renewed attention.
Political and economic developments since the 1980s have further induced most host countries to
liberalize their markets to FDI on their own. n109 As a result, investment disputes have shifted
from focusing on overt instances of expropriation to claims that host nations are indirectly
expropriating property or are violating national treatment obligations through the enactment of
discriminatory domestic laws. n110 This trend accelerated with the conclusion of NAFTA and can
also be seen in the increased number of investor-state arbitration cases launched against
developed countries n111 where direct expropriation or blatant violations of minimum standards
have not generally been at issue. n112
What is more, the renewed potential of national treatment as an investment discipline may actually be broader and deeper
than in the trade context. First, unlike trade law, whose national treatment obligation remains limited to the treatment of
products, national treatment in BITs [*68] covers the entire lifecycle or footprint of an investment. n113 It goes far beyond
measures that affect the products or services produced by foreign investors. It also covers the entire gamut of laws, rules,
and regulations that may affect any aspect of an investor's business. n114 Second, whereas GATT national treatment
may be losing importance with the creation of the TBT and SPS Agreements, n115 the future of national treatment in the
investment context looks brighter. According to a study by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, for example,
the "national treatment standard is perhaps the single most important standard of treatment enshrined in international
investment agreements." n116 At the same time, national treatment in BITs may often coincide with, or blur the boundary
between, itself and discrimination under another obligation commonly included in BITs: the fair and equitable treatment
standard. n117 To some extent this standard, with its focus on fairness and reasonableness, can even be seen as a
rough equivalent to the SPS and TBT Agreements in the trade context, with their focus on "necessity" and sound science.
If so, the future of national treatment in both spheres may, after all, be similarly uncertain. n118
The presence of both "fair and equitable treatment" and "national treatment" provisions in BITs
reminds us, however, that from the very beginning, protection of investors against discrimination
was a real and primordial concern in investment treaties. n119 Unlike GATT/WTO national
treatment, where discrimination is found by comparing imports with like domestic products,
investment treaties' approach to discrimination was not concerned with relative standards of
treatment. Indeed, BITs' minimum standards were designed to counteract the Calvo doctrine, and
their nondiscrimination obligations aimed at the alleged right of newly [*69] independent
developing countries to discriminate against foreign investors, especially investors of former
colonial rulers. n120
As part of the obligation to provide foreign investors "fair and equitable treatment" (as opposed to national treatment),
countries were required to refrain from discriminating. But the standard did not call for a relative comparison of domestic
and foreign investors, nor was it limited to origin-based discrimination. It was, and continues to be, a much broader
standard--potentially including such things as racial or religious discrimination, and grounded in the customary
international law on the treatment of aliens. Whereas nondiscrimination in trade law quickly focused on economy-wide
efficiency and competition, nondiscrimination in investment law originated and remains embedded in the idea of individual
fairness. For example, Article 3.1 of the Netherlands--South Africa BIT provides: "Each Contracting Party shall ensure fair
and equitable treatment of the investments of investors of the other Contracting Party and shall not impair, by
unreasonable or discriminatory measures, the operation, management, maintenance, use, enjoyment or disposal thereof
by those investors." n121 Similarly, an oft quoted definition of "fair and equitable treatment" by the NAFTA tribunal in
Waste Management puts it thus:
[D]espite certain differences of emphasis, a general standard for [NAFTA] Article 1105 [on fair
and equitable treatment] is emerging. Taken together, the S.D. Myers, Mondev, ADF and Loewen
cases suggest that the minimum standard of fair and equitable treatment is infringed by conduct
attributable to the State and harmful to the claimant if the conduct is arbitrary, grossly unfair,
unjust or idiosyncratic, is discriminatory and exposes the claimant to sectional or racial prejudice,
or involves a lack of due process leading to an outcome which offends judicial propriety . . . .
n122
In sum, trade law's focus on market access and liberalization centers national treatment in
the GATT/WTO on efficiency concerns: protecting tariff commitments against circumvention
and ensuring equal competitive opportunities to imported products. In contrast, investment law's
focus on protecting individual investors in order to attract more FDI, especially to developing
countries, focuses national treatment on providing security and fairness to individual
business operations by curtailing discriminatory abuse by local governments.
Peaceful trade solves global nuclear war
Copley News Service, 1999 (Dec 1, LN)
For decades, many children in America and other countries went to bed fearing annihilation by nuclear
war. The specter of nuclear winter freezing the life out of planet Earth seemed very real. Activists
protesting the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle apparently have forgotten that threat. The truth is that
nations join together in groups like the WTO not just to further their own prosperity, but also to forestall
conflict with other nations. In a way, our planet has traded in the threat of a worldwide nuclear war
for the benefit of cooperative global economics. Some Seattle protesters clearly fancy themselves to be in the
mold of nuclear disarmament or anti-Vietnam War protesters of decades past. But they're not. They're special-interest
activists, whether the cause is environmental, labor or paranoia about global government. Actually, most of the
demonstrators in Seattle are very much unlike yesterday's peace activists, such as Beatle John Lennon or philosopher
Bertrand Russell, the father of the nuclear disarmament movement, both of whom urged people and nations to work
together rather than strive against each other. These and other war protesters would probably approve of 135 WTO
nations sitting down peacefully to discuss economic issues that in the past might have been settled by bullets and bombs.
As long as nations are trading peacefully, and their economies are built on exports to other
countries, they have a major disincentive to wage war. That's why bringing China, a budding superpower,
into the WTO is so important. As exports to the United States and the rest of the world feed Chinese prosperity, and that
prosperity increases demand for the goods we produce, the threat of hostility diminishes. Many anti-trade protesters in
Seattle claim that only multinational corporations benefit from global trade, and that it's the everyday wage earners who
get hurt. That's just plain wrong. First of all, it's not the military-industrial complex benefiting. It's U.S. companies that
make high-tech goods. And those companies provide a growing number of jobs for Americans. In San Diego, many
people have good jobs at Qualcomm, Solar Turbines and other companies for whom overseas markets are essential. In
Seattle, many of the 100,000 people who work at Boeing would lose their livelihoods without world trade. Foreign trade
today accounts for 30 percent of our gross domestic product. That's a lot of jobs for everyday workers. Growing global
prosperity has helped counter the specter of nuclear winter. Nations of the world are learning to
live and work together, like the singers of anti-war songs once imagined. Those who care about
world peace shouldn't be protesting world trade. They should be celebrating it.
CP Solvency – 2NC
The CP pays off claims quickly – there are billions of dollars of
economic activity each year – but it avoids the perception of letting
Cuba off the hook – key to the appeasement DA
Tomargo ’12. Mauricio J. Tomargo, 14th Chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement
Commission, recognized authority on international law with particular expertise in international
claims law and claims against foreign sovereigns, such as Iraq Claims, Cuba Claims, and Lybia
Claims, “A Process to Begin Settling American Certified Claims Against Cuba,” 2/28/12
http://www.pobletetamargo.com/the-pt-law-blog/international-claims/settle-american-claimsagainst-cuba
Travel to Cuba results in money being paid to the Cuban government; as Americans pay tribute
fees to the regime every time they visit and spend money there, including a healthcare fee. In
addition, Americans send millions of dollars each year in remittances to relatives in Cuba. As you
can see, these seemingly minor exceptions to the “embargo” add up. Another consequential
exception to U.S. sanctions includes the cash sale of agricultural commodities to the Government
of Cuba by American farmers. American companies also sell medicine, medical supplies, and
telecommunications equipment to Cuba. Estimations of this commerce are hard to come by
but, according to some experts, it is likely to be valued between 1 and 2 billion dollars
annually (possibly a gross underestimation). To some degree, normal trade and commercial
relations between the U.S. and Cuba have already been restored. Cuba sends cash to the U.S.,
mostly in exchange for agricultural commodities, and such transactions are financed by
remittences and travel to Cuba; yet, the government of Cuba has not been forced to pay the
certified claims of our fellow Americans. To add insult to injury, this trade and travel uses,
and is enabled by, the stolen property of the American claimants, which is why terming this
charge on all qualifying commerce and trade a “user fee,” is appropriate. The docks, ports,
railroads, electrical grids, telephone grids, and many hotels, mines, farms, and businesses were
all expropriated by the government of Cuba from Americans and are now being used to benefit
the Cuban regime. American farmers, travel agencies, and many other U.S. businesses also
profit from this trade.
Appeasement – 2NC
The plan is a signal to the world that the U.S. will give in
Joint Corporate Committee on Cuban Claims ’06 A resource for information
pertaining to certified Cuban claims. 2006.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060814030423/http://www.certifiedcubanclaims.org/faqs.htm
Q. Why is it in the interest of the U.S. Government to insist upon a settlement of claims before trade and diplomatic
relations are restored?¶ A. If the United States resumes trade and diplomatic relations without
first resolving the claims issue, this might lead to future unlawful confiscations of
American properties without compensation. Our government should not be sending a
signal to other foreign nations that unlawful seizures of property can occur without
consequence.
Politics Links – Chiquita
Chiquita has the inside track to both parties – top Republican Jon Kyl
lobbies for them
Steiner, Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, 3/6/2013
(Keenan, http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/what-jon-kyl-wont-be-lobbying/)
Jon Kyl, the number two Senate Republican leader before retiring in January, has quickly become
an advisor to influence powerhouse Covington & Burlington, a firm that has spent nearly $100
million lobbying in the nation's capital, Sunlight's Influence Explorer shows. Kyl will be joining a
bipartisan stable of heavy hitters that includes Stuart Eizenstat, a top official in the Carter and
Clinton administrations, and Senate parliamentary wizard Marty Gold.
Technically, the powerful Arizonan will of course not be "lobbying." U.S. statute (relevant section
here) prohibits former senators from lobbying their ex-colleagues for two years.
As Sunlight has documented before, such limitations have not kept former lawmakers from taking
lucrative positions with organizations that do lobby however, positions that allow them to advise
other lobbyists on how to get things done in Congress. Here are some of the many companies on
whose behalf Kyl will "not" be lobbying:
In a year when President Obama and the Congress would like the tackle tax reform, Kyl, a
longtime member of the Senate Finance Committee, "won't" be lobbying for Qualcomm,
Covington and Burling's biggest client in 2012. The telecom company has been pushing for a tax
holiday for companies who bring their foreign earnings back to the United States.
Nor will he be contacting his colleagues on behalf of Amazon.com, which wants to avoid
proposed legislation that would allow states to collect taxes from online retailers outside of their
states, or the jet maker Bombardier, another Covington client, which is trying to avoid the closing
of a tax benefit to makers of corporate jets. President Obama continues to support ending the tax
break.
But Kyl's deep experience -- including an appointment to the failed Joint Committee on Deficit
Reduction, known as the "Supercommittee," in 2011 -- will help undoubtedly aid Covington's
"real" lobbyists on Capitol Hill.
Kyl will be involved with the firm's international practice, also advising companies from the firm's
Brussels office. Kyl was a key player in negotiations with the White House in 2010 over approval
of a new arms control treaty with Russia. The may help Covington's second biggest U.S. lobbying
client: American shareholders of Yukos, a former oil company that Russia disbanded in 2007.
Covington wants the United States government to pressure Russia to compensate the investors.
Covington represents many other companies facing sticky international situations. BP wants the
firm's help in easing the way for its Azerbaijan natural gas exports to Europe and Eli Lily pays the
firm to help with patent issues in Canada. Chiquita hired the firm for help with civil claims against
it in Colombia, where the fruit company violated U.S. anti-terrorism laws by bribing groups
designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department. Covington is lobbying Congress
for Chiquita on the civil liability provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
Chiquita’s lobbying power is empirically proven
Shell, Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics and Management @ Penn, 2004
(G. Richard, Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will, no page given, Google Books)
The WTO legal system includes a separate adjudication process for determining sanctions when
a member state refuses to comply with a ruling. So another WTO panel was convened, evidence
on Chiquita's damages was taken, and in April l999—three years after the first complaint was
filed—the WTO authorized the United States to impose $19! million worth of trade sanctions on
European goods as punishment for the EU's refusal to comply with the first panel's ruling. With
further lobbying and donations by Chiquita, Congress approved punitive tariffs against a
rotating set of European products, from German coffeemakers to Italian cheeses. Lindner by
this time, had become a regular visitor to President Bill Clinton's White House, dropping in for
coffee, attending state dinners, and, at one point, sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom.
[NOTE: Lindner = former owner of Chiquita]