GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
THE SUGAR SULTANS AND BRIBERY
Welcome to the independent republic of Miami
BY GABRIEL MOLINA
IN real terms nobody should have been shocked
that Vice President Al Gore,
the Democratic presidential candidate, has departed from President Clinton's
position in relation to the Elián González kidnapping.
Joe Carollo, mayor of Miami, and Alex Penelas,
the mayor of Miami-Dade, have publicly announced
that they will not cooperate with the federal authorities
if the latter decide to make Lázaro González comply
with the law and hand over Elián.
Gore has asked congress members from his party to
support the bill presented by Republican legislators to grant U.S. citizenship
to Elián and his family in Cuba.
Journalists recently asked President Clinton why all aspirants to the White
House have spoken out in favor of the child remaining in the United States, as
proposed by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).
Clinton's surprisingly sincere response was that perhaps because he is not a
candidate.
However, not everyone understands what he meant by that comment.
In early 1997, the Public Broadcasting System (PBC) transmitted a series of
programs inquiring into what its director Hendrick Smith defined as public
discredit and cynicism toward Washington for the solid reason of the wave of
money spent on the 1996 election: more than $2 billion USD, a record.
Former senator Bill Bradley declared in March `97 that the campaign funding
system is a disaster which is distorting democracy. But in his bid to win the
presidential nomination, he utilized those same methods to collect over $39
million USD for the 2000 elections, overtaking Gore by close to $1 million USD.
Chuck Lewis from the Center for Public Integrity revealed that the Congress
Banking Committee takes money out of the banks, the Agricultural Committee from
sugar, tobacco and other agricultural business interests; and so on down the
line.
Hendrick Smith used the example of the Congress amendment on sugar and exposed
the fact, hidden within that program, that consumers are paying eight cents more
per pound for the product than they should. According to the general accountancy
office, that means $408 million USD per year which passes from hand to hand to
the magnates' benefit.
THE SYSTEM OF FUNDING CONGRESS MEMBERS
BEGAN WITH
THE SUGAR MAGNATES
Critics maintain that this program survives year after
year by means of political money, Smith stated.
He related how the system started in the vast fields of southern Florida where
half the country's sugar cane is produced. This sugar industry is, in the main,
a creation of the U.S. government, he added.
Land in Everglades was drained by the Army Engineer Corps and 500,000 acres was
sold to the wealthiest landowners in the country, the largest section to the two
big corporations: U.S. Sugar and Flo-Sun. For decades the government has helped
these and other sugar producers, curtailing sugar imports at the lowest prices
on the world market and forcing U.S. citizens to pay double for their purchase
of the sweetener.
Smith recounted that in 1995, the 49 members of the Senate Agricultural
Committee received an average of $16,000 USD from the sugar magnates, most of it
from two large producers, the Fanjul brothers. These magnates, moreover,
invested money in hundreds of districts and thus have become, in association
with the CANF, an influential factor in U.S. politics over the last 30 years.
One way of comprehending this is to backtrack to November 25, 1995, when
Congress members Ileana Ros Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz Balart, and Senators
Robert Graham and Connie Mack signed an unusual paid advertisement covering a
whole page in the Miami El Nuevo Herald, with photos of both Fidel Castro and
Nat Reed, claiming that the former destroyed Cuba's sugar industry and the
latter wants to kill off Florida's by taxation.
The four horsemen of the Apocalypse in Congress were assuming the defense
without naming them of the Fanjul brothers, known as the Sugar Sultans, having
learnt that Reed wanted approval for levying a tax of $76 million USD per year
on Florida's sugar producers. The horsemen asked voters to pressure their
senators and representatives to vote against that contribution to the treasury.
The response, signed by the Committee to Ensure Florida's Economic and
Environmental Future, was likewise published in the December 8 edition of El
Nuevo Herald, and directed at Senator Graham. It asked why it was easier for the
U.S. Department of Agriculture to deduct $34 billion USD from the food aid
program (food stamps) for poor children than to ask the millionaire sugar
producers to pay two cents per pound to clean up the contamination they
themselves had caused in the Everglades.
The advertisement, dragging up the so-called anti-Castro industry, set the
standard for what would be the Fanjul's strategy, through the four horsemen, in
their confrontation with the ecologists. The cultivators of sugar cane and its
main derivative, alcohol, the raw material for rum (Bacardi), are strong
contributors and allies of the Mas Canosa family in terms of funding an wide
group of legislators represented by the four horsemen, whose present-day mentor
is Senator Jesse Helms. They also finance José Basulto's Brothers to the Rescue
organization.
The foundation, like the Sultans, annually receives millions of dollars from the
U.S. government, part of which it also invests, precisely, in funding those who,
before or after, facilitate those funds. Domingo Moreira, CANF cadre and head of
Free Cuba PAC Inc., stated that the target for the 1991-2 campaign was to hand
over $250-400,000 USD for that concept. The funds are mainly contributed by the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a program created by Reagan, and
presented to 39 Democratic Congress members and 17 Republicans, significant
among whom were Ileana Ros Lehtinen, Dante Fascell, Robert Torricelli, Lincoln
Díaz Balart, Larry Smith, Ernest Hollings, Robert Graham, Joseph Lieberman,
Connie Mack, Orrin G. Hatch, Claude Pepper and others.
The Sugar Sultans are among the principal entrepreneurs who finance politicians
from both parties, according to the July 17, 1995 edition of the weekly U.S.
News & World Report.
They have been forced to fight steadily more fiendishly to preserve their
privileges, threatened by environmental organizations.
THE FANJULS AND THE FOUNDATION
DISPENSE THEIR DONATIONS
BETWEEN DEMOCRATS
AND REPUBLICANS
According to that weekly, the Fanjuls now own a hard-to-calculate
extension of land planted with sugar cane in Florida, various factories, a
refinery and a finance company in Miami. But the Fanjul empire, according to an
investigation by the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC), due to a contributions
scandal in the 1995-96 electoral campaign owns a further 10 companies in the Flo-Sun
Land Corp., Flo-Sun Sugar and Florida Crystal Refinery. In that electoral cycle
the family contributed approximately $1 million USD to both parties' campaigns,
as far as it is known.
This Fanjul-Gómez Mena family is descended from the marriage in the Cuba of 1936
of Lilliam, the only daughter of millionaire José Gómez Mena the owner of four
sugar mills and other properties and Alfonso Fanjul Rionda, the descendent of a
landowning family of Spanish origin based in the United States, the
Braga-Riondas. Together with the Cuban branch, the Fanjul-Riondas controlled the
majority of shares with the 35% of the Czarnikow-Riondas, founded by Manuela
Rionda in New York; the 22% of the ManatiSugar Company' and the 30% of the
Francisco Sugar Company, in addition to Gómez Mena's assets.
Andrés, the father of José (Pepe) Gómez Mena, arrived in Cuba in the middle of
the 19th century and, by his death in 1910, already owned four sugar mills and
other real estate assets. Pepe, who had been minister of agriculture during the
Gerardo Machado dictatorship and president of the Sugar Stabilization Institute,
reorganized the family business which, with the marriage of Lilliam and Alfonso,
remained in the hands of the Fanjul clan.
With the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, Alfonso Fanjul left the country in
1960 to take refuge in Florida. With the help of his family and Washington,
which was already seeking to strangle Fidel Castro's government by cutting the
sugar quota, he formed a new group that acquired 4000 acres of land at $160 USD
an acre in the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee, and used sections of small sugar
mills to assemble the Osceola mill. One by one, sons Alfonso (Alfi), Pepe,
Alexander and Andrés joined the Miami operation.
“Alfi,” president of the Florida company, backs the Democrats. From 1992, when
he worked as co-president of Clinton's campaign, he has been one of the
principal contributors and continues to be a friend of the president.
José “Pepe” Fanjul was one of the main financial supports of former president
George Bush, and subsequently co-president of Dole's campaign against Clinton,
his current role in the aspirations of Bush's son, George W.
But the powerful Fanjul Sultans went on the defensive in July `95 due to the
campaign to eliminate the federal government program that fixes the price of
sugar at 22 cents per pound. This was one of the main factors in how the Fanjul
brothers, well aware of how government bodies operate in that country, were able
to construct an empire within such a short time.
A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS: RECEIVING $65 MILLION
IN SUBSIDIES AND DISPENSING $2 MILLION
The subsidy program has to be approved by Congress every five years. In
order to maintain that income of $65 million USD per year, the Fanjuls make
regular contributions to the election of Florida congress members and officials,
and those in a large part of the country, amounting to some $2 million USD as
far as it is known. It's a successful business; with that money they fund
congress members and officials and these repay them, not only by protecting
their privileged subsidy, but also by subscribing to congressional bills that
will bring them in the largest profits; even when these go against U.S.
interests, as in the case of the Helms-Burton Act.
An unusual coalition has been combating that rare privilege. It is made up of
environmentalist groups like the National Audubon Society, which is accusing the
sugarcane cultivators of threatening the ecology of the Florida Everglades.
Congressmen Dan Miller, Republican, and Charles Schumer, Democrat, co-sponsored
the legislation to eliminate the administration's sugar program.
In 1996 a Republican majority with plans to eliminate large federal programs
like the sugar one coincided with the ecologists. Representative Pat Roberts,
president of the committee, was fiercely committed to breaking the old subsidy
system to the harvesters. But he encountered a kind of rebellion within the
committee, led by fellow Republican Mark Foley, in whose district a large
portion of the country's sugar cane is grown. According to program director
Hendrick Smith, in 1996, Foley had received enough money, particularly from Flo-Sun
and U.S. Sugar, to overtake his opponent in the congressional elections.
On November 8, the Fanjul brothers mobilized congress members additionally
funded by Mas Canosa, as well as Cuban-origin House Representatives Iliana Ros
Lehtinen and Díaz Balart. The Fanjuls are healthy and notorious contributors to
the CANF.
Miller stated that the sugar lobby's sole concern is the five-yearly debate on
that legislation within the Agricultural Committee for which they prepare by
organizing friends. Every year they parcel out money, vote or no vote, and at
the moment of need, their friends will be there. When Miller was preparing to
introduce his amendment bill, he received a telephone call from José Fanjul.
Miller himself had received $13,000 USD in political donations in the previous
two years, but in spite of Dole and Fanjul he pressed ahead.
Nevertheless, when the Chamber discussed the bill in February 1996, it was
defeated by 217 votes to 209, and the sugar program was maintained with modest
changes. Five of the bill's co-sponsors furnished the margin by changing their
positions and voting in favor of the sugar producers. That day they received
more than $11,000 USD for the campaign, claimed Hendrick Smith, who publicly
noted that in spite of representing New Jersey, Congressman Robert Torricelli
voted with the Fanjul clan. He stated that the records show that Torricelli
received $33,000 USD in contributions to the senatorial campaign he was
preparing.
THE METHOD OF COLLECTING FUNDS FOR THE ELECTION
IS A CANCER THAT IS CORRODING THE SYSTEM
Dan Miller paid: the sugar industry in Tallahassee offered $500,000 USD
to the candidate running against him.
The Securities and Exchange Committee is accusing the Fanjul brothers of
possibly having violated state and federal regulations by making political
contributions to officials who could influence decisions concerning their
companies.
This collusion with a long list of congress members is not related to isolated
events. It is all part of the extreme right's grand strategy against the social
gains, expressed incisively by one of their theoreticians, William Kristol,
director of the Project for a Republican Future: that President Roosevelt's New
Deal was dead, and that its corpse should be taken up and buried before the
stink became unbearable.
The system of collecting funds for general and partial election campaigns has
reached such an extreme that it continues to be denounced as a cancer which is
corroding the establishment.
Last December, Alfonso Fanjul was the joint host with Mas Santos at a dinner
where $1 million USD was collected for Al Gore's Democratic nomination campaign.
But, of the $39.8 million collected for Gore, $32.4 million has already been
spent, as opposed to Bush's $72 million ($60.7 million spent), is pushing the
Democratic candidate into seeking the money promised him by the CANF. It is the
classic give to get back.
The Miami mafia were emboldened by Vice President Gore's support for the
kidnapping of Elián González, which is a by-product of this arrogance that the
U.S. government has conferred on them.
The majority of U.S. citizens are unaware of how, from 1959 onward, Cuban
fugitives have been instruments in the dirtiest work of the extreme right
shielded by the dealings of federal and state government, the Congress, FBI and
the CIA.
The Fanjuls and Bacardi family participated along
with Mas Canosa in the drawing up of the Helms Burton Act to intensify the
economic war against Cuba.
But the situation created by the kidnapping of the child Elián González has
thrown into relief the excessive power that they have gained. The arrogance of
the CANF, and the mayors and congress members of Cuban origin in Miami makes
them appear drunk with that power. So much so that The New York Times of April 1
observed that many people there are describing such acts as a declaration of
independence, a nation apart.
And they are congratulating each other, saying: “Welcome to the Independent
Republic of Miami.”
Copyright. 1996-1999
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL/
ONLINE EDITION
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/abr2/15sultanes-i.html October 12, 2000
BY GABRIEL MOLINA
THE distortion perpetrated by certain members of the U.S. House of
Representatives to the bill to "relax" the blockade of Cuba, in terms of food
and medicine sales, has created a crisis of credibility regarding the very
system they wish to impose on the people of Cuba.
It is no coincidence that that
opposition to the sugar subsidy was defeated in the same way that the U.S.
people's interests were crushed in the congressional vote on the blockade.
On Thursday, October 5, congressional negotiators
agreed on the bill's new version. This maneuver had begun on the evening of
Monday, June 26, when they met with George Nethercutt and other Republican
sponsors of the bill, in order to modify the agreement already reached in both
houses. It was awaiting the drafting of a single document reflecting the
interests of U.S. farmers.
In June, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban National Assembly, charged that
that meeting was really a trap: they could either accept the terms proposed
or—like the previous year—the bill would simply not reach the Conference
Committee (where the final version of the bill is drawn up).
In a statement published in this edition, the Cuban Foreign Ministry noted that
the bill finally approved perverts its original intention. As it stands now, it
prevents Cuba from obtaining credits for the purchase of medicines and food,
from exchanging one product for another, from exporting anything to the United
States; it bans U.S. tourism to the island and prohibits Cuba from trading with
dollars. It also maintains the existing stipulation that ships touching Cuban
ports are banned from docking in U.S. territory for the subsequent six months.
Republicans in Congress, particularly those of Cuban origin like Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, with the help of Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Jesse Helms and House Speaker Dennis Harter, imposed the
prohibitions detailed above and are proclaiming victory over the result. They
say that the status quo has been maintained. However, it is even worse, given
that both the Cuban Foreign Ministry and Representative Jo Ann Emerson, who
drafted the original bill for liberalizing trade with Cuba along with
Representative George Nethercutt and Senator John Ashcroft, have stated that the
new version would give legal backing to regulations currently restricting U.S.
travel to Cuba.
Many Democrats and Clinton himself have affirmed their opposition to the
initiative, since approval of that formula would mean that the U.S. president
would lose his prerogative to decide on U.S. citizens' freedom to travel, at
least as far as Cuba is concerned. The authority over this matter would pass to
Congress.
Moreover, on Friday, October 6, Clinton stated that without the possibility of
utilizing private and federal funding for sales to Cuba, the plan has no hope of
success.
The growing dispute over the measures against Cuba has delayed the agricultural
budget for fiscal year 2001 and has provoked anger among U.S. farmers who want
to sell their produce to Cuba and who are the principal sponsors of the
evidently frustrated measure.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque stated that the good intentions of the
legislators representing the agricultural sector "have once again been hijacked
[for the third time] by a small group of U.S. politicians allied to the Cuban
and U.S. extreme right in the United States."
The sale of medicines, foodstuffs and agricultural produce to Cuba could signify
a market of $7 billion USD for U.S. exporters, with net profits of $1 billion
USD for rural communities, according to U.S. calculations.
A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS
For a long time now, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), founded by
the late Jorge Mas Canosa, together with the Bacardí company and the enterprises
owned by the Fanjul brothers—also known as the Sultans of Sugar—have been the
principal promoters of the blockade of Cuba, largely through "political campaign
donations."
In early 1997, the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) ran a series of programs on
what moderator Hendrick Smith defined as the public deception and cynicism felt
toward Washington in the wake of the vast sums of money spent in the 1996
elections: more than $2 billion USD, a record.
Former Senator Bill Bradley declared in March '97 that the system of financing
campaigns is a disaster that is distorting democracy. Smith presented the
Congress amendment on sugar as an example, revealing that concealed in that
federal program is the fact that consumers pay eight cents more per pound than
they should. According to the General Accounting Office, that signifies that
$1.4 billion USD changes hands annually, to the benefit of the magnates.
Critics argue that this program survives year after year because of political
money, Smith explained.
He added that in 1995, the 49 members of the House Agriculture Committee
received an average of $16,000 USD from the sugar producers, mainly the two
largest ones. Moreover, the Fanjul brothers invest money in hundreds of local
election campaigns and thus have become, in association with the CANF, an
influential factor in U.S. politics over the last 30 years.
The cultivators of sugarcane and its main derivative, alcohol, which is the raw
material for rum (thus including Bacardí), are heavy contributors and allies of
the Mas Canosa family in financing a wide-ranging group of legislators.
Like the Sultans, the CANF receives several million dollars per year from the
U.S. government, part of which is used precisely to finance those who,
previously or subsequently, facilitate those funds.
The main source of funds is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a
Reagan-created program which hands over money to 39 Democratic and 17 Republican
members of Congress, in particular Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Dante Fascell, Robert
Torricelli, Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Larry Smith, Ernest Hollings, Robert Graham,
Joseph Lieberman, Connie Mack, Orrin G. Hatch, Claude Pepper and others. The
Sultans of Sugar are among the principal entrepreneurs to finance politicians
from both parties, confirmed US News & World Report in its July 17, 1995 issue.
The magazine reveals that by dividing up the funding for electoral campaigns in
the United States between the Republican and Democratic Parties, at the state
and national levels, the Fanjul brothers are assured of receiving profits
estimated at $64 million USD per year, thanks to the controversial federal
government cane sugar program.
The subsidy program has to be approved every five years by Congress. To gain
that approval, the Fanjul brothers contribute to the election of Congress
members and officials in Florida and a large area of the country with
approximately $2 million USD, as far as we know. It is a lucrative business;
with that capital, they fund officials and members of Congress and the latter
pay them back, not only by protecting the privileged subsidy, but by backing
bills that bring them more profits even when, as in the case of the Helms-Burton
Act, such legislation goes against U.S. interests.
One good example, similar to the bill currently under discussion in the House,
occurred when Congressmen Dan Miller (Republican) and Charles Schumer (Democrat)
co-sponsored legislation to eliminate the administration's sugar program in
1995.
The Fanjul brothers mobilized the members Congress also financed by Mas Canosa,
such as Cuban-Americans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Díaz-Balart. When Miller
was preparing to present his amendment, he received a telephone call from José
Fanjul. Miller had received $13,000 USD in political donations over the two
previous years, but in spite of Dole and Fanjul he went ahead.
However, when the bill was discussed in the House in February 1996, it was
defeated by 217 votes to 209 and the cane sugar program was maintained with some
modest changes. Five of the bill's co-sponsors changed their position and voted
in favor of the sugar producers. That day they received over $11,000 USD for
their electoral campaigns, Hendrick Smith charged, noting that Congressman
Robert Torricelli of New Jersey voted with the Fanjul clan. He affirmed that the
records reveal that he received $33,000 USD in contributions to his Senate
campaign.
The Fanjul and Bacardí families were involved with Mas Canosa in drafting the
Helms-Burton Act, which intensified the economic war against Cuba. This
collusion with a long list of legislators is not an isolated case. It is all
part of the extreme right's grand strategy against Cuba's social
accomplishments, succinctly expressed by one of its theoreticians, William
Kristol, director of the Project for a Republican Future. He stated that
President Roosevelt's New Deal was dead and that its corpse had to be picked up
and buried before the stink became unbearable.
However, the situation created by the kidnapping of Cuban child Elián González
exposed the excessive power gained by the Miami groups and their allies. The
arrogance of the CANF, Miami's mayors and legislators of Cuban origin has
backfired, giving others the impression that they are drunk with that power. So
much so that The New York Times of April 1 observed that many people in Miami
perceived their actions as an act of independence, a nation apart congratulating
itself by saying: "Welcome to the Independent Republic of Miami."
The "independent" republic has once again demonstrated that in terms of power,
the powerful gentleman is Mr. Money. But this oh-so-eloquent confrontation could
serve to further open the eyes of those who are still attempting to serve the
interests of the United States, given that they are endangering the very system
they want to protect.
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