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25 de janeiro de 2012Brazil’s Foreign Minister, Antonio Patriota, had a private meeting with the president of Cuba, something considered a sign of deference, as Raul Castro usually does not hold separate meetings with ministers of state. The principal topic of conversation was the upcoming visit by president Dilma Rousseff on January 31.
Patriota also met with the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, to discuss cooperation in a number of areas, such as health, agriculture and regional integration.
Dilma will certainly seek to expand partnerships and strengthen bilateral relations with Cuba. But she has made it clear that she will also strongly support Havana’s economic opening (“medidas de abertura”) that began two years ago when Raul Castro began loosening government control to alleviate a domestic crisis aggravated by the longstanding American embargo (that has been in place since 1962) [not to mention the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the loss of subsidies that kept the Cuban economy afloat for decades].
Patriota also talked with Marino Murillo Jorge, the vice president of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, who is in charge of structural reforms in the economy. Jorge is reported to have told Patriota that the 500,000 civil servants who will lose their government jobs through a voluntary resignation program will be assisted by the government and provided incentives to work in tourism.
One of the most important Brazilian – Cuban partnership projects is the expansion of the port of Mariel and its transformation into a development zone. The Brazilian Development Bank (“BNDES”) is financing part of that project and Brazilian construction firms are doing some of the building. The modernization of the port of Mariel has a special significance in Cuba as it was the point of departure for thousands of Cubans who fled the country in the 1980s. The idea is to simply turn things around and make Mariel an attractive place of arrival, besides a bustling port.
Between 2006 and 2010, Brazil-Cuba commercial relations grew 30%, rising from $376 million to $488 million, and in 2011, between January and November, trade between the two nations reached $570 million.
