The Cuba USAID project: Developing an approach to property-claims settlement for a democratic Cuba
Some conflicts present enormous challenges for those of us in the field of dispute resolution and take years, even generations, to get resolved (if they ever do). Imagine an island paradise where individuals and companies lose everything from their homes, to their Chevys, to their factories, rum distilleries, villas, hotels and even boat docks, seized by a dictator who claims to have acted on behalf of an aggrieved people. Imagine over 40 years pass without settlement and now you are asked to devise a process to bring about a solution. This is the challenge that was presented to Creighton University, starting near the end of 2005.
When Fidel Castro took power in 1959, he nationalized virtually all foreign-owned property in Cuba. He also seized homes, land and businesses belonging to Cuban nationals who eventually fled to the U.S. The claims of Americans, including U.S. corporations, are still outstanding, and Cuba remains obligated under international law to compensate them. Cuban exiles also remain dispossessed but do not have the status that foreigners, such as Americans, enjoy under international law. Creighton University received a grant from the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to investigate and report on the thorny matter of developing an approach to property-claims settlement between Cuba and the United States after the end of the Castro regime. None of us could have predicted that Castro himself would step down (due to illness) before our report was issued.
A cross-disciplinary team of Creighton professors and graduate students worked on the project and issued a report late last year (see sidebar). The report recommends an international tribunal to hear the claims of American citizens and corporations whose property was seized by Castro’s regime and who since then have had their claims certified by the U.S.-based Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, mostly during the ’60s and ’70s, the decades following the seizure. The Creighton team’s report also suggests creation of a special Cuban court to hear the claims from the Cuban-American exile community.
The Werner Institute for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution at Creighton was created to become a leading national center for education, training and development in how to manage and resolve conflicts. Our role in the USAID grant was limited to a focus on more consensual resolution of claims: approaches more likely to build a foundation of cooperation that would be beneficial to claimants, the governments and nonclaimant citizens of each nation. Although the primary effort of the Creighton USAID project was to develop a model for adjudicating claims through appropriate tribunals, we at the institute concentrated on ways of providing opportunities for the parties to structure alternative, collaborative resolution processes.
As part of our work, I actually journeyed to Cuba along with my colleague Jacqueline Font-Guzman, associate director of the Werner Institute and a member of our conflict-resolution faculty. Jackie is a native of Puerto Rico, an island with a substantially similar cultural heritage to Cuba. She has been key to the success of the Werner Institute’s graduate program; in our trip to Cuba she was indispensable. Her total comfort with the culture and ability to engage with people in all walks of life opened many doors for us. (Not to mention that the high-speed Caribbean Spanish spoken in Cuba would have left me in the dust if I had been forced to fend for myself).
Not surprisingly, Jackie and I found a very problem-ridden paradise. Cuba is blessed with natural beauty, warm weather, exquisite beaches and a rich culture. One benefit of the economic stagnation that has accompanied Cuba’s communist economy has been in creating a place frozen in time: Havana is remarkably well preserved, from the historic buildings to the 1940s and ’50s Buicks and Plymouths that are everywhere (I came across more than one Edsel still on the road). The people we encountered were friendly beyond description. But it did not take any detective work for Jackie and me to uncover boundless economic misery.
Though the Communists may have tried to divide the economic pie slightly differently, more than anything they have managed to shrink the pie. The society that has emerged is anything but classless. In Cuba, best as I could tell, there are three economic classes: the government class - people who work for the regime and who therefore have it pretty good; the impoverished - those who seem to make up the vast majority of the population and barely eke out a living; and what I like to call the “tourist class” - those who have found a way to insert themselves into Cuba’s growing tourist industry and thus gain access to the black market in hard currencies. One surprising phenomenon was the evidently robust underground trade in the small bottles of shampoo and conditioner and tiny bars of soap delivered to hotel rooms of visiting Europeans and Canadians (the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that bans its citizens from going as tourists to Cuba).
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