Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo: Changing Latitudes, Ever So Slightly

This name means nothing to 99.9 percent of our readers, but it's a very significant name in South Florida. Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo first began his political/rebel career in Cuba fighting against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, the rightist strongman who has been wistfully characterized as the "better the devil you know" and who preceded Fidel Castro's grip on power on my island birthplace. After fighting alongside Castro in Cuba, Gutiérrez-Menoyo turned squarely in opposition to Fidel Castro, realizing that what he had been promised was not what was being delivered. Twenty-two years in Castro's prison confirmed his ideological differences with Fidel, and he eventually landed in Miami, where he has since promoted peaceful change for the island and taken a strong approach against the hard-line, infinitely pro-embargo stance of the traditional Cuban exile community. Last Thursday, he shocked our entire community by announcing in Havana, as he was about to board a plane to return with his wife and children, that he was going to remain on the island for another "dose of dissidence" [in the words of the Miami Herald] against a Castro regime gone wrong.

Gutiérrez-Menoyo is now 68, nearly blind, a Spaniard who left one rightist dictator (Franco in Spain) at the age of 12 to land in the fishing village of Cojimar, just outside of Havana. (Many of our regular readers will recognize that name as the location of Finca Vigia, Hemingway's beautiful ranch, where I took so many pictures for the Cuba Travelogue we posted earlier).

According to the Herald, after working to overthrow Batista, Gutiérrez-Menoyo and his troops arrived in Havana days before Castro showed up with his men, and did not wind up with any sort of position within Castro's revolutionary government. As Castro headed toward communism, Gutiérrez-Menoyo grew disillusioned, and in 1960 fled by boat to Miami, eventually co-founding Alpha 66, an armed commando group that initiated military attacks in Cuba after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. [Alpha 66 is considered a terrorist organization by the Cuban government, and by moderate exile Cuban Americans, one of the most aggressive hard-line groups within the Cuban exile community. A very dear old friend of mine who played a pivotal role in the initial Castro resistance -- and who has recently passed -- actually took me to an Alpha 66 meeting some 13 years ago. It was a room full of fiery old men, passionate about their opposition to the current Cuban government, passionate about their commitment to restoring a non-communist government.]

According to one of the many outstanding articles the Herald has posted since last week (this particular one by Marika Lynch), the 22 years in prison were not particularly uneventful for Gutiérrez-Menoyo: 24 broken ribs, blinded in one eye, and deafened by the constant beatings. It was intervention in 1986 via the Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez which eventually helped get Gutiérrez-Menoyo released from prison. Upon his release, he formed an organization called Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change), established in 1993, dedicated to the concept that only through dialogue will we see a reconciliation of Castro's regime with the democracy that we, Cuban exiles, insist must be realized on the island. Truly breathtaking changes considering what the man has been through in his revolutionary roots. Don't you think?

According to another Herald article by Oscar Corral, Gutiérrez-Menoyo will be staying either with friends or at his childhood home in Havana, which is still occupied by a family member. According to Mr. Corral's article, reaction from Cuban dissidents has been mixed: Cuba's most recognized opposition leader, Oswaldo Paya [search his last name in usvisanews.com and you will find other stuff I have written about him in the past], told the Miami Herald that he welcomed Gutiérrez-Menoyo's "help in opposition," while Elizardo Sanchez, another recognized figure in the opposition community, expressed more caution with another news service. Mr. Sanchez pointed out that Gutiérrez-Menoyo has not expressed "solidarity" on a number of topics. I think that one of the best points made in Mr. Corral's article was summed up by a former banker quoted as saying that nothing had been happening in the anti-Castro movement, and that this could be a "breakthrough."

Mr. Gutiérrez-Menoyo has taken a courageous step in moving his dialogue efforts directly to Havana. Someone has to do something because left in the hands of the Cuban hard-line community in Miami, and in this bungling U.S. administration, and in the big speeches at the "gritodromo," the distance will only make the island look farther away from our community.

Outsourcing, Outsourcing, Outsourcing...

Given the size of that prior article, I only have time to share one more thing with you this week, and it came to me from my buddy Sanjeev, who keeps running into the same stuff that I do, albeit from more direct sources within India. According to an Economic Times article dated July 28, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger used a Computer Associates function in Las Vegas several weeks ago to express his never-subdued opinion regarding global outsourcing. Check this out:

"The question really amounts to whether America can remain a great power or a dominant power if it primarily becomes a service economy...and I doubt that."

Kissinger went on to say that the movement overseas calls for "some careful thought of national policy on how we can create incentives to prevent that from happening."

Therein lies the critical word, and I agree with Mr. Kissinger, one of the few generically dislike-able people on my heroes list. (;

Notice what Kissinger does not say. This most brilliant of Secretaries of State is not suggesting that we can prohibit American companies from exporting entire divisions when American laws make it impossible for American companies to profitably operate within the United States. He is not saying that at all. What he is saying is that we need to "create incentives" to permit American companies to preserve these types of workforces within the United States. The question is how do we do that?

Well, I'll tell you how we don't: by mixing politics and economics, despite their irrepressible inter-connectivity. U.S. Ambassador Robert Blackwell was tsk-tsk-tsking the Indian government regarding its decision ("dissapointing") to not send troops to Iraq. While the Economic Times article indicated that CEOs of Indian companies did not want to go on the record, one of the Chief Operating Officers said ("off the record") that "linking India's foreign policy with an economic issue like outsourcing is being used by these diplomats to bring the Indian government under pressure." I absolutely agree with that. Can anyone say "Canada"???

Listen carefully to the rest of this quote, from that same off-the-record CEO in India, oh readers of mine in Washington, for herein lies the secret to the mystery, the Riddle of the Silicon Sphynx... all that you need to know to solve our economic woe, all that I have been telling you all these years, and all that you are unable to see because you are so stuck in your pork-barrel politics:

"This is not going to work as off-shoring of work from the U.S. is being driven by corporates in the U.S., and unlike in other trade and foreign policy issues, this cannot be controlled by the U.S. government." [Emphasis added.]

Do you understand that, my friends within the Beltway? Unless we are willing to change our fundamental economic system and take away the profit motive, we cannot force U.S. companies to do business in a more costly nature in the United States. However, if we follow the brilliant Mr. Kissinger's suggestion and create "incentives," then perhaps we have a fighting chance...

But what kind of incentives?

Well, let's see... the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is spending a lot of money lobbying to cut H-1B visas, and it wants the fees from the H-1B visa program to support the training of displaced U.S. degreed professional workers... an excellent idea, but I thought that was what we're supposed to be doing with the Scholarship Fees. Isn't that what we're supposed to be doing with that $1000 my clients are paying for each and every H-1B visa? Can someone in Washington please tell us exactly where that money is going and what is being done with it??? (Because none of my clients know, and I can't tell them...)

Folks, listen to this quote from the same article:

"Offshore outsourcing is a global megatrend and legislation by governments cannot stop it."

I sincerely believe this. The only way to stop global outsourcing is to restrain economic activity within a nation, either by creating closed communist/socialist economies such as what we have in Cuba and China or by retraining and redirecting workforces to do that which we do best. According to the economic reality of the global marketplace today, computer programming -- as in the database megaproduction of software and the like -- is becoming something which can be done cheaper, faster, and more effectively in nations such as India. At the same time, the U.S. workforce is infinitely more able to do many other things.

My gentle submission to Washington: Remember back when the U.S. automotive industry was on its knees, bleeding to death, producing inferior hunks of gas guzzling metal, and the Japanese auto industry was completely dominating by virtue of Total Quality Management (TQM) methodologies? Detroit figured it out, got it together, and my F-150 Super Crew is a far better truck than the Toyotas or Nissans I test drove when I set off to find the best possible pickup. My truck was designed, built, and now owned by an American. We figured out how to save that industry at a time when it seemed absolutely impossible.

When it comes to software, outsourcing, IT, etc. -- we are not even talking about reinventing automobiles -- we're talking about reinventing something infinitely more flexible, endlessly more remarkable, and more manifest (if you'll pardon the pun) to our destiny. We are talking about reinventing the American workforce to respond with the changing global economy. Kissinger's "incentive" is no more -- and no less -- than the establishment of government leadership and guidance of our extraordinary business community to identify and grow divisional sectors of our economy to see what we can do best to fill the voids in the global marketplace in ways that allow us to be as much a producer as we are a consumer at a global level. In other words, if the Communist maxim was:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need..."

...and we know that sure as hell isn't working...

Then the new millennium's market-economy maxim for the United States should be...

"From each according to what we can do best at a global level, to each according to our respective national economic strengths."

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