(Or maybe NYC voters…though it’s a bit late for that…)

The really big question if Communism falls in Cuba, is what will all the Cuban expatriates in Miami do? Go back to Cuba and try to recover their seized properties? That won’t go over well.

There is one case where returning property to Cuban expats could be a win-win. After the loss of the Soviet Union sugar daddy, Cuba could not find a market for its sugar. Former sugar planting land lay fallow, and within several years got invaded by marabú, a shrub from Africa that has been in Cuba for over a century. It is estimated that marabú has infested 20-25% of Cuba’s agricultural land, though Micheal Totten estimates 50% in his article. The Lost World, Part 1

Most of Cuba is more or less flat. I could see off in the distance outside the window because the landscape is not forested. It consists mostly of grass, stray palm trees, sad little agricultural plots, and unused fields gone to the weeds.
Cuba doesn’t even break even—hence the checkpoints to ensure no one is “hoarding.” The country could produce many times the amount of food it currently does. Deforestation wouldn’t be necessary. Most of the Cuban landscape I saw is already deforested. It’s just not being used. It’s tree-free and fallow ex-farmland. I’ve never seen anything like it, though parts of the Soviet Union may have looked similar.
Imbecilic communist agriculture practices aren’t the only problem. An invasive weed from Angola is choking half the farmland that would be in use, and no one seems to have a clue how to get rid of it.

That “invasive weed” would be marabú.

C. Wright Mills mentioned marabú in Listen Yankee, his polemic in support of Castro. Mills pointed out that a solution for marabú infestation was well-known: prevention.

Pangola pasture is in the fields here, too: it is ready for the cattle. Pangola makes a wonderful pasture for us. It resists the terrible invasions of brush marabú (a scrub or brush we have in Cuba)—and its protein content is very high—you can run 40 head of beef cattle on each 33-acre unit of it, without any extra feeding of the cattle. And the Isle of Pines used to import its meat from Havana!

Had Cuba turned its fallow former sugar land into pasture, using pangola, this excerpt from Mills suggests that the marabú infestation could have been avoided. As Cuba was importing massive amounts of corn from the USSR to feed its cattle and milk cows, this would have been a good solution: substituting Soviet corn with Cuban grass (or corn). But all-knowing, all-controlling Fidel did not think of this, so it was not done.

Actually, one can get rid of marabú— the same way one gets rid of mesquite, another pesky shrub—physical removal with bulldozers or the like. But this requires capital, which no one in Cuba has. Deed the marabú land back to the former owners, and let them pay to bulldoze the marabú. As most of the marabú land is government-owned, no one would be booted off it.

(As an example of the utter failure of Castrista agriculture, consider milk. From 1961to 1990, milk production tripled in Cuba, and doubled in Latin America. Post 1990, the loss of the Soviet sugar daddy and Soviet corn, coupled with the marabú infested land that could have been turned into cattle pasture, milk production in Cuba declined by about two thirds, while in Latin America it more than doubled. For 1961 to present: milk production in Cuba increased by about 10%,while in Latin America it more than quadrupled.)

Which pointedly ignores the “help” that Cuba got for three decades from the Soviet Union and for two plus decades from Venezuela.

Cross that bridge when they get there. First, let’s topple Communism. Then let the Cuban people sort out the situation.

In the meantime, I’m all for welcoming Cuban immigrants to America. In my experience, Cubans are, collectively, among the best immigrants.* They assimilate, they work hard, they hate communism.

*I know a number of Cuban immigrants, now American citizens.