Buh-bye Squatters

Imagine your family owned a large plot of land including famrs and a mill. They have owned it since 1857. One-hundred-two years later, a new regime usurps power and confiscates this land. It does not care that it's been your family's for over a century. It doesnt care how much hard work your family put into turning the land into a thriving sugar plantation. the new regime just takes it and throws your ass off.

How would you feel? Your birthright gone. The toil and sweat of generations gone at the whim of one man.

So you and your family move to a new country, become citizens of said country and file suit, a gesture quite possibly futile.

It now looks like that suit may actually be chiselling away at the problem. The US, invoking the law of seized property, manages to get at least one of the squatters on your land to leave:

Jamaica's SuperClubs Super-Inclusive Resorts has pulled out of two hotel contracts in Cuba after the State Department threatened to cancel top executives' U.S. visas because the company is ''trafficking'' in property confiscated from Cuban Americans.

The move marks the first time the Bush administration has applied the controversial Helms-Burton law, which was invoked several times under the Clinton administration, according to the State Department.

The 1996 Helms-Burton law allows the U.S. government to sanction investors who make use of land that the communist regime confiscated from private citizens and U.S. companies in the wake of the 1959 Cuban revolution. Almost 6,000 claims have been filed over seized properties.

Of course, there are quite a few more squatters on that land, but it's a start.

From the Miami Herald (reg. reqd)

Posted by Val Prieto at June 18, 2004 07:50 AM

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Posted by: JED at June 19, 2004 06:31 PM

Posted by: Coal at June 20, 2004 06:14 PM