From the Globe & Mail "Mr. Diaz-Canel is not a leader to take on lost causes. During his time as secretary-general of the Communist Party in the province of Holguin, the operations of a Canadian mining firm, Sherritt International, caused environmental degradation to nearby rivers and coastal areas. A loyal party stalwart, Mr. Diaz-Canel probably assumed there was little he could do because the Cuban government, which owned 50 per cent of the enterprise, had granted Sherritt an exemption from its environmental code.
In 2002, I saw first-hand the ravages of this mining operation when a colleague and I took a road trip down the middle of the island on the Carretera Central. After Santiago de Cuba, we crossed the Sierra Maestra on a winding highway built through the mountains by Mr. Castro’s revolutionary government to Baracoa, the island’s original capital. We stopped at the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park to admire efforts to preserve Cuba’s most lush biodiversity, and less than an hour later, we approached the town of Moa where Sherritt was headquartered. On the side of the highway, large grey pipes carrying polluted water from the nearby mines spurted brownish liquid. Every few miles, signs sitting in stale, red puddles and ponds warned us not to trespass and not to take photographs. Heavy, dark clouds billowed over rows of dun-coloured dormitories for workers, as we drove through town and then past open checkpoint gates and into the enormous open-pit mine. It was otherworldly, akin to Dante’s Inferno, as each level became yet a wider expanse of barren, red earth.
It is no surprise that Mr. Diaz-Canel would not confront Sherritt or his own government, as he is a product of the party bureaucracy that follows orders from the top. Nevertheless, once he has proven himself and gained the trust of the party’s old-guard that is hardwired to unquestionably follow Fidel Castro and his revolutionaries, he will have to take initiative and jump-start the stalled reforms, otherwise Cuba will sink deeper into debt and become increasingly dependent on its Russian and Chinese benefactors."