You may remember reading that after the coup attempt which was
thoroughly repudiated and despised by the Venezuelan public, George H. W. Bush immediately huddled with the man who may easily be Venezuela's wealthiest man, media tycoon Cuban-Venezuelan media tycoon, Bush "fishing buddy," coup conspirator, owner of
Venevision, and major stockholder in transnational Spanish language network,
Univision, for deliberations.
Their little get-away location was the Cuban "exile" sugar family Fanjul's Dominican Republic resort. The Fanjuls have been deeply entrenched in US heavy feeding at US taxpayer expense for decades. They are called "America's First Family of Corporate Welfare," and they have made fortunes on the backs of deeply exploited and abused Caribbean workers they have brought to harvest sugar cane under inhumane conditions, finally, after decades of oppression, and threats, and relentless abuse, the workers won a lawsuit against their Florida business, at long last. The workers' plight was even the subject of a very long 3 hour news special on one of the US channels, I think CBS, many years ago.
The Fanjuls, "Alfi" and "Pepe" have managed to channel campaign giving to candidates by working as a team, one associating with Republicans, the other, Democrats, so no matter who's "in," at the moment, they ALWAYS have a pipeline to Washington.
(You may remember their "historical" presence in recent US politics:
The Bush Profiteers:
100 Donors Who Enjoy Hands-off, Handout Government
........
63. José Fanjul (Palm Beach, FL): $10,000
The �First Family of Corporate Welfare,� the Fanjuls control a third of Florida sugar production, collecting $60 million a year in federal subsidies. Their Everglades land was drained at public expense, an environmental nightmare that costs taxpayers $63 million a year to maintain. The Fanjuls invest heavily in politicians; President Clinton even took a call from José�s brother Alfonso while being serviced by Monica Lewinsky.
http://info.tpj.org/reports/gusher/profiteers.htmlOne of these tools has even informed a journalist his own father used to bribe officials in the Cuban government, that it was the way they did business before the Cuban Revolution.
In case you haven't seen them, here are some useful references you might want to scan:
VENEZUELA'S MURDOCH
by RICHARD GOTT
http://www.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20060612/039201.htmlCisneros Group of Companies
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Cisneros-Group-of-Companies-Company-History.html~~~~~(cough, cough, FANJULS, cough, cough)
Corporate Welfare: Sweet Deal
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele Monday, Nov. 23, 1998
Occupying a breathtaking spot on the southeast coast of the Dominican Republic, Casa de Campo is one of the Caribbean's most storied resorts. It bills itself as "a hedonist's and sportsman's dream," and that's truth in advertising. The place has 14 swimming pools, a world-class shooting ground, PGA-quality golf courses and $1,000-a-night villas.
A thousand miles to the northwest, in the Florida Everglades, the vista is much different. Chemical runoff from the corporate cultivation of sugar cane imperils vegetation and wildlife. Polluted water spills out of the glades into Florida Bay, forming a slimy, greenish brown stain where fishing once thrived. Both sites are the by-product of corporate welfare.
In this case the beneficiaries are the Fanjul family of Palm Beach, Fla. The name means nothing to most Americans, but the Fanjuls might be considered the First Family of Corporate Welfare. They own Flo-Sun Inc., one of the nation's largest producers of raw sugar. As such, they benefit from federal policies that compel American consumers to pay artificially high prices for sugar.
Since the Fanjuls control about one-third of Florida's sugar-cane production, that means they collect at least $60 million a year in subsidies, according to an analysis of General Accounting Office calculations. It's the sweetest of deals, and it's made the family, the proprietors of Casa de Campo, one of America's richest.
The subsidy has had one other consequence: it has helped create an environmental catastrophe in the Everglades. Depending on whom you talk to, it will cost anywhere from $3 billion to $8 billion to repair the Everglades by building new dikes, rerouting canals and digging new lakes.More:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989658,00.html~~~Billionaire won't fire assisant for KKK link
Last Updated: 4:23 AM, October 9, 2010
Posted: 11:05 PM, October 8, 2010
Billionaire sugar baron Pepe Fanjul is refusing to fire his executive assistant, Chloe Black, despite her being married first to a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and then to the founder of a white-supremacist group.
Chloe, who has worked for the Cuban-born owner of Florida Crystals for more than 35 years, is the ex-wife of former KKK leader David Duke, and the current wife of Don Black, a former KKK grand wizard and member of the American Nazi Party. He now runs white-supremacist Web site StormFront.org.
Chloe's role with the powerful Palm Beach-based Fanjul family, which Page Six reported on in 2008, caused an outcry from civil-rights groups. Ironically, her duties include working with Fanjul's wife, Emilia, on The Glades, a Florida charter school that aims to help poor black and Latino children.
Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, told us: "Chloe Black is married to one of the most active white supremacists. We do not understand why she has not been fired by the Fanjul family. Her connections to white supremacists run so deep that it seems unthinkable that she work for a school for minority children." Chloe couldn't be reached for comment.
More:
http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/linked_to_kkk_keeps_her_job_PfFEwT29YLqtToLV5MIgiI~~~The Fanjul brothers
Tuesday, 21 September 2010 21:29 Varela
They support, with rivers of money, the leading candidates of both American parties. Alfonso supports the Democrats; Pepe, the Republicans. Then the Fanjul brothers do whatever they want to the flora, the fauna and the human race in Florida. They destroy the Everglades by extending the cane fields all the way into the swamp. The fertilizer they spread in the plantations consumes the oxygen in water, killing the aquatic life. Conservationists complain, but the authorities ignore the crime because the Fanjul brothers – Florida's cane kings and purveyors of two of every three teaspoons of sugar Americans consume – use their million-dollar contributions to Washington to buy the law and impose it as they see fit, including the way they exploit their workers.
I just read in the press one of their latest abuses: the vexation and humiliation meted to Ángel Pérez, a Cuban-American who, for 15 years, worked in one of the Fanjul brothers' sugar mills. He had been considered a model employee, until he was elected as a union representative and started to file complaints about his fellow workers' conditions. He was expelled from the mill in the presence of a sheriff. Since he went to work in a company car, he was left without a vehicle, 50 miles from his home.
~snip~
Of course, because they're good businessmen, the Fanjul brothers use those migrants to increase the production in their cane fields, both in the Dominican Republic and Florida. But something went wrong in Florida when they brought thousands of Jamaicans (on the sly) to work under subhuman conditions. Alternative publications, such as The Miami New Times, accused the Fanjuls' company, Florida Crystals, and denounced “the slavery of the sugar barons in Florida.”
In November 1986 there was a scandal when about 500 Jamaicans in a site known as Vietnam went on strike to protest against the mistreatment. The Fanjuls called the police and special agents carrying guns shoved the Jamaicans into buses and deported them. The incident riled up labor unions, labor lawyers and human rights organizations, and was turned into a movie script by actress Jodie Foster, who sold the rights to Robert DeNiro's production company, Tribeca Films.
Foster herself directed the movie and played the role of the Jamaicans' defense lawyer (in reality, they were defended by attorney Edward Tuddenham). DeNiro played Alfonso Fanjul. The movie was titled “Sugarland” and was distributed by Universal. But the Fanjul brothers' money and influence kept it from being shown (they pressured or paid the movie houses) and the film was shelved in 2007. In other words, a movie about a real social drama, featuring two Oscar-winning stars (Foster and DeNiro), was not shown in this country because the Fanjul brothers, who supposedly left Cuba because of a lack of freedom, blocked its distribution.
More:
http://progreso-weekly.com/2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1917:the-fanjul-brothers-&catid=34:our-pulse-florida&Itemid=53 
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