7-26-08, 9:47 am

This week it was revealed that John McCain's family could make as much as $2 million on a deal with a liquor company that nearly controls the market for beer in Cuba.

According to press accounts, Belgium-based InBev is in the middle of a takeover of the beer maker Anheuser-Busch. McCain's wife's family owns Anheuser's distributorship in Arizona and is set to profit from the InBev takeover.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported InBev has '570 full-time workers and 44 percent share of the Cuban beer market flowing from its brewery in Holguin, Cuba.'

In a May 20 speech in Miami, John McCain called for keeping the embargo of Cuba and the Bush administration's harsh restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba by Cuban American families. If elected, there will be no change in Cuba policy, he said.

The embargo against Cuba by the US government punishes individuals and businesses that want to trade with Cuba unless they seek permission from the US government. The restrictions on these deals force business owners and farmers here to go to the federal government, hat in hand, to beg to business.

Despite McCain's rationale that the embargo is hurting the Cuban government, there is no doubt that the embargo has impoverished and harmed the 11 million people of Cuba.

But the embargo hasn't impoverished McCain, who appears set to rake in $2 million on it. Perhaps he believes profiting on selling alcoholic products to Cubans is the best way to win their hearts and minds.

Interestingly, McCain's harsh anti-Cuba policy hasn't helped him with the Cuban American community, mainly based in Florida. According to the latest polls, Obama is winning in that demographic, a first for a Democratic presidential candidate in decades. Party registration in Cuban American strongholds in Miami have flipped to favor Democrats, according to official Florida state numbers.

Cuban Americans have largely called for easing restrictions on travel and trade with Cuba, breaking with an older generation of anti-Castro Cuban exiles based in Miami.

Earlier this month, the European Union voted to lifted its own five-year old sanctions on the island country, calling instead for dialogue and trade.

So far the McCain campaign has refused to comment on the contradiction between his family's new source of profit and the Arizona Senator's stated anti-Cuba policies.

--Joel Wendland can be reached at