Opinion piece from La Alborada

The US and Cuba have held at least two meetings recently. More meeetings can be expected, according to Thomas Shannon, the point man for the US in the discussions.

Yesterday, April 29, Raul Castro, speaking at the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, said that “The measures that President Obama recently announced, while they are positive, are minimal in their reach. The blockade remained intact.”

After pointing out that Cuba does not maintain a blockade against the US, he added:

“We haver reiterated that we are willing to talk about everything with the government of the United States, under conditions of equality, but not to negotiate our sovereignty nor our political and economic system, the right to self-determination, nor our internal affairs.”

He was willing, he said, “to discuss everything, everything,everything that is ours, but also what is theirs, under conditions of equality.”

He was responding to the US’ position that it has done all that it is willing to do until Cuba takes appropriate steps, implying that Cuba should make internal changes called for by the US.

State Department spokesman Robert Wood put it this way: “We’re interested in a dialogue with Cuba, but I think the international community wants to see some steps from Havana to see, to gauge how serious the government there is.”

That is, of course, nonsense. The international community overwhelmingly opposes the blockade, and the southern neighborhood–Latin American and the Caribbean–has told the US directly that it must undo the blockade. Which community could Mr. Wood mean? Israel and the US dependencies of Marshall Islands and Palau, the only votes in favor of the blockade at the last General Assembly of the UN? The US obtained an echo of support from its close ally Canada, but that country has major investments in Cuba, and its people are among the major groups of visitors to Cuba.

It appears that President Obama has decided that he can go no further as a matter of domestic politics in the US. That leaves the position of the US as it has been: if Cuba begins to undo its revolution, the US will consider beginning to lift the blockade. It will be up to Congress to express whether its sense of domestic politics is the same as that of the White House.

The Cuban government is not unmindful of this reality. It surely recognizes also that Obama’s discourse towards Latin America is unlike that of prior presidents. That will not be enough to for Cuba to start abandoning its social and political project in favor of that of the neoliberal North, especially when the latter is facing a potential economic implosion.

Still, the public discussion is not the same as the private discussions. The talks will continue. The US will find it hard to break its by-now historic habit of attempting to change Cuba the hard way. Perhaps it will find practical purpose in working towards cooperation in areas of mutual interest.

Meanwhile, the lack of progress is not going over well south of the border.