From My Perspective,  Ricardo Gonzalez

One of the most disingenuous statements I have heard in a while was uttered on April 29 by Robert Wood, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, regarding President Obama’s efforts to reach out to Cuba.  While acknowledging that the Administration was “interested in dialogue with Cuba,” Mr. Wood added that he thought the international community “wants to see some steps from Havana to . . . gauge how serious the government there is,” and further noted that “we do have an embargo, and there is no plan at this point to lift that embargo.”

Hello!!  Mr. Wood, sir, did you pay any attention to what was said at the Trinidad Summit, where nearly all the leaders in attendance urged President Obama to lift the embargo against Cuba?  Are you at all aware that for the past fifteen consecutive years the United Nations has voted almost unanimously to condemn the U.S. embargo, asking that it be lifted?  What international community are you speaking of?

Last week, Secretary Hillary Clinton appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs and recalled the tragic downing of the two Brothers to the Rescue planes in February 1996.  Referring to “those two small, unarmed planes doing nothing more than dropping pamphlets,” Mrs. Clinton asserted that they were shot down to prevent an opening to the U.S. from taking place.  She obviously did not want to acknowledge that for months before the shoot down, the Cuban government had asked her husband’s Administration to put an end to such flights and had warned that they would in fact be brought down by force if they continued violating Cuban airspace.

But Clinton wasn’t just reminiscing.  She went on to say that “our goal is for a free, independent democracy that gives the people of Cuba a chance to have the same opportunities that their sisters and brothers and cousins and my sister-in-law, who came to this country from Cuba, that they have in our country.”  Aside from the family connection which most Americans ignore—that Secretary Clinton’s brother is married to a Cuban American—our chief diplomat was really engaging in double talk.  For we cannot say that we want “dialogue” with Cuba and at the same time say that our “goal is for a free, independent democracy.”

It is precisely these kinds of forked-tongued double speak that keeps Cuba defensive and hesitant to enter into any sort of negotiation with the United States.  There was a revolution in Cuba in 1959 that, for better or worst, transformed the island nation and many people suffered on account of it, seeking refuge in the U.S. and thus aligning themselves with the country regarded as an enemy by the new political forces governing Cuba.  This is a historical fact that has to be grasped in all of its dimensions.

The issue of Cuba’s political system is not one that can be decided from Washington or Miami; every effort short of all-out military intervention has been attempted by the U.S. to impose its will on Cuba and they have all failed.  If the Cuban people truly want a change in their political system—and many do indeed wish for change—then that will be up to them to accomplish within their borders without intervention from any foreign power.