Please click on this link to CubaGo to find out how you can help bring an
end to the travel ban on Cuba for ALL Americans!

On September 30, a national day of action  http://www.cubago.info/
will take place to call the offices of all the nation’s
congressional delegations and express our desire to end the travel
ban on Cuba.

Find all your members’ phone numbers HERE
You can also call the Congressional switchboard (202)224-3121 and
ask for your representative’s office.

Please take a moment of your time on Wednesday, September 30 (9 AM
to 5 PM (Eastern time) and let’s end the travel ban on Cuba once and
for all.

Sincerely,

Ricardo Gonzalez

So, now, today, the Treasury Department has finally gotten its OFAC to put in print the deregulations of the previous constraints, or at least the better version or a lesser evil. Still, there is something failing in all of this. Now Cuban families will be broader in concept, now trips will be more frequent, and the influx of whatever cash anyone happens to have left over in a pretty messed up world wide economy will be able to reach the Cuban shores, but what about that other family concept? What about the fact that Cubans and Americans have been “related” in one way or another dating back to the 19th century? What about friendships established In the meantime between then and now? What about the new relations that could flourish?

…

the peoples of two nations also have an entire history together that unites them. In the fields of science, the arts, agriculture, architecture, academia, medicine the list is so long it’s almost scary. Collaborations between both countries would be formidable in this day and age and especially now, when Cuba is open and the United States seems to be willing. Contact between both and all peoples from both nations is equally if not more important; whether they are Cuban or not.

President Obama – who owes nothing to Florida’s powerful community of rich Republican Cuban expatriates – is trying to erase U.S. hostility toward the island 90 miles from Key West. …

Now, oddly, an expert says a loophole in U.S. law could give Obama a chance finally to erase the embargo. Writing in The Washington Monthly (a journal created by Charleston native Charles Peters), Patrick Doherty of the U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative outlines this scenario:…

“In a little-known corner of the U.S. Code, the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, Congress gave the president extraordinary authority in times of humanitarian disaster,” Doherty wrote. It allows the White House temporarily to suspend other laws while saving people’s lives. If another hurricane rips Cuba, he said, Obama could lift the embargo for 180 days, which would let U.S. businesses rush to the island, boosting international goodwill toward America. Afterward, Congress probably would end the embargo permanently.

This is a fine strategy. But it shouldn’t be needed. Congress simply should halt the trade obstacle, without a hurricane. After all, America trades freely with communist China, communist Vietnam, and the like. If Washington welcomes relations with huge Red nations, why is it so cruel to a helpless little Red neighbor barely offshore?

If U.S. businesses and tourists flooded Cuba, its people would be so happy with rising prosperity that they would forget communism and eagerly embrace capitalism. End the embargo.

The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to review the case of the Cuban Five will be seen in Havana as coming from the Obama Administration, thus casting further doubts on the potential for a real thaw in relations between Cuba and the United States.

Beyond the sheer injustice that has been done to these five men—whose only crime was not to have registered as agents of the Cuban government—the Court’s decision adds to what appears to be more evidence of this Administration’s lack of political will to deal with Cuba.

While the President did act on his promise to allow unlimited travel by any Americans with family on the Island, his continued mixed signals to Cuba raise the question of whether Obama is really interested in bringing our failed Cuba policy to an end.

In a previous Perspective on April 23, I wrote:  “Obama would be well advised to offer the following as a minimum to encourage Cuba to respond: 1) Close down Radio and TV Marti; 2) Stop funding USAID for the purpose of financing the Cuban opposition; 3) Remove Cuba from the State Department list of terrorist countries; and 4) Release the five Cubans held unjustly in American prisons for espionage.”

Since then, the President has included funds for Radio/TV Marti in his 2010 Budget and the State Department has continued to list Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism.  Now with the Court’s decision, it is clear that the Administration is not willing to give up much, while asking Cuba to make all the changes necessary for a rapprochement.  This indicates a lack of understanding on the part of the President’s team regarding the historical issues that separate both countries.  It is increasingly obvious that the Administration has given in to pressure from the likes of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, a Cuban American born in this country who is a rather eloquent voice for the anti-Castro lobby.

When Barack Obama won the election last November, it was assumed that Cuba would be an easy issue to tackle given that 67% of Americans—and 80% of those who voted for him—supported normalization of relations.  Just like low hanging fruit, ran the conventional wisdom, or mangos bajitos, as they say in Cuba.  However, it is proving to be more elusive.

There is much speculation about what is going on in Cuba today, whether their own economic hardships will create new pressures on Raul Castro’s government that may lead to popular uprisings and potential change, encouraging those who think the Revolution will not survive the Castro brothers and that the U.S. should just wait it out.  This thinking has proved fallacious in the past and it underestimates the support that Cubans share for what the Revolution has accomplished—not just health care and education for all, but national sovereignty.

Soon Cuba will be exploiting its own oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico with the aid of Spain, India, Brazil and Venezuela.  Not only will the Island become energy independent but it will also become an oil exporter, bringing much needed cash to their economy.  Under current embargo policy, American oil companies are denied participation in this new opportunity which is also of great importance to the national security of the U.S.  If only for this reason, the Obama Administration must break the impasse with Cuba and begin the process of normalization that the overwhelming majority of Americans support.

Ricardo Gonzalez

Some public personalities, including editorialists at major newspapers in the United States, have expressed they are “puzzled and dismayed” by the unanimous “readmission” of Cuba to the OAS. Let me try to explain and comfort.

Cuba was suspended, not expelled, from the OAS, so it did not need to be “readmitted”. The OAS Charter has no clause whereby a state may be separated from the organization.  Cuba’s exclusion through Resolution VI adopted on 31 January 1962 at the 8th General OAS meeting was an imposition by the United States government through undemocratic coercion and buying of votes of member states.

Resolution VI was aberrant as it violated the OAS regulations, more specifically: ARTICLE 3(e):  “Every State has the right to choose, without external interference, its political, economic, and social system …”;  ARTICLE 19: “No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly … in the internal or external affairs of any other State… [including] any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements.”; and ARTICLE 20: “No State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State…”

It was inappropriate, wrong, and illegal for OAS member states to exclude Cuba, thus as Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa stated that the exclusion of Cuba “…was a tremendous shame and demonstrates the double standards that exist in international relations…The OAS must be reformed and reincorporate Cuba; if not, it will have to disappear.”

Honduras’ President, Manuel Zelaya, stated at the OAS General Assembly: “We … [the Latin American Presidents of the Rio Group] made a commitment… which was taken down in writing … that … by majority vote or consensus, that old and worn error committed in 1962 of expelling the Cuban people from this organization would have to be amended.”

Zelaya continued, “We must not go from this assembly… without repealing the decree … which sanctioned an entire people for having proclaimed socialist ideas and principles… now practiced in all parts of the world, including the United States and Europe.”.

These statements show the strength of the Latin American commitment to undoing the wrong to Cuba.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not have much real political space to maneuver at the OAS meeting.

Although practically all countries in the hemisphere have resolved the historical differences they might have had with Cuba, the US still has to come a long way to undue the five decades of supporting congressionally documented military invasions and illegal sabotage, assassination and terrorism activities against Cuba.

Violation of human rights or lack of perfect elections cannot be used as reasons to exclude Cuba, they are common in other OAS member countries (e.g., George W. Bush’s was first elected President through a court decision not by the democratic will of the people, many totalitarian Latin American regimes of the past like Chile or Argentina, were not excluded, and more civilians “disappear” and reporters are assassinated in most Latin American countries than in Cuba). Other human rights are better provided in Cuba than in other countries (e.g., to education, health services, and nutrition).

I believe that the OAS decision will actually help “puzzled and dismayed” US policy-makers to find their way in a new and changing Latin America.

Eduardo Santana, of Cuban origin, is Adjunct Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Professor at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. He is recipient of the WWF International Prince Bernhard Fellow in Conservation, the international Biodiversity Leadership Award, Partners in Flight Conservation and Leadership Awards, and Mexico’s national Nature Conservation Recognition. Address: esantana@cucsur.udg.mx

As with the rest of Administration Cuba policy to date, trying to maintain leverage by incremental change is living in denial and counterproductive. Secretary Clinton should simply abstain if the OAS votes on ending Cuba’s suspension without conditions. In that way she demonstrates we are listening and serious about a new collaborative role, even if the Administration is not able politically to join the affirmative vote.

Most of all, the Administration cannot let it seem as though Sen. Menendez (D, NJ) controls US foreign policy with bluster and threats to cut off OAS funding.

We are witnessing a welcome change in U.S.-Cuba relations, but it does not go far enough.

President Obama has rescinded most restrictions on family travel and remittances to Cuba.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has acknowledged the old, unbending and hostile policy toward Cuba has failed.

At the Summit of the Americas, the president talked of “a new beginning with Cuba,” adding he was “prepared to have (his) administration engage with the Cuban government on a wide range of issues.”

And Congress is now preparing legislation to end travel restrictions to Cuba.

The impetus for change is gathering momentum, and originates from some of the most unlikely sources.

No less a person than Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban-American National Foundation, bemoaned the persistence of a “static, reactive” policy that “does not advance or promote the best interests of the United States or of the Cuban people.”

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, insisted on the need to “re-evaluate a complex relationship marked by misunderstanding, suspicion and open hostility.”

The disavowal of an untenable policy, however, does not necessarily mean the renunciation of the unrealized purpose, which has always been about toppling the Cuban government, or in Lugar’s words – the more common euphemism – about “bringing democracy to the Cuban people.”

Policy approaches often change, to be sure, but assumptions rarely do, and with Cuba they never do.

Obama’s “new beginning” possesses a wearisome familiarity: the United States as self-appointed arbiter professing to act in behalf of the well-being of the Cuban people, to bestow upon the Cubans the liberty they are apparently unable to achieve for themselves.

In a recent interview with CNN, Obama demanded “changes in how Cuba operates that assures that political prisoners are released, that people can speak their minds freely, that they can travel, that they can write and attend church and do the things that people throughout the hemisphere can do and take for granted.”

These remarks could just as easily have been uttered by William McKinley, Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush.

There is a pathology at work here, of course, one profoundly inscribed in the assumption that Americans have a moral entitlement to determine Cuban needs.

With its announcement of new family travel regulations, the White House proclaimed the “promotion of democracy and human rights in Cuba is in the national interest of the United States.”

Only in Cuba?

Why is it not in the national interest of the United States to promote democracy and human rights as a condition of relations with Vietnam?

Or Saudi Arabia?

Or China?

For the United States to keep using the embargo to insert itself in Cuban internal affairs makes a mockery of the very position Obama adopted at the recent Summit: “The United States’ policy should not be interference in other countries.”

A policy of enlightened self-interest would seek to eliminate the perception of the United States as a threat to Cuban sovereignty, thereby denying to those in Cuba who would use U.S. hostility as pretext to limit public debate and restrict political dissent.

A policy of enlightened self-interest would engage Cuba in normal political and economic interactions, and thereby contribute to the creation of space in which Cubans themselves could proceed to address their most pressing issues, on their terms, within the logic of their own history, and act accordingly.

Most importantly, a policy of enlightened self-interest would show respect for the Cuban people by acting on the premise that Cubans themselves know what is in their best interest.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Louis A. Perez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of History and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His most recent book is “Cuba in the American Imagination” (UNC Press, 2008). He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.

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.

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.