Wed, 11/18/2009 - 12:53pm
By José R. Cárdenas
The debate over U.S. policy towards Cuba heats up this week as the House
Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC) holds a hearing Thursday on whether to
lift the U.S. travel ban against Fidel Castro's island-prison. Senator
Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), Ranking Member of
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of the HFAC,
respectively, fired the first salvo with an op-ed in the Miami Herald
calling for the unilateral lifting of the "anachronistic" ban, arguing
that ordinary Americans can "serve as ambassadors for the democratic
values we hold dear," thereby eroding the impediments to change in Cuba.
It is indeed a quaint conceit on the part of many in this country that
Americans, just by being Americans, can demonstrate the errors in
others' ways and infuse on the recalcitrant and autocratic a sudden
appreciation for the commonweal, sparking a dawn of democratic reform
and respect for human rights. Sadly, the world doesn't work quite that
way and thugs like Castro will not be impressed by the earnestness of
American tourists to engender a better Cuba.
Besides, if we are to take our cues from Canadian and European tourists,
one wonders whether political agitation can compete with sun, sex, and
cigars as the primary motivations for visiting the walled tourist
compounds on the Island of Dr. Castro. This doesn't even countenance the
motivations of U.S. businessmen, for whom political agitation would be
the very last item on their agendas, given that their interests are
served by a perceived vision of stability and cozy relations with the
incumbent government.
This is not to recognize the moribund state of affairs in Cuba. Senator
Lugar and Rep. Berman can hardly be blamed for being frustrated. Anyone
who cares about Cuba is frustrated at Fidel Castro's pathological
obstinacy and nominal leader and brother Raúl's craven inability to
deviate from his brother's uncompromising ideological line.
But bad proposals are worse than none at all. The short of it is the
Castro regime simply is more determined to maintain absolute power than
the United States is in mercifully terminating its fifty years of
misrule. Given that, opening the floodgates to U.S. tourists and
businessmen will result in a desperately needed financial windfall and
credibility boost that will only strengthen the regime, not undermine it.
Moreover, the debate over the U.S. travel ban and, more broadly, the
U.S. economic embargo of Cuba clouds the real issues at hand. Namely,
that the real conflict in Cuba is not between the United States and the
Castro regime, but between the regime and the Cuban people. This is made
abundantly clear in a searing new report by the International Republican
Institute on the results of a recent survey conducted discretely among
the Cuban people on the island
Conducted this past summer among a total of 432 Cuban adults from across
the island, the survey found that Cubans do not need American tourists
to tell them that things are rotten in their own country and that change
is desperately needed. Specifically, more than four in five citizens on
the island (82 percent) do not believe things are going well, while a
vast majority of Cubans would vote for fundamental political change (75
percent) and economic change (86 percent) if given the opportunity.
The survey also found that only 8.8 percent believed the U.S. embargo
and "isolation" was the biggest problem in Cuba and only 7.9 percent
said they thought ending the embargo would most help improve the
economy. What do Cubans overwhelmingly want? Multi-party elections,
freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and economic freedoms,
including opportunities to own property and run businesses.
Imagine, Cuban citizens came to those conclusions all on their own.
It remains to be seen whether Congress can mobilize the votes to
overturn the travel ban (the restrictions were codified under the 1996
Helms-Burton Law), but the prospects seem unlikely. To its credit, the
Obama administration has shown no inclination to support such an effort
at this time. At the Inter-American Summit last April, the president's
words on Cuba were cautious -- and sober. "The Cuban people are not
free. And that's our lodestone, our North Star, when it comes to our
policy in Cuba," he said.
He also said his policy would be guided by reciprocity:
What we're looking for is some signal that there are going to be
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 ... And if
there is some sense of movement on those fronts in Cuba, then I think we
can see a further thawing of relations and further changes.
It is not U.S. policy to be stagnant and unimaginative on Cuba, as
critics would have it. President Obama appears intent on continuing the
Bush policy of trying to empower Cuban civil society through strategic
engagement to operate more independently of the regime's control,
although he obviously intends to go much further in opening new avenues
to reach the Cuban people. The strategic goal behind such an offensive
would be to expand pockets of independence within Cuban civil society
and fortify networks among those pockets, putting Cubans who want a
different future for their country in touch with other Cubans fed up
with the same old struggle and deprivation the regime is only capable of
offering.
That Castro's decrepit regime continues to limp along fifty years on
understandably confounds many. But that is less an argument for relaxing
pressure on the regime than it is an argument to persevere in a cause
that is just and right.
The real conflict in Cuba is not between the US and the Castro regime -
By José R. Cárdenas | Shadow Government (18 November 2009)
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/11/18/cuba_needs_change_not_us_tourists
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