Pages

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Honeymoon cancelled

Cuba and the United States
Honeymoon cancelled
A familiar mistrust descends
Mar 4th 2010 | HAVANA

THE Cubans who hawk second-hand books from makeshift stalls in Havana's
Plaza de Armas were thrilled when Barack Obama was elected. Could
millions of American tourists be far behind, they wondered. Word went
out that the vendors were in the market for pre-revolutionary American
paraphernalia such as Life magazines and Coca-Cola signs or newspapers
from the Spanish-American War. But hopes that Mr Obama and his Cuban
counterpart, Raúl Castro, would end a 50-year freeze in relations
between their countries have proved wildly premature.

Mr Obama began with some gestures. Last April his administration lifted
curbs on visits and remittances by Cuban-Americans imposed by George
Bush. It also said that it would allow American firms to provide
telecoms services to Cuba. It quietly switched off an electronic
ticker-tape on the wall of the United States' Interest Section in Havana
which had relayed news (propaganda, complained the Cubans, who erected a
barricade to obscure it). The administration also restarted talks on
practical issues, such as migration, that had been halted under Mr Bush.

The latest round of talks took place in late February. They were
overshadowed by familiar rows. The American officials demanded the
release of Alan Gross, who was working under contract to USAID and was
arrested in Havana in December. His family says he was helping Jewish
groups in Cuba set up satellite-based internet connections; Cuba accuses
him of spying. The American delegation also met a group of dissidents.
That prompted a furious statement from Cuba's foreign ministry that the
visitors were less interested in improving relations than in "promoting
subversion to overthrow the Cuban revolution".

Four days after the talks Orlando Zapata, an imprisoned dissident, died
in custody in a Havana hospital after an 85-day hunger strike in protest
at his treatment in jail. That prompted an outcry from international
human-rights groups. Hundreds of police prevented all but a few
dissidents from attending his funeral in his home town in eastern Cuba.

Mr Zapata, a bricklayer from a poor family, was arrested in 2003 during
a crackdown against Cuba's small opposition movement. Not among the
better-known dissidents, he was initially sentenced to three years for
"disrespecting authority", increased to 25 after he took part in prison
protests. Mr Castro said that he regretted Mr Zapata's death. The
government insisted he was a common criminal. Certainly his death has
embarrassed Mr Castro, as well as Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula
da Silva, who was visiting Cuba at the time but refused to condemn it.

However disgruntled they are with the everyday failures of the communist
government, few Cubans dare brave the harassment meted out to active
opponents. Those in the United States who argue that the American
economic embargo merely serves to shore up the Castro regime hoped that
Mr Obama's team would agree with them. But it has become clear that the
administration is not prepared to do battle with supporters of the
embargo in Congress. Attempts to lift the ban on Americans travelling to
the island have bogged down. "We made a big initial effort, but got
nothing back" from the Cuban government, a State Department official
said. Mr Castro has been emphatic that Cuba's communist system is not up
for negotiation with the United States.

In December a judge in Miami resentenced to long prison terms two of
five Cuban agents arrested in 1998 for spying on anti-Castro
Cuban-Americans. In January the administration included Cuba as one of
just 14 countries on a terrorist watch list under which airline
passengers must undergo extra screening before flying.

That provoked a diplomatic protest from Cuba, and the first
government-organised anti-American rallies across the island since
illness forced Fidel Castro to step down as president in 2006. When Raúl
Castro announced Mr Gross's arrest he said it proved that the Obama
administration was out to topple the government and was no different
from its predecessors. The honeymoon is over before it began.

Cuba and the United States: Honeymoon cancelled | The Economist (4 March
2010)
http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15622219

No comments: