Containing Cuba
Opposition to the US embargo against Cuba is growing, but ending the blockade soon is not in the cards, Hisham El-Naggar writes from Buenos Aires
The recent vote at the United Nations General Assembly condemning the US blockade of Cuba for the 12th straight year, and the vote in Congress to lift the ban on American citizens travelling to the island, suggest that few consider Cuba to be the problem that the Bush administration portrays it as.
Cuba is indeed a touchy issue for the president and his men. Ideologically, the fact that an island half-an-hour by air from Miami should be tenaciously Marxist-Leninist is provocative for the neo-cons in Washington.
There is another, far more pertinent factor conditioning the current administration's Cuba policy: the need to carry Florida's electoral votes. In the 2000 presidential election it was Florida, a swing state with an almost evenly divided electorate, which held the decisive votes. The state's most populous area, Miami and its environs, are also the concentration point of the large Cuban-American community. The assumption has always been -- and to White House advisers it still is -- that Miami's Cuban expatriates are solidly anti-Castro. As such, a decision on the part of the administration to lift the trade embargo which has done grievous harm to the island's economy would alienate a critical segment of the Republican constituency in Florida.
Little wonder that President Bush has promised to veto any Congressional suspension or termination of the travel ban and to ignore the UN resolution condemning the embargo. Even in practical terms, however, one could question the Bush administration's fixation on maintaining the embargo.
There was a time when the Cuban-American community was firmly -- and not altogether democratically -- controlled by Jorge Mas Canosa, a fervent anti-Castro exile who has been linked to terrorism and drug trafficking. Since his 1997 death, however, Cuban-Americans, like most Americans, have accommodated a broad range of views on their country of origin. Unlike the earlier generation, younger members of this community do not dream of returning to Cuba in triumph.
And if many older Cuban residents in the US have held firm in their opposition to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, many are also in favour of closer cultural and other ties with Cuba, even with Fidel still at the helm. One thing is certain: few Latin American issues have been as conducive to hemispheric polarisation as "the Cuban Question". Among Argentines, who are naturally not prevented by their government from visiting Cuba, experiences of Cuba tend to line up with pre-existing ideological notions. Those who have gone there on holiday with pro-Castro views have returned raving about Cuba as a socialist paradise, and those who were anti-Castro to begin with have returned to wail about the island as a Stalinist hell.
Latin Americans who visit Cuba are most inclined to praise the superior quality and accessibility of Cuba's educational and medical infrastructure. The majority of negative opinions on the country are engendered by the economic hardship that broad segments of the population endure.
An often-made point is that but for the US embargo and overall US hostility to the regime, Cuba would have prospered.
But is Castro loved or hated by most Cubans? The Cuban revolution did enjoy widespread support, considering the appalling nature of the regime of Fulgencio Battista which Castro overthrew (Guess which North American country Battista used to consider a "friend"). His predilection for communism did alienate the rich and super-rich classes, most of whom left for more capitalist-friendly pastures. Those who remained did benefit under Castro in many respects. An excellent education system and the best health indicators in Latin America do matter, after all.
If the restrictions on Cuba are lifted, Fidel would have to finally prove that his system can deliver prosperity after more than four decades of mixed results under the embargo. Meanwhile, increased contact with the outside world and cultural exchange, not to mention trade and investment ties, would perforce make Cuban society both more open and lively.
If you happen to believe that direct and open contact with capitalism makes people more determined than ever to throw off the evil communist yoke, what is there to be afraid of? At present, most Cubans' contact with the US is through those exiles who visit the island illegally. Thus, in practice the embargo on travel is waived by many of those who advocate it.
The lobby in favour of the embargo -- bitterly resented by US business interests, who see themselves edged out by other foreign investors -- may be pursuing narrow, parochial interests. Right now, Cubans living abroad are able to send money to their relatives back home. As such many members of the Cuban-American community that apparently support the embargo are also nodes connecting the two countries. These remittances, converted at a very favourable exchange rate, enable the said relatives to live far better than most Cubans. It is they, rather than the party's nomenklatura, who live it up. Open up trade and investment and the exchange rate will not be so favourable any more.
