Arrival in Havana confirms that Washington’s policy failed


While Barack urges “change” in Cuba during his visit, the policy of normalization of relations with Havana will come from changes within the United States, rather than on the island.

In fact, the U.S. president arrived in the socialist island from a country engaged in a struggle over its future, where, in addition to a semi-fascist threat, millions of citizens are responding to a call to a “political revolution” and many identify with “socialism” or say that they have a favorable vision of it.

In the case of Cuba, it should be stressed that perhaps no other country in the developing world has had such a presence and caused such fear and fury in the world’s most powerful nation in the past several decades.

But today, after half a century of policies framed by the Cold War, a broad majority of Americans — 62 percent — favor the reestablishment of bilateral relations as “positive” for the United States, and 55 percent look favorably upon an end to the blockade against Cuba, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll [this week.]

That’s not new. In recent times, up to 73 percent of Americans approved an opening in relations and 72 percent opposed the embargo, in a Pew Research Center survey in July 2015.

Furthermore, for the first time, a majority of Americans (54 percent) have a favorable perception of Cuba, according to a Gallup poll conducted last February — a dramatic turn, after only 10 percent said that in 1996.

Perhaps the most astounding aspect is that in the anti-Castro capital, Miami, most Cuban-Americans are in favor of a normalization of relations and even an end to the blockade. In this group, 56 percent support the restart of diplomatic relations and, for the first time, 53 percent look approvingly upon a lifting of the blockade, according to a Bendixen & Amandi survey in December 2015.

The change in posture of the United States toward Cuba has a lot to do with the demographic change within the U.S., especially in the Cuban-American community.

The new generations of Cuban-Americans born in the U.S. do not share the history or the views of their parents, much less their grandparents, about the island. That has brought down the political monopoly that was so dominant in the days when the Cuban American National Foundation and its boss, Jorge Mas Canosa, imposed their line not only in Miami but also in Washington. That’s when it was said that U.S. policy toward Cuba was a policy toward Miami.

The number of Latinos of Cuban heritage rises to 2 million; 57 percent are immigrants, with a new wave of immigrants, more than half a million of whom have arrived since 1990, the Pew Center reports.

The new waves of immigrants from Cuba do not come for political reasons but out of economic necessity, and they do not share the vision of their homeland with the old anti-Castro immigrants.

The shift in public opinion, the demographic change and the pressures by a broad segment of the political, economic and social cupolas in the U.S. have made it possible for a U.S. president to step on Cuban soil.

For some years now, several federal lawmakers and governors of both parties, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Catholic Church and other religious denominations, plus other institutions, have promoted the renewal of relations and the lifting of the blockade.

It should be remembered that former President Jimmy Carter’s visit to Cuba in 2002 and his subsequent calls for a normalization of relations strongly promoted the change in Washington.

That, and other events, enabled the White House and other sectors of the political cupola to admit what everybody else knew: U.S. policy for the past 50-plus years had “failed.” Obama [restated it] in Havana: “What we did for 50 years did not serve our interests or those of the Cuban people.”

But at this time we should also remember those who sought to promote a change in U.S. policy when not only did they lack the support of sectors of that cupola but also when their quest invited the risk of physical violence, threats, attacks, investigation by secret authorities and even death.

From Cuban dissidents in Miami — among the most dangerous places to break the line established by the anti-Castro cupola — to academic, religious, artistic and supportive groups participated since the 1960s in confronting the U.S. policy against Cuba from within the United States.

The list is long, but within the contributions from Cuban-Americans we find the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and the brave attempts to break the monopoly over the Miami media by Radio Progreso and publications like Progreso Semanal and Areíto.

One of the key voices is that of lawyer and analyst José Pertierra, who, among other things, was one of Elián González’s attorneys and led the legal persecution against Luis Posada Carriles in the name of Venezuelan justice.

This week, Pertierra told La Jornada that, with Obama’s visit, “the intention of the United States continues to be a regime change but, just as in the past Cuba knew how to build trenches against the U.S., now it knows how to build solid bridges to control the new U.S. strategy.”

Beyond the Cuban-American community, there were also supportive efforts by the Venceremos Brigades and, recently, by the caravans by Pastors for Peace against the blockade. In addition, there was the contribution of Latino-American groups such as the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP), which led local Latino leaders to know Cuba and promote a change in U.S. policy.

Efforts made by musicians like Ry Cooder in projects as successful as the Buena Vista Social Club, David Byrne and its production of two CDs of Cuban music titled Dancing with the Enemy, and projects like Playing for Change, along with a continuation of the dialogue among artists, have played a role much more powerful than it appears in the creation of another vision between the two peoples.

It was the change in the United States, more than any change in Cuba, that permitted Washington to overcome its own policy and change its relationship with Cuba both within and without. It was that change that allowed a U.S. president to step this week on the land of Martí.

(From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada. Translated by Progreso Weekly.)