Caution: ‘New’ policy, old objectives

HAVANA — President Barack Obama and other advocates of the changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba have said clearly that they only seek to apply new methods to achieve the same objectives.

In other words, to achieve a regime change in Cuba through the “promotion of democracy,” whose articulation is not reduced to the spontaneous diffusion of the values of The American Way of Life but is instrumented through plans of a political nature that in Cuba are called “projects of political and ideological subversion.”

Such a position has not failed to raise concern in revolutionary sectors in and outside Cuba, which have asked if the Cuban socialist system is adequately prepared to face the challenges implied in an increased relationship with the United States.

It is therefore convenient for us to analyze the premises that will buttress the new U.S. policy and its chances for success in Cuba.

In the first place, it should be said that this is an inescapable scenario for Cuba. The Cuban Revolution has no choice but to consider its own sustenance and development under the conditions imposed by a world system ruled by USAmerican hegemony, especially on a cultural level.

With a blockade or without it, that influence is inevitable. To counteract it is a basic objective of the revolutionary project itself.

This is not a new dilemma for Cuba. It has existed from the start, in a culture of resistance that has accompanied the history of the Cuban nation and has been present throughout the revolutionary process.

Obama’s new policy, then, is not as new as it appears but consists of the leftovers of a set of widely encompassing actions that included economic war, terrorism and international isolation.

We are, therefore, talking about the continuation of a policy that now takes refuge in the possible influence that might result from a broadening of contacts, because the policy has no other alternatives.

Though his performance deserves merit, Obama did not present Cuba with “a new policy” for humanitarian reasons. Instead, he’s trying to adapt it to reality, in the hope that it will better serve the interests of the United States.

Perhaps the only novel aspect of the new design is that it bets on “captivating” (i.e. capturing) Cuba’s emerging private entrepreneurs, with the intention of making them the Fifth Column that, according to some U.S. politicians and analysts, is required for the restoration of capitalism on the island.

However, not even this premise has enough guarantees to justify its intentions.

The development of the private sector is a decision made by the Cuban state with full awareness, aimed at suiting its economic management to the needs of the country. It is conceived in a way that these new economic performers will integrate into the socialist system, and there are no objective factors to prevent it, if the correct policy to this end is developed.

On the other hand, in their huge majority, these individuals are the same people who have accompanied the revolutionary process throughout their lives. There’s nothing to indicate that their values of patriotism and solidarity will automatically change just because they’ll be working for their own account.

The political apathy, cultural deformation and loss of civic values present in some sectors of Cuban society do not lie in the implantation of these economic options. Rather, they result from accumulated problems that sharpened during the 1990s crisis.

On the contrary, the adoption of these [self-employment] options can become a solution for a greater problem related to the exhaustion of an economic model that has been excessively centralized in the hands of the State. The negative consequences of that problem might be even more serious because they appear to be related to the efficacy of the system to solve the problems of the population.

The economic battle is the mother of the political and ideological struggles of Cuba’s contemporary society, and what has been achieved in the process of improving relations with the United States contributes to that end, regardless of what the purposes of the U.S. Government are.

On the other hand, Cuba’s experience vis-à-vis U.S. policy demonstrates that “to wish is not the same as to achieve.” The new plans of the U.S. Government toward Cuba will continue to face the resistance of the majority of the Cuban people, the rejection of other governments and popular movements in various parts of the world, and the domestic contradictions in the U.S. itself, where an infinity of private interests coexist and a high degree of political polarization exists.

Nobody can say for certain that every USAmerican who steps on Cuban soil is an agent of the destabilizing plans, or that all businessmen who decide to trade with Cuba are interested in a regime change. As demonstrated until now, the people-to-people contact can lead to quite the opposite.

In effect, USAmerican culture has had — and will continue to have — much influence in Cuba. But that is not always intrinsically bad, and many times U.S. culture has been unable to resist the spell of Cuban culture.

Something that has characterized Cuban culture and articulated its resistance has been its capacity to metabolize what arrives from everywhere and turn it into Cuban. That is why we Cubans have never been xenophobes.

To achieve the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States and move forward in the dismantling of the more aggressive forms of U.S. policy, especially the economic blockade, constitutes the best possible scenario for Cuba in the present conditions. It is the result of a Cuban victory accompanied by international solidarity, especially from Latin America.

An analysis of the new juncture should start from this perspective. Anything else is secondary.

* Jesus Arboleya Cervera, PhD of historical sciences, professor at the University of Havana. Served in the Cuban diplomatic services during the decade of the 1970s at the United Nations and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.

Photo: Esteban Fernández García