Cell phones will liberate Cuba! Pigs will fly!
By
Saul Landau
Epitaph
offered for Bush’s future grave stone:
What’s the word
For dropping beneath
What’s considered absurd?
That level of humor
When one laughs
At someone else’s tumor?
What seems idiotic
W proudly calls
his realist politik.
On
May 21, President George W. Bush announced a dramatic new change in
Cuba policy. In addition to food, Bush declared, U.S. companies can
now dispatch cell phones to Cuba. Bush demanded that Cuba’s
government apply more reforms, not just those allowing wider access
to digital technology. Bush called for real democracy and his kind
of free market economic change on the island
and then declared a “day of solidarity” with the Cuban people. He
put on his most empathetic look to remind his audience of the jailed
dissidents, people whose political views diverged from those of Fidel
and Raul Castro.
Several
Cubans wrote me that the President made a sick joke. When a man who
has tried to withhold goods, investment and services from Cubans
declares solidarity with his victims, one said, it’s even worse
than Bush saying he stood hand in hand with the Katrina victims.
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
Epitaph
offered for Bush’s future grave stone:
What’s the word
For dropping beneath
What’s considered absurd?
That level of humor
When one laughs
At someone else’s tumor?
What seems idiotic
W proudly calls
his realist politik.
On
May 21, President George W. Bush announced a dramatic new change in
Cuba policy. In addition to food, Bush declared, U.S. companies can
now dispatch cell phones to Cuba. Bush demanded that Cuba’s
government apply more reforms, not just those allowing wider access
to digital technology. Bush called for real democracy and his kind
of free market economic change on the island
and then declared a “day of solidarity” with the Cuban people. He
put on his most empathetic look to remind his audience of the jailed
dissidents, people whose political views diverged from those of Fidel
and Raul Castro.
Several
Cubans wrote me that the President made a sick joke. When a man who
has tried to withhold goods, investment and services from Cubans
declares solidarity with his victims, one said, it’s even worse
than Bush saying he stood hand in hand with the Katrina victims.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque dismissed Bush’
solidarity rhetoric and his cell phone policy as ridiculous,
especially in light of the release of a video taped by Cuba’s state
security agency showing Michael Parmly, chief of the U.S. Interest
Section in Havana, passing an envelope of money to a leading
dissident, Martha Beatriz Roque. The Cubans also released a taped
phone conversation with Parmly (they called it a phone orgasm) in
which the top U.S. diplomat in Cuba gushes loudly to the dissident,
admiring her “provocation.” He meant she attracted publicity in
the U.S. media and once again embarrassed the Cuban government.
As
if! Most people involved in Cubanology understand that the laugh’s
on Bush. He demanded severe rules about transferring money from U.S.
citizens to Cubans, especially from a government official who gets
the money from a convicted felon. The money Parmly handed to Martha
Beatriz Roque on tape came from Santiago Alvarez, creator of the
Fundación Rescate Jurídico, a private Miami-based
foundation whose account the money came from. U.S. diplomats in Cuba
say they simply provide humanitarian assistance (books, radios, tape
recorders and other items) through U.S. government-funded USAID to
the families of “political prisoners” and “independent
journalists” in Cuba.
Alvarez
collaborated with the plots of Luis Posada Carriles, who orchestrated
the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976. Declassified documents point
directly at Posada and his collaborator Orlando Bosch. So, too, has
Posada become overwhelmingly implicated in Havana hotel bombings in
1997. Cubans recorded Alvarez’s
phone
conversations with his subordinate, giving him orders to plant
explosives at Havana’s Tropicana Night Club.
In
March 2003, State Security arrested Beatriz Roque along with a larger
group of other “dissidents,” people who claimed to be independent
journalists, writers and librarians. A Cuban court convicted her and
the other “dissidents” of taking money from U.S. programs
designed to overthrow the Cuban government and constitution.
In
July 2004, Cuba released her on health grounds. The money Parmly gave
to her came from Alvarez’s foundation. How cute, the terrorist
sends money to supposedly peaceful dissidents in Havana. Poor Parmly,
I think, a genuinely nice man who became a true believer in an
asinine cause who, thankfully, will have served his three year tour
by summer’s end.
As
Chief U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Parmly provided help and succor to
“dissidents” — insuring they had sufficient food, telephone and
other communications’ services and now, it turns out, money as
well.
In
2006, he boasted about his activities in support of dissidents. He
had almost a religious fervor in his voice when he described how he
dedicated his working days to them
I
asked him to tell me how he distinguished between a true dissident
and a Cuban state security agent.
He
looked down and said: “I try not to think about that.”
My
question derived from the fact that when Cuba put 75 dissidents on
trial in 2003, 12 moles surfaced to testify damningly against them,
revealing their material connections to members of the U.S.
government. Indeed, some of the witnesses had earned accolades in the
United States as among the most articulate members of the dissident
community. Nestor Baguer, for example, was the acknowledged dean of
“the independent journalists” until the moment he acknowledged he
worked for Cuba’s security forces and described how his fellow
“independents” relied totally on U.S. funding and distribution
sources.
I
wondered why, after deeply penetrating the “dissident” group,
Cuba bothered to try them unless to reveal the extent of its
penetration and thus alert Washington to the futility of efforts to
support them. But Bush doesn’t notice hints; and he responds
aggressively to all situations.
In
late May, he challenged Cuban President
Raul
Castro’s “seriousness”. “If he is serious about his so-called
reforms, he will allow these phones to reach the Cuban people.”
Bush referred to a hare-brained scheme to send cell phones to Cuba, a
nation that has spent almost fifty years living under a U.S. trade
embargo designed to punish Fidel Castro. In fact, the embargo helped
Fidel consolidate power and subsequently mobilize the population
against U.S. policies. By depriving the revolutionary island of its
natural and closest trading partner, Washington simply made life
materially miserable for the Cuban people.
Now,
while having assigned more staff to monitor U.S. citizens’ travel
to Cuba — and for Cuban-Americans who can visit close relatives only
once every three years — Bush suddenly got an epiphany. Cell phones
will become his Aladdin’s lamp. Cell phones will liberate the Cuban
people. Technology is truly wonderful. How such a scheme will work —
well, let the experts figure out the details.
Few
Cubans will fall for Bush’s appeal. They know him as the man who
kissed the butt of the arch right wing in Miami, the pro Batista
crowd, those who arrived with stolen wealth or who had suffered from
the revolution the expropriation of their large estates. Many of
those anti-Castro Cubans who support the hard line came to Miami in
1959-60.
Most have no remaining close family in Cuba, so felt no compunction
in pushing Bush to restrict family visits for Cubans and curtail
remittances as well.
These
Cubans, now in their geriatric phase, don’t see contradictions in
George Bush when he says “he who harbors a terrorist is as guilty
as the terrorist.” Indeed, hundreds of them attended
a dinner honoring Posada who lives comfortably in
Miami — as does Bosch. Both enjoy routine accolades from admirers —
including three Republican Members of Congress: Ileana Ros Lehtinen
and Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart.
Indeed,
Bush will make few converts in Cuba. Like most of his foreign
policies, the Bush Cuba plan to direct Cuba’s post-Fidel transition
failed miserably. The transition occurred without incident as Bush
bellowed threats and demands. His tight embargo did not deter
billions of dollars in investments from China, Venezuela, Brazil and
other countries who find Cuba’s resources
— especially nickel and newly discovered oil — attractive.
The embargo has failed to dislodge or weaken the Cuban government for
nearly half a century.
When
the quintessentially establishment Council on Foreign Relations calls
for an end of the embargo on Cuba and a rejection of the century-old
hegemony policy toward Latin America, one knows that a glimpse of
21st
Century reality has entered Washington’s collective policy mind.
For
nearly fifty years, U.S. policy toward Cuba has emphasized punishment
as the answer to a disobedient or upstart regime. No need to recite
the litany of aggressive moves, from a trade embargo and travel ban,
through barely covert terrorist operations. Now Bush throws cell
phones into the mix. Does he think Cubans will call each other on
these cute little toys and share their common complaints, then
assemble en masse at Raul Castro’s next rally and throw the phones
at him? Or does Laura have stock in the phone manufacturing company?
If so, an engineer better make them compatible with the Cuban phone
system — which is no mean feat.
There
is a zany quality to Bush’s cell phone epiphany. Did he suffer a
brain spasm that flashed a message? “Technology will free Cuba.”
In addition, he offered solidarity with the Cuban people whose lives
he has made worse. Bush only dramatizes how far Washington has
removed itself from reality. The United States needs a Cuba policy,
not a divine manifestation from Bush following his daily gym workout.
To make this happen, two ingredients are necessary: reason and the
courage to act on it. Of the aspiring presidential candidates, only
Obama has demonstrated his ability to reason on this issue — sort
of. His courage? We’ll see, I hope.
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow who has made three
TV films with Fidel, available through
roundworldproductions@gmail.com.
