The family and flights to Cuba
Last week the Trump administration decided that flights to Cuba can only land in Havana. Nine provincial capitals or major cities were therefore suppressed. It is the newest squeeze in Trump policy against the Cuban government with the express purpose of choking the Island’s economy and punishing the Cuban government for supporting the Venezuelan government.
The impact of this policy touches and tests more than dollars. It points to the essence of any country: the family and its emotional and spiritual ties.
It is not the first time that the Cuban family — on both sides of the Florida Straits — is at the center of the Washington-Havana conflict. A family that has been receiving blows for the past 61 years.
In an article published recently in Progreso Weekly by its columnist Jesús Arboleya, at the time Dr. Arboleya hinted that the Trump administration would implement measures like the ones taken last week.
We decided to speak to Dr. Arboleya to hear his initial impressions of the newest measures taken by the Trump administration.
Progreso Weekly: In one of your recent articles, “A bad year for new Cuban migrants in the United States,” you said that other measures were expected from the United States government aimed at further limiting the visits of emigrants to Cuba. Does the recent decision to ban flights to destinations other than Havana fit in your thinking?
Arboleya: Surely. Mike Pompeo’s excuse when he stated that the new measure was meant to hurt the Cuban economy as punishment for the Cuban support of the Venezuelan government is an insult to people’s intelligence. By this I mean the intelligent and well informed, because there are others who will believe anything. The objective is to prevent the contact of emigrants with Cuba, because, as I said in the aforementioned article, these [family] links conflict with the control the Cuban-American extreme right has over the rest of that community.
PW: So the origin of this proposal falls on the lap the Cuban-American extreme right?
Arboleya: Not only are they set to damage these contacts, but the Cuban-American extreme right is undoubtedly the most interested in doing so. I would say that they are also the most obsessed and for political-electoral purposes. The measures are sold and bought as the most likely to hit the bullseye.
PW: Do you think they could succeed?
Arboleya: It is not the first time they’ve tried something similar. In 2004, under the presidency of George W. Bush, they established regulations that limited family visits to once every three years, redefined the concept of family, and still Cuban emigrants found other ways to get here. It was also bad policy. Barack Obama, by expressing himself against it, obtained more votes than ever by a Democratic presidential candidate in the Cuban-American community. The fact is that some of these people are so fanatical that they always find a way to shoot themselves in the foot. It’s why they are symbolically lame.
