Charting a new course on U.S.-Cuba policy: Seizing a historic opportunity
(This
document was presented by ENCASA soon after President Barack Obama
had won the election for president in November of last year. At the
time Progreso Weekly ran it. We decided to repeat it today because
the suggestions still apply.)
An
Open Letter to President-elect Barack Obama: Mr. Obama, Tear Down
This Wall
The
next President of the United States, Barack Obama, will have the
unprecedented opportunity to change a policy that for nearly half a
century has been ineffective in improving the lives of the Cuban
people and advancing the interests of the United States.
The
laws and regulations Washington has implemented over the past five
decades with the intent of isolating Cuba and changing its government
have served only to preserve the status quo and isolate the United
States from its neighbors and the international community as a whole.
A
clear manifestation of this is the fact that, for the last 17 years,
the United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly and virtually
unanimously repudiated the U.S. embargo of the island nation. This
year’s vote, on October 29, 2008, was more lopsided than ever. Out
of 192 states, 185 voted against
the United States. Only two countries supported the U.S. position
(Israel and Palau), while the remaining four either abstained
(Micronesia, the Marshall Islands) or declined to vote (El Salvador
and Iraq).
With
the alleged purpose of improving the economic and political lives of
the Cuban people, ten U.S. Presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower to
George W. Bush, have tried and failed to bring about change in Cuba
by limiting diplomatic, commercial, and personal contacts with the
island and by attempting to strangle the Cuban economy. It is not
surprising that a policy based on the perverse logic that lack of
contact will induce change has been a total failure.
U.S.
policy toward Cuba has not only been a failure in attaining its
stated objectives of inducing democratic changes on the island. It
also has placed the most powerful nation on the planet in the
embarrassing position of acting as if threatened by a nation the size
of Pennsylvania with a shrunken military capability and a sputtering
economy. What other explanation than an absurd perception of threat
or a puerile pique is there for the United States to forbid its own
citizens –including and most egregiously its citizens of Cuban
origin — to travel to Cuba? The limit on family visits to once every
three years regardless of emergencies and other humanitarian concerns
is an especially cruel policy not applied to U.S. citizens from any
other national origin.
In
reality, of course, the U.S. is hardly threatened by Cuba, and a
great nation’s policy should not be based on pique. U.S. policy
toward the island is maintained neither by sound foreign policy
considerations nor by any credible threat to U.S. national security.
As everyone recognizes, in the post-Soviet era, the embargo is
sustained principally by domestic political concerns. The result of
pandering to a shrinking but still powerful minority within the Cuban
American population is a failed policy harmful to the interests of
Cubans, Cuban Americans, and the United States.
Outdated
assumptions about Cuban American voting behavior and Florida
electoral politics and the exaggerated influence of some members of
the Cuban American community have kept such a senseless policy in
place. As members of that community, ENCASA calls upon the new
President of the United States to take the historic step of changing
course away from an ineffective, counterproductive, unjust, and
harmful path toward one more consistent with the interests of the
United States and the Cuban people on both sides of the Florida
Straits.
The
present moment is unprecedented in providing the opportunity for the
United States to depart from a policy that has kept ten of his
predecessors from achieving a positive impact on U.S.-Cuba relations:
Such
a policy should be based on the realities of 2009 and not those of
1959:
-
The
Cuban American community is no longer monolithic (if it ever was) in
supporting the continuing isolation of Cuba. Opinion
polls and local electoral challenges in Miami indicate that among
Cuban Americans the younger generation and more recent arrivals have
more nuanced attitudes toward U.S. policy than those of the
dwindling members of the old guard. The extreme measures adopted in
2004 by the U.S. government severely limiting visits by Cuban
Americans to their loved ones on the island, narrowing the
definition of family and restricting remittances, only served to
turn more Cuban Americans against a policy that harms the Cuban
family. Many of them have for the first time found the courage to
oppose the continuing imposition of the political will of an
entrenched minority within the community.
-
Changes
in Cuba since the replacement of Fidel Castro as president point to
an evolution of the Cuban political system in the direction of a
greater willingness to consider alternatives that were previously
not possible. The
tendency towards a greater pragmatism and away from
ideologically-based policies is likely to make the government in
Havana more amenable to engaging in meaningful actions that will
improve the economic and political life of the Cuban people and
change the nature of U.S.-Cuba relations.
We
therefore call upon the next President of the United States to take
advantage of these opportunities and initiate a historic course of
action:
1. Immediately
rescind the 2004 restrictions on Cuban American travel and
remittances to the island.
2. Permit
unrestricted travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba.
3. Signal
to the Cuban government a willingness to enter into conversations
with the purpose of exploring ways to normalize relations between the
two countries for their mutual benefit and to improve the lives of
the Cuban people.
These
steps would be loudly applauded by Cubans, Cuban Americans,
Americans, and Latin Americans — indeed, by the international
community as a whole. To adopt the course of action we envision would
send a very clear message to the entire world that a new U.S.
administration is embarking on a new foreign policy based on
communication and engagement.
ENCASA/US-CUBA
is a national network of more than 400 scholars, artists, writers,
academics and professionals affiliated with universities in more than
150 cities in 37 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
For more information, see http://www.encasa-us-cuba.org/.
