E-4, or pawn to King 4: A new move by Washington
By Enrique Ubieta Gómez
When is a dialogue false? Is it when the demand for liberty becomes a rhetorical trick to deceive the reader? Whoever attempts to dialogue with Cuba has to jettison all prejudices. Seated across the table would not be “the good guy” and “the bad guy,” the big rich interlocutor and the small “needy” one, the one who must change and the one who extends his hand so that changes may occur.
President Castro has reiterated, over and again, the Cuban government’s offer to dialogue without preconditions, but that means that the ideological convictions of both parties will have to be placed in a closed folder, so both parties may broach the topics of an open bilateral agenda.
Whoever offers a possibility of dialogue between Cuba and the United States that can overcome the half-century of hostilities and military and economic aggression must set aside his personal position. The discussion will not center on the significance and permanence of the Cuban Revolution or on U.S. imperialism.
There are so many issues in dispute and so many others with possible mutual benefit – as it is natural between neighboring countries – that trying to turn this necessary re-encounter into acts of victory or defeat for either participant is a historic crime.
Cuba would not sit down to negotiate its socialism (which is the sovereign choice of its people) or demand its interlocutor to desist from capitalism. It is true that the major Western media inculcate the image of the “socialist failure” and that, despite all evidence, conceal the failure of capitalism, but a negotiation between two sovereign states wishing to arrive at a civilized coexistence cannot be based on media decrees or ideological conclusions from either side.
If the ideological differences are selected as the central issue of the debate, then there is no accord and none will be reached.
When the American president chooses – or accepts the choice that others make for him – a soldier in his own army (as Yoani Sánchez is) as his leading “interlocutor,” he is evidently not building bridges with Cuba. It is not difficult to demonstrate that nothing in her is authentic – neither her success as blogger nor her performances nor her “patriotism.”
To any serious and informed analyst, Yoani is a media construction who must be seen as a Yanqui chess piece. International policy has become so cynical that many of those who accept that evidence, overlook it.
In a game of chess (remember Aznar’s famous phrase about “moving a piece” and Fidel’s crushing retort?) the important thing is to win. But in a dialogue, if it is real, what’s important is to find common values. If you analyze the questionnaires Yoani allegedly submitted to the presidents of both nations (one nation is hers by birth, the other is hers by ideology and loyalty, whatever her reasons may be) you’ll see the questions are posed from the American, not the Cuban, point of view.
Obama is not asked, for example, if he is willing to unconditionally end the economic blockade he maintains over Cuba –explicitly denounced by 187 countries in the United Nations – or if he would at least be willing to talk about the sovereignty of the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo.
Yoani is nothing but a chess piece and her current high profile is the result only of the uselessness of the other pieces on the board. As many “hunger strikes” Martha Beatriz Roque may stage to catch up with the young girl in the media constellation, her political uselessness now makes Roque disposable. The same goes for the other pawns.
Yoani is not a serious interlocutor, and the attention given to her by the American president is just that: a move on a board. But even in that context, the responses given by Obama – or by the people who wrote them for him – do not reflect a real interest in dialogue.
Obama starts from an incorrect premise that in itself shows a position of force: the Cuban government does not represent the interests or the will of its people. Many of us Cubans think the same about Obama’s government in relation to the American people, and we have a different opinion about the legitimacy of the Cuban government.
But is that what we’ll sit down to discuss? When he says that “the United States supports increased respect for human rights and for political and economic freedoms in Cuba” – does he allude to the political freedom to guarantee the economic liberties of the transnational corporations? When he “hopes that the Cuban government will respond to the desire of the Cuban people to enjoy the benefits of democracy and be able to freely determine Cuba’s future” – does he mean democracy in the Honduran style?
“Only the Cuban people can bring about positive change in Cuba and it is our hope that they will soon be able to exercise their full potential,” he says. Is he really proposing a serious conversation between sovereign states?
Obama resorts to the language of the Cold War and turns international relations into ideology. Most of us Cubans think that our system of life is more democratic than the American way, but that does not grant us the right to demand the U.S. government to change its system as a prerequisite for the normalization of relations. Of course we will make our own changes, but those changes will not dismantle socialism.
“In the case of Cuba,” the U.S. president says, “diplomacy should create opportunities to advance the interests of the United States and the cause of freedom for the Cuban people.” Cuba has the right to reverse that statement and design a policy that promotes “the interests of Cuba and the cause of freedom for the American people.” In Obama’s responses, I don’t see a hand extended to shake ours.
To talk, Mr. Obama, does not mean to resign. Cuba does not need to make its historical victory explicit, but here we are, under the longest blockade in human history. To us, the authentic policy, the revolutionary policy, is not a game of chess where principles don’t matter.
Enrique Ubieta Gómez is a Cuban essayist and researcher. He lives in Havana.
