An unacceptable proposal

Cuban-American Republican members of Congress Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, now being pressured by their Miami voting base because of the cancellation of the Cuban Family Reunification Parole (CFRP) Program by former President Donald Trump in 2017, have proposed a deceptive new program that would attempt to hide their complicity with the damage that the Trump cancellation caused thousands of Cuban families. They would replace CFRP with the Cuban Family Reunification Modernization Act of 2021.

The CFRP is one of the categories designed by the United States to comply with the migratory agreements signed with Cuba in 1994, which established the acceptance by the U.S. of a minimum of 20,000 annual visas granted to Cubans. This implied preferential treatment for immigration from Cuba and was respected by all U.S. administrations (before Trump) considering it in the interest of national security. We owe thanks for non-compliance of this agreement by Donald Trump to those who now present themselves as its defenders.

The excuse given was the alleged existence of sonic attacks against U.S. diplomats living in Cuba, which led to the closure of the consulate in Havana and the transfer of immigration procedures to Guyana, something no other potential Latin American migrant has to deal with.

No one has been able to prove the veracity of the sonic attacks; not even a scientific explanation has been possible. So if Díaz-Balart and Salazar wanted to solve the problem of Cuban family reunification, it would be easy enough for them to propose the resumption of consular services in Havana. But the scorpion cannot act against its own interests, so now they propose the strange idea that the procedures be carried out at the Guantánamo Naval Base.

I will not waste time analyzing the feasibility of their proposal; what I can imagine is that those in charge of Base security jumped in terror at the idea of turning it into a kind of shopping center. On the other hand, it would require the approval of the Cuban side, which they know is impossible. Therefore, it is more interesting to analyze the colonialist mentality hidden behind this proposal, and its true intentions.

The Guantanamo Naval Base was established under the Cuban-American treaty of 1903, signed under the shadow of the Platt Amendment — an addition imposed to the Cuban Constitution that established the right of the United States to intervene in Cuba’s internal affairs. Even President Tomás Estrada Palma, favored by the U.S. because of his annexationist leanings, resisted the establishment of these types of naval bases — the original plan was for five throughout the country.

Cuba’s current argument against the permanence of the base, based on the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, is that a treaty signed under the duress of the most powerful is not valid. But even under these conditions, the treaty recognizes Cuban sovereignty over Guantanamo soil and establishes that the base cannot be used for activities other than those agreed upon, such as a coal base, for example, or for other naval matters.

Although the United States recognizes Cuban sovereignty over this territory, on numerous occasions it has violated the treaty regarding the use of the base, either by creation of concentration camps for Haitian and Cuban migrants, or the establishment of a prison for alleged foreign terrorists, thereby avoiding any legal protection for these persons. Perhaps this precedent is what led the Cuban-American members of congress to think that at the base they can do whatever they want. But the answer is very clear: under the protection of the law, a U.S. consulate cannot be established at the base.

It is still paradoxical that the machinery of the Cuban-American far-right, grown from the assumption of the exceptionality of Cuban migrants, today turns out to be the opposite, to the point of turning them into one of the groups most abused by U.S. immigration policy. Creating a smokescreen regarding their responsibility and interests is what Díaz-Balart and Salazar intend with their proposal. They are aware that it does not have the slightest chance of being approved, nor do they want it to be. That breach that exists among Cubans is what the Cuban-American extreme right lives by.