Cuba on Obama

By
Manuel E. Yepe                                                                 Read Spanish Version

Cuba
is not the most urgent and important problem the new U.S. government
has to deal with. Nor
is it the most difficult.

The
so-called “Cuban problem” was never very important to the United
States, given the size of the island and its scant economic
significance relative to its size and technological-industrial
development and the financial opulence of the superpower.

Not
even after the triumph of the Revolution, which freed the island from
subordination to Washington, or when the topic became part of the
Cold War tensions – if you exclude the days of the October Crisis
(or the October Missiles) in 1961, which should not be considered a
bilateral Cuba-U.S. affair – was it proper to treat the topic as a
matter of the highest priority for Washington.

However,
the superpower’s demential policy against the Cuban Revolution in
the past 50 years – because of the way it has magnified the
purported “Cuba danger” to the security of the United States, and
because of the charges of alleged disrespect for human rights and an
absence of democracy on the island that served as pretexts for its
hostility – has manipulated consciences by means of a monumental
and multimillion-dollar media campaign, both in the U.S. and the rest
of the world.

The
objective has been to make it incomparably more difficult to try to
normalize links than to maintain tensions. But, because not a single
charge can withstand the simplest test in the light of facts and
history, all that’s needed is willingness and a lot of valor –
considering the influence of the groups in power that sponsor and
benefit from the hostile policy against Cuba – to tear down the
scaffolding of prejudices and fears built around the island and its
passion for the defense of its independence.

To
shut down the center for the torturing of prisoners that the U.S.
government created in the Guantanamo Naval Base, President Obama
surely will have the unanimous support of the world community, given
the general repudiation this center has justifiably deserved.

Nor
would Obama meet with any objections from the rest of the world if he
returns to the Cubans that territory, seized as a result of the
military intervention that prevented the Cubans to achieve in 1898
the independence from Spanish colonialism for which they had
struggled since 1868. There is no excuse not to accomplish this with
swiftness, if the objective is to promote relations founded on
reciprocal respect.

The
rules that forbid Cuban immigrants in the U.S. to travel to the land
of their birth and send money to their relatives under the same
conditions granted to immigrants from other countries are so absurd
that nobody would object to their revocation.

When
this happens, the other U.S. citizens will feel discriminated against
because they are prevented from enjoying their constitutional right
to visit the insulted island to determine by themselves if the media
are deceiving them or telling them the truth. It will then become
obligatory to eliminate as soon as possible the ban on travel to Cuba
imposed on the entire U.S. population, something that world public
opinion would approve, despite the muck left by the campaign of
defamation waged against the island for half a century.

The
new U.S. president would have strong allies among his country’s
exporters to broaden the granting of licenses for the exportation of
merchandise of all kinds, a process that is currently limited to
agricultural products. This would surely be a step prior to the
lifting of the blockade, something that is essential for the
normalization of relations with Cuba.

Surely,
the release of the five Cuban held prisoner for more than a decade on
the basis of a fraudulent trial held in Miami for the crime of having
infiltrated the gangs of terrorists that operated there against Cuba,
would be among the decisions the president could make.

The
same could be said about Washington’s refusal to extradite to
Venezuela – or try in the United States – the Cuban-born
terrorist who was responsible for the bombing of a civilian Cuban
aircraft in 1973 and for other crimes that have been widely
repudiated.

The
new president should especially examine the unfounded nature of the
allegations against Cuba, both in the diplomatic and media fields.

The
allegations regarding democratic flaws do not withstand direct
confirmation, therefore lack a lasting effect, and end up backfiring
against the accusers, as was recently the case in the United Nations,
in relation with the purported violation of human rights by a country
that is a world model in that regard, notwithstanding the demands
placed by the defense of survival in the face of the violent
hostility of the world’s only superpower.

Still
unresolved are concrete issues, such as who owes what to whom, in
terms of damages. On one side are the U.S. companies affected by the
Cuban nationalizations of 1959, which (hampered by their own
government) could not at the time accept the offers of compensation
from the Cuban government, and on the other side is the Cuban nation,
which has suffered damages and losses as a result of the blockade and
the hostile actions of the United States. Both sides would have to
compare the objectivity of their respective claims.

Manuel
E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, an economist and a journalist. He
works as a professor at the Higher Institute for Foreign Relations in
Havana.