Freedom to travel: the point of no return

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Freedom
to travel: the point of no return

“To
dismantle external coercion favors realistic policies.”

“Reconciliation
has advanced much farther than people believe.”

By
Manuel Alberto Ramy

Politologist
Rafael Hernández is one of the most lucid Cuban thinkers. A profound
analyst, he perfectly matches his integral vision of reality with an
excellent didactic ability. There is a reason why has been visiting
professor at several top-line universities, including Harvard. He
welcomes me on the fifth floor of the Cuban Institute of
Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC), headquarters of the
magazine Temas,
the cultural and ideological publication he edits. The date is
Tuesday, April 13, but because neither he nor I is superstitious and
because everything indicates that the Obama administration will
announce important decisions, we begin a dialogue that smoothly
develops into an important interview. Here is a transcription of the
recording, which was aired on Wednesday the 15th.

Manuel
Alberto Ramy:
Professor, in a few days the Fifth Summit of the Americas will be
held in Trinidad & Tobago. Cuba is the only hemispheric nation
that will not be present at the summit; however, it seems that
somehow it will be there.

Recently,
the secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, said that the
topic of Cuba should not be forced into the summit. What do you think
will be the reaction, or possible reaction, of the various countries
that participate in that reunion?

Rafael
Hernández:
It is a fact. Everybody knows that most of the countries of Latin
America and the Caribbean have favored a lifting of the blockade for
many years, including those that have had disagreements with Cuba, as
in the case of Mexico, for example. We are living through a very
special moment in terms of Cuba’s international relations. As never
before, Cuba maintains the closest relations with the hemisphere,
including countries like Costa Rica, which recently made a hurried
decision to reestablish relations with Cuba, a decision perhaps
accelerated by factors outside Costa Rica.

This
is a summit in a Caribbean country and that is not unimportant for
those countries — such as Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados
and Guyana — that were the first Caribbean nations to reestablish
relations with Cuba in 1972-73, when the thaw began. Those countries
have accompanied Cuba all these years and — beyond the ideological
or political differences that exist in relation to Cuba — theirs has
been a common position. So, it is no news that, number one, most of
these countries take the topic of Cuba as part of the inter-American
agenda with the United States, and, number two, today Cuba is closer
to the rest of the hemisphere than ever before, not only close to the
Caribbean islands but also to countries like Brazil, Argentina, not
to mention Venezuela and Bolivia.

It
is in this hemispheric context that we have to analyze Cuba’s
relations, and in an international context where the European Union
has changed its policy toward Cuba of five years ago, where we are
again in very close relations with Russia, relations that cooled
after the fall of socialism. The same with China. On a global level,
let’s not leave out our relations with Africa, which, after the
withdrawal of Cuban troops, continue to be very close. Cooperation
has occupied a central spot in Cuba’s relations, particularly with
Third World countries. It is in this context where this summit is
taking place. I think that’s something different and
inter-hemispheric coordination is a process that does not go through
the OAS [Organization of American States].

The
OAS is an organization of the inter-American system that does not
solve many important problems in the region. That is done on the
margins of the OAS. So, Cuba is interested in maintaining a presence
in the organizations of coordination but does not consider its
presence in the OAS a priority item. Being part of the OAS is not a
priority for Cuba because the OAS is not the obligatory space through
which Cuba’s relations with the rest of the hemisphere can and must
pass. That is something that has been best shown at this moment. I
say this in relation to the statements from José Miguel Insulza —
very logical from the point of view of the secretary of the OAS,
which is one more among the organizations of coordination. But it’s
not the most important or the most decisive and has a lot less
specific weight than it had almost 50 years ago, when the Cuban
government was expelled.

The
topic of Cuba is inevitably present, the topic of Cuba is part of the
inter-American agenda, not only of the countries most closely allied
to Cuba but also of the Caribbean countries, which include countries
not so close to Cuba. As a result of Obama’s election, the president
of Caricom [Community of Caribbean Countries] declared that he
expected that Cuba might be considered by the U.S. as one of the
topics expected to be part of Obama’s new policy in the region. In
other words, if there is any expectation that Obama is going to
change, regardless of whether that is formally or informally on the
agenda of all the Latin American countries, because the consensus —
not in relation with the conflict between Cuba and the U.S. — is
that United States policy toward Cuba must change as part of a change
toward Latin America. It is something that inevitably will be
present.

Another
thing is what Obama is going to take to that reunion and the ability
he will not have to offer Latin America and the Caribbean a new
proposal for a policy. I don’t think that’s going to happen toward
Cuba, toward Latin America. It is very probable that among the few
new things Obama might announce in relation to the United States’
Latin America policy is the recent announcement that he will allow
Cuban citizens in the United States to travel freely to their
homeland and send remittances freely, the way the citizens of every
other country in the world do. The Obama government is going to
normalize its treatment to the Cuban-Americans living in the United
States who are subjected to the restrictions of the blockade.

Ramy:
That liberalization of travel, which President Obama has just
announced, do you think it will satisfy the positions of all the
Latin American countries that are asking for a deeper rapprochement?

Hernandez:
I think that it is one thing to respond to the Florida voters who
voted for Obama and his campaign promises to facilitate the encounter
and the rights of the Cuban-American citizens with their country of
origin, and quite another are the embargo, the blockade laws and the
whole structure that attempts to isolate Cuba from the world, which
is a barrier for the relations between Cuba and the United States,
and between Cuba and civil society and the American economy. However,
even when one thing doesn’t imply the other and, for example, for the
blockade to be eliminated there would have to exist a dialogue
between Cuba and the U.S., it wouldn’t occur to us that that’s going
to happen without some initial conversation between Cuba and the
United States. To allow Cuban-Americans to travel there is no need
for any dialogue whatever and that’s what has just happened. That
doesn’t mean that this recent measure doesn’t have some sort of
meaning.

Ramy:
Why does it have meaning?

Hernandez:
Because allowing people to send unlimited remittances and visit their
country as often as they want pokes a hole in the blockade. It is not
only an acknowledgment of the civil rights of Cuban-Americans; it is
also an objective hole in the blockade. The remittances are an
important component of Cuba’s national income, same as in Mexico,
same as in the Dominican Republic, same as in many countries of this
region. In that sense, we are closer to other countries in the region
than we were 15 or 20 years ago, because that phenomenon of emigrants
who live abroad and send money to their homes is a generalized
phenomenon.

Cuba
is more Caribbean and more Latin American than what it was in that
sense some years ago. The effect that that may have and must have not
only in the blockade, not only the economic effect itself, is
something that still does not constitute a mortal hole in the
blockade. In my judgment, it places on the table and elevates to top
priority the right of American citizens to travel to Cuba.

Ramy:
That is an interesting point, the right of American citizens, and
there is also talk that a space might open — a hole, as you call it
— a window for academic, cultural and sports exchange. I would like
your opinion on this point.

Hernandez:
Well,
precisely because of that I said that maybe Obama is in a better
position to offer Latin America changes in relation with Cuba than
changes in the United States’ Latin American agenda. Those are very
heavy topics — problems like migration, drug trafficking,
international security, free trade. They are a lot more complicated
problems, a lot more difficult to solve and farther from a solution,
within current U.S. policy, than making the changes with Cuba we’re
talking about.

In
addition to the change of allowing Cuban-Americans to travel and send
remittances, the right protected by the First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, "freedom to travel,"
seems limited, because they can travel to Cuba but they can’t spend
money, which is the same as saying that they can’t travel. So, to
make this decision, to pass legislation through the Executive and the
Congress — and it may be easier for the Congress to pass it — it is
not necessary to have a policy of dialogue with Cuba, not even to sit
at a conference table, because it is a response to something that
affects the civil rights of the Americans who live in the United
States.

Naturally,
the right-wing Cuban-American lobby knows the meaning of freedom to
travel; so does the Cuban American National Foundation. Freedom to
travel is the weakest link and the point of no return of the
countdown of the blockade, because it means U.S. tourism. What is
this country’s top industry? It is not sugar, not nickel, not
biotechnology. It is tourism, and U.S. tourism would open such a big
hole in the wall of the blockade that, even while the wall remains
standing, one could shove absolutely everything through the hole.

People
can shake hands through the hole that will open at that time. I would
say that the meaning of freedom to travel has an importance that’s
more political than economic because it means that any American can
come to see by himself what is happening and not happening in Cuba.
In my experience, when someone from the U.S. comes to Cuba he finds
things he didn’t expect, he finds realities that are not what he had
in mind, he realizes that some of his prepared questions make no
sense in Cuba, while other questions have very evident answers, and
he asks himself other questions.

They
change their questions in relation with Cuba, but what has changed,
above all, is the idea of why the dickens don’t we have normal
relations with this country? Even if they think that this is a
dictatorship, even if they think that this is an anti-democratic
system. Why can’t we, Cubans and Americans, talk to each other
directly? Why is it impossible to travel to Cuba?

And
that’s precisely the fear of that right-wing lobby that has had such
a big influence on U.S. policy. I would say that this political
impact will inevitably lead — in the medium run and maybe faster
than we think — to the crumbling of that blockade wall. I don’t
expect it to crumble overnight or that it will be hammered down like
the Berlin Wall. It will crumble because big chunks will fall down
and this is a big chunk that’s going to fall in the name of freedom
of U.S. citizens — the freedom of travel, and later free trade. None
of that has anything to do with Marxism-Leninism or ideology or Fidel
Castro. It has to do with American values and the idea is to validate
them.

Ramy:
President Obama’s decision to eliminate the encumbrances to travel by
Cuban-Americans to the island is an absolutely unilateral decision.
However, could we be approaching a game of expectations?

Hernandez:
Any relaxation of the relations between Cuba and the United States,
any measure that tends to reduce or dismantle the external mechanisms
of coercion favors policies that are more realistic, more convenient,
more directed at benefiting the Cubans who live in Cuba and the ones
who live outside Cuba.

It
seems to me unthinkable that, if a relaxation of the antagonism
between Cuba and the U.S. occurs, it will not have an effect, because
it creates a climate that is more favorable for all kinds of new
policies. It would facilitate them, not because they are part of a
negotiation with the U.S. that’s neither explicit nor implicitly —
and I think that it would be a mistake to negotiate internal
political changes across a table with the U.S. Objectively, the
reduction of that external pressure represented by the United States’
hostile policy of pressure against the Revolution and Cuban society
as a whole would be favorable, beneficial, it would decompress many
issues inside Cuba.

On
the other hand, I opine that the topic of reconciliation is one in
which Cubans outside and inside the island have progressed a lot more
than people think. Policies must respond to that; they must be
coherent with that level of dialogue, of a respectful dialogue
between the Cubans inside and the Cubans outside who have different
political ideas, because there are many who do not have different
political ideas and maintain at this moment a dialogue that would be
a good model for the two governments in their quest for
understanding.

Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.