Guti

By
Manuel E. Yepe                                                                Read Spanish Version

"The
future of Cuba is neither in Miami nor New Jersey. It has to emerge
from changes inside the island, and the government of the United
States is not interested in taking over that country."

A
thought like that would be entirely logical coming from the lips of a
U.S. leader or any citizen of that nation, but makes no sense when
the person who voices it is the co-chairman (along with Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice) of the current Commission on Aid for a Free
Cuba, a White House instrument to carry out the Bush Plan, which aims
to overthrow the Cuban government and return the island to its
semi-colonial condition prior to 1959.

The
man who expressed it was the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Carlos
Gutiérrez, in a speech to students at Harvard University. He
was particularly sarcastic when he emphasized that the United States
does everything possible to tell the Cuban people that it defends
human rights and to tell the world what happens on the island, but he
admitted that the required changes must take place inside Cuba.

The
high-ranking official of the George W. Bush administration said that
it’s not a question that Washington has changed its policy toward the
island but that Washington wants to know when Cuba will change its
policies and who will be the Cubans who will guide the nation’s
destiny.

The
Commerce Secretary assumed poses of generosity when he said that the
United States is the No. 1 provider of food and medicine to Cuba,
alluding to the fact that Washington, under pressure from its
farmers, was forced to authorize the exportation of agricultural
products and some medicines, although it imposed limitations that
keep the transactions from being called "trade." Cuba only
buys, with no right to sell or transport the products and without the
credits that are usual in any commercial operation.

Gutiérrez,
Cuban by birth and taken to the U.S. by his parents at the age of 7,
after the revolutionary triumph of 1959, is part of the group of
Cuban-born leaders known as the "Batistianos" because of
their ideological identification and often familial links to
politicians and military officers aligned with Fulgencio Batista’s
tyranny, which, for most of the 1950s, bloodied Cuba with strong
support from the United States.

The
Commerce Secretary predicted, as he as done repeatedly since promoted
to his post by Bush, that Cuba will soon resume the preferential
place it once occupied during the United States’ hegemony.

For
almost 50 years, Washington has tried, as an essential objective of
its relationship with Cuba, to overthrow its government because of
its independent orientation. It has always resorted to justifications
that have been magnified by the powerful press media it controls
worldwide.

Gutiérrez
described Cuba as "a country devastated by two recent
hurricanes, while it endures a corrupt regime that will be unable to
withstand the challenges of a defiant population." At the same
time, he reiterated the policy of blockade against the island.

"We
don’t want to give them a lot of breathing room at a time when we
believe change will happen," Gutiérrez said in response
to a question from the audience. He also opined that the blockade and
the ban on travel to Cuba "have denied a sworn enemy of our
country resources that he can use against us."

Asked
why the U.S. does business with countries that do not obey the
blockade against Cuba, Gutiérrez said that U.S. foreign policy
obliges Washington to deal with states that have "oligarchic
systems" but "are our customers and would like to buy from
us or sell us goods we need, such as oil."

He
made no reference to the fact that only three of the member nations
of the United Nations support the blockade against Cuba. Two of them,
the Marshall Islands and Palau, are protectorates of the United
States, and the third, Israel, votes to support the U.S. but does not
heed the blockade.

Manuel
E. Yepe Menéndez is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is
a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in
Havana. He was Cuba’s ambassador to Romania, general director of the
Prensa Latina agency; vice president of the Cuban Institute of Radio
and Television; founder and national director of the Technological
Information System (TIPS) of the United Nations Program for
Development in Cuba, and secretary of the Cuban Movement for the
Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples.