U.S-Cuba: Statements and contexts
A reporter´s notebook
U.S-Cuba: Statements and contexts
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
ramymanuel@yahoo.com
January 18th 2011
The fact that Washington has decided to promote a few changes in relation to its Cuban policy, allowing certain travels of certain citizens to Cuba, the sending of remittances between individuals as well as the possibility to open new airports to guarantee travels to the island, is already a conspicuous news in the media and a motivation for comments for politicians and political analysts in Florida, the U.S in general and Cuba.
I find it hard to believe that the news come as a real surprise for perceptive observers, because the fact that such measures would be announced prior to the partial elections was already an issue in the talk of the (presidential) town. According to some, the changes were delayed due to the negative impact they could have in the electoral outcome, mainly in Florida. Now we know about these results which, even without such changes, meant a total disaster for Democrats, battered in Congress and tied up in the Senate. Nevertheless, there was always the possibility of an executive decision and that´s what it´s all about: a presidential step.
“This seems to indicate that he (the President) would not allow the right from both parties to keep pushing him around in this matter”, says Francisco Aruca a political analyst and commentator in the Spanish spoken radio hour “La tarde se mueve” (The afternoon is in motion). Aruca, who is also director of Radio Progreso Alternativa, thinks that the announcement (which he considers “a step ahead”) also represents “a setback for the exiled right-wingers and an incentive to those who, in Miami as much as in Washington, are working for a shift in policies towards Cuba” and aspire that “every American may freely travel to the island.”
On the other hand, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican Congress-woman from Florida, as well as president of the all-mighty Commission of Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, declared to El Nuevo Herald that “these changes will not ensure that Castro´s regime respects human rights and surely won´t help the Cuban people to free itself from the despotic tyranny that oppresses them.”
Her opinion is emblematic of a certain posture which seems to defy the presidential gesture, quite transparent in itself according to an official statement of January 14th past: it is intended to strengthen the incipient Cuban private sector, in other words, to lay hands on the island´s reality through fresh socio-economic participants.
In that respect, Jesús Arboleya, a professor of History in Havana University, argues that “inasmuch as those measures are based on equally subversive and interventionist criteria, its adoption does not contribute to ameliorate dialogue between both countries, thus limiting its impact and transcendence.”
That notwithstanding, Arboleya values the presidential decision as “a breakthrough settling a difference in respect to G. W. Bush´s policy”, and senses the incapacity to open doors to free travelling to Cuba as “a result of inner contradictions which the administration is facing in the practice of foreign policy, tight-roping over a resulting amount of inconsistencies.”
Cuba´s official statement, as delivered by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX), points out that: “Positive though they are, the measures (…) fail to modify the policy against Cuba.” I think that very seldom, in many years, Havana has deemed a related Washington decision as “positive”. Some have even dared to turn the phrase around: though the measures do not modify the policy against Cuba, they are positive.
So much for those opinions which, save the quote from El Nuevo Herald, I have managed to collect first hand. Now it´s my turn to pitch, hoping the readers will analytically bat back to me from whichever political or ideological home-plate.
My invitation is to strip bare from formalities the official statements from both administrations (published in Progreso Semanal and Progreso Weekly) and focus on the fact, and study the immediate basic context where Washington´s decision has been taken in a simple 96 hours chronology.
1) January 11th: the official U.S delegation lead by Roberta Jacobson, sub-Secretary of Latin American Affairs in the State Department, in Havana to resume the migratory dialogues, met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, who has taken an active stand as mediator in the liberation of imprisoned dissidents, a task which has lead him to engage in conversations with President Raúl Castro. The Cardinal has travelled twice, in a six months period, to Washington to hold meetings with top officers of the Obama administration.
2) On January 12th, after the rendezvous with the Cardinal, the gathering to discuss migratory issues took place. Both delegations agreed in considering it fruitful, and the American counterpart stated in a note that the imprisonment of contractor Alan Gross meant a hindrance for the development of ensuing dialogues. The Cuban statement did not include such point.
3) On the 13th, the American delegation came together with a group of dissidents, some of whom shared with news agencies an information concerning upcoming changes on the part of Washington.
4) That very same day, Miss Jacobson visited Alan Gross in prison.
5) On January 14th, the White House announces the new provisions.
At some point of this chronology, which the reader may feel free to specify, some news agencies suggested that Alan Gross could be set free after pleading guilty in an eventual trial, after which he would return to his country.
The reader, considering that contexts tend to be more eloquent than words, may feel tempted to read between the lines. Be my guest.
