Welcome Mr. Carter

Welcome Mr. Carter

By Aurelio Pedroso

27/03/2011.

James Carter, the American ex-president, couldn´t find a better moment to visit Cuba; to go a bit deeper into the matter, one could dare saying that we are about to witness, in such crucial moments for U.S.- Cuba relationships, a virtual agreement previously concocted by both sides because, to put it straight, he was invited by the Cuban president.

Carter is man of respect, with outstanding results in foreign policy to the benefit of our neighbors. And not only: we are to remember that if there ever was a moment of flexibility in the eternal tension between both governments, it was precisely during his administration.

Raúl Roa himself confessed to me back then that he would resign from his position as foreign affairs minister after the first Communist Party Congress (1975), because to face Carter it took “a silken gloved diplomat” and not a boxing gloved diplomat as himself. And he did. And he was replaced by Isidoro Malmierca Peoli.

But that, and whatever happened afterwards, is already history. The present situation is quite different. As old politicians say when they feel like scrutinizing past events, times change.

They will meet next Tuesday. The purpose of the Cuban president seems to be that of reiterating his disposition to talk and negotiate as equals, a disposition that Carter will surely take into consideration. And, more important, he could transmit to the White House.

Next Monday, the 2002 Nobel Prize will arrive at the Havana Airport. After a lunch or brunch, he would visit the site of the Hebrew Community Foundation, a coincidental choice after all, taking into account how fresh in everybody´s minds is the case of Alan Gross…   

Immediately after, he will meet Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, another willful mediator: unlike those who are only interested in prisoners for the sake of propaganda, he has contributed to the liberation of 114 of them. Whatever they shall discuss will admit very few witnesses and in the end probably only God will be able to tell the story.

Then a transitional visit to the Belén convent followed, possibly, by a convenient, dream-like ride by a springtime Malecón, to get to the rendezvous with the Cuban president who –this is a divinatory exercise- will pay attention to his reasoning on the need to free, on humanitarian grounds, his fellow citizen Gross.

As to the members of the opposition, I agree with many that he will not meet them, and, at the end of such a transcendental (the term does not respond to the usual journalistic hurly burly) transit, he will receive us journalists, in a press conference, on Wednesday, in the Palacio de las Convenciones. There, and there only we will have a chance to know a bit more, fantasize a bit less and maybe catch a sniff of whatever is being cooked under the counter.