Cuba and the U.S. need a new approach
Sixty-one years have passed since the Cuban Revolution. The Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago; the Cold War ended peacefully; Americans stepped foot on the moon; terrorists attacked our country; and a Black man was elected president of the United States. And, much has changed between the U.S. and Cuba.
When I was head of the American diplomatic mission in Cuba, I supported human rights and challenged Fidel Castro. At that time, from 1999 to 2002, on trips to Miami from my post at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, I urged reconciliation, and many Americans agreed. Tragically, today we are further away from reconciliation than at any time since the 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster and the 1962 missile crisis that brought us to the brink of a nuclear armageddon.
In the 61 years since the Cuban revolution, much has changed between the U.S. and Cuba. The principal protagonists — Cuban President Fidel Castro and Jorge Mas Canosa, president of the Cuban American National Foundation and architect of our punitive policy — are dead. The U.S has had 12 presidents, all of whom — with the exception of the current one — have sought and failed to improve relations between our countries.
The one constant through all this time and history is that Cuba and the U.S. have remained estranged. Thousands of Cubans have lost their lives fleeing the country and many more have endured stunted lives because of our mutual inability to put an end to the difference that sunder our countries.
And why? What is the enormous divide that keeps us from building on the strong bonds of love and friendship between Cubans here and there? There is no threat from Cuba as there was during the Cold War. Cuba sends us her people, but not drugs, criminals or terrorists. Cuba has an authoritarian government; we have an imperfect democracy. Cuba provides universal health care but jails dissidents. We are unable to adequately confront a pandemic but provide broad freedoms to our citizens, something we are working to ensure for all races.
Are these divides so insurmountable that it is impossible for Cuban
Americans to put aside their loss and their longing and seek reconciliation? At a minimum, let us seek a way forward that does not harm the Cuban people.
The greater tragedy is that for decades American presidents have used our Cuba policy as a means of garnering votes and financial backing from Cuban Americans. Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy accused his rival, Richard Nixon, of having been soft on communism in Cuba. President Bill Clinton made the embargo the law of the land after the downing of civil aircraft by Cuban MiGs. Despite Cuba’s cooperation with the Department of Defense in the use of Guantánamo Bay for unlawful combatants, President H.W. Bush made a concerted effort for regime change during his second term in office.
President Donald Trump has gone further than any previous administration in catering to conservative Cuban American voters. His administration has refused to lift sanctions that would allow personal protective equipment to be shipped to Cuba, reduced remittances that sustain Cuban families and ended the people-to-people travel program though which American visitors were nourishing Cuba’s fledgling private sector.
His hostile policy — just as those before it — has also failed. Cubans are suffering, their private sector is in ruins, and they have turned to their old patrons, China and Russia, for assistance. Still, Cuba has overcome COVID-19 and has sent medical personnel around the world, gaining respect and admiration. That stands in contrast to the Trump administration, which has spectacularly failed to provide leadership at home and abroad.
What is needed is a new approach to Cuba. One that, above all else, seeks reconciliation between the American and Cuban people. The first and most important step is a return to President Barack Obama’s opening that began in December 2014 and ended with Trump’s declaring it “canceled” in July 2017.
Above all else, our approach to Cuba must reflect our values of fairness and justice, be nonpartisan and be carried out in concert with the hemisphere and with our allies.
I recount in Our Woman in Havana: A Diplomat’s Chronicle of America’s Long Struggle with Castro’s Cuba the incident that convinced me our Cuba policy was wrong. In the summer of 2002, I picked up several Cuban teenagers on Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue) in my official, black armored sedan. Suddenly, realizing this ride was something special, one asked, “Who are you?” I replied, “Soy ls Jefa del las SINA” (“I am the chief of the North American Interest Section”). Then a young woman said, “Be our mother; take us to Miami.” Those words left me with the realization — which has never really left me — that Cuba’s youth deserve a future in Havana, not Miami.