Our rapprochement with Cuba, as viewed by a refugee

For a man who lost so much — his freedom, his homeland and nearly his life — to Fidel Castro, my friend Juan Roque is extraordinarily unmoved by the tyrant’s death.

But that’s Roque’s hallmark: steady vision, calm spirit. It’s a standpoint that more people would be wise to adopt, especially now, as interested parties wait out this uncertain time between Castro’s death and the possible reversal of the U.S. rapprochement with Cuba under the Trump administration.

Of all the voices chiming in on Castro’s death, Roque’s was the one I sought. We met years ago, when he was an advertising executive at the Kansas City Star. He’s mostly retired now, a grandfather of five living in a suburb of Kansas City.

At 16, Roque was a freedom fighter.

He was dropped off, along with 1,400 other Cuban exiles, by boat near Cuba. They fought for three days, vastly outnumbered by Castro’s troops. More than 100 died before they ran out of ammunition.

Roque, thinking like an indestructible teenager, believed that he could swim 50 miles through shark-infested waters and reach safety. He tried, but he spent the next 20 months in a Cuban jail, subsisting on noodles, bread and water.

His mother, part of the underground resistance to Castro, was held at the same time. She’d been captured about eight months after sending her son and a daughter to the U.S. She’d spend 13 years in a Cuban prison.

His stepfather, who had been an adviser to Fulgencio Batista, also was jailed, for eight years. Both parents eventually made it to the United States and are now deceased.

“Nothing good happened to us as a result of Fidel Castro coming to power,” Roque told me.

Hatred of Castro can make people lose perspective. It’s one reason why so many, including some who have the ear of President-elect Donald Trump, continue to press for maintaining the embargo.

It’s a failed policy, although some still mistakenly cast it as a principled stand.

“What can possibly happen?” Roque asked. “The Communist Party is still in control.”

Raul Castro is 85 and set to retire from the presidency on Feb. 24, 2018, which is a reason why Roque is a patient man.

At a mere stroke of a pen, President Trump could reverse the executive orders Barack Obama used to weave connections between the U.S. and Cuba.

But he capitalism genie is out of the bottle. U.S. business interests will not willingly retreat from pursuing opportunities in Cuba.

In fact, the pace of rapprochement did not pause after Castro’s death, not even for his funeral. Two days after his last breath, as Castro’s ashes were ceremoniously making their way across Cuba, Havana was added as yet another Cuban destination reachable by scheduled commercial flights from a number of major U.S. cities.

Before the revolution, Cuba was prosperous, with a growing middle class, Roque sadly reflects. Castro destroyed that, but Roque refuses to waste the energy mourning it, adding philosophically, “You cannot go through life like that.”

U.S. business interests will not willingly retreat from pursuing opportunities in Cuba.