Houston Cubans divided on new policy.
Directive exposes generational divide about how to improve life in homeland
For Jose R. Perez Jr., an immigration lawyer and native Cuban, then-President Barack Obama’s 2014 reinstatement of relations between the U.S. and Cuba was bittersweet.
“Things are moving in the right direction,” he thought.
Yet Perez, 62, struggled to get past the seemingly ubiquitous acceptance among world leaders that the Castro regime, which prompted Perez’s family to flee the island nation for Texas decades ago, wasn’t going anywhere.
Trump’s announcement Friday that he will scrap many of Obama’s initiatives added to Perez’s frustration that human rights do not appear to be improving for Cuba’s 11.4 million residents.
It also exposed a largely generational divide among Cubans in Houston and nationwide about how to reach that goal: through renewed crackdowns or loosening restrictions.
Jorge Ferragut, 69, a retired engineer, welcomed Trump’s announcement.
He, his wife and their three children left Cuba in 1979 after years of religious persecution. Ferragut, who co-founded a nonprofit to educate American-born Cubans about their heritage, is nostalgic for the country where he lived before the communist revolution in 1959, when Fidel Castro seized power.
He said he knew firsthand of atrocities committed by Castro’s regime. He left because of them.
And Obama’s attempts to work with Cuba’s authoritarian leader, despite possibly good intentions, were misguided, Ferragut said.
Instead of helping Cubans challenge the regime, Obama legitimized it, he
added.
“We are not helping the Cuban people,” Ferragut said. “We are helping the military structure that are the owners of every business in Cuba.”
Trump’s directive tightened travel restrictions for Americans that had been loosened under Obama and banned U.S. business transactions with Cuba’s military conglomerate that makes up about 60 percent of the nation’s economy, the Miami Herald reported.
Ferragut agreed with Trump’s crackdown on American dollars flowing to Cuba’s military.
“You have to be tough,” Ferragut said.
Javier Gonzalez, a 30-year-old Cuban native, advocates a different approach.
He left Cuba in 2005, when he was 18. Like Ferragut, he wants to see Cubans’ quality of life improve and the authoritarian regime come to an end.
He’s convinced loosening restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba is the right course to reach that goal.
Gonzalez, who operates several Cuban-related social media channels, fears Trump will do away with the economic benefits he believes have come to Cuba since 2014, primarily through the country’s burgeoning tourism industry.
“I don’t think about the past,” Gonzalez said. “I think about the people in Cuba right now.”
It took Perez years to come to his conclusion that economic sanctions against Cuba aren’t an effective strategy.
He steadfastly believes the country needs to become a democracy — he won’t travel there until it does — but thinks even the current trade embargo is a vestige of Cold War policies.
Neither Obama nor Trump’s directives can change the trade embargo. Only Congress has the power to do so.
Tough sanctions were meant to make the Castro regime collapse, Perez said. Yet, it’s been 58 years without change.
“You have to reconcile,” Perez said. “And go forward.”