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From: lbarrios@jjay.cuny.edu
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:13:20 -0400
Subject: Charting a New Course on U.S Cuba Policy: A Historic Opportunity
ENCASA/US-CUBA September 2008
Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists for Change in U.S.-Cuba Policy
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Charting a New Course on U.S Cuba Policy:
A Historic Opportunity
The next President of the United States will have the unprecedented opportunity to change a policy that for nearly half a century has proven to be ineffective in improving the lives of the Cuban people and in advancing the interests of the United States among its neighbors.
The laws and regulations that have been implemented in Washington over past decades with the vain intent of isolating Cuba and changing its government have clearly served only to preserve the status quo and isolate the United States in its advocacy of hostile relations with the island. At the United Nations, the U.S. embargo is almost unanimously repudiated year after year in the General Assembly. For the past several years only Israel, Palau, and the Marshall Islands have joined the U.S. in voting to support the embargo on Cuba. Last year's vote was 184-4.
All ten U.S. Presidents since, and including, Dwight Eisenhower have sought to bring about changes in Cuba, ostensibly to improve the economic and political lives of the Cuban people. They have all been unsuccessful in doing so with a policy that limits diplomatic, commercial, and personal contacts with the island and attempts to strangle the Cuban economy into a better future. It is not surprising that a policy based on the perverse logic that lack of contact will induce change has been a total failure.
Not only has it been a failure in attaining its stated objectives of inducing changes in Cuba, but it is a policy that has placed the most powerful and influential nation in the planet in the position of acting as if it is threatened, or even bothered, by a nation the size of Pennsylvania with a jaded military and a sputtering economy—enough to forbid its citizens to travel there and to place severe and unjust restrictions on those Cuban Americans who wish to visit and help their family members in the island.
In reality, of course, the U.S. is neither threatened nor bothered by Cuba. Its policy towards the island is maintained neither by a sense of what is good foreign policy nor by any threat to U.S. national security. As everyone recognizes, it is a policy sustained principally by domestic political concerns. The result of such political pandering is a policy that is not only a failure, but is unjust and harmful to the best interests of Cubans, Cuban Americans, and all Americans. Assumptions about Cuban American voting behavior and Florida electoral politics and the influence of some members of the Cuban American community have kept such a policy in place.
As members of that community, ENCASA calls upon the next President of the United States to take the historic step of changing a policy that is ineffective, unjust, and harmful to U.S. interests. The present moment is unprecedented in providing the opportunity for the next President to depart from a course that has kept ten of his predecessors from making a meaningful difference in the history of U.S.-Cuba relations:
1. The Cuban American community is no longer monolithic (if it ever was) in supporting the continuing isolation of Cuba. Opinion polls and local electoral challenges in Miami reflect the importance of newer generations and newer arrivals in bringing about a more nuanced position regarding Cuba among Cuban Americans. The extreme measures adopted in 2004 by the U.S. government severely limiting contacts between Cuban Americans and their loved ones in Cuba served to turn many Cuban Americans against a policy that has harmed the Cuban family, leading them to oppose the continuing imposition of the political will of a powerful minority within the community.
2. Changes in Cuba since the replacement of Fidel Castro as President point to an evolution of the Cuban political system in the direction of a greater willingness to consider alternatives that were previously not possible. The tendency towards a greater pragmatism and away from ideologically-based policies is likely to make the government in Havana more amenable to engage in meaningful actions that will improve the economic and political life of the Cuban people and improve U.S.-Cuba relations.
We therefore call upon the next President of the United States to take advantage of these opportunities and initiate a historic course of action:
1. Immediately rescind the 2004 restrictions on Cuban American travel and remittances to the island.
2. Permit unrestricted travel by U.S. citizens to Cuba.
3. Signal to the Cuban government a willingness to enter into conversations with the purpose of exploring ways to normalize relations between the two countries for their mutual benefit and to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
These steps would be applauded by Cubans, Cuban Americans, Americans, and Latin Americans as well—indeed, by the international community. To adopt this course of action is to send a message that a U.S. administration is willing to embark on a new approach to rectify a counterproductive foreign policy that has been allowed too long to languish in the sphere of domestic politics.
Luis Barrios, Ph.D., BCFE
Chair & Associate Professor
Department of Latin American & Latina/o Studies
Joh Jay College of Criminal Justice-City University of New York
445 West 59 Street, Room 1551-N
New York, New York 10019
Office: (212) 237-8747
FAX: (212) 237-8664
Email: lbarrios@jjay.cuny.edu
Web Page: www.jjay.cuny.edu
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