Stupid Pet Tricks and Other Foreign Policy Missteps

The never-ending boycott of everything Cuban. It started back in 1960, a year after a military coup deposed Mafia-friendly Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, a man with has hand in just about every economic activity in his elite-run country. Images from The Godfather float in the ether. Big decadent hotels and gambling palaces. He was a cruel man, greedy and decadent.

“Batista's increasingly corrupt and repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with the American mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large multinational American corporations that had invested considerable amounts of money in Cuba. To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his anti-Communist secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 people. For several years until 1959, the Batista government received financial, military, and logistical support from the United States.” Wikipedia.

Then Castro’s rebels invaded and ripped apart the country. Batista fled. The mafia was shoved out the door. American interests were confiscated. The landed gentry, the urban rich, the well-educated professionals watched as their upscale lives were torn apart by the next dictator on the block, communist rebel/lawyer, Fidel Castro (and to a much lesser extent, his brother Raul). He decimated their ranks, confiscated their property, often resorting to the same kinds of brutality once attributed to the now departed Batista.

They fled in continuing droves to the United States, almost all to South Florida, heavily focused on Miami and environs. Cuba remained a thorn in America’s side, even fomenting the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that almost caused a war between the United States and the Soviet Union after the latter decided that having nuclear weapons in Cuba would be a great containment force against “American Imperialism.” Even after the missiles were withdrawn, tensions between the U.S. and Cuba never dissipated. Americans were banned from traveling to Cuba, and Cuba’s sugar exports (even their legendary cigars) were banned from American shores.

Meanwhile, this coterie of Cuban-Americans rose to become one of the most powerful ethnic communities in the United States. They embraced their new country to run some of America’s biggest companies (like Coca-Cola), successful entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and political powers with clear unanimity, tons of money and the savvy to know how to use their influence well-beyond their numbers. Generation after generation of Cuban Americans rapidly climbed the success ladder, well-educated and highly motivated. But the older Cuban émigrés perpetually cast a strong eye to their homeland, waiting for the Castro regime to topple to “go back home.”

Castro still clings to life, a feeble man about to achieve his 88th birthday, who has passed the leadership baton in 2011 to his younger brother, Raul, although many believe that Fidel still calls all the shots. The Soviet Union is long gone, and Cuba is little threat to any American interest anywhere. Europeans and Canadians, not facing boycott restrictions, travel to Cuba’s wondrous beaches, buy cigars in scary quantities, and are beginning to snap up well-situated properties in Cuba’s nascent real estate market. Still, the older Cuban Americans seethe with hatred for the Castro regime.

“Miami is a North American city with a Latin American feel, and at Domino Park in Little Havana old men gather each day to recreate a small corner of their beloved homeland… Hunched over small tables, they wile away the afternoon playing dominos and chess, some wearing Panama hats, others donning baseball caps - a sartorial indicator of the dual allegiance of the Cuban-American community. Many of them are old and frail. Yet ask them about the communist Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, and the passions of their youth are easily aroused… ‘He's not a good man,’ says one elderly gentleman, referring to Fidel Castro. ‘He's killing people in Cuba, my country.’” BBC.co.uk, May 19th.

The boycott serves little remaining purpose. Other nations are gaining a competitive foothold in Cuba, denied to Americans, even as travel restrictions have loosened a bit over the years. In Cuba, everyone has relatives in the U.S., and generally Cubans adore Americans. The only legal export – defecting skilled baseball players – hardly makes an economic ripple. And as over half a century has passed since the Communist take-over, Cuba is an economic also-ran with widespread (but fairly evenly-distributed) poverty. Does the boycott still serve any justifiable U.S. interest?

Many believe it is precisely the U.S. boycott that has kept the Castros in power so long, providing a rallying point that has justified why Communist rule under the Castro lead foot was a “necessity.” It created a common element of “oppression” that unified the people of this small island nation. “More than 50 years on, however, the Castros are still in power. US critics of the embargo argue it has crippled the Cuban people rather than the government.

“‘We're beginning to realise not only the policy didn't work but it was just wrong and counterproductive,’ says Carlos Saladrigas, another prominent figure in the Cuban-American community… ‘The politics of passion is being replaced by the politics of affection,’ he says. He credits a generational change - the simple fact that so many émigrés have died off - and the mounting feeling that the embargo has failed.

 “In the slow thawing of relations between Washington and Havana, Nelson Mandela's memorial service last year became an inflection point. President Obama shook hands with his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro - the first leader-to-leader contact since Bill Clinton had a similar brush-by with Fidel Castro at a UN summit in New York in 2000.” BBC.

American attitudes are changing. That little handshake would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. Saladrigas thinks it’s time to abandon the boycott. “Recent polls bolster his argument. One conducted by the Atlantic Council in February showed that 64% of Cubans living in South Florida favoured normalisation of relations with Cuba or more direct engagement. When the poll expanded to those of Cuban descent throughout Florida, 79% favoured normalisation or engagement.” BBC. Until recently, any Florida politician who embraced this policy was committing electability suicide. But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to stop letting nationals from other countries eclipse the potential of American re-involvement in Cuba’s future.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if time heals all wounds… let it!!!