To promote a peaceful transition to a Cuba that respects human rights
and political and economic freedoms
Revisiting the aftermath of the Obama Administration's normalization of relations with Cuba
First and foremost the step taken by the Biden Administration on Cuba, to conduct an in depth investigation into what led to the brain injuries of scores of U.S. diplomats beginning in late 2016 in Havana is both right and necessary. Policy makers should also look at the Castro regime's history of outlaw behavior and international terrorism when considering possible bad actors.
Hours before President Obama's arrival in Cuba on March 21, 2016 a member of the Ladies in White taken away by police.
Advocates for returning to the 2009 - 2017 Cuba normalization policy are wrong in the claims they continue to make. Tourism had unexpected and negative consequences for Cubans. Loosening sanctions benefitted the Cuban military that expanded its role in the national economy, while engaging in repressive behavior at home and abroad, especially in Venezuela and Nicaragua. Human rights violations worsened in Cuba during the Obama detente, and the promise of Havana's increased engagement with the International Red Cross did not translate into visits to Cuba's prisons.
Tourism to Cuba had unexpected outcomes reported The New York Times in 2016 that the impact of nearly 3.5 million visitors to Cuba in 2015 had caused a surging demand for food that led to "soaring prices and empty shelves" with basic food staples "becoming unaffordable for regular Cubans." The paper of record concluded "tourists are quite literally eating Cuba’s lunch."
Unintended consequences extended into other areas beyond food staples.
It was not the "fledgling private sector" that flourished under the last two years of the Obama Administration but the Cuban military and its conglomerate the "Armed Forces Business Enterprises Group" (GAESA) headed up by Raul Castro’s former son-in-law, General Luis Alberto Rodriguez. GAESA expanded into sectors previously controlled by civilians in the government.
Over 25 years Eusebio Leal, the city historian, and his office worked to restore Old Havana, and over this period it "became a center of power with unprecedented budgetary freedom" under the entity known as Habaguanex, and was viewed by some as a success story. According to the Associated Press in August 2016, " the Cuban military took over the business operations of Leal’s City Historian’s Office, absorbing them into a business empire that has grown dramatically since the declaration of detente between the U.S. and Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014."
According to Reuters, "the only hotel deal struck" prior to Trump cooling relations with Havana was between Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (Marriott International Inc) and Gaviota, a subsidiary of GAESA to manage a hotel in Havana owned by the military conglomerate. All the state hotels, stores and eateries in colonial Old Havana were taken over by GAESA in the last year of the Obama Administration.
The reality that the lack of human rights for Cubans also impacts the economic sphere was revealed with a high profile foreign investment that failed. In mid-February 2016 the
Obama administration gave "its approval to the first American factory in Cuba in more than 50 years'', and ABC News also reported that "the move appears to have gained the support of the Cuban government as well." Official communist publications Granma and Juventud Rebelde published stories praising the initiative.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Saul Berenthal in Havana, Cuba, on March 21, 2016. Credit: Photo by Pete Souza.
Ten months later in November 2016 the Cuban government said no. Turned out that one of the owners of the company that would set up the factory, Saul Berenthal, was Cuban American, and in his enthusiasm Mr. Berenthal had reclaimed his Cuban citizenship. This exposed an ugly truth. Average Cubans living on the island are not allowed to make large investments into businesses, and this led to the deal being rejected.
"The real reason for the rejection was that Berenthal, a 73-year-old retired software engineer who was born in Cuba and lived in the United States since 1960, had obtained permanent residence in Cuba, according to a knowledgeable source who asked for anonymity to speak about the issue. “Saul got enthusiastic,” the source told el Nuevo Herald. Berenthal's “repatriation” put the Cuban government in a difficult position: accept the project, even though it would break its own ban on large investments by Cubans who live on the island, or reject it using an indirect argument. Officials chose the second option."
There was not an explosion of positive change in Cuba, but to the contrary the number of arbitrary detentions against dissidents continued to rise geometrically over 2014, 2015, and 2016 as Human Rights Watch documented in their annual reports, but failed to mention rising acts of violence against dissidents such as the May 24, 2015 machete attack against Sirley Avila Leon. that led to the loss of her hand, and the use of both her knees in a politically motivated attack.
Sirley Avila Leon: In Cuba in 2015 following the machete attack and exiled in Miami in 2016
Prior to President Obama’s March 2016 state visit to Cuba, "police arrested more than 300 dissidents as part of a crackdown on opposition leaders," reported Human Rights Watch in their 2017 annual report.
The aftermath of the visit did not generate an improvement in relations. Two days after President Obama's visit an official newspaper, Tribuna de la Habana, published an article about his visit titled "Negro, are you dumb?" Eight months later in November 2016 U.S. diplomats in Havana began to suffer brain injuries. On January 2, 2017, Raúl Castro presided over a military parade in which Cuban soldiers chanted: “Obama! Obama! With what fervor we’d like to confront your clumsiness, give you a cleansing with rebels and mortar, and make you a hat out of bullets to the head.”
The Trump Administration's shift in Cuba policy did not worsen the human rights situation in Cuba, and on the economic front the regime in Havana in the summer of 2020 announced economic reforms that would have been celebrated during the Obama Presidency. The Obama Administration thought detente would lead to an improvement in human rights, and engagement with the International Committee of the Red Cross. It did not happen on his watch.
The last Red Cross visit to Cuban prisons was between 1988 and 1989 after the Reagan Administration, undid the Carter detente with Havana (1977-1981), placed Cuba on the list of terror sponsors, and pressured Havana at the United Nations Human Rights Commission and civil society organizations brought former Cuban political prisoners to give their testimony at an international forum in Paris in 1986. It was this that opened prisons in Cuba to international inspections for two years.
The man who led the effort at the United Nations that opened up Cuba's prisons to Red Cross visits in 1988 and 1989 was Armando Valladares, a former Cuban political prisoner, and in March 2016 he characterized President Obama's state visit to Cuba as a mistake. Five years later, and reviewing the aftermath of that visit, and the detente with Havana, and "a mistake" is the best way to sum up the whole policy. The President of the United States normalizing relations with a state sponsor of terrorism that remains ideologically hostile to the existence of the United States, while denying that reality, was doomed to fail, and so it did.
No comments:
Post a Comment