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Obama Will Use Spring Summit to Bring Cuba in from the Cold
US companies are queuing up as the president moves to ease restrictions on travel and trade, raising hopes of warmer relations and an end to the embargo
President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America.
A man passes in front graffiti reading "Long live Fidel" in Havana, in January. The US economic embargo on Cuba "has failed," top Republican lawmaker Richard Lugar has said in a report likely to fuel momentum for a shift in US' decades-old policy toward the island. (AFP/File/Rodrigo Arangua) The
White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a
cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of
an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several
Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next
month's Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the
president's regional debut and signal a new era of "Yankee" cooperation.
The administration has moved to ease draconian travel controls and lift limits on cash remittances that Cuban-Americans can send to the island, a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of families.
"The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome," said a western diplomat in Havana. The changes would reverse hardline Bush policies but not fundamentally alter relations between the superpower and the island, he added. "It just takes us back to the 1990s."
The provisions are contained in a $410bn (£290bn) spending bill due to be voted on this week. The legislation would allow Americans with immediate family in Cuba to visit annually, instead of once every three years, and broaden the definition of immediate family. It would also drop a requirement that Havana pay cash in advance for US food imports.
"There is a strong likelihood that Obama will announce policy changes prior to the summit," said Daniel Erikson, director of Caribbean programmes at the Inter-American Dialogue and author of The Cuba Wars. "Loosening travel restrictions would be the easy thing to do and defuse tensions at the summit."
Latin America, once considered Washington's "backyard", has become newly assertive and ended the Castro government's pariah status. The presidents of Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala have recently visited Havana to deepen economic and political ties. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is expected to tell Obama on a White House visit this week that the region views the US embargo as anachronistic and vindictive. Easing it would help mend Washington's strained relations with the "pink tide" of leftist governments.
Obama's proposed Cuba measures would only partly thaw a policy frozen since John F Kennedy tried to isolate the communist state across the Florida Straits. "It would signal new pragmatism, but you would still have the embargo, which is the centrepiece of US policy," said Erikson.
Wayne Smith at the Centre for International Policy, Washington DC, said: "I think that the Obama administration will go ahead and lift restrictions on travel of Cuban Americans and remittance to their families. He may also lift restrictions on academic travel.
"There are some things that could be done very easily - for example it's about time we took Cuba off the terrorist list. It's the beginning of the end of the policies we have had towards Cuba for 50 years. It's achieved nothing, it's an embarrassment."
Wayne Smith, a former head of the US Interest Section in Havana, famously said Cuba had the same effect on American administrations as the full moon had on werewolves.
Cuban exiles in Florida, a crucial voting bloc in a swing state, sustained a hardline US policy towards Havana even as the cold war ended and the US traded with other undemocratic nations with much worse human rights records.
To Washington's chagrin, the economic stranglehold did not topple Fidel Castro. When Soviet Union subsidies evaporated, the "maximum leader" implemented savage austerity, opened the island to tourism and found a new sponsor in Venezuela's petrol-rich president, Hugo Chávez.
When Fidel fell ill in 2006, power transferred seamlessly to his brother Raúl. He cemented his authority last week with a cabinet reshuffle that replaced "Fidelistas" with "Raúlistas" from the military.
Recognising Castro continuity, and aghast at European and Asian competitors getting a free hand, US corporate interests are impatient to do business with Cuba. Oil companies want to drill offshore, farmers to export more rice, vegetables and meat, construction firms to build infrastructure projects.
Young Cuban exiles in Florida, less radical than their parents, have advocated ending the policy of isolation. As a senator, Obama opposed the embargo, but as a presidential candidate he supported it - and simultaneously promised engagement with Havana.
A handful of hardline anti-Castro Republican and Democrat members of Congress have threatened to derail the $410bn spending bill unless the Cuba provisions are removed, but most analysts think the legislation will survive.
Compared to intractable challenges in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East, the opportunity for quick progress on Cuba has been called the "low-hanging fruit" of US foreign policy.
That Obama has moved so cautiously has frustrated many reformers. But after decades of freeze, even a slight thaw is welcome, and there is speculation that more will follow.
Old enemies
President Kennedy imposed an economic and trade embargo on Cuba on 7 February 1962 after Fidel Castro's government expropriated US property on the island. Known by Cubans as el bloqueo, the blockade, elements have been toughened and relaxed under succeeding US presidents. Exceptions have been made for food and medicine exports. George Bush added restrictions on travel and remittances.
The sanctions regime
- No Cuban products or raw materials may enter the US
- US companies and foreign subsidiaries banned from trade with Cuba
- Cuba must pay cash up front when importing US food
- Ships which dock in Cuba may not dock in the US for six months
- US citizens banned from spending money or receiving gifts in Cuba without special permission, in effect a travel ban
- Americans with family on the island limited to one visit every three years.
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27 Comments so far
Show AllUS intransigence and bullying was the best thing for which the Cuban revolution could have ever hoped. Because, as bad as the Marxist-Leninist administration of Fidel was to the Cubans who remained, it was still preferable to US meddling which had dominated their country since suppossed independence from Spain.
Everyone from the corrupt US Chamber of Commerce and its multinational corporate membership to the CIA mole-infested South Florida Cuban community fancies that they can accomplish by bribery, espionage, and subversion what couldn't be accomplished by economic embargo and military bluster.
The truth is that Cubans have learned over the last 50 years that they really do not need the US and that they can function quite well in defiance to its tactics of isolation and intimidation--thank you very much.
Fidel has inspired Hugo Chaves, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and Fernando Lugo. Trusty stooges like Uribe are getting harder and harder for the CIA, IMF, and World Bank, to install and may we all rejoice for that.
Cuba may be is a much poorer and less exciting place than it might otherwise have been, but at least Cubans are running it. It is their land and they are now the masters of their own house which is what they really wanted in the first place.
If Raul and his new policy team that is now installed are as sharp as they need to be, they will make the removal of the Guantanamo Bay military facility a condition of restablishing ties with the US.
Poet
Poet, I heartily agree. I was thinking: they're really ahead of the curve here. They've learned how to live in a very limited environment, doing more with less, maintaining the old rather than throwing it away, and still caring for the humanitarian needs of the people. Aside from the greater freedom to visit family, if I were Cuban I think I'd say to Obama: keep your corporate interests and your offshore drilling, we're not interested in the poisoned hand of American friendship.
We could learn a lot from Cuba, but then we refuse to learn from our friends (i.e. health care), so why learn from Cuba.
Please read your history. The embargo began while Dwight D Eisenhower was in the White House. Lyndon B Johnson expanded it to food and medical supplies. Get off all this hate the Kennedys garbage. It's getting old. Harry Truman started the Cold War.
AD
Yeah, you gotta love Eisenhower: he warned us about the military industrial complex but did nothing about it. And he obeyed his capitalist masters in regard to Cuba when Castro nationalized their money grabbing enterprises. Kennedy was still an inexperienced leader when he started to turn this country around. He had to be shot. Those in control do what is necessary. That probably explains Eisenhower.
Eisenhower was a war leader - a general - and not a politician. He never did learn, and was in over his head. He didn't even have a political party - it's just that the GOP asked him to run and the DFL didn't... he could just as well have been a Democrat, and admitted as much. He was easily manipulated BECAUSE he was such a political neophyte. But he threw his share of tantrums, usually behind the scenes. He didn't like having the wool pulled over his eyes by people he thought he could trust - and that's exactly what happened.
Yeah, I remember being a kid in school and being dumbfounded that the US wasn't going to support a country that just threw out an evil dictator - I felt so betrayed. America wasn't the country some teachers were trying to tell us that it was - one that supported freedom and democracy - after all. That was my initiation to the 'real world' - the US supported DICTATORS and tyranny. What liars - I'll never forget how disillusioned I felt - everybody admired Castro and Che...
I called Menendez's office last week after he threatened to stop a bill in Congress because Obama supported normalization with Cuba. Told the folks in the office how active I will be in the primary election - including money to anyone who might run against this thug.
This is what has to happen in 2010 and 2012 - the Progressives in this country absolutely must push the system, not necessarily to the left or to any ideological point - but merely to accountability, honesty, openness. There cannot be a starting point for real reform until the system allows itself to be scrutinized to the extent that its flaws, fabrications and reforms are apparent to all. that is why we cannot give up. Don't trust Obama or anyone - never give up. Always question. Always confront. Always stay informed. Always remember that the lifestyle these idiots propagandaized for so long will only lead to our destruction; simplify your lives, live in harmony with the planet, and poliically, economically and socially relegate those who resist to the dustbin of history.
lt is time for free and open elections in Cuba so the people there can choose any kind of government we want !!!!
Yeah! Sort of like what they did in Gaza.
The Cuba US has kept in survival mode for almost fifty years has the free education, healthcare, organic farming and overall sustainability that helps their people get through hurricanes of all sorts without relying on Wall Street and Banks. We could learn a lot from our experiment.
The only thing Cuba lacks is resources (since the Soviet Collapse) and a democratic government that can rob them blind without providing anything in return.
Representative government can't be democratic government.
"to bring Cuba in from the cold"
You meant to say "to bring the USA in from the cold"??
We WOULD welcome such effort, but...
O'Bama's move is a PLOY, formulated by the usual suspects, Washington's parasitic elite, to squish the Cuban influence built by Cuba's political and practical successes which greatly benefit the Cuban people, and people worldwide.
Washington's blockade strategy failed miserably. Washington's parasitic elite now seek to overwhelm Cuba with the "American Way", to addict Cubans to "big macs", etc, which will destroy Cuba's great momentum toward a utopian reality of production/policy in the people's TRUE better interests. For example, preventive healthcare, permaculture crops, and the people's enlightenment. These are the "Cuban Way".
Leave up the blockade to protect Cuba's great progress. Expand the blockade so other states may benefit like Cuba.
Alot of thoughtful posts
I hope the Cubans remember what it was like with their own corporate/mafia controlled government, and considering the ire of the U.S., how much the U.S, government was behind it. They did what we can't seem to do: Remove corporate control from the government. Unfortunately, they had to nationalize to do it.
There is a difference between corporations and private ownership, even though on the face they look the same. A corporation is the path from private ownership to monopoly. Ask Bill Gates. The Cubans don't need our sickness. They need to evolve on their own.
The life expectancy of a Cuban is the same as that of an American (US). It is also well known that Cubans have more better sex lives.
Cuba has more doctors per 100,000 citizens than the US and even Canada... Their healthcare doesn't involve "insurance" companies with scheme to profit on people's illness. It's free.
Poet, on point. Lets hope the Cubans tell Obama to shove it. The last thing the Cuban people need is a load of murderers from the CIA running around doing to Cuba what they did to Iran, and every country in Centeral and South America. The Cuban people don't need American oil companys or to eat McShit Burgers.
VIVA FIDEL, long live the Revolution.
The world is finally caught up with what Cuba is all about .Civility to all mankind and the planet!!!
When Lansky and the Mafiosos wanted to create their casino company towns in Vegas and Havana to launder their money in a legal limbo land, they did not appreciate it when the marxists launched their people's revolution, nationalized the industries and plantations, shut down the casinos and whorehouses, and kicked out the criminal elite that were exploiting the people and land...
Prescott Bush owned sugar cane plantations that were nationalized, and the Cuban exile community in Miami became a breeding ground for homegrown terrorists/CIA assets that blow up Cuban airliners and assassinate diplomats on the streets of DC, and even launching an attack to spring the terrorists from a venezuelan prison, the true terrorists remain harbored in the US to this day, walking freely, despite warrants to stand trial in Cuba and venezuela...
The CIA have attempted unsuccessfully to invade Cuba at least once and assassinate Fidel in over four hundred separate plots...
In the 80's, Cuban intelligence sent five men to Miami to infiltrate the Ex-Cuban terrorist network, and provided thurough and irrefutable evidence documenting the inner organization and players of their crimes against innocent civilians... The US Govt emprisoned the Cuban Five, and held a kangaroo court to convict them of being terrorists, where they still sit in jail as political prisoners...
Until the Obama Admin adresses these issues of harboring known terrorists and attempted assassination of foreign leaders, any gestures of loosening the fascist embargo is an insult to the families of the bombing victims and the people of Cuba, Venezuela, and the US... This "low hanging fruit" is less controversial than embroinic stem cell research, since most of the major players are now wearing adult diapers, like GHWBush...
Exactly, we can learn a lot from Cuba. Especially about health care.
They have a health care system that is now spreading across the rest of the Americas, based on training community health care workers, chosen from communities that need more health care workers, who return to their communities to work after they are trained.
US medical, drug and "insurance" profiteering industries have created the costly failed profit-from-peoples-suffering medical mess we are in (with the help of bribed politicians), which bears little relationship to caring for peoples health.
That Cubans can enjoy a better quality of health than US Americans do, at less than one tenth the cost, is just one of the reasons Latin American countries are adopting their models rather than ours. Let's join the rest of the American Republics in following Cuba's lead on health care.
And Cuba is not the only place doing better than we are; we can learn from whoever whatever it is that they are doing better than we are. If we see past the hollow chauvinism we are taught by the propaganda of the new robber barons, drug companies, FOX and their paid political stooges.
Just imagine, we can have real community health care facilities run by local neighbors we have grown up with, trained to help people who need health care, instead of being prey to medicos and insurance agents who collect bribes as drug pushers for drug cartels and Wall Street corporations.
I've always wanted to go to Cuba and see for myself. I was so envious of the group from Minnesota that went on an agricultural excursion and came back raving about what nice friendly guy Castro was - he actually talked to regular people, like those Minnesota farmers! Wow! Just like Eisenhower and JFK did - imagine an American president doing something like that in recent years...
Who's Afraid of a Little Yellow School Bus?
A documentary film about Pastors For Peace, an international organization who bring medical supplies and computers down to Chiapas, Nicaragua, and Cuba at least twice per year, to challenge the Embargo, and bring back goods made in the workers collectives in those regions...
I have volunteered to help out with the caravan from Canada to California, and many folks continue on to the destined country...
Check it out...
good
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2009/0309pepper.html
Hmmm, that little Cohiba Mini I smoked last night on my back poarch on this first spring-like evening in the USA. Open the box and it smells like a Virginia tobacco barn. Smoke it to the nub and it's sweet all the way down. Worth the buck-fifty it cost me in South America. I've also seen big walk-in humidors in Lebanon, with every conceivable kind of Cuban cigar, fresh and aromatic. Now I have to hoard that little stash, but soon, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?