Shannon Ebrahim
Foreign Editor
It takes great men to move towards the future rather than looking backwards at the past.
US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro’s historic meeting in Havana this week have shown the two men to be visionaries who have defied the politics of mistrust and set in motion a new path for US-Cuban relations based on mutual respect.
It took over half a century for an American president to hold out an olive branch across the 144km that separates the US and Cuba, and it took an African-American president to defy the hawks in the US Congress and do the right thing. With this visit the last vestiges of the Cold War, which had lived on in US policy in the Caribbean, have evaporated.
All manner of diplomacy on the part of the Cubans has been attempted over the past 55 years to reach out to a series of American administrations to pursue peaceful coexistence.
Che Guevara had tried cigar diplomacy by delivering Cuban cigars to Richard Goodwin, the adviser to President John F Kennedy, in 1961. The note inside the cigar box from Guevara said he was “extending his hand”.
Guevara publicly said that Cuba was willing to negotiate with the US on any issue without preconditions. What Cuba wanted, Guevara said, “was to be free to develop along a different path from the Western hemisphere without the threat of US intervention”. This has been the Cuban position up to today.
Instead of embracing the opportunity for dialogue, Goodwin had advised that the US step up its clandestine sabotage operations of economic targets on the island.
Over decades Fidel Castro attempted to reach out to various US presidents, to no avail. The US response was a series of assassination attempts of the Cuban president, whether through poisoned pens, cigars and even seashells. Over the years the US has tried everything to change the political order in Cuba. The failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was one of the most dramatic.
Wikileaks cables have revealed that the US funded counter-revolutionaries in both Cuba and Miami to the tune of millions of dollars, and used USAID to foment regime change by funding more than 10 000 shortwave radios, millions of books with messages aimed at changing the political order, as well as other clandestine operations. The “ladies in white”, who currently engage in protests against the government every Sunday in Havana, are allegedly paid a monthly salary in dollars by US proxies.
Nothing that the US has done has worked, and now an American president said in Havana on Monday afternoon that “the future of Cuba will be decided by the Cubans”. Obama has admitted that US-Cuba policy has been a failure, and it is time to do something different. There is no question that the US still seeks to mould Cuba’s political system in its image, promoting an American-style democracy and human rights doctrine. This is the rationale behind the US-Cuba human rights dialogue which is due to take place in Havana later this year.
What few Americans realise is that in Cuba there has been no tear gas used since the revolution, no police helmets or shields, and most police officers do not even carry a firearm.
As many inside the Cuban administration have pointed out, there is not much the US can preach about when it comes to human rights. President Castro challenged American journalists at Monday’s press conference with Obama to produce a list of Cuban political prisoners and he would release them by the end of the day. The Cuban government released its political prisoners in 2010, and claims that no one is currently being held for political reasons.
This stands in contrast to the 93 prisoners still being held by the US without trial at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade with no recourse to a fair judicial process as required under the US constitution. Guantanamo Bay was always a convenient location for the US to carry out its own human rights abuses as they continually use the excuse that the US recognises Cuba’s territorial sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay, hence US law does not apply. But because Cuba leased the territory, therefore Cuban law does not apply.
Hence, the American logic goes, the territory is under US military jurisdiction. As important to the Cuban government as lifting the economic embargo, is the return of Guantanamo Bay to Cuba. The Cuban government had leased Guantanamo Bay to the US in 1902 through a treaty it was forced to sign practically at gun point. The return to Cuba of the territory occupied by the Guantanamo Bay naval base was specifically mentioned by Castro in Monday’s press conference as a key Cuban priority.
Cuba’s other demands, as articulated in an editorial published in Cuba’s Communist Party newspaper Granma just prior to Obama’s visit, are for an end to the US policy of regime change in Cuba, and an elimination of the interventionist programmes aimed at provoking internal destabilisation.
Cuba wants the US to abandon fabricating domestic political opposition supported by American money, as well as its aggressive radio and television broadcasts in violation of international law. Not only does Cuba want such US meddling to end in Cuba’s sovereign territory, but in countries of the region – particularly Venezuela.
Castro called current US efforts at destabilisation in Venezuela counterproductive, and has used the opportunity of direct discussions with Obama to raise this issue. The surprise visit to Cuba of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro just before Obama arrived on Sunday was clearly designed to send a message to the US administration that its solidarity with other socialist governments in the region is unshakeable.
It did not go unnoticed that Maduro was met on arrival in Havana by Cuban Vice-President Miguel Diaz Canel, while Obama was greeted on arrival by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. Just two days before Obama’s arrival, Maduro was awarded Cuba’s highest state honour – the Jose Marti medal.
The predominant message that Cubans were giving Obama this week is that before he leaves office this year, he should clear the embargo of its provisions – thereby cutting the Gordian knot.