Rafael Hernandez: The Beginning of the Conflict

In a jungle of prejudices: Fidel and the Americans

The Revolution has triumphed 109 days ago, and he has been in the United States for five, where he has arrived as a guest of the Newspaper Publishers Association.

by Rafael Hernandez 

 

 April 24, 2024

 

Fidel Castro in Washington, 1959.

It is difficult for me to speak here in the middle of a forest of prejudices. I can speak here about a real revolution that is taking place near your country. Our revolution was made without hate of class. There was never a division from one class to another. Our revolution is a revolution for social justice, for the poor people, and of course, too, for the middle class. ¹

This is Fidel Castro, 65 years ago, speaking in English to students at Princeton University. The Revolution has triumphed for 109 days, and he has been in the United States for five, where he has arrived as a guest of the Newspaper Publishers Association. Although on a “private” visit, he has spoken repeatedly in front of the big press, on high- rated television programs, and has even met with the Secretary of State, with senators and representatives of the foreign committees of Congress, and with Vice President Nixon himself. The photo of him waving to the crowd in Washington is on the front page everywhere. He is not yet 33 years old.

Before leaving Havana, Ambassador Bonsal made all kinds of recommendations on how to make the most of the trip. The diplomat, for whom Cuban politics is a crossword puzzle, believes that the trip will be the return trip, and it annoys him that the journalists have taken the lead over the Eisenhower Administration. He knows, by the way, that the general president was reluctant to invite him, waiting for Fidel and Cuba to enter through the ring. Instead, the guerrillas have slipped through the half-open door of the press, since closing it would have been a hassle (Eisenhower discreetly asked if they couldn't "deny him a visa").

The plan is dizzying, of course, like everything back then, but not so improvised. The Government's economic team, made up of top professionals, has prepared to talk with its counterparts from the North. The National Bank has sent a memo to the other side proposing an agenda on cooperation and financial assistance. And Minrex (the chancellor is not yet Roa, who served as ambassador to the OAS) has even hired a well-known American public relations company to advise the visit.   

For some notable historians this was the best opportunity to have avoided the breakdown of relations and the spiral of conflict that surrounded it. I'm not saying no. Reviewing it retrospectively is like going back over the history of what could have been, a path of lost opportunities, options, gestures that stayed there. However, it allows us to appreciate how many negative reactions, vested interests, prejudices, underestimations, arrogance, the young revolution and its top leader had already aroused in the toxic climate of the Cold War. 

In fact, if you look carefully at everything that was happening in that political theater, with the benefit of time and declassified papers, the chronicle of a death foretold was already underway, the collision course between the United States and the Revolution. This was true despite the fact that that expedition was hopeful for many, including Fidel himself. 

The first act of the Revolution in power had been to install the revolutionary courts, to prosecute the criminals of the dictatorship. The popularity of those processes inside contrasted with the commotion they raised outside. Instead of taking justice into their own hands, as 25 years earlier, when Machado fell, this time the trials applied the law as punishment for the repression. In January 1959, the independent Cuban press spoke of 20,000 deaths. Beyond the number of victims, the 81 months of Batistato represented a much greater cumulative effect: that of a historical hangover in which impunity had prevailed, from the time of Weyler until the last dictatorship. In the Cuba of 1959 there were living witnesses to all these pending cases. This time they were going to judge them. 

Paradoxically, the first point of friction between the United States and the young Revolution had not been the agrarian reform or the nationalizations, but rather the punishment of human rights violators and its extreme transparency, which reached the point of letting in the Cuban and foreign press to the executions. Although his external image turned out to be counterproductive. Let's say, the sequence of the execution of Colonel Cornelio Rojas, police chief of Santa Clara, guilty of countless murders and torture that terrorized the city, presented an unarmed old man, dressed in civilian clothes, whose hat flew through the air under the impact of the bullets. With this bad image circulating around the world, what would not be the surprise of the Christian Science Monitor's envoys when they heard Cubans on the street who, instead of protesting the expeditious action of the courts, asked them: "Is it already Did you see how exemplary Cuban justice is?”

It is not surprising that, when those newspaper editors, fascinated with the exotic image of Fidel and the bearded men, took the initiative to see him up close, they offered him the golden opportunity, above any other economic or diplomatic interest, to convey to the people in the US, live and direct, their version of what was happening in Cuba. That was the priority. So no more asking for help or financing, he told his perplexed economists, this is going to be a visit of good will, to tell our truth. And so the delegation of 40 Cubans left, on April 15, 1959.

I am not going to review a journey that had multitudinous moments and diverse meetings, not only in the field of politics and the media, but also in civil society, with the great universities of New England—Princeton, Columbia, Harvard—and that included everything type of adventures, night walks, late-night Chinese restaurants, Latin newspapers, shaking hands with Cuban emigrants and high school students, lunches at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, visits to the Sugar Exchange and the tiger cage at the Bronx Zoo , as well as other common or unusual places, within and especially outside of plan, days typical of that first and unrepeatable time.

With his talent as a means of communication, which Cubans already knew, and his ability to charm his audiences, without reading a piece of paper and in his imperfect English, although politically very effective, Fidel also exposed himself, especially in his meetings with journalists and politicians, who subjected him to identical interrogations about the same three topics: the trials, the communist presence, the prospect of elections. This was the case, especially in the two longest and most dense sessions of his journey, with Richard Nixon and with a senior CIA officer who was an expert in the fight against communism. 

Twelve years later, in his memoirs, Ambassador Bonsal refers to the objective of Nixon's meeting with Fidel in the following terms: “to underline the dangers to which the machinations of international communism could expose the naive leader of a popular revolution.” 

Indeed, after two and a half hours of pedagogical talk, Nixon felt that Fidel's attitude toward the virtues of capital, elections, and the danger of communism was contradictory to that of the U.S. However, he did not believe that Fidel was a communist, but rather “incredibly naive about the communist threat.” Above all, although he was an adversary, he saw him as endowed with the qualities of a leader. “No matter what we think of him, he is going to be a big factor in the development of Cuba and quite possibly in Latin American affairs in general… we have no choice but to try to steer him in the right direction.”

This same paternalistic and visionary Nixon would change his mind regarding the Revolution and Fidel in a very short time: instead of leading them on the right path, he began to advocate the use of force to liquidate them.

The senior CIA officer repeated the same class to him, for three hours. While he smoked cigars that Fidel gave him, he explained to him the threat that the PSP posed to his leadership. The commander responded that the communists were few, and that the US exaggerated its threat in Latin America, since the little attention that the US paid to the economic and social problems of the region had a worse effect. In any case, the officer appreciated that Fidel had listened “carefully and in good faith” to his warnings, and had been willing to “continue receiving recommendations on international communism in the future.” In fact, he told the president of the National Bank that “Not only is Fidel not a communist, but he is a strong anti-communist fighter.”

The State Department's assessment of that visit was that it had been a triumph for Cuba in terms of public relations (contrary to what Bonsal thought), but that it was not going to "alter the essentially radical course of its revolution...". For them, despite having seen him speak for so many hours and with such dissimilar interlocutors, Fidel remained “an enigma.” 

Nor did US policy towards Cuba change after that visit in favor of a more realistic and negotiating approach, but on the contrary. The USSR did not begin to define its policy towards Cuba until almost a year later, because the CPSU did not fully understand what was happening on the island. When a high-level Soviet delegation visited the island for the first time, in March 1960, the CIA had been carrying out its assassination plans for five months and Playa Girón had progressed from infiltration to invasion. That officer who spoke with Fidel, Gerry Droller, better known in the world of covert operations as Frank Bender, would be the head of Political Action during the attack. 

I wonder what would have happened if, instead of that unorthodox strategy, Fidel had opted for the route advised by his trained economists, dedicated to managing loans, financing and seeking aid from the United States. Would they have reacted differently to an agrarian reform that maintained most of the private property in agriculture and that, however, would trigger a conflict without return with the Cuban and American sugar oligarchy, if agreements had been reached during that visit, a month earlier?

The public relations consulting company had recommended that Cubans shave their beards and wear suits and ties. Although this idea does not merit comment, in essence it is not far from the ineptitude revealed by politicians, diplomats and intelligence officers to understand the Revolution and its leadership. 

As Lars Schultz has documented, they had always constructed Cubans as immature, impulsive, emotional, wild and crazy people.  The Cuban upper class itself and its children reproduced this image when it came to the revolutionaries, so they continued to repeat to this day that Fidel was a madman, prone to violence and allowing himself to be provoked, and that he owed his entire ancestry to something ineffable called “the charisma". 

This vision, which is not exclusive to his enemies, gives style, persuasive power, oratory and the way of projecting himself, the key to a capacity for influence that is truly sustained in political action and ideas, in the courage and the ability to defend them. 

At that dawn of the Revolution, the litmus test consisted of entering “the jungle of prejudices”, that is, into the den of the wolf, with the forced foot of the other's language, and demonstrating more audacity and political intelligence than charisma. . That's the question.

Rafael Hernandez   Political scientist, professor, writer. Author of books and essays about the US, Cuba, society, history, culture. He directs the magazine Temas.http:// 

William LeoGrande: No Prospect of Regime Collapse

 Cuba Is Ailing, but the Regime Remains Sturdy

Despite U.S. hopes, Communist Party rule in Havana is not about to collapse.

By William M. LeoGrande, professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C., and co-author with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana.

APRIL 29, 2024, 4:25 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/29/cuba-economic-crisis-washington-protests-sanctions/

Is the Cuban government on the verge of collapse? Has the moment that Washington has waited for, hoped for, and worked toward for 65 years finally arrived? Some U.S. officials seem to think so. But so eager are they to see the dream of regime change finally come true that they underestimate the Cuban regime’s resilience, skewing U.S. policy to the detriment of the Cuban people that they purport to support.

At a recent conference in Madrid, Brian Nichols—the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs—gave a glimpse into how the Biden administration views Cuba’s current crisis. “Cuba is at a key moment,” he said, referring to recent protests over shortages of food and electricity in Santiago, the symbolic birthplace of Cuban revolutions. “And the solution is democracy.”

In a similar vein, U.S. President Joe Biden previously called Cuba a “failed state” following an unprecedented spate of nationwide protests that began on July 11, 2021. In normal usage, a failed state is one that has lost the capacity to govern its national territory. Haiti is a failed state; Cuba is certainly not. Nevertheless, the possibility that the protests marked the onset of a “people’s power” revolution caused Biden to freeze plans for relaxing some of former President Donald Trump’s draconian economic sanctions.

“After July 11, we hit the pause button,” said Juan Gonzalez, Biden’s National Security Council advisor for Latin America, in an interview with NBC.

Cuba was not a failed state in 2021, nor is it now—but its economy is failing under the combined weight of U.S. sanctions, misguided government policies, and the aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” was designed to starve the economy of foreign exchange currency by curtailing travel, limiting remittances, impeding energy supplies, and coercing other countries into canceling medical services contracts with Cuba.

Just as these sanctions were taking effect, COVID-19 closed the tourist industry, the centerpiece of the Cuban economy, resulting in a loss of as much as $3 billion annually. When Trump blocked the wire service transfers of remittances and the pandemic prevented Cuban Americans from hand-carrying cash to help their families, annual remittances fell from more than $3 billion to just $1.9 billion in 2021. All in all, foreign exchange earnings dropped by some 40 percent.

With the economy under this severe stress, the government decided to undertake a long awaited currency and exchange rate reform that was poorly implemented, touching off runaway inflation that has eroded the real purchasing power of the Cuban peso by as much as 90 percent in certain informal markets.

As a result, Cubans are suffering critical shortages of basic necessities—food, fuel, and medicine. Electrical blackouts lasting half a day are common. Life has become so hard that more than 5 percent of the population has emigrated over the past two years, exacerbating the migration problem on the U.S. southern border.

On top of the economic crisis, Cuba’s leaders face unprecedented political challenges. Fidel Castro, whose prestige and charisma held the regime together through past hardships, is gone. His brother Raúl and the rest of the “historic generation” that brought about the revolution have stepped back from the helm, and their successors lack the credibility of the founders. The internet, and especially social media, have awakened Cuban civil society, confronting leaders with demands from below that they have no experience managing. Rising inequality, produced by the very market reforms that the government introduced to stimulate the economy, is exacerbating popular frustration.

The depth of people’s desperation and discontent is why some U.S. officials think the denouement of the Cuba regime may finally be at hand. U.S. analysts made that same mistake in the early 1990s, when the Cuban economy suffered a similar meltdown after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1993, a CIA National Intelligence Estimate predicted “a better than even chance” of regime collapse “within the next few years.”

In fact, official Washington has been predicting the Cuban regime’s imminent demise ever since 1959, when the Eisenhower administration expected to overthrow Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government before leaving office. When U.S. Ambassador to Cuba Philip Bonsal proposed offering Castro an olive branch to counter the rising influence of the Soviet Union, Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Thomas Mann replied, “Our best bet is to wait for a successor regime.” Subsequent U.S. administrations thought the Cuban regime would be toppled by exile paramilitary attacks, a comprehensive economic embargo, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and, finally, Castro’s death.

These predictions have been consistently wrong because they focused on the Cuban government’s vulnerabilities, neglecting its sources of resilience. First, despite widespread and deep popular discontent, there is no organized opposition able to mobilize and channel that discontent into a movement for political change. The one major attempt, in November 2021, to organize a nationwide “Civic March for Change” demanding political reform was a total failure. Today, most leading dissident activists are either in jail or in exile. The protests on July 11, 2021, and the recent ones in Santiago de Cuba were spontaneous outbursts of frustration over the hardships of everyday life, not the result of an organized opposition movement with staying power.

Second, although the Cuban political elite is clearly divided over economic policy, there is no evidence of any split over the fundamental structure of the political system. That is a critical difference from Eastern Europe in 1989. Ironically, U.S. hostility has strengthened elite unity, since Cuba’s leaders know that if they don’t hang together, they will surely hang separately.

Finally, there is no sign of disloyalty within the armed forces. On the contrary, the military enjoys exceptionally strong influence within the upper echelons of the Communist Party, and it manages key sectors of the economy. Its interests are well protected by the status quo.

With a cohesive elite, a loyal military, and no effective organized opposition, there is no plausible path to sudden regime transition in Cuba in the foreseeable future. Change will only come through evolution, not cataclysmic collapse. And regimes under siege are rarely disposed to embark on significant reforms. Former U.S. President Barack Obama recognized the futility of pursuing regime collapse, and he instead sought to engage with Cuba to shape its evolutionary change in a positive direction. But a normalization agreement reached a decade ago was quickly rolled back by the Trump administration.

Biden and his foreign-policy team are holding on to a Cuba policy inherited from Trump, built on the premise that there is no point engaging with a dead man walking. But the real zombie is U.S. policy, an “outdated approach that, for decades, has failed to advance our interests,” as Obama put it.

Even though the current U.S. approach has no prospect of producing regime change, it is impoverishing the Cuban people who Biden claims to support, deepening the humanitarian crisis on the island and accelerating uncontrolled migration—none of which serves the interests of the United States, let alone the Cuban people.

William M. LeoGrande is coauthor with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Twitter: @WMLeoGrande

A nuanced critique from Juventud Rebelde

A dragon in our environment

 

Published: Saturday, May 4, 2024 | 09:49:04 pm.

Translated by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

Osviel Castro Medel

https://www.juventudrebelde.cu/opinion/2024-05-04/un-dragon-en-nuestro-entorno

I cannot decipher whether the phenomenon is born out of naivety, hallucination or excessive desire to disrupt reality; I only know that it is there, biting us with its many heads, breathing fire on us, as if it were a dragon that revives over time.

We journalists have been accused more than once, rightly, of carrying it; but journalism is just a tiny plot in which the "bug" grazes and relaxes. It is disseminated in the language of bureaucrats, in officials who do not understand their obligations to him, in pluggers, inflators, disguises.

 The worst thing is that, beyond the canned language, for some, it has become a philosophy of life, a way of acting, and a cloth embedded in the neurons.

I am referring to triumphalism, a harmful tendency that resorts to fanfare and does not allow us to see moles, knots and craters. Scares away solutions or results. It constantly winks at stagnation. Germinates in appearances.

Of all its sides, one of the most disgusting is the desire to justify errors and blunders, which would mean an enormous distortion, a word very much in vogue these days.

Luis Sexto, national prize-winner for Journalism, warned us a long time ago that triumphalism should not be confused with optimism. «He observes, values, trusts and acts realistically. That one, however, lives between mirrors: taking for granted and good what is only a cloud," wrote the brilliant columnist in 2008, in Juventud Rebelde .

Sometime later, another renowned columnist, Ricardo Ronquillo Bello, expressed in these pages that triumphalism resembles defeatism, although they seem diametrically opposed. "It paralyzes and incapacitates due to excess of vainglory," he said.

Over the years, both texts remain fully valid because the triumphalists continue to see victories and laurels, even before starting any battle; they continue to abuse consignism or grandiloquence, describing as successful realities that are quite the opposite.

A triumphalist views social criticism as a poison dart, sometimes even as a "problem," instead of appreciating it as a saving arrow. She does not walk with her feet on the ground, as Raúl has asked us several times, but with her body in the air of a planet called Apología.

Save Cuba from the fact that triumphalism comes to surpass questioning, critical judgment or rigorous analysis. Save yourself from silence, false allegations, and lies, which are the answers to what is wrong, in plain sight of everyone.

 The nation does not need the sniper who shoots at all the flags and feasts on our problems and shortcomings, either. The apocalyptic vocabulary will never eliminate the hangover of those who become intoxicated with supposed triumphs. Therefore, we require balance.

I hope to see that dragon with many heads, which burns not physically, defeated. But we must do it without pomp and without arrogance, critically and consciously, without an iota of triumphalism.

Easter Open Letters to Both Governments

Bring the Spirit of Two Easters to US-Cuba Relations

March 29, 2024

Dear Assistant Secretary Nichols and Deputy Minister de Cossio,

To Irish Americans who value their ethnic heritage, Easter carries a significance of irrational bravery in the face of a colonial master--and unexpected eventual victory.

To persons raised in a Catholic tradition, beyond the chocolate bunnies lies the message of rebirth and salvation.

In the spirit of both meanings of Easter, I wish you a happy holiday and want to convey the equally improbable hope that the Barbados agreement on Venezuela can be saved in conjunction with a fulsome return of the status quo pre Trump both within Cuba (July 11 amnesty, greater political space) and within the US (removal from SSOT, hotel use, independent people to people travel, suspension of Title III, souvenir rum and cigars).

My Venezuela dream is posted here

https://havanatimes.org/features/allies-of-maduro-reject-his-maneuvers-in-venezuela/

My comparison of Peace Corps service to Cuban medical teams, recalling the wisdom of Samantha Power, is posted here

https://havanatimes.org/opinion/cubas-medical-missions-a-modern-form-of-slavery/

Confronted by the daily tragedy of arrogant aggression in Gaza and Ukraine, the shortages and hopelessness afflicting Cuba and its emigrants feels almost tolerable.  But unnecessary suffering is unnecessary and you and your leaders have the potential to finally put it behind us now rather than for the next generation.

Regards, 

John McAuliff

**************

April 1, 2024

Dear Assistant Secretary Nichols and Deputy Minister de Cossio,

When I reviewed my message to you of last Friday, I realized that I had omitted a significant step that could be taken by the US, the restoration of licenses for cruises.

During the Obama Administration, cruises had developed as the largest channel for travel to Cuba by Americans who were not of Cuban origin.

As reported by the US Trade and Economic Council on May 17, 2019

"MINTUR reported that in 2018 seventeen (17) cruise lines delivered approximately 800,000 passengers to the Republic of Cuba compared to 619,000 in 2017 and 541,000 in 2016.  Media reporting has 6,770 passengers in 2012, 37,513(9) passengers in 2015, 397,520 passengers in 2017 and 500,000 passengers in 2018." 

I don't know which figures are more accurate and what percentage of the passengers were from the US but from personal observation American cruise ships were reshaping our presence in Cuba..  

Cruises are inherently a limited source of revenue for Cuba and a shallower experience but they open doors to a wider range of visitors for reasons of age and psychological comfort in a new and forbidding environment.  Most passengers participated in bus tours arranged by the cruise companies with a Cuban receiving agency, not much different than found in existing people to people tour programs.  More experienced travelers set off on their own, patronizing private restaurants and hiring independent guides.  

In principle, it is simple for the Commerce Department to restore permission for cruises.  Companies that are tangled up in legal suits because of the enabling of Title III could be cautious to return.  Until the court  cases and appeals are resolved, Cuba may need to find alternative docking facilities that are not encumbered by Cuban American claims.  US citizens can undertake authorized ground programs by utilizing Support for the Cuban People or People to People group licenses.

There is an option that avoids this problem entirely but may strike you as even more far-fetched:  Guantanamo.  Obviously there are no Cuban Americans claiming ownership of its docks.  Cuba's best deep water port could receive larger cruise ships than other cities.  Passengers can be bussed to Santiago which is rich in sites providing a shared history.  The San Juan Hill memorial honors both American and Cuban war dead.  A bust memorializing Clara Barton for her medical assistance to victims of the Spanish military can be found on the Malecon.   The history of the Cuban revolution is richly reflected in a city that is home to the Moncada Barracks and the grave sites of Jose Marti and Fidel Castro.  Santiago also justifiably claims to be a source of great musical performances and creativity.

While solving the Guantanamo issue is conventionally seen as a late stage normalization agenda item, creating a transitional Panama Canal style joint authority could provide a way to implement the President's commitment to close the prison.

It should not be impossible to recognize that the base was established through a classic unequal treaty as the Platt Amendment required it for US military withdrawal and Cuban independence.

I could not find an on-line reference to the US principle of only maintaining bases in other countries when they are welcome but a google search brought me this matter-of-fact observation:   

"Overseas bases depend on host nation acceptance of the sovereign imposition they involve and the political liabilities they entail." 

AIR WAR COLLEGE AIR UNIVERSITY OVERSEAS MILITARY BASES: UNDERSTANDING HOST NATION SUPPORT by Jeffrey J. Draeger, CDR, USN A Research Report Submitted to the Faculty In Partial Fulfillment of Graduation Requirements 15 February 2012

From Ireland's Easter Proclamation of Independence, language parallel to Cuba's view of its relation to the US 

"We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible."   24 April 1916

Regards,

John McAuliff

*************************************

The Link Between Irish and Cuban Nationalism in 19th Century New York:

Father Felix Varela, Tammany Hall, and Captain Dynamite Johnny O'Brien

click here   https://cubapeopletopeople.blogspot.com/2024/01/father-felix-varelas-us-cuba-bond.html

Venezuela as an Opportunity

 A personal dialogue with Cuban friends about Venezuela

The Donald Trump / John Bolton linkage of  Venezuela and Cuba was designed to justify greater pressure on Cuba, even containing hints of military intervention.

I have argued for a long time, perhaps unrealistically, that the only hope for a restructuring of relations with Cuba was a grand bargain reconciliation. The embargo will only be ended when we provide a reason to do so in terms of US interests.  The moral and political case is completely valid but has no significant impact on US policymakers.  

Cuba cannot control Venezuela but it can influence it.  If the opposition wins in Venezuela, that is not the end of the story as we saw when Bolsonaro won in Brazil.  A political process that denies the authority of the populace will ultimately fail.  I hope but don't know that reaching a peaceful solution for Venezuela is important enough to the US that it will find full end-of-the-embargo engagement with Cuba as an appropriate response for Cuban assistance.

The above reflects my conclusion of a dialogue I initiated with two Cuban friends.

What is Maduro afraid of?  It would benefit Cuba (and Venezuela) if Havana can persuade him to play by the rules.   https://www.barrons.com/news/venezuela-opposition-says-unable-to-register-stand-in-candidate-d26c0dbc

And received these responses from sophisticated very pro-engagement people:

Friend 1:  Why do you think that Corina Machado is telling the truth? The longest history of lies about politics in Latin America is what is published in the US and Western European press. And who’s and which rules is Maduro violating?

and

Friend 2:  The idea of Cuba responsible for Maduro is the bias of people that don't understand Venezuela. The idea of Cuba negotiating with the US using the its allies as a chip is reflecting total ignorance about Cuba's foreign policy.  Like asking a Quaker to join a guerrilla group.   The record shows that US Venezuela relations are NOT mirroring US Cuba relations.

This was my reply to them:

Conflicting interpretations about what was agreed to in Barbados. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-opposition-sign-election-deal-paving-way-us-sanctions-relief-2023-10-17/        

Tuesday's meeting in Barbados, brokered by Norway, was the first between the two sides in 11 months.

The talks, meant to provide a way out of Venezuela's long-running political and economic crisis, will continue at an unspecified date, the parties said, adding they are committed to respecting the results of the vote.

The deal says each side can choose its 2024 candidate according to its internal rules, but did not reverse bans on some opposition figures - including Oct. 22 primary frontrunner Maria Corina Machado - that prevent them from holding office.

The opposition has said the bans, handed down by the controller general, are unlawful and Washington has rejected any roadblocks to opposition candidates.

"If you have an administrative inhabilitation...from the controller general of the republic you cannot be a candidate, I want to clarify that," Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the government delegation told a press conference after the signing.

Speaking before Rodriguez, the head of the opposition delegation Gerardo Blyde had said the deal could allow banned candidates to "recover their rights."       

A nuanced analysis from the International Crisis Group: https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/venezuela/barbados-deal-sets-venezuela-rocky-path-competitive-polls   

The Barbados agreement states that the parties will promote the “authorisation” of all presidential candidates and political parties “as long as they meet the requirements to participate in the presidential election, consistent with the procedures provided under Venezuelan law”. In a press conference following the signing of the agreement, Jorge Rodríguez – president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and the government’s chief negotiator – interpreted the clause as stating that a banned candidate could not run. Such disqualifications, however, have been roundly condemned by the U.S. government. If the Maduro government does not revisit its bans, Washington’s appetite for lifting further sanctions will dull, and the U.S. could reverse the relief measures it has put in place. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that Washington had insisted on a timeline and process for the reinstatement of “all candidates” (underlined in the State Department’s communiqué) by the end of November – adding that the “release of all wrongfully detained U.S. nationals and Venezuelan political prisoners” should also have begun by that time.

The issue of proscribed candidates is typical of the uncertainties and ambiguities that shroud the deal and could still imperil the validity of the 2024 poll. Various political constituencies in the U.S. and Latin America are likely to reject any election in which leading candidates are denied the right to run. Should Machado be proclaimed the victor in the opposition primaries and the ban on her running for office persist, her supporters and their foreign allies could feel compelled to denounce a rigged election and call for a return to a campaign of pressure upon Caracas. …. The U.S., the EU and Latin American states should continue to press for bans on candidates to be removed, ideally through an independent review process that would need to be created, and be primed to lift more sanctions if the government accedes. At a very minimum, it is essential that all politicians be free to campaign in Venezuela, and that the opposition’s designation of an alternative candidate if its chosen nominee remains proscribed be respected."  

-- John McAuliff  3/25/24

An update:

Brazil and Colombia joined the wave of rejection from the US, the EU, and other countries regarding the development of the Venezuelan electoral process.

By EFE (Confidencial)   26 de marzo 2024

HAVANA TIMES – Brazil and Colombia, allies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, joined the wave of rejection from the US, the European Union (EU), and other countries regarding the development of the Venezuelan electoral process and pointed out that the elections on July 28 are an opportunity to “strengthen” democracy in that country, as agreed in Barbados.

The reactions of the international community came the day after the end of the candidate registration period for the July 28th presidential elections in Venezuela, in which the main opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Platform, denounced obstacles to nominating its candidate, Corina Yoris, chosen due to the impossibility of Maria Corina Machado to compete because she is disqualified.

Finally, the Unity Platform reported the provisional registration of Edmundo González Urrutia, who may be replaced starting on April 1, provided he does not have any administrative sanctions or impediments under the law, and the National Electoral Council (CNE) admits the candidacy that replaces him.

Commitments Made in Barbados

The government of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to whom Maduro committed to calling elections, was one of the first to express its “concern” and pointed out that the development of the electoral process “is not compatible” with the commitments of the Barbados agreement, signed in October 2023.

“Based on the available information, we note that the candidate (Corina Yoris) indicated by the Democratic Unity Platform, a political opposition force, and against whom there were no judicial decisions, was prevented from registering, which is not compatible with the Barbados agreement,” said the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement.

Likewise, it reiterated that “Brazil is ready” to “cooperate” with the international community so that the elections “constitute a firm step for the normalization of political life and the strengthening of democracy” in Venezuela.

The Colombian government expressed its “concern” about the registration of “some presidential candidacies, particularly regarding the difficulties faced by major opposition sectors such as the Unity Platform and the Vente Venezuela Movement, among others.”

Colombia believes these decisions could “affect the confidence of some sectors of the international community in the transparency and competitiveness of the electoral process that will culminate in the presidential elections.”...

https://havanatimes.org/features/allies-of-maduro-reject-his-maneuvers-in-venezuela/

https://confidencial.digital/mundo/aliados-de-maduro-rechazan-maniobras-contra-oposicion-en-venezuela/

Rafael Hernandez: The Cultural Ties that Bind

 

The Americans and us: parallel roads?

Imagining relations and their perspectives is not limited to diagnosing micropolitics in Washington or Miami, recording the latest polls, or understanding the psychological profile of the next president and his intentions toward Cuba.

by  Rafael Hernández

 

 February 1, 2024

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Photo: Kaloian

In my younger days, I was not particularly a rock and roll fan. However, I vividly remember that my friends and I “sang” “Rock de la Cárcel” or “Tutti Frutti”; “Rock Around the Clock”, or “See you later, Alligator”; “Put your head on my shoulder” or “Diana.” I say “we sang,” because none of us had the slightest idea what Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets, or Paul Anka were saying. So we just made up lyrics that sounded like the English words.

By the way, the Spanish versions of Enrique Guzmán, Manolo Muñoz, Luis Bravo, Palito Ortega, or Los Hooligans would soon come to our aid. So “Pink Shoe Laces” would become “Agujetas de color de rosa.” The lyrics of the covers sometimes had nothing to do with the originals. But at least we could scream in Mexican, “El Gordo said to the Cat, this is my chance, no one sees me and I can fight,” without knowing for sure what we were saying.

I remember as if it were today Raúl Gómez and the Astros, or Dany Puga, the fashionable rockers in 1962, giving a concert at the Belisa cinema, in La Lisa. As I said, I wasn’t particularly into rock and roll, so I missed Los Kents or Los Jets, who would come to liven up the late 1960s. As is known, these bands did not appear, of course, on radio and television, nor were The Beatles, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johny Cash, The Mamas and the Papas, The Rolling Stones. Although we did at the parties with the senior high people on Saturday nights, where we danced twist listening to all of them until dawn.

I don’t remember that the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) or the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) came to question us about our musical tastes. I do remember that among the dancers was the secretary of the Young Communist League (UJC) Base Committee, and that the parties with that prohibited music were at the house of the president of the UES (Union of Secondary Students) of the senior high.

Those who were on the radio and TV were the Mustangs, the Bravos, Juan y Junior, Los Brincos, and a whole host of Spanish, Argentine, and Mexican epigones, who could be heard on programs with very high ratings, such as Nocturno (1966).

I confess that to me rock in Spanish, whose hits I sang to my daughter when she was little, and which she and I can still share in favorable family circumstances, did not sound the same to me.

Regarding the presence of U.S. music in the soundtrack of the 1960s, we know that filin is more of a style derived from the great performers of American jazz; and that Los Zafiros and Los Meme, those legendary groups of that time, carried to the surface the genetic code of the fashionable U.S. quartets; the same as the Cuarteto del Rey, which sang spirituals and country songs like “Sixteen Tons,” and where a boy who sang like angels named Pablo Milanés became known. As well as another beginner from that time, who due to his voice, his style and the poetics of his lyrics remembered Bob Dylan, named Silvio Rodríguez.

To see those quartets live, I recommend an Noticiero Icaic (#247, March 1, 1965), in which the main national and international political events of the week were interspersed with “Sabes bien” and “Otro amanecer,” hits from Los Zafiros and Los Meme respectively. The most memorable thing about that Newscast was that it concluded with nothing less than the so-called “Rock Beethoven,” performed by The Beatles in the flesh. Putting something nice followed by something not so pleasant, the editor made a parallel montage between the four Beatles and a band of monkeys playing with musical instruments. Years later, a friend from the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) would tell me that he had gone to the premiere theaters seventeen times that week, just to see, listen to, and jiggle in his seat with the live Beatles show that closed the Newscast. He did not remember, by the way, the images of the monkeys, only the golden opportunity to see his idols accompanied by their fans, breaking out with “roll over Beethoven / and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

Many years later, I discovered that “Tutti Frutti” was not by Elvis, but by Little Richard; and that the original lyrics in English (“a-wop-bop-a-loon-bop-a-boom-bam-boom”) were as crazy as the one we invented in our Spanglish (“a-uam-ba- buluba-balam-bamboo”), because what mattered was the sound. And that monkey rock, actually titled “Roll Over Beethoven,” was not by The Beatles, but by Chuck Berry. For me, that Chuck Berry was a late discovery.

I imagine that he was well-known, however, by Cuban jazz players, who have always been, let’s say, on top of the ball with U.S. music. Thanks to his peculiar electric guitar and the literary imagination of his lyrics, which earned him recognition as the father of rock by John Lennon and Dylan himself, Berry sounded to me like those indistinct memories that one doesn’t know where they come from. I think they were from the jazz-rock and rhythmic blues of the Cuban Modern Music Orchestra (1967), which was all the rage with “Pastilla de menta,” popularized a few years earlier by Ray Charles in his original “One Mint Julep.” In that mythical orchestra I saw for the first time Chucho Valdés, Paquito D’Rivera, the guajiro Mirabal, Leonardo Acosta, Arturo Sandoval, Cachaito, and other recognized jazz players, like later Irakere, who filled the great theaters of Havana with that very American music. Also Cubanized, of course. Like everything else.

If that music has never stopped being part of us, the same has happened with other areas of art and culture.

In those 1960s of our red-hot anti-imperialism, the images of Martí, Fidel, Che, Ho Chi Minh, farmers cutting cane, young soldiers and students painted by Raúl Martínez invaded public art on billboards and murals, with the aesthetics of primary colors distinctive of pop art, which at that same time Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were cultivating in the United States. The golden age of Cuban posters, a good part of them had the imprint of that pop, avant-garde art (truly) put in function of political denunciation, critic of advertising and mass culture, with an ironic and irreverent tone, in the distinctive works of Humberto Peña, Rostgaard, Frémez.

Watching some of them work in their workshops full of cuttings from magazines and newspapers from all over the world, slides, catalogs from the great museums, photo contacts, collages, lithography stones, was like going up to a lookout point from where you could see beyond the world and particularly the United States. None of the “damn circumstance of water everywhere.”

The living presence of U.S.-origin culture among us includes so many dimensions that I do not have space to address them here in an equally detailed and exemplary manner.

If someone thinks that rock and jazz; the visual arts; the art deco buildings of Old Havana, Centro Habana, El Vedado; the so-called modern dance or Cuban school of ballet, the repertoires of the country’s main theater groups, are part of the tastes of an elite, I want to recall that baseball, evangelical churches, the odd-fellows lodges, spiritualism, the taste for movies and television series are legacies of that exchange, and continue to be a living communicating vessel between the two cultures.

Recognizing it this way does not make these demonstrations any less Cuban. From Fernando Ortiz, what we call Cuban is almost never equivalent to native, as if it were a plant or a species that was already on the island when the Spanish arrived. If we are what Darcy Ribeiro called a new people, it is because we carry genes from other parts, also from there. The same, by the way, as that “house of people” (Martí dixit) that is the American nation (or nations).

In case anyone thinks that familiarity with things American is not an active and organic ingredient of our much-mentioned cultural identity, but rather an atavism of our capitalist past, from which we have been getting rid of, thank God; if they believe that they are remnants that the cultural policy of the Revolution has sought to eradicate, I want to comment that the history of this policy is not so simple.

Although sometimes the allergy to everything that comes from the North has been able to cross into the national interest, as in that censorship of rock in the media, applied in a partial and contradictory way in the 1960s, or during the so-called Gray Five Years (1971-75). A fair examination of these stages reveals that it was never complete or penetrated much into popular culture, then or in later episodes, until today, as I have commented before.

Pulsing with censorship and other cultural keys of politics

Regarding the exhibition policy, in the first half of the 1970s, when 7 out of 10 Cubans went to the movies at least once a week, and we saw more diverse films than anyone else, including films by Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols, Stuart Rosenberg, Roger Corman, Robert Aldrich, Ralph Nelson, Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola, Sydney Pollack, John Huston, Arthur Penn, Alfred Hitchcock, scheduled in all movie theaters in the country.

I mention all this because cultural interflows are not marginal to relations between the two countries. Thinking about these relations, in political terms, only as the fencing between the two governments, is a textbook example of the cultural deficits that affect the understanding of politics among us. This diplocentric vision of relations with the United States, common not only among our cadres, but also among several intellectuals, and which includes, by the way, some who study or advise them on their own, spreads in established media and in social networks.

The cultural and social level of these relations to which I am referring is not reduced to the flow of visitors called people to people. But if we stopped at the groups that arrive under this general license, we would see that they are not only simple citizens but also professionals, company directors, local governments, lawyers from important firms, as well as students, talent seekers, small businesspeople, advertising agents, artists. A group of Americans who have nothing to do with communism, and at the same time very motivated to see with their own eyes the reality of this forbidden island.

Conceiving them as a contingent of tourists attracted by the ineffable beauty of our beaches and sunsets, the son and the mojitos, loaded with dollars and passionate about traveling the boardwalk in a pink convertible Cadillac ignores the main cultural connection that unites us, or that is, sharing a common history. That history, by the way, includes the last sixty years. If for many of them, it was like visiting the Jurassic Park of socialism, for us it is the opportunity for another policy, culturally speaking. Achieving another policy would require that those in charge of serving them as if they were simple visitors or clients could someday be interested in finding out who the hell they are. On the other hand, the social and cultural dynamics of our close encounter involve different agencies. Among these, companies, media, universities, research and development centers, art and entertainment, sports, churches, and other social actors. As an example of their specific weight in relations, for example, during Obama’s short summer, artistic institutions and agencies alone represented 40% of all agreements reached. A good measure of communication and mutual interest, understanding and cooperation, which has not gone through agreements between governments.

Learning from history: five years after Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba

For the most part, the exchanges in all these sectors arose from initiatives on the other side. Our side limited itself to responding, better or worse. If that hopeful interregnum took place at the twilight of the Obama administration, it is unlikely that this reactive pattern has changed.

What are the causes of this imbalance? The first is that our policy towards the United States, in general, has led the black pieces, with chess masters who have known how to play that Sicilian defense very well, by the way. The second is that, instead of playing, most of our institutions tend to become defensive about any action on the U.S. side, more than any other country. Anything that comes from there, no matter if it is far from its government, triggers a complicated protocol. The third — right now the worst: the idea that as long as the United States does not emit clear and distinct signals of change, it is best to stay still; as if it were unrealistic to generate initiatives on this side while the sun of normalization does not shine at around noon.

The attitude of waiting, lighting candles for the least bad candidate, seems to ignore that the interflow between institutions and people on both sides contributes decisively to activating trends that affect the reconfiguration of the political context, both there and here and, consequently, encourage the rapprochement.

I have the memory of a discussion in a very select group of specialists in the United States in the early 1990s when a colleague with vast experience argued that “we should only fight when the correlation of forces favors us.” The change of this mentality towards a proactive attitude implies a less narrow or purely reflexive social, cultural and political vision. So imagining relations and their perspectives is not limited to diagnosing micropolitics in Washington or Miami, recording the latest polls, or the psychological profile of the next president and his secret intentions towards Cuba. A comprehensive and broader vision could contribute to a different understanding of the circumstances between the two sides, and to facilitate actions outside of diplomacy between governments, apparently frozen.

Paradoxically, the common codes between the respective cultures and societies, born from history and geographical proximity, give Americans and Cubans a comparative advantage in understanding each other, much greater, let’s say, than those existing with Vietnam, South Africa, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and others that U.S. politics gets along well with. These same affinities should enable us to identify interlocutors and manage associations.

It is impractical to set goals a priori or unilaterally, without having come into contact, and to prepare to work to clear up the ignorance prevailing here and there about the other. There is a cultural problem there, not simply an ideological or political one. As a Chinese strategy professor once told me: “Two-thirds of the way is for them (the Americans) to understand us. We are the ones in charge of explaining it to them.” Not to convince them of our ideas, to get them to share them, naturally. Just that they understand us. Isn’t that what culture means?

Regarding the legitimate and reasonable concern for national security, we must recognize the different conditions under which these relations operate today and, in particular, the close communication that binds us. In the era of artificial intelligence, social media, and circular migration, control over everything that flies requires other methods. And maybe it’s not about trying to control everything. It is not effective, it produces obstacles that limit us in what we want to achieve.

Protecting national culture is not about using a condom, because neither ideology nor culture allows for condoms — assuming it made any sense to use them to avoid certain perceived threats.

I often tell my students that the main eventual challenge in our relations with the United States (and with the world) would be if one night, unexpectedly, the blockade were lifted and true normalization was imposed. Because we’ve never had to deal with that scenario.

After the initial rejoicing over the raising of the U.S. flag in the until then Interests Section and the visit of President Obama, the effects of an eventual American tsunami worried some at the top and also many at the bottom. In 2016, more than a million visitors from the North invaded the streets of Havana and other cities. Suddenly, we had a kind of anticipatory flash of what was to come when the blockade was lifted.

As Sun Tzu recommended, the first thing to protect national interest is to walk with our eyes wide open about what we have around us, near us, and in our own people. Some worry, not without reason, about the impregnation of cultural globalization among us, with its alienating elements, characterized as manipulations foreign to the most authentic values of our identity. Although I share the concern to a certain extent, we must not forget, at the same time, that self and other people are not as delineated as they used to be, just as they are not delineated outside and inside.

Before I mentioned a list of American filmmakers who made movies that we were able to see in movie theaters during the Gray Five Year Period. Recently, thanks to a researcher friend, I was able to review the catalog of films shown on our TV channels between 2020 and 2022.

In that last year alone, 3,308 films were released, of which 1,842 were from the United States; that is, 55.68% of all the movies that viewers saw. The analysis of this programming, surely explainable with copyright arguments, etc., would entail an examination taking into account genres, authors, dates and quality of the films. In any case, during those three years, we Cubans saw, on state TV alone, 5,628 American films. Although there has been progress in terms of balance, since in 2021 the cinema of that country had reached 70%, and in 2020, 77% of all programming.

Of course, this very high concentration of U.S. movies, compared to the 1960s, is not a Cuban peculiarity; and at the same time, it would be desirable to have audiovisual diversity, especially on state TV, that balances the personalized consumption offered by countless services that sell all types of series and audiovisual products under license, and other suppliers, such as El paquete (The Package), Mochila (The Backpack), etc. While some researchers are encouraged to carry out this study, and others could do the same with music, access to Internet websites, etc., it is obvious that if the U.S. tsunami has not occurred, that tide that reaches our ankles is already part of the Cuban reality of today.

The echoes of the most prestigious and oldest jazz event in Cuba are still alive, where musicians from several countries met again, the presence of a greater number of musicians from the United States than in Trump’s gray quadrennium could illustrate what I was pointing out about parallel currents that do not cease between both sides. Giving them the attention they deserve, to facilitate and expand them as bridges of understanding and collaboration is the most imminent challenge. To do so, we do not have to wait for “the correlation of forces to favor us” or for the god of harmony to enter through a window in his Batmobile.

Instead of wasting away on futile predictions, pessimistic or optimistic, we should pay attention to that aphorism of the philosopher Chuck Berry: “You never can tell.”

Rafael Hernández

Politólogo, profesor, escritor. Autor de libros y ensayos sobre EEUU, Cuba, sociedad, historia, cultura. Dirige la revista Temas.

https://oncubanews.com/en/opinion/columns/in-plain-words/the-americans-and-us-parallel-roads/