CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
April 25, 2009 – 9:16 a.m.
Politics of Color for Obama in Cuba
By Tracie Powell, CQ Guest Columnist
Miriela Mir Fonseca left her mother as well as four brothers and sisters behind in Cuba. Her relatives often don’t have enough to eat, she says.
So when President Obama recently lifted travel and remittance restrictions for the tiny island nation, Mir Fonseca considered it a blessing.
“With Obama, I can go home anytime I want,” said the 33-year-old, who works as a baker for a popular pastry chain in Buffalo, NY. “Can I tell you my dream? My dream is for my mother to come visit me, and for my brother to come here to help me start my business.”
Mir Fonesca is the face of a little-understood side of U.S.-Cuba relations. She is Afro-Cuban.
Fidel Castro’s relationship with blacks in the U.S. goes all the way back to when he stayed in Harlem after getting rejected by Western and European leaders attending a UN General Assembly meeting in 1961; he was welcomed by El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (also known as Malcolm X). Castro has chosen to visit and deliver speeches in Harlem ever since.
The tiny island nation has long offered to provide free medical school to African Americans, and took a harsh stance against South African apartheid, even as the American government would not.
Over the years, Fidel Castro has encouraged his country – about 60 percent of which is of African descent — to not only identify themselves with African Americans, but to have an affinity for them. And he used America’s racism to discredit U.S. policy on the island, according to Mark Sawyer, associate professor of political science at UCLA and author of Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba.
Obama’s election means the Cuban regime might not be able to demonize the U.S. as it once did.
But despite his reversal of Bush Administration policy toward Cuba travel, it more than likely will prove difficult to follow that with a quick end to the 47-year-old trade embargo.
For one thing, Cuban leaders aren’t sure the country is ready for the embargo to be lifted. That’s why we see mixed messagescoming from the Castro brothers about opening a dialogue with the U.S.
And Castro isn’t stupid. He saw what happened to the Soviet Union in the 1980s after it opened itself up to the West — its economy collapsed.
“Cuba is an island of 10 million people and it has a very small economy,” Sawyer said during a recent telephone conversation. “Opening up with the U.S. could potentially overwhelm their economy; and it could dramatically undermine Cuba’s power, control and its domestic policy.”
Like Mir Fonseca, Afro-Cubans tend to want the embargo put to rest; but they also want their families to maintain the gains of the revolution, such as universal health care and a guaranteed quality education. (Cuba has one of the highest life-expectancies in the world, and Castro is credited with basically eliminating illiteracy in the country.)
A report released earlier this year by Sen. Richard G. Lugar , R-Ind., recommended establishing a bipartisan commission to forge a new, multilateral strategy on Cuba with Latin America and the European Union. It also urged Havana’s reintegration into western-dominated international institutions, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, among other steps.
Borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund could impact Cuba’s domestic policy, by forcing the country to put caps on how much money it spends on education, health and poverty reduction. And it could affect how much Cuba can tax remittances. Currently taxed at 20 percent, that money allows Cuba to provide social services to its citizens.
Possible negotiations with the U.S. are further complicated by an issue that has a decidedly racial component.
When 25,000 elite, mostly white Cubans, fled the island between 1959 and 1993, Castro allowed their homes to be taken over by the maids and other servants – mostly black – who, in many cases, worked for the families that moved to Miami. “These wealthy families want to be paid back for their homes,” said Sawyer. “Under the radar, this is being talked about in terms of possible negotiations with the U.S.”
Cuba could be bankrupted if forced to repay wealthy exiles for their property, Sawyer said.
And that would further hurt poor black Cubans, like the realtives of Mir Fonesca.
As grateful as she is to be able to see her family more than once every three years, as the Bush Administration permitted, she wants more for them, and thinks ending the embargo would be the right start.
“Our families are starving,” she said. “We’re praying for a new start for the USA and Cuba.”
Tracie Powell is a former American Political Science Association congressional fellow who writes regularly on politics and policy.
Comments
The self-imposed embargo by Castro is the real problem in Cuba. He is the one who needs to free the Cuban people from his tyrannical grip. The notorious American embargo, so bandied about by the Cuban government as the reason for Cuba's lack of progress, has been aimed mainly at loosening the political grip of the regime on the people and certainly not at the people themselves. The poverty and lack of progress in that country had more to do with their poor choice of economic governance than the embargo ever did. It also provided Castro with the perfect alibi for the regime's failures. Today, the people of Cuba remain in the firm grip of a dehumanising Communist ideology that was supposed to have freed them from tyranny and improved their human condition. Instead, Communism, was imposed on the country, continuing to stain the pages of human history with the blood of innocents, including those of the Cuban people. For 50 years, the people of Cuba have endured food rationing, political victimisation, economic deprivation and rampant human rights violations. They now cannot assemble, they are not free to travel, speak freely, start a business, own a computer, or a fax machine. They cannot own an apartment, own or farm their own land or own livestock. The list goes on. The sad and obvious conclusion is that as far as the people of Cuba are concerned, the main purpose of the Cuban revolution was the acquisition and consolidation of power for Fidel Castro and his cohorts while being a miserable failure in meeting the needs of the people. If Cuba is to maximise its developmental potential and utilise the tremendous human resources that reside in its people, then the obvious progression of events now facing that country will have to be a re-orienting of its iron economic grip on the nation, in the same fashion that China did in 1979 under Deng Shao Ping. China at that time introduced a free market experiment in the countryside that took off and set the whole country ablaze with unparalleled economic growth. This obvious choice of economic freedom is the dilemma now facing Cuba. There is really nowhere else for it to go at this time. It will mean an eventual reduction or forfeiting of power by the current leadership, in pursuit of a free market economy and eventual functioning democracy. It is indeed ironic that in the 21st century, and in the Western Hemisphere, in a time of the celebration of such grand themes as human rights, global warming solutions, environmental upliftment and economic empowerment, that there still exists such a totalitarian and totally unrepentant dictatorship as Fidel Castro's Cuba. The people of Cuba must be made to choose their own leadership and their own system of government. Their freedom should not have to be a negotiable commodity. It just simply cannot be denied them for much longer. For what is revolution if not to liberate a people from tyranny? And what indeed should be the pre-eminent considerations in any revolution if not to re-establish the basic tenets of freedom, hope, human rights and prosperity to a downtrodden society? The sovereignty and dignity of any country lies in its people, not in a self-appointed dictator who shot his way to power. And ultimately, be it sooner or in time to come, Mr Castro and his band of merry men will answer to the Cuban people for 50 years of oppression, hardship and injustice. Gualdo Hidalgo, Former Cuban Political Prisoner.(hun.ter99@yahoo.com)
1) The first wave Cuban expat community is almost gone. the children of that generation do not feel as vehemently as the older generation. They less likely to vote conservative and as the older fossils pass on, the renumeration issue is not so critical. I expect relations with Cuba to normalize, but the Cuban government will NOT allow what happened in Russia (and historically throughout Latin America) happen in Cuba. 2) There will be no "Chicago Boys," Milton Friedman groupies running shit to the ground as they did in Chile http://www.thenation.com/archive/detail/11162408 , Soviet Union and elsewhere.
The problem is Castro; and that little business in Dallas with Oswald. After all, the CIA was trying to kill him. Think about it?? When have Democratic and Republican presidents ever agreed lock-in-step about anything??? Until Castro is gone, no lifting of embargo.
Cuba is already bankrupted, so payment to some of those rich families for their properties would NOT affect Blacks living in the island. That tactic has been used to scare Blacks in the island for too long . Why not use Castro's accumulated wealth in Spain to repay these wealthy white families, a group to which he belonged before 1959? Let's get real: for the majority of the population in the island, mostly Black, little can make it worse. And if open access to food at prices they can afford, decent housing, clean water, bathrooms that work , regular garbage pick up, clean streets, water 24hrs a day, and democracy come with a price of paying back for property to a few rich families, I am sure most will vote: YES. After all, secretly our governments can prepare a "stimulus package" that will take generations to payback -- right?
I am impressed by the statement, "the Cuban government will NOT allow what happened in Russia (and historically throughout Latin America) happen in Cuba." It is as though the liberation of Russia lead to the downfall of Russia. Ask any Russian economist (at least the Russians are honest about their past) about this statement and it is almost laughable. It is amazing how this statement has been turned backwards. Let's put it right: The Soviet Union fell because it was consuming more than it was producing. It started with Wheat. Russia was once the biggest producer of Wheat, systematic neglect of the sector resulted in Russia becoming one of the largest importers of Wheat. Russia then moved to becoming totally relient on oil revenue - primairly to the West. In essence, in the last years the sales of oil to the West was keeping the Soviet Union alive. When the price of oil crashed, so did the Soviets. When Gorbachev met with Reagan in the 80's it wasn't just about a new era of relations - it was to beg the USA for money.
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