U.S. Latin America Policy: change or continuity?

By Abel Enrique González Santamaría

In 2013 the Capitan San Luis Publishing House published the book U.S. Latin America Policy: change or continuity? In this book the author, Abel Enrique González Santamaría, reflected the challenges for the second term of President Obama and wondered: Will Obama take bold steps in the area of foreign relations, particularly concerning a change of the Cuba policy?

Cuba’s exclusion and the failure of isolation

Fifty years have passed since Cuba was left out of the Inter American System. A return to the OAS would put an end to a criminal imperial history since that organization has been a U.S. accomplice in the blockade, the attempt at isolation and the terrorist actions against the Island, which have resulted in 3,478 dead and 2,099 disabled. Cuba stands firm in its resolution to choose its own path and for that purpose it draws spiritual sustenance from its old and recent history. 
The current scenario is quite different. The master country and its instruments of domination stand alone while Cuba has broken the isolation imposed by the OAS and its mentor. Cuba has diplomatic relations with 186 states, including every nation in Latin America and the Caribbean, and is a member of 83 international organizations and mechanisms. Over 500 foreign high level delegations visit the country every year. There is a strong global solidarity movement with the Island distributed in 2,112 friendship associations in 150 nations; including 124 in the United States.
For twenty years now, the UN General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning the blockade. The first vote was taken in 1992 and resulted in 59 in favor of condemning the blockade, 3 against and 71 abstentions; but support for Cuba has been mounting in the successive years, and in 2012 the Cuba resolution was passed with 188 votes in favor, 3 against (the United States, Israel and Palau) and 2 abstentions (the Marshall Islands and the Micronesia). 
One of the most significant features of the blockade in the past few years has been the persecution of Cuba’s international financial transactions. The Annual Report issued by the Treasure Department Office of Foreign Assets Control affirms that, at the end of fiscal year 2011, the Cuban funds held in escrow by the United States amounted to 245 million dollars, resulting in damages for the economic, social and technical-scientific development of the country.
For example, on June 12, 2012 the Treasure Department fined Dutch Bank ING for its financial transactions with Cuba and other countries. The 619-million dollar fine stands as the highest ever imposed by the U.S. government to a foreign bank for its commercial relations with Cuba. In this connection OFAC Director Adam Szubin stated: “Our legal sanctions reflect our main foreign policy and national security interests thoroughly pursued by OFAC. Today’s historic announcement should serve as a clear warning to anyone who plans to benefit from avoiding United States prohibitions.”
The blockade persists and intensifies despite the strong demands recently made by the international community to the U.S. Administration to change its Cuba policy, lift the blockade and normalize relations between the two countries. The blockade constitutes a violation of International Law; it contradicts the principles and objectives consecrated in the United Nations Charter and tramples on a sovereign state’s right to peace, development and safety. It also violates the constitutional rights of the American people prevented from free traveling to Cuba, and it violates the sovereign rights of many other states given its extraterritorial nature. 
Additionally, it has caused the Cuban people economic damages that until December 2011 exceeded 1.06 trillion dollars, this considering the loss of value of the dollar with respect to gold in the international markets. At current prices, an extremely conservative estimate shows the figure exceeds 108 billions.
Every U.S. Administration from Eisenhower to Obama has tried, by more or less aggressive means, to force a regime change in Cuba. The difference after the events of September 11 is that before that date it was attempted with covert actions while now it is openly claimed as the official policy of the United States government. For example, just between 2009 and 2012, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have received a public allocation of 75 million dollars to spend on subversive programs against Cuba. 
Nevertheless, solidarity with Cuba has kept growing. In 2008, during the Latin American and Caribbean Summit of Integration and Development, the Rio Group welcomed Cuba as a full member. Again, the fraternal Latin American and Caribbean nations broke up isolation and unanimously claimed for the lifting of the blockade. A particularly moving moment was that when the head of the Cuban delegation, Army General Raul Castro Ruz, described the country’s incorporation to the Rio Group as transcendental and said: “My one regret is that Fidel is not sitting here today! Although he is surely watching the TV broadcast of this session.” This remark was met with applauses that recognized the resilience of the Cuban people and its maximum leader in defense of the peoples’ sovereignty and the unity of Our America.
Subsequently, during the 39th OAS General Assembly held in 2009 at San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the Latin American and Caribbean nations abrogated the 1962 Resolution that had excluded Cuba from that organization. They wanted to correct a historic injustice and vindicate the Cuban people and other peoples of our larger homeland. Another extraordinary event in that same period took place during the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held in Caracas, in December 2011, where Cuba was elected to preside over it through 2013 and host its third summit at the end of that year.
At this moment, the U.S. Administration is at a crossroads: it may either carry on with a failed five-decade old policy aimed at changing the political, economic and social system chosen by the Cuban people or it may start on a new direction towards the normalization of relations with the government of socialist Cuba. These are the options. This is the dilemma before Obama, the eleventh American President to confront the Cuban Revolution, the same that in his first four-year term has stayed the course of his predecessors. 
Nevertheless, Cubans began improving their economic, political and social system from January 1959, right after the victory, and the upgrading process has continued unabated all these years. At the moment, its democratic system develops with a more participatory approach where the fundamental decisions concerning its citizens are submitted to public consultation. An example of this is the updating of the economic model discussed by the entire population in three months, from December 2010 to February 2011. Over 8.9 million people took part in more than 163,000 meetings convened by various mass organizations to discuss the Draft Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution, and the result was the rephrasing of sixty-eight percent of them and the confirmation of the decision to work for a socialist future.
In Obama’s second term, will he adopt a ‘different, credible and effective’ position toward the region, and particularly Cuba, as he has said? Will it be the Big Stick or the Good Neighbor policy? The answer to these questions demands patience because it transcends the willingness to restructure a complex political system designed to preserve global power. However, the stage is set for an improvement of U.S. relations with the region, and to be really good neighbors.
As to Cuba, its government has raised several issues that would have to be discussed with the United States in an eventual dialogue toward the improvement of relations. These are: the lifting of the economic, commercial and financial blockade; Cuba’s removal from the list of countries sponsors of terrorism; the elimination of the Cuban Adjustment Act and the ‘dry-foot/wet-foot’ policy; the payment of compensation for economic and human damages; the return of the territory occupied by the Guantanamo Naval Base; the end of radio and TV broadcasts from the United States against Cuba; the cessation of the supply of funds to the internal subversion; and the release of the Five Cuban antiterrorists imprisoned in the United States.
Havana has also made a proposal to Washington to start a dialogue towards the establishment of cooperation in confronting drug-trafficking, terrorism and trafficking in persons, and to protect the environment and cope with natural disasters. None of the Cuban suggestions run contrary to International Law nor do they affect the independence and sovereignty of the United States in any way; however, the reaction has been elusive showing the absence of a true willingness to settle the contention between the two countries. 
If the U.S. government were actually willing to change, it could start by permitting the export of Cuban goods and services to the United States and vice versa. It could allow Cuba to purchase products anywhere in the world containing more than ten percent of U.S. components or technology, regardless of trademarks or origin; it could suspend the ban on third country ships calling on U.S. ports within the next 180 days following a call on a Cuban port; and it could cease persecuting financial companies or businesses trading or operating with Cuba. President Obama could allow Americans to visit Cuba, the only country in the world they cannot travel to without a license.
The policy of the Cuban Revolution, backed by the overwhelming majority of its people, has been clearly described by President Raul Castro: “[…] the day they are willing to talk we will talk, on equal footing, without the slightest threat to our sovereignty, and treating each other as equals. We are willing to do that directly, without intermediaries, whenever they are ready. But we are not in a hurry, we are not desperate and we have said, — and Fidel said it a long time ago — that we will not talk under the threat of a ‘stick and carrot’ policy, that time is long passed, it belongs in a different period of time.”
There is the opportunity for Obama to rectify his policy toward the region, especially Cuba. It is time for doing rather than saying, it is time to put aside anti-Cuban rhetoric and absurd pretexts. There is no reason for insisting on the failed blockade policy instead of resuming relations with the Island.
The fundamental principle advanced by Karl Marx in the initial paragraphs of his classic book The Eighteenth Brumaire of Luis Bonaparte explains how human beings can exercise their free will and serves as a reminder that even the most powerful are restrained by geography and history: “Man makes his own history not of his own free will or under circumstances of his own choosing but under those which exist as brought to him by the past.”