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Emerging Markets Datafile
The St. Petersburg Times
May 4, 2001 Friday
EMEDIA-ACC-NO: 200105048313.m13
LENGTH: 1187 words
HEADLINE: American Policy on Cuba Needs a Change of Direction, THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
BYLINE: William
Leogrande
BODY:
THE Bay of Pigs invasion 40 years ago this month was, as historian Theodore
Draper observed,
"a perfect failure." Washington's attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro by sending 1,400 Cuban
expatriates ashore to spark a popular insurrection not only proved ineffective,
it was also premised on a profound misunderstanding of Cuba by U.S.
policymakers that persists to this day. The invasion, and later CIA campaigns
of sabotage and attempted assassination, grew out of Washington's conviction
that Castro's government was so antithetical to U.S. interests that coexistence
was impossible: He had to be overthrown. These policies failed because
Washington did not comprehend how Castro could rally nationalist sentiment
behind his revolution in any confrontation with the United States. The world
has changed since 1961, but U.S. policy toward Cuba remains unaltered.
Washington still cannot conceive of coexisting with Castro and is still trying
to overthrow him, albeit by means other than military force. It is still deaf
to the ways in which its actions enable Castro to appeal to Cuban nationalism.
Current U.S. policy employs a combination of severe economic sanctions,
designed to weaken the Castro regime, and
"people-to- people" contacts, intended to foster the development of civil society.
People-to-people contacts - through academic and cultural exchanges, improved
air and telecommunications links - are laudable in principle. They serve the
immediate interests of ordinary citizens on both sides of the Florida Straits.
But the policy has a double edge. From the outset, Washington has conceived of
these contacts as a way to subvert the Cuban government. That's how the policy,
dubbed
"Track II," was promoted when introduced in the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act. Its author,
Senator Robert
Torricelli, argued that central European communist regimes
"ultimately fell from the power of ideas." By analogy, Castro would, too. Washington has also taken a more direct hand.
In addition to academic and cultural contacts, the 1992 law authorizes U.S.
government aid to
"individuals and organizations to promote nonviolent democratic change in Cuba." Former president Bill Clinton approved the first such program in 1995. The
following year, the Helms-Burton law expanded the
"democracy-building" mandate of this political program, authorizing assistance to democratic and
human rights groups in Cuba and to former political prisoners and their
families. About $10 million has been spent since 1996, and another $5 million allocated in the next budget cycle. A new bill just introduced by
Cuban American Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart would channel this political
aid exclusively to
"opposition groups" and former political prisoners. The idea of fomenting and supporting
opposition to regimes that Washington dislikes is by no means new. Overtly and
covertly, the United States has funded newspapers, trade unions, political
parties and nongovernmental organizations in scores of countries with the aim
of destabilizing their governments. The strategy has an impressive record of
success: It disposed of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala,
Salvador Allende in Chile (where the policy was also called
"Track II"), the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia. But
exploiting whatever political liberty exists in another country to foment its
subversion inevitably puts real democrats at risk. Advocates of political aid
reply that Cuba's dissidents themselves are the best judges of whether
receiving outside assistance is worth the added repression they endure. No one
is forced to
take U.S. aid, they point out, and some, like human-rights activist Elizardo
Sanchez, consistently refuse. The problem, however, is that a chill in the
political climate affects everyone.
When Castro's regime cracks down, everyone suffers, not just those who have
consciously decided to risk antagonizing state security by accepting U.S. aid.
In 1996, soon after passage of Helms-Burton, Cuban Defense Minister Raul
Castro, younger brother of Fidel, denounced Cuban intellectuals for developing
dangerously close ties with U.S. NGOs and foundations. They had been seduced by
U.S. plans to create a
"fifth column," he warned. An ideological housecleaning of Cuban think tanks commenced. Cuban
intellectuals and mid-level officials trying to find ways to solve their
country's problems are far more numerous and politically well-positioned than
the
tiny opposition movement. Europeans recognize that these are the people most
likely to chart Cuba's future course, and so have tried to build constructive
relations with them. U.S. policy fails to distinguish them from regime
hardliners, betting instead that the future belongs to the small, fragmented
and isolated dissident community. From its first intervention in Cuba in 1898,
the U.S. has adopted a tutelary attitude toward the island. The Platt
Amendment, imposed on Cuba in 1901 as the price for ending U.S. occupation,
gave Washington the right to intervene in Cuba at its discretion, a right
exercised twice in the following decade. In 1933-34, Ambassador Sumner Welles
engineered the replacement of two successive Cuban presidents and installed
Fulgencio Batista's military government. In late 1958, the CIA tried in vain to
find some alternative to Castro as
Batista's replacement, and even after Castro's victory, the agency tried to
build an opposition movement to challenge Castro's leadership.
Then it tried to assassinate him. Castro has made a political career reminding
Cubans of this history of imperial arrogance. It was no coincidence that he
chose the moment of the 1961 invasion to declare the Cuban revolution
socialist. In the months leading up to the Bay of Pigs, internal opposition to
Castro had been rising as he pushed the revolution to the left.
The invasion gave him the perfect opportunity to wrap socialism in the Cuban
flag, making it a nationalist project. Several months later, Castro's comrade
in arms, Ernesto
"Che" Guevara, met White House official Richard Goodwin at an Organization of
American States meeting in Punta del Este.
"He wanted to thank us very much for the invasion," Goodwin reported to
President John Kennedy in a memo recently declassified.
"It had been a great political victory for them [and] enabled them to
consolidate." Forty years later, the Elian Gonzalez affair demonstrated that nationalism
remains a potent political force, regardless of how disheartened ordinary
Cubans may be about the decline in their standard of living or the sclerotic
pace of change. Washington should cancel its program of overt political aid to
opposition groups.
Given the history of U.S. hostility to the Cuban government, there is no way
this support can avoid tainting everyone who receives it, casting suspicion on
everyone who interacts with foreigners and exacerbating internal divisions in
ways that make peaceful change less likely. Authentic people-to-people contacts
ought to be truly nongovernmental, not orchestrated and manipulated by
government behind the scenes.
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
JOURNAL-CODE: m13
LOAD-DATE: November 7, 2001
