The Beginning of the End of a Policy?
by Oscar Espinosa Chepe, independent journalist, Havana, Cuba
August 1, 2002

This article was written shortly after the House of Representatives approved the Flake amendments to end the Cuba travel ban and to lift limits on remittances that Americans send to Cuban families. It was published on Cubanet, a Miami-based service for Cuba's independent journalists. Oscar Espinosa Chepe was arrested in March 2003 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Translation by the Lexington Institute.

For more than 40 years, the United States has applied an economic embargo against Cuba. As has been stated on many occasions, the goal has been to apply pressure for democratic change and the elimination of totalitarianism.

The fundamental problem of the Cuban people has been the denial of their rights by a group in power that for decades has applied a political, economic, and social model that has brought the nation to disaster. Independent of that, the policy of isolating Cuba, far from bringing freedom, has only served to give the regime the alibi that the embargo is the cause of all the ills the country suffers, and it has kept Cuban society away from a greater flow of democratic ideas and values.

U.S. policy, criticized all around the world and the object of successive defeats in the UN General Assembly for violating international law, is having difficulties in the United States itself, where there seems to be an opening toward common sense where its island neighbor is concerned. That is what votes in the House of Representatives would indicate, where on the night of July 23, bipartisan proposals were approved to lift the prohibitions on travel to Cuba, the free sending of remittances, and trade in medicines and food.

[….]*

Without doubt, lifting the restrictions on travel and remittances would have a significant impact on the Cuban economy. U.S. citizens have a higher level of income than any other nationality, and the proximity of the United States to Cuba would mean lower transportation costs for American tourists compared to all others, which would be a great inducement for travel.

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*Omitted here are three paragraphs on the substance of the amendments, the vote tallies, and prospects for Senate action.

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This could provide an extraordinary boost to tourism income in Cuba. However, the links between the Cuban and American peoples would be strengthened, which would bring about a climate of understanding that would not be propitious for the Gods who for so long have poisoned the relations between the two countries and fomented an extreme nationalism.

History demonstrates that isolation provides fertile ground for political extremism and totalitarianism. It feeds resentment and disputes. The turn toward democratic societies in Eastern Europe was promoted by contact between peoples. In large measure, the democratization of Spain was not brought about by isolation, but rather by the opposite.

The changes that have come about in China and Vietnam, societies dominated by despotism for millennia, have been produced by contacts between peoples and by closer economic, commercial, and cultural ties with democratic nations.

Cuba, with Western traditions and culture and a history of ties to the United States - which have not been erased in spite of many efforts - will not be an exception. The policy of promoting people-to-people contact will also bear fruit here.

When the travel of Americans to Cuba and the free sending of remittances are approved, the struggle for democracy and freedom will by no means end. To the contrary, these measures create better conditions to achieve these objectives. And the efforts to defend Cubans' rights to enter and leave their country freely should not be obscured by the current limitations on the right of Americans to travel to Cuba.

It is to be hoped that in the face of these realities and the majority of U.S. and world public opinion, the President of the United States, George W. Bush, will not block the decisions of the legislature of his country.

One hopes that he understands that the time for change has arrived and - as his Republican predecessor did in his own time with respect to China - that he will help bring about the change that will lead to a new era in Cuban-American relations. Both peoples will appreciate it and remember it forever.