|
Report
on Cuba highlights the wrong issue
Andres Oppenheimer. Posted
on Sun, May. 09, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
Judging from what I heard in telephone
interviews with key Cuban opposition leaders
on the island, I wonder whether President
Bush's newly released 500-page Cuba Commission
report will not do more harm than good for
the cause of hastening the end of Cuba's
dictatorship.
By announcing some new restrictions on
travel and remittances to the island in
what critics see as an election-time move
to win Cuban exile votes, the Bush administration
is shifting world attention to the wrong
issue. It's directing the headlines toward
the United States versus Cuba dispute, instead
of toward the dictatorship versus democracy
clash between Fidel Castro's regime and
the island's peaceful opposition.
Oswaldo Payá, the leader of the
Project Varela movement, told me from a
relative's house in Havana that the new
U.S. measures will ''complicate'' the internal
opposition's struggle. The movement has
gathered more than 30,000 signatures on
the island demanding a referendum within
the island's communist constitution on whether
Cubans should be allowed to have basic freedoms.
Payá did not want to get into details
of the new U.S. measures, which also include
$18 million for Radio and TV Martí
broadcasts to the island and some financial
aid for dissidents' families. But he said
that "this new package of [U.S.] measures
once again shifts the center of attention
toward a confrontation between the Cuban
government and the United States. Now there
will be an avalanche of news in the government
media about this new confrontation stemming
from the latest U.S. measures. It's Cuba
versus the United States, all over again.
''My position is that the only thing we
expect from the United States and the rest
of the world is political and moral support,''
said Payá. "Those who led this
[Cuba Commission report] looked into their
own needs, rather than those of Cuba and
the peaceful opposition movement.''
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission
of Human Rights and National Reconciliation,
told me in a separate telephone interview
from Havana that "it's hard [for the
United States] to deal with a totalitarian
government: If you normalize relations,
it takes advantage of it, and if you impose
sanctions, it takes advantage as well. Sometimes,
the best thing is to do nothing.''
Vladimiro Roca, another leading dissident,
was less critical. Given that the Cuban
regime is the only employer on the island
and doesn't allow opponents to get jobs,
''any gesture from any government in support
of democracy in Cuba is welcome,'' he said.
The problem is, I wonder whether the new
U.S. measures will have enough of an impact
to offset the public relations harm they
will cause.
The estimated $1 billion in U.S remittances
to Cuba, which are already the island's
biggest source of income, might be reduced
somewhat, but probably not much. The newly
restricted money will continue flowing through
Canada or Mexico, just like U.S. tourists
facing travel restrictions will make a detour
through Jamaica or the Bahamas.
Simultaneously, Castro will be able to
step up his David versus Goliath spiel and
divert attention from the fact that he is
leading one of the world's last police states,
where people's basic rights such as choosing
one's profession, reading a foreign newspaper,
using the Internet or even buying a car
are subject to a government-issued certificate
of good political behavior.
Meantime, much to his delight, headlines
around the world are talking about the ''new
U.S. push to oust Castro.'' Even Mexican
President Vicente Fox, in the middle of
a diplomatic rift with Cuba, came out Friday
to make it clear that ''we reject any [U.S.]
meddling'' in Cuban affairs.
Bush administration officials say that
many Cuban dissidents cannot openly support
the new U.S. measures, because doing so
would land them in jail.
History shows that, after the fall of the
Soviet Union, pro-democracy activists in
Russia and Eastern Europe said that the
U.S.-financed Radio Free Europe radio broadcasts
and foreign-supplied fax machines were their
lifeline for information and moral support.
Maybe so. But I tend to agree with Cuba's
leading pro-democracy activists that if
the Bush administration were more concerned
about Cuba's freedom than about Florida
votes, it would have focused its energies
on working silently to get international
political support for Cuba's opposition.
|
