Ileana Oroza. Published Thursday, December 21, 2000, in the
Miami Herald
Cubans need friends, visitors, allies; they don't need tough love.
On the occasion of the coming inauguration, here is a letter to the
president elect.
Dear Mr. Bush:
On issues of Cuba, we share a basic understanding: The Cuban government is
corrupt and repressive. And it's incompetent, to boot.
Given that common ground, perhaps you might entertain some thoughts that
differ from yours on what U.S. policy toward the island should be.
I read in the paper that your advisors urge a harder line: a reduction of
cultural exchanges and people-to-people contact; limits on special licenses to
travel to the island; tougher restrictions on American businesspeople interested
in exploring options there. What purpose would that serve?
I've just returned from a week in Havana. I won't write about the misery and
the fear. You've looked at the pictures and listened to the tales. It's every
bit as bad as you've seen and heard. I will write about the isolation that
people in Cuba feel. About their loneliness. For seven days, I walked Havana's
ruined streets, spoke with peddlers and shopkeepers, with children and elderly
women. They all want dollars, of course, to take care of basic needs -- a bar of
soap, a box of milk. But the fact is, the Cuban economy is improving
ever-so-slowly: There are more cars on the streets than there were even 10
months ago; there is more construction; tourists from Europe are filling up the
streets of Old Havana. (Change, in fact, is in the air, and we are, sadly, not
influencing it, but that is another column.)
What the folks with whom I spoke seemed to want even more was human contact
with their families abroad and with their closest neighbors. They wanted to know
about life outside. Whether what the propagandist Cuban television was saying
about your election (nothing, by they way, you'd really like to hear) was true.
Whether there would ever be phone calls between Cuba and the United States
again. What Miami is like. What we in Miami think of them. Whether we think of
them.
Cuba is an island with 11 million castaways, and, sadly, we are abandoning
them.
Whom would we punish if we tightened the screws? What is our goal? I'm no
expert on revolutions, but I can't imagine that a tougher embargo is going to
lead to spontaneous, internal insurrection. Not with the kind of state-security
apparatus they've constructed, and all those armed fellows dressed in drab gray
patrolling every nook and cranny of the city.
(One of them even stopped our Coco-taxi -- a motorcycle, really, pulling a
three-seats-and-a-canopy contraption -- for a check. I can't imagine what
mischief the cop thought two women and a 6-year-old could create in Old Havana.
For the record, we were searching the agro markets, unsuccessfully, for tamarind
pulp for my aunt Rosa in Miami; the yearning works both ways.)
Under those conditions, open revolt would require a kind of courage I'm not
sure I would have; more courage than we have the right to expect from anyone
there, as we sit here, safely in Miami.
It sickens me to think that anything we do in the United States could
bolster the Fidel Castro government. But it sickens me even more to think that
we might leave Cubans in the island to their own, meager resources, waiting for
a hand that is never extended.
Cubans need friends, visitors, allies; they don't need tough love.
Publishing this column might ruin my chances of ever getting another Cuban
visa to travel to the island. That would be my loss. But worthwhile if it helps
change some minds regarding what our policy should be.
I used to think the Cuban regime would change in my lifetime, but I am 50,
and the folks in my family are not long-lived. The Castros, on the other hand,
seem made of hardier stock. The laws of nature do not always work on our favor.
Meanwhile, 11 million Cubans wait. The distances between our families grow.
And a magnificent city, the majestic Havana, crumbles.
Ileana Oroza is a journalism professor at the University of Miami's School
of Communication.
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