Monday, March 25, 2024

Venezuela as an Opportunity

 A personal dialogue with Cuban friends about Venezuela


The Donald Trump / John Bolton linkage of  Venezuela and Cuba was designed to justify greater pressure on Cuba, even containing hints of military intervention.

I have argued for a long time, perhaps unrealistically, that the only hope for a restructuring of relations with Cuba was a grand bargain reconciliation. The embargo will only be ended when we provide a reason to do so in terms of US interests.  The moral and political case is completely valid but has no significant impact on US policymakers.  

Cuba cannot control Venezuela but it can influence it.  If the opposition wins in Venezuela, that is not the end of the story as we saw when Bolsonaro won in Brazil.  A political process that denies the authority of the populace will ultimately fail.  I hope but don't know that reaching a peaceful solution for Venezuela is important enough to the US that it will find full end-of-the-embargo engagement with Cuba as an appropriate response for Cuban assistance.

The above reflects my conclusion of a dialogue I initiated with two Cuban friends.

What is Maduro afraid of?  It would benefit Cuba (and Venezuela) if Havana can persuade him to play by the rules.   https://www.barrons.com/news/venezuela-opposition-says-unable-to-register-stand-in-candidate-d26c0dbc

And received these responses from sophisticated very pro-engagement people:

Friend 1:  Why do you think that Corina Machado is telling the truth? The longest history of lies about politics in Latin America is what is published in the US and Western European press. And who’s and which rules is Maduro violating?

and

Friend 2:  The idea of Cuba responsible for Maduro is the bias of people that don't understand Venezuela. The idea of Cuba negotiating with the US using the its allies as a chip is reflecting total ignorance about Cuba's foreign policy.  Like asking a Quaker to join a guerrilla group.   The record shows that US Venezuela relations are NOT mirroring US Cuba relations.



This was my reply to them:

Conflicting interpretations about what was agreed to in Barbados. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuela-opposition-sign-election-deal-paving-way-us-sanctions-relief-2023-10-17/        


Tuesday's meeting in Barbados, brokered by Norway, was the first between the two sides in 11 months.

The talks, meant to provide a way out of Venezuela's long-running political and economic crisis, will continue at an unspecified date, the parties said, adding they are committed to respecting the results of the vote.
The deal says each side can choose its 2024 candidate according to its internal rules, but did not reverse bans on some opposition figures - including Oct. 22 primary frontrunner Maria Corina Machado - that prevent them from holding office.
The opposition has said the bans, handed down by the controller general, are unlawful and Washington has rejected any roadblocks to opposition candidates.

"If you have an administrative inhabilitation...from the controller general of the republic you cannot be a candidate, I want to clarify that," Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the government delegation told a press conference after the signing.


Speaking before Rodriguez, the head of the opposition delegation Gerardo Blyde had said the deal could allow banned candidates to "recover their rights."       


A nuanced analysis from the International Crisis Group: https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/venezuela/barbados-deal-sets-venezuela-rocky-path-competitive-polls   

The Barbados agreement states that the parties will promote the “authorisation” of all presidential candidates and political parties “as long as they meet the requirements to participate in the presidential election, consistent with the procedures provided under Venezuelan law”. In a press conference following the signing of the agreement, Jorge Rodríguez – president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and the government’s chief negotiator – interpreted the clause as stating that a banned candidate could not run. Such disqualifications, however, have been roundly condemned by the U.S. government. If the Maduro government does not revisit its bans, Washington’s appetite for lifting further sanctions will dull, and the U.S. could reverse the relief measures it has put in place. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that Washington had insisted on a timeline and process for the reinstatement of “all candidates” (underlined in the State Department’s communiqué) by the end of November – adding that the “release of all wrongfully detained U.S. nationals and Venezuelan political prisoners” should also have begun by that time.


The issue of proscribed candidates is typical of the uncertainties and ambiguities that shroud the deal and could still imperil the validity of the 2024 poll. Various political constituencies in the U.S. and Latin America are likely to reject any election in which leading candidates are denied the right to run. Should Machado be proclaimed the victor in the opposition primaries and the ban on her running for office persist, her supporters and their foreign allies could feel compelled to denounce a rigged election and call for a return to a campaign of pressure upon Caracas. …. The U.S., the EU and Latin American states should continue to press for bans on candidates to be removed, ideally through an independent review process that would need to be created, and be primed to lift more sanctions if the government accedes. At a very minimum, it is essential that all politicians be free to campaign in Venezuela, and that the opposition’s designation of an alternative candidate if its chosen nominee remains proscribed be respected."  

-- John McAuliff  3/25/24


An update:

Maduro has faced criticism from the international community for interference in the election, after his government and the opposition sealed a deal in Barbados last year to hold a free and fair vote with international observers present.

Brazil on Tuesday said it was watching the electoral process "with concern".

The foreign ministry said the developments were "not compatible" with the Barbados deal.

However, Machado said she remained hopeful, adding "there is still time" for her Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) opposition coalition to field a presidential aspirant, as candidacies can be modified until April 20.

https://www.barrons.com/news/venezuela-s-maduro-has-chosen-poll-rivals-banned-contender-74dc311a




Rafael Hernandez: The Cultural Ties that Bind

 

The Americans and us: parallel roads?

Imagining relations and their perspectives is not limited to diagnosing micropolitics in Washington or Miami, recording the latest polls, or understanding the psychological profile of the next president and his intentions toward Cuba.

In my younger days, I was not particularly a rock and roll fan. However, I vividly remember that my friends and I “sang” “Rock de la Cárcel” or “Tutti Frutti”; “Rock Around the Clock”, or “See you later, Alligator”; “Put your head on my shoulder” or “Diana.” I say “we sang,” because none of us had the slightest idea what Elvis, Bill Haley and the Comets, or Paul Anka were saying. So we just made up lyrics that sounded like the English words.

By the way, the Spanish versions of Enrique Guzmán, Manolo Muñoz, Luis Bravo, Palito Ortega, or Los Hooligans would soon come to our aid. So “Pink Shoe Laces” would become “Agujetas de color de rosa.” The lyrics of the covers sometimes had nothing to do with the originals. But at least we could scream in Mexican, “El Gordo said to the Cat, this is my chance, no one sees me and I can fight,” without knowing for sure what we were saying.

I remember as if it were today Raúl Gómez and the Astros, or Dany Puga, the fashionable rockers in 1962, giving a concert at the Belisa cinema, in La Lisa. As I said, I wasn’t particularly into rock and roll, so I missed Los Kents or Los Jets, who would come to liven up the late 1960s. As is known, these bands did not appear, of course, on radio and television, nor were The Beatles, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johny Cash, The Mamas and the Papas, The Rolling Stones. Although we did at the parties with the senior high people on Saturday nights, where we danced twist listening to all of them until dawn.

I don’t remember that the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) or the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) came to question us about our musical tastes. I do remember that among the dancers was the secretary of the Young Communist League (UJC) Base Committee, and that the parties with that prohibited music were at the house of the president of the UES (Union of Secondary Students) of the senior high.

Those who were on the radio and TV were the Mustangs, the Bravos, Juan y Junior, Los Brincos, and a whole host of Spanish, Argentine, and Mexican epigones, who could be heard on programs with very high ratings, such as Nocturno (1966).

I confess that to me rock in Spanish, whose hits I sang to my daughter when she was little, and which she and I can still share in favorable family circumstances, did not sound the same to me.

Regarding the presence of U.S. music in the soundtrack of the 1960s, we know that filin is more of a style derived from the great performers of American jazz; and that Los Zafiros and Los Meme, those legendary groups of that time, carried to the surface the genetic code of the fashionable U.S. quartets; the same as the Cuarteto del Rey, which sang spirituals and country songs like “Sixteen Tons,” and where a boy who sang like angels named Pablo Milanés became known. As well as another beginner from that time, who due to his voice, his style and the poetics of his lyrics remembered Bob Dylan, named Silvio Rodríguez.

To see those quartets live, I recommend an Noticiero Icaic (#247, March 1, 1965), in which the main national and international political events of the week were interspersed with “Sabes bien” and “Otro amanecer,” hits from Los Zafiros and Los Meme respectively. The most memorable thing about that Newscast was that it concluded with nothing less than the so-called “Rock Beethoven,” performed by The Beatles in the flesh. Putting something nice followed by something not so pleasant, the editor made a parallel montage between the four Beatles and a band of monkeys playing with musical instruments. Years later, a friend from the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) would tell me that he had gone to the premiere theaters seventeen times that week, just to see, listen to, and jiggle in his seat with the live Beatles show that closed the Newscast. He did not remember, by the way, the images of the monkeys, only the golden opportunity to see his idols accompanied by their fans, breaking out with “roll over Beethoven / and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”

Many years later, I discovered that “Tutti Frutti” was not by Elvis, but by Little Richard; and that the original lyrics in English (“a-wop-bop-a-loon-bop-a-boom-bam-boom”) were as crazy as the one we invented in our Spanglish (“a-uam-ba- buluba-balam-bamboo”), because what mattered was the sound. And that monkey rock, actually titled Roll Over Beethoven,” was not by The Beatles, but by Chuck Berry. For me, that Chuck Berry was a late discovery.

I imagine that he was well-known, however, by Cuban jazz players, who have always been, let’s say, on top of the ball with U.S. music. Thanks to his peculiar electric guitar and the literary imagination of his lyrics, which earned him recognition as the father of rock by John Lennon and Dylan himself, Berry sounded to me like those indistinct memories that one doesn’t know where they come from. I think they were from the jazz-rock and rhythmic blues of the Cuban Modern Music Orchestra (1967), which was all the rage with “Pastilla de menta,” popularized a few years earlier by Ray Charles in his original “One Mint Julep.” In that mythical orchestra I saw for the first time Chucho Valdés, Paquito D’Rivera, the guajiro Mirabal, Leonardo Acosta, Arturo Sandoval, Cachaito, and other recognized jazz players, like later Irakere, who filled the great theaters of Havana with that very American music. Also Cubanized, of course. Like everything else.

If that music has never stopped being part of us, the same has happened with other areas of art and culture.

In those 1960s of our red-hot anti-imperialism, the images of Martí, Fidel, Che, Ho Chi Minh, farmers cutting cane, young soldiers and students painted by Raúl Martínez invaded public art on billboards and murals, with the aesthetics of primary colors distinctive of pop art, which at that same time Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol were cultivating in the United States. The golden age of Cuban posters, a good part of them had the imprint of that pop, avant-garde art (truly) put in function of political denunciation, critic of advertising and mass culture, with an ironic and irreverent tone, in the distinctive works of Humberto Peña, Rostgaard, Frémez.

Watching some of them work in their workshops full of cuttings from magazines and newspapers from all over the world, slides, catalogs from the great museums, photo contacts, collages, lithography stones, was like going up to a lookout point from where you could see beyond the world and particularly the United States. None of the “damn circumstance of water everywhere.”

The living presence of U.S.-origin culture among us includes so many dimensions that I do not have space to address them here in an equally detailed and exemplary manner.

If someone thinks that rock and jazz; the visual arts; the art deco buildings of Old Havana, Centro Habana, El Vedado; the so-called modern dance or Cuban school of ballet, the repertoires of the country’s main theater groups, are part of the tastes of an elite, I want to recall that baseball, evangelical churches, the odd-fellows lodges, spiritualism, the taste for movies and television series are legacies of that exchange, and continue to be a living communicating vessel between the two cultures.

Recognizing it this way does not make these demonstrations any less Cuban. From Fernando Ortiz, what we call Cuban is almost never equivalent to native, as if it were a plant or a species that was already on the island when the Spanish arrived. If we are what Darcy Ribeiro called a new people, it is because we carry genes from other parts, also from there. The same, by the way, as that “house of people” (Martí dixit) that is the American nation (or nations).

In case anyone thinks that familiarity with things American is not an active and organic ingredient of our much-mentioned cultural identity, but rather an atavism of our capitalist past, from which we have been getting rid of, thank God; if they believe that they are remnants that the cultural policy of the Revolution has sought to eradicate, I want to comment that the history of this policy is not so simple.

Although sometimes the allergy to everything that comes from the North has been able to cross into the national interest, as in that censorship of rock in the media, applied in a partial and contradictory way in the 1960s, or during the so-called Gray Five Years (1971-75). A fair examination of these stages reveals that it was never complete or penetrated much into popular culture, then or in later episodes, until today, as I have commented before.

Pulsing with censorship and other cultural keys of politics

Regarding the exhibition policy, in the first half of the 1970s, when 7 out of 10 Cubans went to the movies at least once a week, and we saw more diverse films than anyone else, including films by Sidney Lumet, Mike Nichols, Stuart Rosenberg, Roger Corman, Robert Aldrich, Ralph Nelson, Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola, Sydney Pollack, John Huston, Arthur Penn, Alfred Hitchcock, scheduled in all movie theaters in the country.

I mention all this because cultural interflows are not marginal to relations between the two countries. Thinking about these relations, in political terms, only as the fencing between the two governments, is a textbook example of the cultural deficits that affect the understanding of politics among us. This diplocentric vision of relations with the United States, common not only among our cadres, but also among several intellectuals, and which includes, by the way, some who study or advise them on their own, spreads in established media and in social networks.

The cultural and social level of these relations to which I am referring is not reduced to the flow of visitors called people to people. But if we stopped at the groups that arrive under this general license, we would see that they are not only simple citizens but also professionals, company directors, local governments, lawyers from important firms, as well as students, talent seekers, small businesspeople, advertising agents, artists. A group of Americans who have nothing to do with communism, and at the same time very motivated to see with their own eyes the reality of this forbidden island.

Conceiving them as a contingent of tourists attracted by the ineffable beauty of our beaches and sunsets, the son and the mojitos, loaded with dollars and passionate about traveling the boardwalk in a pink convertible Cadillac ignores the main cultural connection that unites us, or that is, sharing a common history. That history, by the way, includes the last sixty years. If for many of them, it was like visiting the Jurassic Park of socialism, for us it is the opportunity for another policy, culturally speaking. Achieving another policy would require that those in charge of serving them as if they were simple visitors or clients could someday be interested in finding out who the hell they are. On the other hand, the social and cultural dynamics of our close encounter involve different agencies. Among these, companies, media, universities, research and development centers, art and entertainment, sports, churches, and other social actors. As an example of their specific weight in relations, for example, during Obama’s short summer, artistic institutions and agencies alone represented 40% of all agreements reached. A good measure of communication and mutual interest, understanding and cooperation, which has not gone through agreements between governments.

Learning from history: five years after Barack Obama’s visit to Cuba

For the most part, the exchanges in all these sectors arose from initiatives on the other side. Our side limited itself to responding, better or worse. If that hopeful interregnum took place at the twilight of the Obama administration, it is unlikely that this reactive pattern has changed.

What are the causes of this imbalance? The first is that our policy towards the United States, in general, has led the black pieces, with chess masters who have known how to play that Sicilian defense very well, by the way. The second is that, instead of playing, most of our institutions tend to become defensive about any action on the U.S. side, more than any other country. Anything that comes from there, no matter if it is far from its government, triggers a complicated protocol. The third — right now the worst: the idea that as long as the United States does not emit clear and distinct signals of change, it is best to stay still; as if it were unrealistic to generate initiatives on this side while the sun of normalization does not shine at around noon.

The attitude of waiting, lighting candles for the least bad candidate, seems to ignore that the interflow between institutions and people on both sides contributes decisively to activating trends that affect the reconfiguration of the political context, both there and here and, consequently, encourage the rapprochement.

I have the memory of a discussion in a very select group of specialists in the United States in the early 1990s when a colleague with vast experience argued that “we should only fight when the correlation of forces favors us.” The change of this mentality towards a proactive attitude implies a less narrow or purely reflexive social, cultural and political vision. So imagining relations and their perspectives is not limited to diagnosing micropolitics in Washington or Miami, recording the latest polls, or the psychological profile of the next president and his secret intentions towards Cuba. A comprehensive and broader vision could contribute to a different understanding of the circumstances between the two sides, and to facilitate actions outside of diplomacy between governments, apparently frozen.

Paradoxically, the common codes between the respective cultures and societies, born from history and geographical proximity, give Americans and Cubans a comparative advantage in understanding each other, much greater, let’s say, than those existing with Vietnam, South Africa, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and others that U.S. politics gets along well with. These same affinities should enable us to identify interlocutors and manage associations.

It is impractical to set goals a priori or unilaterally, without having come into contact, and to prepare to work to clear up the ignorance prevailing here and there about the other. There is a cultural problem there, not simply an ideological or political one. As a Chinese strategy professor once told me: “Two-thirds of the way is for them (the Americans) to understand us. We are the ones in charge of explaining it to them.” Not to convince them of our ideas, to get them to share them, naturally. Just that they understand us. Isn’t that what culture means?

Regarding the legitimate and reasonable concern for national security, we must recognize the different conditions under which these relations operate today and, in particular, the close communication that binds us. In the era of artificial intelligence, social media, and circular migration, control over everything that flies requires other methods. And maybe it’s not about trying to control everything. It is not effective, it produces obstacles that limit us in what we want to achieve.

Protecting national culture is not about using a condom, because neither ideology nor culture allows for condoms — assuming it made any sense to use them to avoid certain perceived threats.

I often tell my students that the main eventual challenge in our relations with the United States (and with the world) would be if one night, unexpectedly, the blockade were lifted and true normalization was imposed. Because we’ve never had to deal with that scenario.

After the initial rejoicing over the raising of the U.S. flag in the until then Interests Section and the visit of President Obama, the effects of an eventual American tsunami worried some at the top and also many at the bottom. In 2016, more than a million visitors from the North invaded the streets of Havana and other cities. Suddenly, we had a kind of anticipatory flash of what was to come when the blockade was lifted.

As Sun Tzu recommended, the first thing to protect national interest is to walk with our eyes wide open about what we have around us, near us, and in our own people. Some worry, not without reason, about the impregnation of cultural globalization among us, with its alienating elements, characterized as manipulations foreign to the most authentic values of our identity. Although I share the concern to a certain extent, we must not forget, at the same time, that self and other people are not as delineated as they used to be, just as they are not delineated outside and inside.

Before I mentioned a list of American filmmakers who made movies that we were able to see in movie theaters during the Gray Five Year Period. Recently, thanks to a researcher friend, I was able to review the catalog of films shown on our TV channels between 2020 and 2022.

In that last year alone, 3,308 films were released, of which 1,842 were from the United States; that is, 55.68% of all the movies that viewers saw. The analysis of this programming, surely explainable with copyright arguments, etc., would entail an examination taking into account genres, authors, dates and quality of the films. In any case, during those three years, we Cubans saw, on state TV alone, 5,628 American films. Although there has been progress in terms of balance, since in 2021 the cinema of that country had reached 70%, and in 2020, 77% of all programming.

Of course, this very high concentration of U.S. movies, compared to the 1960s, is not a Cuban peculiarity; and at the same time, it would be desirable to have audiovisual diversity, especially on state TV, that balances the personalized consumption offered by countless services that sell all types of series and audiovisual products under license, and other suppliers, such as El paquete (The Package), Mochila (The Backpack), etc. While some researchers are encouraged to carry out this study, and others could do the same with music, access to Internet websites, etc., it is obvious that if the U.S. tsunami has not occurred, that tide that reaches our ankles is already part of the Cuban reality of today.

The echoes of the most prestigious and oldest jazz event in Cuba are still alive, where musicians from several countries met again, the presence of a greater number of musicians from the United States than in Trump’s gray quadrennium could illustrate what I was pointing out about parallel currents that do not cease between both sides. Giving them the attention they deserve, to facilitate and expand them as bridges of understanding and collaboration is the most imminent challenge. To do so, we do not have to wait for “the correlation of forces to favor us” or for the god of harmony to enter through a window in his Batmobile.

Instead of wasting away on futile predictions, pessimistic or optimistic, we should pay attention to that aphorism of the philosopher Chuck Berry: “You never can tell.”

Rafael Hernández

Rafael Hernández

Politólogo, profesor, escritor. Autor de libros y ensayos sobre EEUU, Cuba, sociedad, historia, cultura. Dirige la revista Temas.



https://oncubanews.com/en/opinion/columns/in-plain-words/the-americans-and-us-parallel-roads/

Rafael Hernandez: The Double Standard of Human Rights

Human rights and sanctions: two sticks

Should countries subject their agreements and cooperation to political and legislative changes that undermine the rights of disadvantaged groups?

by Rafael Hernandez 

March 18, 2024 


Orginal Spanish text  

https://oncubanews.com/opinion/columnas/con-todas-sus-letras/derechos-humanos-y-sanciones-dos-varas/


The current that raises once again the old anti-communist slogan of toughening policy towards the island and conditioning relations to this or that, in Europe or in Washington, believes it has found in the current Cuban crisis the right moment to tighten the screws. 


Is it possible that they have not learned how their double standards are processed on the side over here? What is its real effect on openness, reforms, democratization? Have they not looked in the mirror?


Let's take as an example what Amnesty International (AI) says, let's say, about Spain . AI says that the eradication of violence against women has made progress, but it remains a critical problem; that the treatment of prisoners, sometimes inhuman and degrading, includes practices classified as torture. And it puts its finger on the reception of immigrants, where the capacity of the established order to respond to the human security of those who aspire to a better life is tested. 


Should Latin American and Caribbean countries subject their agreements and cooperation with that country to making political and legislative changes that undermine the rights of these disadvantaged groups? Would it be the most effective way to achieve desirable progress? 


As for giving an example to Cuba, I imagine what would have happened here if fifty years after the dictatorship overthrown in 1959, the thousands of dead of that regime had not received justice and reparation, had not been vindicated by the courts or been in many cases knew for sure where they were buried; and where those guilty of “extrajudicial executions”, torture, arbitrary imprisonment, had not been tried. If almost half a century later a Fulgencio Batista Foundation were maintained, and a law that prevents any judicial process for human rights violations committed during that regime, sealing the impunity of the repressors. Or if the exaltation of Batistato had been reborn in political organizations that celebrate him as a hero, the architect of modern Cuba, whom international communism has unjustly vilified. And, above all, some invoked it as a transition model to guide countries victims of totalitarianism along the path of freedom and democracy. 


Let's imagine that instead of being the country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the closest cooperative relations, political-diplomatic alliances and collaboration with Africa, its treatment of Africans who arrived in Cuba were described as serious violations of human rights . 


Let's think if every time a delegation from our countries visited Madrid or Brussels they asked that Catalan politicians convicted for political reasons, or imprisoned Basque independentists and anarchists, be at the conversation table. 


Although some MEPs are proud of their European supremacy, 40% of Spaniards do believe that there are political prisoners in their country; and 57%, that preventive detention is abused, according to a survey by the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia. 


As the well-known Spanish visual artist Santiago Sierra, whose work in favor of political prisoners has been censored, says, the approval of the Citizen Security Law, or “ Gag Law ”, covers opinions and acts of disobedience as crimes, such as, for example, the attempts to collectively paralyze evictions, multiplying complaints and sanctions for resistance to authority.” And it is known that the application of article 155 of the Constitution against the self-determination referendum called in Catalonia unleashed a wave of arrests that led elected representatives to prison or exile.


However, when you ask the politicians there, they say that theirs “are not political prisoners at all.” And they clarify that "in a democracy there are no political prisoners", so in Spain "there have not been any for many years." Or even better: “ There are no political prisoners here, but political prisoners .” If Mario Moreno had been Minister of Justice, he would not have said it better. 


Given that the European Parliament does not vote to condition relations with Israel on the cessation of the Gaza massacre; that the Sahrawi fighters imprisoned by Morocco remain incommunicado, without adequate medical care, tortured and held thousands of kilometers from their families, while no one in Brussels seems to care ; that Tunisia does not allow a delegation of MEPs to enter and nothing happens either; that cases of murdered journalists, of contingents of poor people displaced by the violence of organized crime that some States fail to control, proliferate in other countries; Since the victims of police violence in the US reach record numbers in 2023 without the official European institutions opening their mouths, how can we explain the application of such a selective standard to what is happening in Cuba?  


This propensity is not only the work of right-wing parties. Other actors enthusiastically contribute to ensuring that political organizations do not measure themselves by their own yardstick. They are those who, by mouth, promote dialogue, freedom of expression, the debate of ideas, the free circulation of information, pluralism, and at the same time carefully exclude those who express approaches that do not coincide with their ideology or line. editorial. Let's say, when a newspaper like El País or Washington Post, and some press agencies based in Havana decide which authors or which “political analyzes” they publish, giving a perfect example of that asymmetry. 


I wonder what it would be like if the most high-profile political commentators on China, Vietnam, Russia, Pakistan, India, Brazil, Colombia, in the mainstream media, were exiles from those countries, who identified themselves as activists against those governments, and whose texts They would dedicate themselves to denying or ignoring everything that could be considered valuable and recognizable. And of course I am not referring to the academy that studies Cuba elsewhere, but to what is spread in the most influential newspapers and media in the formation of international public opinion. 


Recapitulating all of the above, I draw attention to three issues. 


The first, that when some judge the real deficiencies, problems, errors and clumsiness of Cuban policies, they tend to apply a logic that, deep down and increasingly openly, rather objects to the very nature of the system. 


Can democratic exercises in our region and beyond be paradigmatic?


As most observers recognize, today's democracies are no more credible, nor do they function better, nor are they more popular than many authoritarian regimes, in Latin America and the Caribbean, and also in Asia, right now. Of course, this does not mean justifying any form of dictatorship, authoritarianism or populism, especially in regions with a record of dictatorships like ours. However, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), democracy in our part of the world has fallen more since 2008 (-10%) than anywhere else. 


Except in Chile and Uruguay, according to the EIU, perfect, “hybrid” authoritarian regimes and “imperfect democracies” constitute the majority. The imperfect refers to Brazil, Colombia and Argentina; and hybrids, Peru, Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras... If you know what has been happening in those countries in recent years, you will see how democracy, oligarchic concentration and large-scale corruption are taking place.  


Comparatively, says EIU, where democracy has fallen the least is in Asia (-2.1%), a region where regimes described as authoritarian prosper, such as China, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia ...


It seems that, adhering to the same parameters, actually existing democracies do not achieve more credibility or respond better than many authoritarians, in terms of human security, equity, poverty reduction, prosperity, access to education and health. 


The second issue refers to the belief that imposing conditions, punishments, isolation, pressure or, as they would say in Old Havana, “putting your foot in” those regimes of an authoritarian nature, we achieve greater influence to reach compromises and, at the same time, long, behavioral changes, that through dialogue and constructive engagement. 


US policies towards Cuba are a long experiment of error-trial-error-error-more trial-more error that demonstrates not only the ineffectiveness, but the counterproductive effect of that variant. President Obama's recognition of this effect should be sufficiently demonstrative, because of "confession of parties, release of evidence."


Before him, the European Union recognized this, by discarding the so-called “common position” in 2016 . The Italian historian Carlo Mario Cipolla formulated it in his third law of human stupidity: “A behavior is stupid if it causes harm to others without obtaining any gain, or, even worse, causing harm to itself in the process.” 


The third is that “putting your foot in” and calling on the other instead of dialogue and commitment has repercussions within the besieged, in their politics and their society, inside and outside. This is because it contributes to reinforcing extremism of all colors, to clouding and festering the zipizape above dialogue, to facilitating the hijacking of the debate by the desire for protagonism, the exchange of ideas by charlatanry, reasoning by speculation, the defense of the national interest through the mentality of a besieged fortress.


I am thinking now of some Cuban problems, not derived from the blockade or the USSR, but contaminated by harassment, which hampers their understanding and in-depth debate. Let's say, corruption.


If I had the evidence and time, it would be worth trying.  

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Rafael Herandez: US Impact on the Revolution

Us and the Americans

How does history serve us to understand the origins of our problems and as a tool to interpret the present?

by Rafael Hernandez  January 3, 2024 


Original Spanish text in On Cuba

https://oncubanews.com/opinion/columnas/con-todas-sus-letras/relaciones-cuba-eeuu/


I saw the men of my generation, the lares, sing in ceremonies, rejoice

when Cuba and Fidel and that year 60 were just an inferior, invertebrate animal.

And I saw them later

when Cuba and Fidel and all those things were weight and color

and the strength and beauty necessary for a young mammal.

I ran with them

and I saw them run.

And the animal was surrounded with oil, with pine stakes so that no one would know

its shiny fur, its drum.

I was with my joyful ignorance, my rage, my colored feathers

at the old bonfire festivals

Cuba yes, Yankees no

There is a noble and beautiful animal surrounded by crossbows.

On the southern border the war has begun.

The plague, the famine, on the northern border.


The speaker is Antonio Cisneros, one of the greatest Peruvian poets. It is the year 1968. Cuba was that wounded, fenced animal. This is how the Latin Americans of that time saw it. In that mirror we also saw ourselves. Latin American solidarity comforted us. But that dangerous living did not diminish, nor did the perception of threat become a habit, daily life, which permeated everything, including politics, the economy, social and family relationships, morality, and faith.

As our main living Marxist philosopher, Jorge Luis Acanda, has pointed out, Cuban socialism “was not achieved by standardizing society, nor by converting it into a monolithic and monotonous block (something impossible), but by laying, in those years, the foundations of a more plural civil society, precisely because it is more inclusive than the previous one.” To do so, it had to defend itself in a real war, and sweep away its enemies, those who had opposed this national project since the time of Martí - saccharocracy, importing bourgeoisie, lumpen, armed institutions -, and confront the hegemonic power with who were allies long before. That war did not end, as some imagine, when the rebels against the Revolution were defeated.

He had to travel that path alone because, while those formidable powers waged incessant war on him from his early childhood and managed to surround him, as Cisneros says, his only allies, the Soviet bloc and China, which did not share that project of Cuban-style socialism , they tried to subordinate him in their own way.

It is not strange, then, that in that stormy environment, isolated and trapped in a geopolitical equation that surpassed it, the political project was necessarily transformed, to the same extent that its survival made national security the main variable.

This logic dictated radical measures, such as the massive transfer of the families of the rebels and collaborators to towns in Pinar del Río and Camagüey, a special military service for those who were not reliable in the handling of "the new technique" of weapons coming from the USSR (disaffected, religious, homosexuals), the massive nationalization of 58 thousand small businesses alleging “illegality, low integration of the owners to the Revolution, antisocial living conditions, dirty businesses, theft and bribery.”

As often happens with political reason, these measures were justified ideologically: “If this Revolution can be reproached for anything, it is not at all about having been extremist but in any case about not having been radical enough. And we must not lose the opportunity or let the time pass to radicalize this Revolution more and more.” (FC, March 13, 1968).

Judging those policies as excessive or erroneous, seen from today, does not prevent us from understanding that none of them were the cause but rather the consequence of a situation created by the conflict. And explaining them without taking into account the circumstance of entrenchment, perception of threat, preeminence of security and instinct of conservation, lacks historical sense.

Why remember all this, so many years later? Well, because when talking about the origins of our current evils, many seem to ignore that past, or have forgotten it. As if the haze of yesterday turned red as what was narrated becomes remote, in the manner of those celestial bodies that move away more and more quickly from our galaxy, and that is why their light reaches us at the red wavelength, that clouds everything.

How does this history serve us, not only to understand the origins of our problems, but as a tool of analysis in the interpretation of the present? How does it relate to our current context, internal/external, especially with our relations with North and South America, with the world? Can you help us foresee what is coming?

Thinking about the present as history requires rewinding the video a little , and contrasting it with our contexts. The first thing that stands out is that Cuba stopped having, for the United States, the importance that it had during the Cold War.

In the 60s we were a threat perceived by the United States, through the lenses of the domino theory, when the ghost of “other Cubas” inspired its Latin American policy. Surrounding it by all means, except direct invasion, was the spell. As is known, that almost perfect siege, which barely left Cuba as interlocutors for the national liberation movements, rather made the prophecy self-fulfilling, being a decisive factor in the proliferation of guerrilla armies inspired by the Cuban Revolution.

Since the early 1970s, the American republics of the South realized the counterproductive effect of this siege on their security interests, and not only reestablished relations with the island, but also asked the United States to do so, starting in 1974. In fact, that Caribbean and Latin American thaw (in that order), which Cuba was quick to reciprocate, had its effect on the Carter Administration's approach to us. Do not forget that this rapprochement took place despite the fact that the Cuban-Soviet alliance was at its highest point, and thousands of Cuban troops were deployed in the southwest and the Horn of Africa.

As is known, according to declassified documents and interviews with the actors, Carter had the intention, if he had been re-elected, to continue seeking dialogue, despite the incidents in Congress about “Soviet brigades” and other nonsense, and even of the Mariel exodus.

In other words, the Latin American context was then the main driver of an understanding between Cuba and the US. And even the alliances with the USSR and with the African liberation movements kept it as a priority. Of course, in geopolitical terms.

Today's Cuba is not on the US radar as in those times, nor as in the 80s, when, under the Reagan Administration, it was identified in terms of a global threat, preceded only by the USSR. Of course not. The great paradox is, however, that the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Africa and military advisors in Nicaragua, the end of the Central American wars, and the collapse of European and Soviet socialism, by erasing Cuba from the radar of the threats from the US, did not give way to normalization, but rather threw it into the basement of its geopolitical priorities.

The paradox would have another realpolitik explanation. Why negotiate with a small country, economically and militarily dependent on allies that have vanished, involved in a multiple crisis, and with a Castro “in his final hour,” as that Miami best-seller announced?

Since the end of the USSR, more than thirty years ago, the Cuban economy has not recovered; With ups and downs, the crisis has continued. But neither the protests of July 2021, nor the massive migratory flow, nor the visibility of dissent that mobile data has fostered - although they represent political symptoms of unrest and the narrowing of consensus - have so far caused signs of ungovernability, lack of control , political destabilization.

What is the US waiting for? Wouldn't it be better for them to continue Obama's policy, the search for a dialogue that expands the surface of contact, instead of closing it? Wouldn't it be smarter to continue weaving a network of agreements that, as happens with all of these, oblige the two parties, technically, to subject their sovereignty to those freely assumed commitments?

To use a historical parallel, if instead of falling into the spiral of war, the United States and Cuba had discussed their differences, would the revolutionary process have been so dizzying and so radical? I do not mention it to imagine what could have been, as some hypothetical historians do, but to point out an angle of the problem, understood not in a rationalist way, but in a political way: that radical conflict accelerated and took everything planned further, it forced what was imagined as possible or viable, it closed the differences between the revolutionary forces, and most especially, it encouraged the search for alliances wherever they existed.

Today we repeat that everything Cuba can do to channel the conflict with the United States is insignificant, since the initiative is on Washington's side, and we remain locked in a Cold War bubble. That the future of relations is decided in the electoral campaign and the Cuban-American votes in Florida. That a Republican senator and another Democrat have the bond of those relationships in their hands, and they have tied it into a knot around the president's neck. As long as the application of Title III of the Helms-Burton is not suspended, we are on the black list of terrorist countries, and Americans cannot stay in hotels in Gaviota, there will be no signs of change worth recording. To close this iron mask, the 400 thousand Cubans who have left cultivate the same legitimate fury and resentment against the communist regime as the first exiles, so the Republican Cuban-American vote will inevitably be determined by the harshness of their candidate regarding Cuba.

As for this side, it has been said and repeated that Cuba was not as flexible and pragmatic as it could have been during Obama's short summer; while the White House made unilateral concessions.

However, at later times it could still contribute to recovering relations, especially through two key levers. The first, given the crucial weight of the Washington-Caracas-Havana triangle as an obstacle in relations, Cuba had in its hands to convince Maduro to relax with the opposition, responding to pressure from the EU and other countries in the region, as well as lowering the profile of its relations with Russia and Iran. The second, that to motivate this Administration it was advisable to release all those convicted of the actions of July 11, 2021 once and for all.

The above is premised on the fact that the laser of US policy towards Cuba is focused on one point: regime change. For economic reasons (recover the properties nationalized in 1959-68), political (reestablish the capitalist order and liberal democracy), strategic (restore the order of the inter-American system advocated in the TIAR and the OAS) and ideological (reinforce the Monroe doctrine in its version 4.0).

Our focus, to paraphrase, is to “save everything that can be saved”; that is, “preserve the conquests of the Revolution” (education, health, social security...), guide ourselves by political pragmatism (conceptually different from realism) in order to survive and grow (conceptually different from development), remember that we are an island in the Gulf similar to others, in whose normality lies our prosperity and future (as opposed to believing ourselves “unique” and “exceptional”), and whose comparative advantage lies in the vicinity of a vast natural market, which is also that of a great hegemonic power, a geopolitical condition to which we must adapt our ideas and projects to the maximum.

I do not have space in this first article of the year to discuss, in light of history, the degree of validity of all these theses (which I do not share).

I end by just noting, as in a memorandum, some points to keep in mind when we examine that key dimension that is the hemispheric, regional and global dynamics in which we move, with historical lenses.

Like that fly in Cortázar's story, which flew upside down, US policy has remained the same, while the world has changed. That wouldn't be too serious, for a fly of that size, if it weren't head down only towards Cuba.

On the other hand, we have never had, neither after nor before 1959, such a respectful, diverse and dialogic relationship, politically speaking, with the different regions and countries, taken as a whole.

Despite the kidnapping of Argentina and some other center-right governments, there are still more Latin Americans and Caribbeans close to Cuba, and some among the largest, such as Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia. Beyond that pink wave or whatever it is called, the last Summit of the Americas revealed to what extent the alignment against the US exclusion policy reached a critical point.

Beyond this closeness, the crisis of confidence in Latin American democracies has also reached an unprecedented climax. The demand for States capable of dealing with poverty, inequality, inflation, but also with human insecurity, organized crime, epidemics, inflated migratory flows, low growth rates, is multiplying. The levels of discrepancy and tension with the North have risen and have spread among those Southern American countries, small and large. The problems that afflict this Cuba are not exotic or predetermined by ideology. Curiously, they seem more common than those you may share with China and Vietnam.

Finally, in the 60s-80s, our main partners were at odds with each other; Now they seem allies. This revived alliance, although different from the one of yesteryear, reminds me of a survey from a year or so ago, with which I want to end this New Year's rant. I posted a question on Facebook: “Does getting closer to Russia and China harm a change in relations with the United States?” Or does it favor it?”

Among the 76 people who responded, almost all of them Cuban, distributed inside and outside the island, the thesis that I have noted above are reiterated. In most cases, they go beyond the simple question in my survey. I put some, just to give an idea of ​​their color.

"It does not matter. “The US doesn’t give a damn about that.” “Ukraine and its bad relations with China show that it disadvantages them.” “In any case, there will be no conversations, due to the rudeness and stubbornness of the Cuban Government or the collective blindness of certain circles of power.” “Likewise, there will never be rapprochement due to the essence of gringo politics. So relations with countries outside gringo control are welcome.” “Nothing to see.” “USA is only a blockade. China and Russia the hope.” “Let's wake up from the American dream. Academicism leads us to dreamlike error. “We are like the Deep South for the US. It is irreconcilable with our independence.” “We demand this change, regardless of our relations with friendly countries.” “We are already allies of Russia and China, and the US considers us enemies. “It is a matter of survival.” “We cannot get out of our economic quagmire. Today the relations benefit us, as in the past with the USSR. With Russia and China they should influence the international community according to their positions. But due to geography, security and density of ties, none is more important for Cuba than with the United States.” “The fate of Cuba cannot be decided in the toilets of Congress.” “It's a matter of survival.” “The US has a policy to make the millions of Cubans more obedient. Having relations with China and Russia is better for them [Cubans].” “If they were smart, the Yankees would remove the blockade from us.” “How bad we are when we keep looking for tits to hit. Look within, to produce our milk.” “The only solution is to get up and walk. If the conditions are met, it can be negotiated later. “First you have to breathe.” “As long as we have a blockade, no one can think that Cuba should not look for alternatives.” “The USA doesn't care when it comes to their interests.” “Get closer?!!!” “It may not be possible to answer that question in the current state of the world.” “Change has never depended on Cuba. The best thing is to get closer to friends.” “Foreign policy must be a mixture of principles and interests, that of the US is pure interests; that of Cuba, no.” “When someone so close bites us, we can't turn our backs on whoever is pulling our hand.” “I have difficulties with the question.”

Those that strictly address the question offer interesting arguments. “Cuba is in the Western Hemisphere. Area of ​​influence of Russia and China is in the Far East.” “It depends on the area of ​​influence in which Cuba remains after the recomposition of the current world order is completed. Could Cuba have its polar loyalty on the other side of the world, being 90 miles from the US?” “[Relations with China and Russia] favor the relationship with the US for geopolitical balance.” “It helps us that [the US] sees that we are not alone.” “It favors them, because it strengthens us.” "Yeah. We must make them nervous, perhaps uncomfortable.”

There is a lot of wheat in some more elaborate answers, which I would like to thresh at another time. And many more reflections that derive from how this load of comments are aligned around realpolitik, pragmatism, values, principles and peculiar views on history, ours, that of the world of the Cold War.

I put them among my good resolutions for 2024.