WASHINGTON’S HAVANA
Alex Santiago is a composite of three persons I got to know in Miami during my book tour promoting Havana Passage. Alex is a citizen of the United States, but his family comes from Cuba. He knows a bit about the Castro brothers and about life in Cuba during his parents time and more recently. After seven months of the Obama Administration I revisited my composite, Alex, to get his side of the story.
Do you see any progress in our leaders in Washington understanding what has to be done in Cuba?
“I do not. The failures go back 25 years through seven Presidential Administrations, and as many Congresses. I hoped we might see some improvement from the latest crowd on Capitol Hill, but what I see is worse. Barack Obama is letting the far left make the case for him that communism in Cuba has a good side. His agenda, I fear, is to use Cuba to advance his own ideas elsewhere, including here at home.”
So what’s the answer?
“The answer to finding a route to freedom for the people of Cuba is not to let our elected officials or our bureaucrats in Washington get involved trying to make deals with the Castro regime. They don’t know what they don’t know, and they’re unlikely to listen and learn. Why should they . . . they already know everything. Raul and his henchmen will take them to the cleaners.”
That’s a bit hard, isn’t it? What’s the alternative to sending our politicians and bureaucrats down there to jawbone Raul Castro?
“Congress can and should unilaterally scrub the embargo against U.S. citizens doing business in Cuba. Then we sit back and see what the Castros do.”
They won’t let us in.
“Why not?”
They don’t want real business to take hold.
“Exactly. Business requires freedom to make decisions, and this can transform Cuba the way it did Eastern Europe and is doing in China; or the Castro regime will need to take excessive measures to keep U.S. business out, which in turn will result in their eventual overthrow from within . . . also as occurred in Eastern Europe. All Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton need to do is stand tall and keep Hugo Chavez and his buddies from the mid-east and Russia from moving to support Cuban Communism 90 miles off our shores.”
Then what?
“The process will take time, but not anywhere near the 25 years our current policy has had to fail. Part of the answer is to admit there’s no quick fix for the right outcome.”
That doesn’t sound like Congress.
If you mean will the current crowd on Capitol Hill take this step? Not likely, for two reasons: If the key persons in our own government don’t support capitalism here, why would they foster its growth in Cuba? The second reason is that our legislators and bureaucrats, like most everywhere, believe in the governmental approach to solving all problems . . . They think meeting with their counterparts in Havana, people with whom they share a common self-importance and whose top-heavy perspective they can understand, is the way to go.”
You’re not at all optimistic.
“It doesn’t help that all we hear in the press these days is what a wonderful leader this man Fidel Castro has been, that Hugo Chavez is a hero for overcoming previous American animosity and the CIA, and that Raul Castro is making the right changes to free-up the Cuban society.”
That’s a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it?
“Not really. Please don’t misunderstand me, but every time I see Barack Obama making one of his ongoing, powerful, flowery speeches to rally his supporters, the picture of a younger Fidel Castro on the pulpit in Revolutionary Square comes back to haunt me. The European left sees this and smiles. Remember, Fidel didn’t come out of the communist closet until after he’d conned everyone and had solidified power, then he took no prisoners. Old, and now infirm, he still doesn’t.”
