We have recognized before that the policy of hostility towards Cuba has been a mistake. First of all, because it never worked to achieve its objectives. But also because it was counterproductive… We know that Cuban policy does not automatically align itself with the enemies of the United States; and that it is not fair to have put Cuba on the list of terrorist countries, where none of our allies have it.
If Cuba feels like a besieged fortress, and fears that its opponents are at the service of a foreign power, we would like to reiterate that it will have no reason to perceive any threat from us… That is why we have invited a group of young students and professors from public universities, doctors, farmers, businesspeople, communicators, artists, scientists, religious people from various states, some of whom have already initiated exchanges with Cuba on their own, to accompany us in this meeting, so that they may take part in this new dialogue between civil societies on both shores. A dialogue that should not be limited, naturally, to the non-state sector, but should include primary and secondary school teachers, university professors, health specialists, journalists from public media, People’s Power delegates, diplomats, experts in law and public order, leaders of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Young Communist League, all of whom also constitute the human capital of the new Cuba.
We witnessed how the previous administration poisoned the atmosphere of understanding achieved in 25 months of intense negotiations, and recharged it with the sound and fury of the worst moments of the Cold War; it closed the doors of the consulate in Havana to the relatives of Cuban immigrants in the United States; it restricted air traffic between our airports and those of the Cuban provinces; it interrupted the people-to-people exchange policy; it severely limited remittances, and put the channels for their delivery in crisis; finally, it obliquely encouraged rhetoric hostile to normalization within Cuba itself.
This is how I imagined, in the first hundred days of his administration, a speech by Joe Biden in Havana. I reproduce it here, not only to illustrate how one makes mistakes at the beginning of a government, but to remember the lost opportunities and the policies not rectified at the time; and how history never stops taking its toll.
In all fairness, when Biden and Harris took office in January 2021, all the forecasts were optimistic, not just mine. From “anything will be better than Trump” to “he will pick up where relations left off under Obama.” And so on. But those predictions were nothing more than calculations and opinions based on the U.S.-Cuba rapprochement under Obama, of whose administration the new president and numerous appointees in his new government had been part. However, it was not known how those same people were going to act in their new roles, and in the context of a work team that was beginning its first term.
The advantage we have now regarding the future is that we do know how President Trump behaved in his previous government; and how Biden’s behaved. Let’s see how much we can extract from a cold assessment, which allows us to think about the present and the foreseeable future, so as not to make mistakes again, by excess or by default.
The hostility of the Trump administration was not long in coming. Within the first 100 days, the Treasury Department put Cuba on a list of countries that favor money laundering, and just five months after taking office, the president proclaimed in Miami that he was “canceling President Obama’s completely unilateral agreement with Cuba,” “firmly limiting the money that flows to the military services” [remittances], as well as “enforcing the ban on tourism” [people-to-people individual visits and cruises].
At that gathering of “Cuban-American brotherhood” at Miami’s Manuel Artime Theater, the new president would make clear, however, that he would maintain “safeguards to prevent Cubans from risking their lives by traveling illegally to the United States” [the cancellation of the dry foot/wet foot policy], as well as “our Embassy open with the hope that our countries can forge a much stronger and better path.”
The most radical action in Trump’s turn toward Cuba occurred in August of his first year: the affair of the “sonic attacks” against U.S. diplomats and representatives in Havana. This affair served to reduce the staff at its Embassy in Havana to a minimum and to suspend de facto the processing of immigrant visas, agreed since 1995.
I have no space to dwell here on the boom of conspiracy speculations unleashed among many commentators on bilateral relations, attributing those strange and never verified “neurological damages” of the supposed victims to the surreptitious action of a mysterious “external” or internal factor (“the Cuban G2”).
The harvest of the so-called “Havana syndrome,” harvested by respectable news agencies and periodicals, and quickly replicated in Beijing and other propitious places, with a true cloud of covert actions attributed to incarnations of the evil empire (Russia, North Korea, Iran), vanished into nothingness. However, its direct consequences in the interruption of the Cuban migratory flow to the United States and the deterrent effect among possible visitors, extended for more than five years, were very tangible.
In November of that first year, 2017, the U.S. government launched its first blacklist of “prohibited Cuban organizations and companies” (179), including the Ministry of the Armed Forces and Ministry of the Interior, agencies, companies, hotels, etc. This inquisitorial index grew until it reached almost 250. I believe that, at this point, there is only one hotel in Havana where visiting Americans can legally stay.
The second event that would mark the extent of Trump’s hostility towards Cuba was his failure to sign the suspension of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act in May 2019.
The decision, which not even the George W. Bush administration had adopted, left the door open to a frenzy of lawsuits against third-country interests, which could be presented not only by U.S. firms nationalized in 1959-60, but by affected Cubans (who at the time were not U.S. citizens), including, say, members of the Batista dictatorship whose embezzled property was confiscated in 1959. Naturally, most experts predicted a wave of lawsuits against Cuba’s numerous foreign investors and trade partners.
It is difficult to measure the psychological inhibitory effect that this application of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act could have, in 2019 and subsequently, on these potential businesses. However, expectations about the wave of lawsuits were not met; and some that seemed to be initiated were resolved by agreement between the parties.
This observation does not underestimate their negative impact, it only attempts to establish the effectiveness and scope of these hostile measures. A striking example was the litigation against large Cuban-American businessmen, the Fanjul brothers, for having bought Cuban sugar from London, which the claimant finally abandoned.
Subsequently, the number of remittances was again restricted, people-to-people visits and direct flights to the provinces were canceled, dozens of vessels transporting crude oil to Cuba were blacklisted, new Cuban entities were included among those prohibited, the agreement was canceled between both sides so that players residing on the island could participate in the Major Leagues, numerous European companies were fined for transactions with Cuban institutions, Cuba was classified in the worst category of countries that practice “human trafficking.”
In his last year in the White House, the Trump administration banned Western Union from sending remittances to the island, put Cuba on the list of “countries that do not cooperate in the fight against terrorism,” put us on the highest “risk alert category for visits by U.S. citizens,” prohibited them from bringing rum and tobacco from the island in their suitcases, eliminated the general license to attend conferences, sports competitions, art exhibitions, etc.; extended restrictions on funds for cultural and educational exchanges, and kept us on the watch list of “governments that have participated in or tolerated systematic, continuous, and atrocious violations of religious freedom.” Ten days before leaving the presidency, Trump made sure that Cuba remained on the List of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
How many of these measures have been dismantled by Biden in his first and only term, as announced just days after taking office? Very few and none of the main ones. Quite the opposite.
Despite having declared himself “committed to reviewing the previous administration’s policy decisions, including that of designating Cuba as a sponsor of terrorism,” the island was never removed from that list. The regulations established would prevent supplies of spare parts for the main Cuban thermoelectric plants by European companies, as well as equipment for transportation services. About a hundred banks blocked accounts and transactions related to Cuba, including humanitarian donations; fines were imposed on accommodation agencies such as Airbnb for violating prohibitions on categories of travelers; the Cuban government was accused of nothing less than “interfering in the US elections”; the inclusion of the island on the list of countries “that do not do enough to prevent human trafficking” was maintained, alleging that “medical missions abroad” presented “strong signs of forced labor.” The blockade policy did not give way even in exceptional situations, such as the fire at the Supertanker Base in Matanzas.
I have previously commented, with references from the Foreign Ministry itself and from U.S. diplomats in Havana, on the instructions and actions aimed at directly supporting the opposition, since before the demonstrations of July 11, 2021. To a large extent, this interventionist and hostile tone, initiated under Trump, and reflected even in the discourse of President Biden himself, was further reinforced from that moment on, marking the climate of relations from then on.
The Biden administration kept the flame of the “Havana syndrome” alive, granting compensation to “the victims,” without advancing a serious investigation into the problem itself, but rather prolonging the closure of consular services for visa processing, and breaching the migration agreement, until relatively recently.
For four years, the Trump administration continued to “study” the exclusion of Cuba from all blacklists, in particular, those of terrorist countries, practitioners of “slave labor,” “human trafficking,” and other that were equally disconcerting, and lacking the endorsement of any of its allies.
Derived from this meticulous and incomplete inventory, a couple of conclusions jump out.
The first is that the Trump administration applied practically everything imaginable in the U.S. arsenal, except military force, to isolate, erode, destabilize, and subvert not only the Cuban government but the system itself. It is difficult to conceive of new measures that, in the next four years, could catch Cuba and Cubans off guard. Although the old ones can continue to cause a lot of damage, especially today, experience shows, for the hundredth time, that they do not achieve more than what dialogue does, and that they also affect not only the government and residents in Cuba but also emigrants and their descendants in the United States.
The second is that the Biden administration, despite integrating decision-makers from the Obama administration, not only did not want to resume that policy but, by omission and also by conviction, in fact, adopted Trump’s logic. The explanation that its hands have been full of all kinds of global and regional conflicts and challenges is not enough to justify this fidelity to a Cold War pattern towards Cuba as the one that is maintained, not only in the facts but even in his rhetoric, very similar to that of Trump.
For Cuba, in practical terms, never as now has it been more evident that the policy of force and exclusion has a bipartisan character, that it continues in the logic of the so-called deep state, the bureaucracies in charge of implementing it, regardless of who is in the White House.
A week before the end of his term in January 2017, Obama signed an agreement with Cuba ending the wet foot/dry foot policy (which he had previously refused to adopt, arguing that the Adjustment Act prevented it). And less than 48 hours after handing over the presidency to Trump, a company made an export to the United States (40 tons of vegetable charcoal from that shrub known as marabú in Cuba), the first in more than half a century.
This administration has only 60 days left in government. How many executive measures could it adopt to reduce some of the most irrational and counterproductive areas of this bipartisan policy, based on exclusion and force?
While this remains unfulfilled, the Cuban government, political system, and society, under the shock of Trump’s sweeping victory, are experiencing the anticipated tension in the face of what is to come. Typically, the syndrome of the besieged fortress will tend to increase. From experience, we Cubans know that this syndrome is not at all favorable to change.
It is time to think carefully, with a cool head, about what can be done to control this damage.
Author
Rafael Hernández
