That Cuban winter afternoon in 2014, when General President Raúl Castro announced on television that the United States and Cuba were going to normalize relations, is indelible.
We were participating in an event dedicated precisely to those relations, with the most recognized academics in the field, from there and here, in a large room full of students, diplomats, and other experts from various organizations. The day before, while we were discussing possible scenarios for change, it had occurred to me to propose a “far-fetched” one, which went something like this: “Let’s suppose that the United States and Cuba are right now agreeing to exchange Gerardo, Ramón and Toni for Alan Gross. In that scenario, what would be the marginal cost of removing Cuba, once and for all, from the black list of countries that cooperate with terrorism?” I must say that my scenario was not exactly very popular in the debate, rather it suffered the fate of one of those “academic” digressions, separated from the “concrete policy” being examined.
When Raúl announced the exchange of prisoners, the room shook. But when he declared the beginning of diplomatic normalization between the two countries, there was a kind of explosion. Something so unexpected and out of all the screens, the “academic” and the “concrete,” that it allowed for nothing but overflowing joy. It was the only thing that was talked about in the streets, at the bus stops, in the queues at the pizzerias, in the parks, among people who did not know each other and celebrated the news. “Now yes, now yes,” said the veteran ambassador Wayne Smith in our room with his resonant voice, interrupted by tears.
From then on, all the issues took a backseat. So when it was my turn to present my paper, I don’t remember about what, nobody paid attention to me at that event.
It is not at all strange that many academic reflections are seen as absolutely fantastic and far from reality; nor, by the way, that some of the most skeptical interpreters of the past paint themselves, ten years later, as someone who “foresaw everything” (Villena dixit). Luckily, what was said then, correctly or with errors and omissions, is visible to the “gnawing criticism” of readers.
Dissolving the skein of U.S.-Cuba relations into personalities and anecdotes, or through the principle of “eternal return,” explaining the present based on quotes from officials from the Eisenhower era, ignores its complex dynamics.
Examining the political circumstances and strategic interests that came together in the 2014-2017 change, and that favored or hindered it, is key. Although difficult in these few pages, I will point out some.
A tango between two
The first thing is that it takes two to tango so that nothing of what happened or did not happen can be judged without taking into account both sides.
The United States conceded to Cuba that they were going to sit down to negotiate, even if the island was not a democracy certified by the United States, nor had it adopted capitalism, the market economy and multipartyism, nor had it abolished the security organs, nor had it returned the nationalized properties, including those confiscated from the embezzling Batista supporters in 1959, as required by the Helms-Burton Act. And it did so even though Cuba was still governed by a president named Castro, and not Díaz-Balart, Más Canosa, or Claver-Carone. Something contradictory to the very terms of the United States’ discourse in the years following the Cold War.
Obama’s discourse moved away from that position, announcing, since 2009, that “the United States aspires to a new beginning with Cuba,” not only by making it easier for “Cuban Americans to visit the island whenever they want and provide resources for their families,” but by talking about a variety of issues, from “drug trafficking, migration, and economic issues to human rights, freedom of expression and democratic reform.” He said that we should “learn from history, but we should not be trapped by it.”
Raúl Castro had announced, since he took office in 2008, that he was ready to talk about everything with the United States, including domestic policy issues. This was also a different position.
Normalization with an embargo?
If it is about concessions, the biggest of all on the Cuban side was to admit that normalization did not have as its first point the lifting of the multilateral and extraterritorial embargo against the island. Following the examples of China and Vietnam, the conversations should have started there. Without economic relations, what normalization are we talking about?
It is true that 22 agreements were signed on issues of common interest, especially national security. But none of them reached the level of a treaty. So they did not have the force of law, nor the basis of International Law that generates a reference framework regarding established regulations and norms, by which both states would have been obliged to comply with what was agreed, regardless of the administration in power. In other words, none of these memoranda of understanding contained a vaccine against possible outbreaks or swings dictated by the subsequent political situation.
So, especially for Cuba, everything that was agreed lacked guarantees of preservation, but rather represented a political commitment, based on goodwill and trust, lacking assurance, beyond the logic of quid pro quo. And not necessarily.
Asymmetries
In fact, symmetry and reciprocity did not always prevail in those exchanges.
Let’s say, a dozen U.S. commercial airlines were authorized to fly to the island; but Cubana de Aviación was never able to land on any runway in the United States, threatened with a U.S. court ordering the seizure of its planes in favor of one of those “affected by the revolutionary laws” more than half a century ago.
President Obama landed in Cuba on a “private visit,” paralyzed traffic in Old Havana while touring the area around the Cathedral Square, spoke at events broadcast on Cuban state television, was received by Raúl Castro, and watched a baseball game together. However, neither the president nor any high-ranking representative of the Cuban government was able to visit Washington DC on a personal level, invited by a university or journalists’ guild, as Fidel did in March 1959.
Without Congress
The short summer of relations, during the final 25 months of the Obama administration, would once again demonstrate the decisive role of the executive in dictating its course. Normalization was a process that, on the side of the United States, ignored Congress. Just like Carter when (against the Cold War) he began the march towards full relations in 1978; like Clinton when he radically changed the migration policy towards the island in 1994; like Bush when he sat at the same table with the Cuban government to reach a firm result in the negotiation process of southwest Africa in 1988.
As every time the White House has had reasons of national interest to make a change towards Cuba, in 2015-2016 it was again demonstrated that it has done so and that’s it, despite the active opposition of the ultra-right congresspeople of Florida and their allies, and their supposed capacity to dictate the Cuba policy.
It would also demonstrate that progress in relations can be made, even if Congress does not repeal the Helms-Burton Act. People-to-people visits opened the door, on the other side, to more than half a million visitors, who for the first time surpassed the annual contingent of Cuban-Americans. But, above all, it would trigger a boom in Cuba’s image on a global level. To understand how this happened, it is useful to explain how the shift in U.S. policy was possible.
A two-cent investment
More than President Obama’s inaugural speeches in 2009, Cuba’s rise on the U.S. foreign policy agenda was prompted by the circumstances of 2014.
The convergence of consensus in favor of normalization and lifting the blockade encompassed all the governments in the region, the United States’ allies in Europe, and emerged in domestic public opinion polls, even among broad sectors of the Cuban-American community, which benefited from the measures on remittances and visits taken by the administration in the first months.
In its final phase, the presidency entered the period that political scientists call “the lame duck,” in which there is not much left to do, since political capital has been spent on priority tasks, and there is no other mandate to win. So he had two cents left to invest in something that could bear fruit in the short term, without having to embark on long congressional battles. The secret negotiation around Alan Gross and the possible exchange for the Cuban prisoners offered the propitious occasion.
To put it in terms of my fantastic scenario of 2014: having made progress in the negotiation on the exchange of prisoners, what was the marginal cost of announcing diplomatic normalization? Doing so on the day of San Lázaro in Cuba, and the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, would leave two years in which the newly planted plant could be fertilized.
Derived from that political circumstance that marked the rise of Cuba in the foreign policy of the United States, the boom in the image did not take long to arrive.
From boxing to chess
The island stopped appearing as the “tropical Gulag” with thousands of prisoners, Raúl went from “dictator” to “statesman” or “ruler,” and Havana jumped to the list of 14 cities that you must visit, according to The New York Times.
According to my calculations at the time, between 2015 and 2016 the frequency of high-ranking visitors, heads of state or government, prime ministers, foreign ministers or ministers of defense, most of them for the first time, reached two per week. The expectation of an unstoppable rise in U.S.-Cuba relations was like a magnet.
In other texts, I have commented on the impacts of the process called normalization between Cuba and the United States, as well as on its aftermath, under Trump-Biden. Although those circumstances are unrepeatable, there were lessons and demonstrative effects that should not be forgotten.
Going from a boxing-type confrontation to a chess game posed challenges of all kinds. Although some authors reduce the differences to the ideological chromosomes of each side, it was shown that despite everything, both sides were able to agree on their disagreements and move forward, maintaining their goals, but leaving behind preconditions. As well as generating, at the same time, a climate of communication that facilitated reaching agreements, and especially, diversifying the channels between both sides.
Mutual interests
Institutions and telecommunications companies, tourism, air and maritime transportation, biomedicine, pharmaceuticals, the entertainment industry and baseball, as well as actors who had initiated their own dialogues and previous cooperation actions, such as academics, artists, scientists, and religious figures, expanded and strengthened bridges. Despite the winter that followed that season of cooperation, these actors and channels have not disappeared, and their mutual interests are still there.
Of course, although most Cubans welcomed the thaw with joy, many were wary of the “American tsunami” that was coming upon us, not only among politicians but among ordinary people. That most Cubans benefited from the rapprochement, inside and outside; although some more than others. That the pause in a long period of hostility and disputes, threats and arrogance, defensive predisposition and sharpening of the feeling of a besieged fortress, decongested the Cuban political climate, favoring debate and change.
At the same time, it posed new challenges to politics, to mentalities, but above all to conduct, and to everything that expresses established cultural patterns, which are not erased or modified overnight, by the work and grace of a handful of agreements, the visit of a black president, of his portrait next to a Raúl Castro who promoted socialist reforms, and paved the way for a change in the historical leadership.
Looking back ten years, the greatest achievement back then was precisely having challenged the legacy of mistrust, something more difficult to overcome than the blockade, and whose roots remain.
It is worth rescuing that lesson, ten years later, so as not to be trapped in the history of frustration; to prevent defensive tension from prevailing and paralyzing us.
