{"id":313515,"date":"2024-11-21T18:25:26","date_gmt":"2024-11-21T23:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=313515"},"modified":"2024-11-21T18:26:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-21T23:26:01","slug":"memorandum-on-trump-biden-and-crystal-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/in-plain-words\/memorandum-on-trump-biden-and-crystal-balls\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorandum on Trump-Biden and crystal balls"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2026 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.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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\u2026 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

In all fairness, when Biden and Harris took office in January 2021, all the forecasts were optimistic, not just mine. From \u201canything will be better than Trump\u201d to \u201che will pick up where relations left off under Obama.\u201d 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

The advantage we have now regarding the future is that we do know how President Trump behaved in his previous government; and how Biden\u2019s behaved. Let\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/span>proclaimed in Miami<\/b><\/a> that he was \u201ccanceling President Obama\u2019s completely unilateral agreement with Cuba,\u201d \u201cfirmly limiting the money that flows to the military services\u201d [remittances], as well as \u201cenforcing the ban on tourism\u201d [people-to-people individual visits and <\/span>cruises<\/b><\/a>].<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s changes<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n