Help Cubans enact change from within

THE MIAMI HERALD
OPINION
Posted on Saturday, 10.25.08
U.S. POLICY
Help Cubans enact change from within
BY JORGE MAS SANTOS
www.canf.org
President Ronald Reagan in the State of the Union speech in 1985 said: ''We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives to secure rights which have been ours from birth. Support for freedom fighters is self-defense.'' This commitment translated into a vigorous program of substantial, direct support to the democratic opposition in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc.
U.S. policy on Cuba has been devoid of such a vision, turned, instead, into a mere domestic issue where lip service is paid to the cause of freedom but little is done in the way of substance. Two primary considerations have driven U.S. policy on Cuba: the Cuban-American vote in South Florida and avoiding a mass migration from Cuba. For many years, our community's vote could be guaranteed by a photo opportunity in Miami and the quintessential anti-Castro, rhetoric-filled speech. No longer is this the case.
The Cuban American National Foundation strongly supports a policy that uses the embargo and effective sanctions against the oppressive regime but is accompanied by a proactive approach that empowers the Cuban people to enact change from within. What has been touted as a hard-line policy on Cuba is anything but. Rather than an active partner for the Cuban people in pushing for democratic change, the United States has served as a passive bystander doing nothing to derail the now ostensibly seamless dictatorial transition that has taken place in Havana. This administration has failed to destabilize the regime or its mechanisms of internal control.
The result is a policy full of inherent contradictions:
• It has allowed U.S. companies to sell more than $2 billion in agricultural products to the regime during the last eight years, yet it prohibits a Cuban American in Miami from sending a relative basic hygiene products like soap and toothpaste.
• It allows American businessmen to tour Cuba as many times as they choose, spending money in luxury, government-run hotels and restaurants, while it limits to once every three years a granddaughter from visiting her ailing grandmother in a dilapidated housing tenement in Havana.
• It promises to support Cuban dissidents but prohibits critical cash remittances to those on the front lines of the struggle for democracy.
• It forbids person-to-person humanitarian assistance to Cuban victims of the most destructive hurricane season in Cuban history.
By refusing to move beyond the status quo policy, Washington has strangely, or maybe predictably, embraced a policy of accommodation. Waiting for Raúl Castro to reform is not a strategy; it is wishful thinking, it is surrendering a critical juncture in Cuba's history that could make all the difference.
The next president of the United States, whether it is Sen. John McCain or Sen. Barack Obama, will have to adopt a policy toward Cuba that demonstrates a break from the past and a real and substantive commitment to the triumph of democracy that recognizes the very significant role that Cuban Americans must play in helping Cubans on the island win back their freedom.
We must reassure and strengthen the hands of reformists within the Cuban government, those outside the cohorts of Castro, using effective sanctions and other incentives as a trading card for fundamental political and economic reforms. A proactive Cuba policy should, also, include direct, vigorous support in the form of cash aid and substantial material goods to Cuba's brave opposition leaders and members of independent civil society.
We cannot continue to cripple U.S.-Cuba democracy programs with illogical regulations that result in more than 83 percent of the funding being spent outside of Cuba while Cuba's dissidents and political prisoners are unable to meet their family's most basic needs. We need to facilitate the ability for a family member to send their relatives in Cuba cash assistance that not only alleviates real humanitarian need but also allows them to become independent of the state.
With only days before a crucial election, little can be expected from this administration or our elected officials when they refuse to even temporarily lift the 2004 restrictions after two devastating hurricanes. They have forced the democratic opposition in Cuba to make a desperate appeal to First Lady Laura Bush and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez in a, thus far, unsuccessful effort to push for a moratorium on the restrictions.
We should demand more of our elected leaders. We cannot forfeit our opportunity to influence events in Havana while we wait for Castro to be born again as a democrat. It will not happen. The next U.S. president should usher in a new U.S. policy on Cuba, one that demonstrates the political will and courage that Reagan heralded with his support for the forces of freedom; one that defies the predominant wisdom in Washington that not much can be done, outside the realm of military power, to help a people be free.Jorge Mas Santos is chairman of the board of the Cuban American National Foundation