THE WASHINGTON POST
How to Win the Cuban American Vote
By Jorge Mas SantosSaturday, October 25, 2008; A15
U.S. policy toward Cuba is at best static and at worst counterproductive, a source of increasing frustration to many Cuban Americans. This sad status quo contributes to the challenge that Cuban Americans will face on Election Day as, once again, particularly in Florida, our vote will probably help determine the next occupant of the White House.
The overwhelming majority of Cuban Americans expect the next president to abandon today's failed "wait and hope" policy and adopt a policy of support and engagement directed toward opening new avenues of freedom for the Cuban people as well as enhancing stability in the United States.
The Cuban American National Foundation, the nation's largest Cuban exile organization, has a predominantly Republican membership. Yet our fundamental interest is not partisan politics but helping to restore freedom to our brothers and sisters on the island.
We entered the new millennium expecting U.S. policy toward Cuba to follow the effective model of the West's support for Poland's Solidarity movement and civil society across Eastern Europe. It was our hope that by seeking to empower Cuba's independent civil society through unlimited support for the brave men and women on the island opposing the Castro regime, the energy and resources of the Cuban American community would be unleashed. To this end, we have been sorely disappointed.
As a direct result of President Bush's strategic blunder in 2004 restricting contact with the island, Cuban dissidents have experienced a significant reduction in material and humanitarian assistance. They are also subject to a ban on receiving cash remittances that help them and their families survive. The isolation of these and other Cubans has increased while Fidel Castro's departure from office caught the Bush administration off guard. Together, these developments have helped Raúl Castro consolidate control over the Cuban people.
These failures in U.S. policy undermine important American interests. Just as a democratic Israel is a key U.S. friend in a critical region, a democratic Cuba would be a crucial ally in furthering democracy in Latin America. Cuba is important, also, because the dissatisfaction of its people under the Castro regime is bound to have a significant effect on Floridians and Cuban Americans nationwide. It has in the past.
The next president must put a stop to America's spectator approach. To this end, we have presented the campaigns of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama with simple recommendations based on two basic premises: (a) the status quo is unacceptable; and (b) change needs to come from within Cuba. Our specific recommendations are:
· Change the rules that make it impossible to send cash aid and allow direct, substantial and unfettered aid to Cuba's dissidents.
· Lift the 2004 restrictions on travel and remittances by Cuban Americans. Removing the handcuffs that have prevented us from becoming active participants in the development of Cuban civil society will make us agents of change.
· Maintain sanctions that diminish the Castro regime's access to hard currency, which it uses to help fund its apparatus of repression.
· Engage democratic and reformist forces in Cuba, including those in the military and in the civilian government. They need to know that they can count on the friendship and support of the United States.
· Rebuild our intelligence capabilities in Cuba; they have been dismantled over the past decade, creating a vulnerability in this nation's security.
Both presidential candidates have made clear that they want to help the Cuban people achieve freedom. But Barack Obama's forward-looking and proactive approach toward empowering the Cuban people is more in line with these proposals than John McCain's vow to continue the Bush administration's policy.
More of the same will not bring about freedom in Cuba, and more must be done to directly assist Cuba's opposition movement. Cuban Americans are wary of empty promises. But on Nov. 4, before casting ballots, we will ask ourselves two important questions: Who will adopt a proactive policy toward Cuba, and if dissidents in Cuba had a vote in our election, for whom would they vote?
The writer is chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation.
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5 comments:
Let's hope that Obama isn't like many other politicians who says one thing and does another when (or if), he's elected. And while I must say I cannot agree with Jorge Mas Santos's motivations, I certainly agree that the restrictions on remittances and travel for Cuban Americans should be removed.
But why should only Cuban-Americans have their restrictions removed?
Why is Cuba the only country on the entire planet where people from the United States need a permission slip to go for a visit? McCain says he wants less federal interference in our lives, but he's planning to keeping everything now in place from everything he says.
It's easy Walter, travel restrictions should be removed for only cuban-americans because they are the ones who have family on the island and not being allowed to see your family becomes a human rights issue. Americans who have no family there will only be going to pour money into the regime through their tourism.
I see, human rights is only for people with relatives there.
So, Anonymous, you and I could only have the human right to travel to Saudi Arabia, China, Vietnam or anywhere else if we have relatives there?
Personally, I'm not a tourist. I've been to Cuba perhaps twenty times in the last nine years, and I work 95% of the time.
Please clarify. Thanks.
These letters were published today at the Washington Post website responding to Jorge Mas Santos's column:
The Washington Post
October 31, 2008 Friday
Updating America's Cuba Policies
SECTION: EDITORIAL COPY; Pg. A18
I was heartened as I began reading Jorge Mas Santos's Oct. 25 op-ed column, "How to Win the Cuban American Vote," calling for a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Unfortunately, by the time I finished the article, I realized that the head of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) was offering nothing more than the same old bromides.
Essentially, Mr. Mas Santos's argument was this: The United States should maintain the ineffective sanctions that have been in place against Cuba for nearly 50 years but should permit an ethnically based exception for Cuban Americans, and no other Americans, to travel to the island at will. As long as CANF insists on maintaining an embargo that is opposed by most Americans, Cuban Americans ought to be barred from visiting the island just as the rest of us are.
But the really right answer, to borrow a phrase from Colin Powell, is that it's time to end a mindless and ineffective embargo against a regime that poses no threat to the United States.
IDRIS M. DIAZ
Washington
•
Jorge Mas Santos had at least one good suggestion for a new American administration's policy toward Cuba: It should lift the restrictions on travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans and on the remittances that they can send to their families on the island. Tightening the embargo against Cuba was a grievous mistake by the Bush administration.
But why limit the lifting of restrictions to Cuban Americans? What about other Americans? We don't want to get into opening up for tourism, of course, but surely we should go back to the situation that existed under the last years of the Clinton administration, with People-to-People travel and academic exchanges. Those were certainly helpful in getting America's message across and could be resumed, as travel to Cuba could be, with the stroke of a pen.
WAYNE S. SMITH
Washington
The writer was chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1979 to 1982.
LOAD-DATE: October 31, 2008
I personally doubt that Mr. Obama if elected will be able to force any mayor change politically in Cuba in his term. But do believe that the strategy that has been perused for that past forty-nine years needs to be completely overhauled.
Lets remember that the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I also do believe that any change in the political landscape in Cuba must come from the people in the island with support form the United States and the exile community.
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