Deck the halls with boughs of holly. It’s the season for propaganda. The spurs of the Florida electoral school are freshly cut. There is a sweet perfume. It is the perfume of votes renewed on the minds of Republicans. The US Cuban embargo is now inconsistent with traditional American liberties. Isolating Cuba was a mistake. It is time for a different policy. An image of flexibility has arisen just before the 2012 elections, as talks on Cuba always do. Afterwards, the blockade and the sanctions will remain intact.
So strike the harp and join the chorus. There is a need for dialogue. Cubans have been continually seduced and subverted and drawn across the line. They have been pushed almost beyond oblivion behind an iron curtain. The effects are jolting. It is not the season to be jolly. Congress tells of Yuletide treasure but each time their efforts to ease the embargo are frustrated by Republican leadership. It is clear that it is Cuban-American activists concentrated in southern Florida which supports the embargo and Republicans feel indebted to please them at the expense of garnering votes in the upcoming presidential elections.
Hence, lifting the embargo is not about freedom for the Cuban people. It is about the unwillingness of Republicans to let the larger interests of the US and their own constituents be sacrificed to the gods of electoral politics.
In a country where education and health are triumphs of a revolution and where health care is a major export that it is in even paid for in oil, critics argue that the embargo now belongs to history; for in a post-Cold War zone it has outlived its main objectives.
Thus, the blazing Yule is as egregious as it is asinine and compounds fear and hypocrisy. Intriguing questions arise.
How can an embargo be lifted when the brutal abuse of human rights continue? What about the wrath of the Helms-Burton Act, where US courts continue to impose penalties on foreign companies doing business in Cuba?
It is true that the US can no longer continue to be the global laughing stock for using an embargo as a weapon of foreign policy against the Cuban people, while at the same time failing to impose trade sanctions against China because of its poor human rights record. It would be disastrous if we returned to business as usual without pausing to take note that the Chinese government has jailed and killed far more political and religious dissenters than has the Cuban government. Yet, China is America’s third largest trading partner while the maintenance of a blanket embargo on commercial relations with Cuba still prevails.
Rumours of lifting the embargo on the eve of an election year are dubious in theory and cruel in its potential practice. It is not a victory for Fidel Castro or his oppressive regime but just an overdue acknowledgement that a five-decade embargo has failed. While the Cuban people would be a bit less disadvantaged, lifting the embargo only shows that commercial engagement is the best way to embolden open societies abroad.
Henceforth, Obama’s ‘incremental design’ should be allowed to continue with the expansion of trade and tourism, for it is trade and development that give people tools of communication, i.e. cell phones, satellite TV, fax machines, and the internet in order to destabilize tyrannical regimes.
It is trade and development that increases the flow of goods and services and enlarges the scope of ideology, technically tailoring freedom in their path, thus giving birth to democracy and demands for better democratic institutions.
Following in fearful measure, America now bears the guilty burden before the world, while Cuba at 50 faces pressure for change. Stars shine in the Havana sky as if to answer the wind's defiant call. And the moon, crowned with yellow gorse dances fearful shadows in the courtyard of the dead.
November 2, 2011
caribbeannewsnow
