Julia Sweig Overview for Council on Foreign Relations

The Frozen U.S.-Cuba Relationship

Interviewee: Julia E. Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewer: Brianna Lee, Production Editor, CFR.org

February 28, 2012

Fifty years after the United States enacted an embargo on all trade and commercial transactions with Cuba, relations between the two countries remain at a standstill. Julia E. Sweig, CFR's director of Latin American studies, says the Obama administration has prioritized domestic politics over foreign policy in its relationship with Cuba, even as Cuban President Raul Castro has been "moving in the direction of the kind of reforms that every administration over the last fifty years has called upon Cuba to make." The case of American USAID contractor Alan Gross, currently serving a fifteen-year prison sentence in Cuba (CubanTriangle) on charges of attempting to upend the regime through a U.S.-authorized democracy promotion program, has also heightened tensions, she says. Meanwhile, Sweig adds, Cuba is strengthening ties with global powers like Brazil, as well as the Catholic Church, as the Castro administration seeks to open up new economic and social spaces for its citizens.

We've passed the fifty-year mark of the breakdown of diplomatic ties between Cuba and the United States. Where do we stand now? Is normalizing relations even remotely on the table on either side?

Let me start by talking about three geographical points on the map that are relevant to the answer. In Washington, the Obama administration, consistent with the approach of the Bush administration, has made a political decision to subordinate foreign policy and national interest-based decisions to domestic politics with respect to its Cuba policy. There is a bipartisan group of members of Congress--Democrats and Republicans, House and Senate--who represent Florida, a state where there are many swing votes that deliver the electoral votes for any president. Those individuals not only deliver votes, but they deliver campaign finance, and generally make a lot of noise, and that combination has persuaded the White House that reelection is more of a priority than taking on the heavy lifting to set the United States on the path of normalization with Cuba for now.

"Brazil is clearly stepping into a space where the United States should be, and the United States has made a decision to watch as that happens."

The second point is what's happening in Cuba. It's not realistic to expect the United States to undertake a series of unilateral moves toward normalization; it needs a willing partner. I believe we have one in Havana but have failed to read the signals. Raul Castro has now been in office since the beginning of 2008. Raul holds the reins on both foreign policy and domestic policy, and, domestically, the politics of implementing a fairly wide range of economic and political and social reforms are his priority. In a deal that was coordinated with the help of the Cuban Catholic Church and Spain, he released all of the political prisoners in Cuba. He also is taking a number of steps that imply a major rewriting of the social contract in Cuba to shrink the size of the state and give Cuban individuals more freedom--economically, especially, but also in terms of speech--than we've seen in the last fifty years. He has privatized the residential real estate and car market[s], expanded much-needed agrarian reform, lifted caps on salaries, and greatly expanded space for small businesses. He also is moving to deal with corruption and to prepare the groundwork for a great deal more foreign investment. He's moving in the direction of the kind of reforms that every administration over the last fifty years has called upon Cuba to make, albeit under the rubric of a one-party system. There's a broad range of cooperation--neighborhood security in the Gulf of Mexico, as Cuba has just started drilling for oil, counternarcotics, and natural disasters--between the two countries that is still not happening, and that gives me the impression that the United States has been unwilling to take "yes" for an answer and respond positively to steps taken by Cuba.

The third geographic part of the story is south Florida. When they're polled, the majority of Cuban-Americans say that the embargo has failed, and support lifting the travel ban or loosening the embargo or some steps along that continuum of liberalization and normalization. The one most significant step that Obama did take when he took office was to eliminate the restriction on Cuban-American travel and remittances to Cuba. Cuban-Americans are now voting with their feet. If you go to the Miami airport, you will see thirty, forty flights to Cuba a week just out of Miami. Cuban-Americans are now investing in their families' small businesses on the island. The politics of this are strange because we are told by the Obama administration that we can't rock the boat of the Cuban-American vote, but those very voters are in fact demonstrating that they support a radically different set of policies than, in fact, the Obama administration has supported.

The ongoing case of USAID contractor Alan Gross (AP) has stoked tensions between the United States and Cuba. At the heart of the matter is the U.S. democracy promotion program that authorized Gross' travel to Cuba. What impact does this case have on U.S.-Cuba relations?

Precisely because we have no overarching framework for diplomacy in place and no political will to establish it for now, the Alan Gross case casts a huge shadow over U.S.-Cuban relations. The heart of the issue is the context in which those [pro-democracy] programs were being implemented. We have a full-blown economic embargo with extra-territorial dimensions that are felt in the banking and finance world--a very comprehensive and well-enforced sanctions program. The democracy programs sound very mom and apple pie--USAID has them around the world, its officials will tell you. But having them in Cuba is an extraordinary provocation. They were inherited from the previous administration's concept of regime change, and under Obama, they remain largely intact. The programs are purposely kept secret from the American public. There is no public information about the private and not-for-profit subcontractors in the United States and around the world, and Cuban institutions and individuals who may be targets of the programs are likewise not told they are part of such U.S. government programs. The democracy promotion programs have been deliberately politicized in order to provoke, and they have succeeded in provoking.

What's key is the context. There's been no real diplomacy; there's no negotiating framework that I've seen for a very long period of time, and again, that has to do with domestic politics. It's very hard to understand otherwise why this guy's still in jail. The United States has repeatedly asked the Cuban government to release Gross unilaterally, with no commitments on our end. Asking for unilateral gestures, having rebuffed or ignored or failed to read the signals from Cuba, has created this impasse. Having said that, there can be a diplomatic, humanitarian solution, and I see no value to keeping Gross in jail and hope he will be released as soon as possible. But we will need real diplomacy and a framework for negotiating a range of issues both countries care about.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff paid a visit to Cuba recently, and it looks like Cuba's trying to formulate ties with an influential, rising Latin American power. How does this burgeoning relationship between Cuba and Brazil affect Cuba's relationship with the United States.?

Brazil is a regional power and a global power; it plays in a number of spaces well beyond Latin America. In the last couple of years it undertook some major investments, and those investments will grow in Cuba--in infrastructure, in agriculture, in perhaps energy as well, and others. Brazil is clearly stepping into a space where the United States should be, and the United States has made a decision to watch as that happens.

How does Cuba's human rights situation complicate the relationship between those two countries?

It doesn't seem to be complicating it at all. Rousseff--given her own history of having spent three years in jail and being tortured in the 1970s and having worked to make human rights more of a domestic and foreign policy--her presidency has quite a bit of standing with respect to talking to any government, including the Cuban government, about human rights. She was criticized by her own public, especially in the media, a great deal for choosing to have those discussions with Cuba privately. But I would suggest that having a public, browbeating, rhetorical approach has almost always backfired for major heads of state when dealing with Cuba, and if you look at the success that the Catholic Church and the Spanish government had around the political prisoner release, that success derived from a basic fundamental degree of respect, cooperation, and engagement as the framework for the relationship.

The Pope is set to make a highly anticipated visit to Cuba in March. What's the significance of this visit?

Pope John Paul II went to Cuba in 1998, and that was very significant because that was just a few years after a new constitution in Cuba had affirmed the right of religious believers to hold senior positions in government. In the decade-plus that's transpired since, the Catholic Church under Archbishop Jaime Ortega has become the most important provider of social services outside of the state. It has started its own business school; it has opened space for itself and for others for publications, opinion, and debate; it has worked in concert with the Cuban government, especially with Raul Castro, on a very nationalist project of building a more open society in Cuba. This Pope is a different person than Pope John Paul, and it's highly anticipated, but he's coming at a time when already there is substantial change under way in that country. The visit will help the Cuban Catholic Church create space for itself and continue to create space for itself, and signal to the Cuban government that it's an institution that can be relied upon to support the kinds of reforms that the government itself wants to make happen.

It's important to note that the Pope's going to Mexico on this trip, and Mexico's population of practicing Catholics is proportionally much bigger than Cuba's. In Cuba, the syncretic religions are widely practiced. The Catholic Church is an incredibly important institution, but it would be a mistake to think of Cuba the way we do Mexico, as a predominantly Catholic society.

Raul Castro held the First National Conference of the Cuban Communist Party last month. What was he hoping to accomplish?

This conference was preceded by a Party congress in April 2011, and you have to think about both in tandem. The biggest take-away from the Party conference was the formalization of term limits for senior officials in the Cuban government, both elected and appointed. That's a very significant step forward in terms of political reform, given that many of the top leaders in the politburo are over sixty-five and have been working in those positions or other senior positions for their entire careers. It's also an important sign to the junior people who are building their political careers that they're not going to be permanent.

"Political party space, like having a multi-party system, that's not the top priority for Cubans. But what is a top priority is having the opportunity to make good for themselves."

The broader consequences of the congress and the conference were for Raul to continue a process that has been pretty slow and difficult of building a consensus among the longtime beneficiaries of the status quo that the status quo needs to change. One key thing for the Communist Party is to get the Communist Party out of day-to-day government. The party is supposed to be a political party, sort of ideological ballast, but it isn't supposed to be running ministries or having the kind of major role bureaucratically and politically that it's had over the last fifty years.

The other piece is to institute accountability and transparency within the institutions of governance themselves. That process means a radical overhaul of the way things have happened for the last fifty years.

How strong is the Cuban society's desire to move beyond the one-party system?

It's very strong. Public opinion is complicated because on the one hand, Cubans want change and they want much more space--economic space, speech space. I would say political party space, like having a multi-party system, that's not the top priority for Cubans. But what is a top priority is having the opportunity to make good for themselves with the wonderful education they have and to run businesses and to have the state get out of the way, while continuing to provide the basic social services that the entire population has benefited from and gotten so accustomed to.

http://www.cfr.org/cuba/frozen-us-cuba-relationship/p27510

Prominent Conservative Wants Big Change in US Policy

Mort Zuckerman: Time for U.S. to Review Its Cuba Policy

Raul Castro has succeeded Fidel and is reining in the all-pervasive Cuban government

By MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN

January 12, 2012

It is past time to change our policy toward Cuba. For over 50 years, the United States has been obsessed with the Cuba of Fidel Castro's time. So much so that many of the circumstances that animate our conversations and views of Cuba today seem to be drawn from the 20th century. They are a throwback to the days when Cuba was a menacing outpost of an aggressive Soviet Union. Admittedly, it's hard to forget the days of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. We forced the removal of those missiles, then sought to punish and bring down the Castro regime by a trade embargo (and some madcap covert schemes).

For over 49 years those policies have failed. And they are inappropriate for the Cuba of today. About 70 percent of Cubans were born after the original revolution. They are pressuring the state to get out of their way.

Since a chance meeting with Fidel Castro many years ago, I have had hours of conversation with him over many visits, including one a few weeks ago. Castro has overcome several bouts of serious illness. As he put it, "Nobody thought I would get through my illness, but here I am at work." And so he is, but he is playing a different role. The most critical change is that his brother, Raúl Castro, has succeeded him as president in a transition marked by a noteworthy degree of stability.

Fidel is certainly at work and active and still an inspiration for Cubans. They respect and admire him for establishing an excellent system of free healthcare; an improved educational system; and a relatively colorblind, multiracial society in which most of the institutionalized racism against blacks and mulattoes has been eliminated. They also take pride in the way he stood up to America.

He was teased a number of years ago that if he had been a slightly better baseball pitcher and made it to the major leagues, Cuba and the United States would not have had years of conflict. Castro's response was, "I was a good pitcher, but I am a great revolutionary." He is still involved, for as he has said, "Revolutionaries do not retire." But Fidel's role today is that of the senior statesman concentrating on the international stage, long a key interest for him, rather than the head of state on the domestic stage.

The driver for change in Cuba now is Raúl Castro. The pace of change will be, as he puts it, "without pause, but without haste." To implement his judgment that structural reforms are needed to revitalize Cuba's stagnant economy, he has become the principal architect in abandoning the all-pervasive role of the state and shifting a good part of economic activity to the private sector. Speech is freer. He has called on Cubans to openly air their opinions in the form of numerous town hall-style meetings. He has listened. Policies he announced have ultimately been refined and changed by the process.

He has eliminated excessive bans and regulations, encouraged productivity, and sought to make the government smaller and more efficient. This is a major change from Fidel's totally planned economy to a more market-oriented one, despite the forces of bureaucratic inertia and resistance. For the first time in over five decades, there are new rules that support the legitimization of the private sector. Free-market mechanisms have been embraced, such as self-employment, a new tax code, and liberalized rules on such things as home and auto ownership. Hundreds of thousands of licenses have been granted to Cubans to operate private businesses. A financing mechanism provides credit to would-be entrepreneurs.

Cubans finally have the right to sell and buy their homes. Many Cuban-Americans have been encouraged enough to accelerate the process by sending money to relatives. Cubans are now also allowed to purchase cellphones, DVDs, and other items that were once restricted. All these reforms are helping to change public attitudes; fewer young people want to leave. Not bad for a government that heretofore had followed a centralized communist economic model.

The church has also been positive. It has helped to negotiate the release of political prisoners, now significantly fewer. It has encouraged the move to free markets, providing counseling that reflects the words of the late Pope John Paul II when he called for "Cuba to open to the world, and the world to open to Cuba."
The Cuban-American community in the United States has also changed. Many now believe the embargo should end and the travel ban lifted. This, too, reflects a generational shift. Younger Cuban-Americans, who now outnumber the aging Cuban exiles of the 1960s, have a different attitude. They think of Cuba not in terms of politics and ideology but of family and friendships. Using so-called gift parcels, they are supplying their families in Cuba with tools and other goods for use in small businesses.

President Obama, in tune with these changes, has sought a better relationship with Cuba. He has lifted Bush-era restrictions on family travel and remittances. Last year over 300,000 people took charter flights from Florida to Cuba. Many are from the younger generation, and some no doubt dislike the Cuban leadership and what it represents. But they consider family reunification and support to be their priority. They think that after 50 years, it is time to try something different with Cuba.

The question for Americans is how to relate to the new evolving Cuba. I believe there is wisdom in Henry Kissinger's view. He lived through the grim years as secretary of state, and had said: "It is better to deal straight with Castro. Behave chivalrously," and think in broader terms.

One step to improve our relationship—and advantage America—is to remove the restrictions on exports of agricultural products. All sectors of the U.S. economy would benefit by freeing commodity sales. It would increase our revenues by perhaps $300 million to $500 million a year. Food should not be seen as a weapon but as a way to build a better longer-term relationship between the two countries, as was shown by the experience between East and West Germany.

Our restriction is pointless anyway. Cubans have access to food through imports from countries like Vietnam and China. Our regulations are simply restricting the ability of our farmers and agribusinesses to trade with Cuba while competitors exploit the opportunities to take over the sales we would otherwise have. We don't hesitate to trade with other communist countries. We even offer them credit. It is not very sensible to worry over selling wheat to Cuba and putting that money into the pockets of American farmers. As for restricting travel to Cuba, we have allowed Americans to travel to Iran, China, and Russia.

There is every evidence, moreover, that when we have liberalized intercourse with closed societies, they have become more open, with greater freedoms for their populations. China is a case in point. For this reason, we should be willing to open up Internet access and allow Americans to travel to Cuba.
I recognize there remain serious political issues between Cuba and the United States. The Cubans have jailed Alan Gross, a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. He was implementing a U.S. government democracy-building program, distributing computers, cellphones, and satellite communication technologies for nongovernmental organizations. The Cuban government interpreted this as a subversive activity and arrested him. This has now become a main obstacle to improving relations.

The Cuban government wants to have any humanitarian release of Gross matched by some degree of reciprocity. One possibility is that the United States would allow a recently released Cuban spy to serve out his next three years of parole in Cuba rather than in Florida. (He was one of five Cuban officers sent here in the 1990s to spy on anti-Castro militant groups. A release of all five is another possibility.)
Whatever the process, quiet diplomacy should be able to resolve such issues and inspire a more positive rapport. The main hurdle is political: A portion of the Cuban-American community takes a very hard-line view of the Castro government and remains a powerful political force in the key swing state of Florida. The attitude of the presidential candidates will be a good test of their vision and diplomatic skills.

We should not try to seal off Cuba from the American influence that has so profoundly changed much of the rest of the world. We cannot bully a country by starvation or deny its people the right to rejoin their families. We can move forward in our relationship with Cuba and still maintain American interests and values.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2012/01/12/mort-zuckerman-time-for-us-to-reviews-its-cuba-policy

Insider Critique of USAID Regime Change Programs

Time to clean up U.S. regime-change programs in Cuba

BY FULTON ARMSTRONG fultona1@yahoo.com

As USAID subcontractor Alan P. Gross marked his second year in a Cuban prison for carrying out secret “democracy promotion” operations, White House spokesman Jay Carney demanded his immediate release and gloated: “Cuban authorities have failed in their effort to use Gross as a pawn for their own ends.”

The message is simple: Gross is our pawn, not the Cubans’.The administration’s signals throughout the Gross affair have been clear. To Havana, it’s been “no negotiation.” To Gross, “tough luck.” And to Americans who think our 50-year Cuba policy should be reviewed, it is, “Don’t hold your breath.”

When a covert action run by the CIA goes bad and a clandestine officer gets arrested, the U.S. government works up a strategy for negotiating his release. When a covert operator working for USAID gets arrested, Washington turns up the rhetoric, throws more money at the compromised program, and refuses to talk.

For three years, I was the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s lead investigator into the political operations of the State Department and USAID in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America.

The Cuba programs — designed to identify, organize, train and mobilize Cubans to demand political change — have an especially problematic heritage, including embezzlement, mismanagement, and systemic politicization. Some program successes costing millions of taxpayer dollars, such as the creation of a network of “independent libraries,” were grossly exaggerated or fabricated.

An oversight committee’s mandate is to ensure that funds — about $20 million a year but surging to $45 million in 2009 — are used effectively and in a manner consistent with U.S. law.

State and USAID fought us at every turn, refusing to divulge even basic information about the programs, citing only a document of vague “program objectives.” The programs did not involve our Intelligence Community, but the secrecy surrounding them, the clandestine tradecraft (including the use of advanced encryption technologies) and the deliberate concealment of the U.S. hand, had all the markings of an intelligence covert operation. We never requested the names of their on-island operatives, but program managers claimed that “people will die” if we knew the names of even U.S.-based “partner” groups.

The programs were not a secret in Cuba. The Cuban government had them deeply penetrated. We did not know who Alan P. Gross was — indeed, the State Department vehemently denied he was theirs after his arrest, and even some of our diplomats in Havana thought he was working for CIA. But it was clear that the Cubans had been on him. Cuban television has shown video of other contractors in action on the island.

Only Gross can say what he knew about Cuban law as he carried out his $585,000 contract, including five visits to Cuba. He has said that he was “duped.” We confirmed that State and USAID had no policy in place to brief individuals conducting these secret operations that they are not legal in Cuba, nor that U.S. law does not allow unregistered foreign agents to travel around the country providing satellite gear, wide-area WiFi hotspots, encryption and telephony equipment and other cash-value assistance.

Administration policy is that Cuban recipients not be told the origin and purpose of the assistance — unless they ask directly. Some Cubans can guess, of course, but the implications of non-disclosure, especially as new programs target children as young as 12, are significant in a country that expressly outlaws receiving U.S. funds.

USAID has emerged as a covert warrior to undermine anti-U.S. regimes worldwide — without the burden of accountability imposed on the Intelligence Community. The regime-change focus of the programs is explicit: Rather than fund them under education and cultural authorities, the Bush and Obama administrations have insisted on citing authorities in the Helms-Burton “Libertad Act” prescribing a post-Castro future for Cuba.

Fixes have been repeatedly proposed to increase efficiencies and steer funds to help the Cuban people improve their lives, such as by taking advantage of the incipient economic adjustments that Raúl Castro has begun — to help people help themselves, not just organize and mobilize them for protests. USAID’s firm reaction has been that the programs are not to help Cubans live better lives today but rather help them demand a better future tomorrow. Regime change.

Like the other millions of dollars we have spent to topple the Cuban government, these programs have failed even to provoke the regime, except to arrest Gross and hassle people who have accepted assistance from other on-island operators.

Our policy should be based on what’s effective at promoting the U.S. national interest — peaceful, democratic and evolutionary change — not engaging in gratuitous provocations. Rhetoric and actions that prolong the prison stay of an innocent American apparently duped into being a pawn in the U.S. government’s 50-year effort to achieve regime change in Cuba are counterproductive. It’s time to clean up the regime-change programs and negotiate Alan P. Gross’s release.

Fulton Armstrong has worked on the Cuba issue on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration and later as National Intelligence Officer for Latin America and senior advisor on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/25/v-fullstory/2559755/time-to-clean-up-us-regime-change.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy

Grand Valley State University Baseball Team

GVSU to Cuba for baseball, med supplies
Lakers play 6 games in 4 days against Cuban team

Published : Wednesday, 21 Dec 2011, 5:05 PM EST

By Steve Kelso
ALLENDALE, Mich. (WOOD) - Skylar Hoke is a freshman right-handed pitcher for the Grand Valley State University Lakers. When he makes his college debut, it will be in Havana, Cuba.

The Lakers will be only the second team from the United States to play against a Cuban team in Cuba when they travel to the island for a four-game series between January 3-9, 2012.

They'll face a Cuban national university team , but they're also joining forces with First Hand Aid , a Grand Rapids-based organization that has delivered medical supplies to Cuba for more than a decade.

"Every three months we travel down and just bring hundreds of pounds of medical supplies that Cuba cannot get because of the embargo," said First Hand Aid director Marc Bohland. "It cannot be sold to them. It can only be donated."

For GVSU head baseball coach Steve Lyon, it's a dream come true. It's a chance for his team to play against some of the best ball players in the world and an opportunity to build the character of his players as they bind together as a team.

"This is going to be an experience for them, baseball-wise," he said, "but also just culturally and the humanitarian efforts that we are going to be doing while we are there, I think, is an extremely important experience for our guys to have."

Hoke, the freshman pitcher, is not exactly sure what to expect. He's both excited and a little nervous.

"It will make you realize just how much and how special and how fortunate we are to have it here," he said.

http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/sports/GVSU-to-Cuba-for-baseball-med-supplies

Cantaclaro's Insight on Alan Gross and The Five

The following appeared as comments to an excellent post by Phil Peters at the Cuban Triangle http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2011/12/alan-gross-on-his-own.html

Anonymous said...

Mr. Peters,

I suspect, although the Cubans themselves are a little confused about what they are accusing Alan Gross of, that Alan Gross was arrested because he was attempting to set up a mesh network in Cuba, of the type that the State Department has been developing to use in hostile totalitarian countries that do not allow their population to have permanent or temporary internet access and that, although the efforts to develop such a network in Cuba while Alan Gross is arrested, they will be resumed with more precaution once he is released.

So I believe that this is one additional reason for the Cuban government to refuse to release Alan Gross.

Not only is he their sole negotiation chip for the release of their five cuban spies imprisoned in the US, but while he is imprisoned, the Cuban government is reasonably certain that the US government will not continue to make efforts to provide clandestine internet access to a part of its population.

This is a message to discuss a small part of the problem people may not normally be aware of.

In a series of future ones, if you allow me, I'll try to comment by parts the whole Alan Gross five Cuban spies enchilada.

Cantaclaro


DECEMBER 4, 2011 1:23 AM

Anonymous said...

The official Cuban government version of events is that:

1- During the nineties the right wing Cubans in the United States were financing a series of terrorist incidents in Havana hotels to scare off foreign tourists and that the US government was not doing anything about it.

2- The Cuban government sent over to the US a series of agents to infiltrate these right wing groups discover their plans and communicate them to the Cuban government so that the terrorist activities in the island could be neutralized.

3- After obtaining sufficient evidence of these activities from his agents, Fidel Castro decided that the Cuban government should contact the FBI and provide them with this information to give the FBI the necessary leads to investigate these right wing groups, verify their criminal activities, prosecute them and put an end to them.

4- Instead of doing this the FBI handed over the information that had been provided by the Cuban government to the right wing Cuban groups in the United States that Castro accused of promoting terrorism.

5- Then, with the active aid of these Cuban right wing groups, the FBI reversed engineered the information to trace back the Cuban government informants infiltrated within these groups.

6- Once located, these Cuban government agents were placed under observation, proof of their activities was gathered and once a sufficient amount was available they were finally arrested and prosecuted.

7- All those arrested accepted they were Cuban agents but stated that they were not in the US to spy on the US government or military but that their sole purpose was to report on the right wing groups financing and promoting terrorist activities inside the island.

8- The US government prosecution on the other hand attempted to prove that they were guilty of more heinous crimes such as spying on the US government and being involved in the plot that resulted in the downing of two planes and the death of four Cuban American Castro opponents on 2/24/1996.

Several very important conclusions that have a bearing on the present imbroglio can be derived from all the ground we have covered so far.

From the Cuban government perspective, the FBI acted in bad faith when it used the evidence about a group promoting terrorist activity that the Cuban government had supplied it to prosecute the informants instead of the perpetrators of a terrorist activity.

What was even more aggravating was that this bad faith action made Fidel Castro look like a snitch to his own subordinates and thus undermined their loyalty to him.

This is a very serious charge on a regime that is held together in by the bonds of loyalty between the charismatic supreme leader and his subordinates.

Fidel Castro and his brother must do their utmost to recover these convicted spies in order to try to regain the full confidence of their subordinates that is needed to ensure their own future political survival in a very hostile world.

This is the reason that they attach so much importance to recovering them.

While they remain in prison, their subordinates have a reason to distrust them and this weakens the monolithic coherence of the Cuban totalitarian regime!

When that trust begins to disappear, such totalitarian regime, based on personal loyalty to a charismatic leader, also starts to crumble.

It is crucial for the regime's survival to regain it as rapidly as possible.

In the next installment I shall talk about the trial and conviction of the Cuban five.

Cantaclaro


DECEMBER 4, 2011 10:50 AM

Anonymous said...

The official Cuban government line is that the five Cuban agents who were tried on spying charges received excessive sentences for two reasons:

1- The prosecutor pressured other codefendants who turned state evidence into accusing them of crimes they did not commit in order to receive a reduction of their sentence.

2- The Miami venue of the trial exposed the jury to a lot of unfavorable community pressure and made a fair trial impossible.

The first situation might have occurred but there is little proof that it could have had a significant weight in the outcome of the trial.

There is evidence in the court records to indicate that the prosecutor was aware of the weakness of some of the more serious accusations for which he thought there was insufficient evidence and tried to withdraw them but was restricted from doing so by the judge.

So the reason for the severe sentences does not lie in the conduct of the prosecutor but with that of the jury which throughout a very long trial was under the constant influence of a very hostile community opinion.

Indeed in the court records there are jury complaints presented to the judge that their photographs were being taken as they left the court and that their license plate numbers were also being recorded and being published in the communities spanish newspapers.

Moreover, these were constantly making hostile comments against the accused and drumming up community public opinion against them all along the prolongued trial.

When the testimony was concluded, after a very short deliberation, the jury convicted the defendants on all counts including those that the District Attorney had attempted to withdraw because he thought he had insufficient proof.

Cantaclaro


DECEMBER 5, 2011 12:31 PM

Anonymous said...

With respect to Gross, whatever we might think about the fact that Cuban law restricts people's right to have access to the internet and to be informed, it is a fact that the introduction and distribution of the software and hardware he brought to Cuba had been prohibited and that he broke this law.

Therefore, although this goes against the right of the Cuban population to be informed, the Cuban government had every legal right to convict him for this "crime".

Now the Cuban government is evidently using him as a negotiating chip and is not going to let him go until they get their five agents back.

However, this does not mean that they are proposing a one to five swap.

Obviously they are willing to negotiate and are willing to throw in other political prisoners to close the deal.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, seems to be in a lose lose situation in an election year.

If it does not get Alan Gross back it will probably loose part of the Jewish vote and part of the vote of the rest of the electorate because it will be accused by its Republican opponents of being weak and allowing itself to be pushed around by a third world dictatorship.

On the other hand, if it swaps the five Cuban agents for Gross, it will keep the Jewish vote but loose part of the Cuban vote and part of the vote of the general population because its opponents will accuse it of giving in to blackmail from a weak third world country dictatorship.

Since the Jewish vote is more important to the Obama administration than the Cuban vote, which is predominantly Republican anyway, the Democratic administration will probably want to strike a deal with the Cuban government that will allow Gross and the five Cuban agents to return to their countries before next year's November election.

However, it can not afford to make a one for five deal because this would give credence to the blackmail accusation and cost it votes among the non Jewish and non Cuban electorate.

Thus it is forced to attempt to get some other goodies to even the basic one for five deal deal to give less weight to the blackmail accusation and allow it to save face with the voters.

What those other goodies will be is what is probably being negotiated under the table at present by both governments at present.

The Cubans are probably willing to throw in two Cuban Americans accused of an armed invasion of the island, several Cuban convicted CIA agents, other Cuban political prisoners and even two Salvadoreans convicted of participating or planning terrorist activities that took place in Cuba.

The problem is many of these other possible assets, given their rap sheet, might not be palatable to the US government.

However, something will probably be finally worked out before the November 2012 Presidential Elections.

The timing of the swap will probably depend on the convenience of the Obama administration.

The Cuban government is probably ready to carry out the swap at anytime since it will strengthen its public support and will open the door to new negotiations that could ease the effects of the US embargo.

The deal will probably take place much earlier and further away from November of 2012 if the Obama political advisors expect the net effect on voters to be unfavorable for the democrats and closer to the date of the elections otherwise to allow the results to be less harmful in the first case or more beneficial in the second for the Obama administration.

Cantaclaro

National Council of Churches Cuba Trip

U.S. churches will continue to press
for Cuba-U.S. normalization, Kinnamon says

After 53-year embargo, NCC churches ‘live in hope’ of reconciliation

by Jerry L. Van Marter
Presbyterian News Service

HAVANA, Cuba ― The National Council of Churches in the U.S.A. (NCC) will continue to press for normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba, an end to the 53-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba and release of the “Cuban Five” held in U.S. prisons, NCC General Secretary Michael Kinnamon told a packed press conference here Dec. 2.

Kinnamon, speaking at the conclusion of a week-long visit by 15 U.S. religious leaders, told the crowd of Cuban and international journalists “we come not as politicians or diplomats but as religious leaders. Our first responsibility is to pray for the leaders of both countries and we will … but our churches represent 50 million Christians, so we believe we have some influence and we’ll use it.”

Everyone the delegation spoke with ― from Cuban President Raul Castro to the head of the U.S. government’s Cuban Interest Section here, John Caulfield ― expressed the desire to end the embargo. “The question,” Kinnamon said, “is how to get there.”

Castro, Kinnamon said, “insisted that everything is on the table. All the Cubans require, he told me, is that talks be held in an atmosphere of mutual respect.”
Kinnamon said he and Castro discussed “small steps” that can be taken: cooperation on drug and human trafficking in the Caribbean, coordinated air traffic control (communication about the 50 weekly flights currently operating between the U.S. and Cuba is done by telephone, not electronic tracking), weather monitoring and improved telecommunications.

The chances of even small steps to improve Cuba-U.S. relations “are complicated in an election year,” Kinnamon conceded, “but I am a person of faith so I always live in hope,” adding that “since 1968 the position of the NCC (on normalization) has been strong and consistent, taken out of our faith position of reconciliation.”

The NCC will continue to press for a review of the sentences ― anywhere from 20 years to life ― levied against the Cuban Five, who were convicted of espionage in the U.S. even though they were monitoring the activities of Cuban expatriate counterrevolutionaries plotting against the Cuban government.

Numerous international human rights organizations have branded the sentences ― four of the five have been imprisoned for 13 years; the fifth, Rene Gonzalez, was “freed” this fall to stringent “supervised release” and is not allowed to leave Florida ― unjust. Kinnamon said “they should not have been tried.”

Of more immediate concern to the churches, Kinnamon said, is the ability of family members to visit the imprisoned Cubans, at least two of whom are U.S. citizens. Two of the wives and all of the men’s children have never been allowed to visit them in prison. “We ache with them for this situation that weighs so heavily,” he said.

Kinnamon said he also raised with Castro the situation of American Alan Gross, who has been held in a Cuban prison for more than a year for allegedly smuggling illegal telecommunications equipment onto the island. “[Members of the NCC delegation] met with Alan Gross and talked about his sense of being unjustly accused and about his concern for his family, several members of which are seriously ill, including his daughter with cancer,” Kinnamon said.

“I raised the Alan Gross case with President Castro,” Kinnamon said. “I am not here to pass judgment but I care about him as a person ― the humanitarian issue.”

Kinnamon said that while political and human rights discussions occupied some of the delegation’s time, “the primary purpose of our visit has been to be in communion and conversation with our church partners here in Cuba.” Kinnamon praised the Cuban Council of Churches, saying that “U.S. churches need the Cuban churches in order to feel whole and complete.”

In times of economic transition in Cuba and “economic tensions” in the U.S., “it is the call to the churches of both countries to offer a word of hope in response to the anxiety and fear in both countries.”

Contact NCC News Service: 212-870-2228 | E-mail mailto:pjenks@ncccusa.org |

http://www.ncccusa.org/news/111208pressconference.html

President Obama Loses Way on Cuba

September 12 meeting with Hispanic journalists

QUESTION: Richardson is right now trying to get access and the liberation of Alan Gross. His detention came in the middle of your efforts to try to change a little the US policy towards Cuba. What’s the situation with Gross right now, how far might this case torpedo somehow your visions for that change of policy and are you disappointed with Cuba’s response to your steps?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Richardson is acting as a private citizen on a humanitarian mission to try to free Gross. We’ve said repeatedly that Mr. Gross should be free, that the conviction was not based on evidence or rule of law [1], also that there is an humanitarian issue here involved given Gross precarious health. So anything to get Mr. Gross free we will support [2], although Mr. Richardson does not represent the US government in his actions there.

More broadly, the policy we have had to facilitate additional remittances and travel for family to Cuba, we continue to think is the right one [3].

It empowers Cubans inside of Cuba who are able to have other sources of income, meet their families, get new ideas and exposure to what’s going on outside of Cuba. We think it creates more space inside Cuba for freedom and civil liberties.

The Cuban government has said that it wants to transition, to loosen up the economy, so that businesses can operate more freely. We have not seen evidence that they have been sufficiently aggressive in changing their policies economically, and they certainly have not been aggressive enough when it comes to freeing political prisoners [4] and giving people the opportunity to speak their minds [5].

And when you think of what’s happening around the world, everywhere people are crying out for freedom, you are seeing enormous changes taking place in the Middle East just in the span of 6 months, you are seeing there are almost no authoritarian communist countries left in the world and here you have this small island that is a throwback to the 60s. [6] Obviously is not working for them, the standard of living has not improved significantly, in fact they are deteriorating. [7] In many cases, peoples’ liberties continue to be constrained at a time when the world is more open and people have more information than ever before.

So it’s clearly time for the Cuban regime to change. Whether they are going to seize that opportunity, so far we have not seen the kind of evidence that we’d like to see, but that change is going to take place. [8]

(unofficial transcript by a participating journalist)

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September 28, 2011 Remarks by the President in an "Open for Questions" Roundtable

MS. MEDINA: This next question is about Cuba, and it comes from Florida: What is your position regarding Cuba and the embargo? What should the Cuban people expect from you and your government during the remainder of your term, and in the future if you’re reelected?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, what we did with respect to Cuba was recognize that the Cuban people now have not enjoyed freedom for 50 years, and everywhere else in the world you’ve been seeing a democratization movement that has been pressing forward. Throughout Latin America, democracies have emerged from previously authoritarian regimes. The time has come for the same thing to happen in Cuba. [9]

Now, what we’ve tried to do is to send a signal that we are open to a new relationship with Cuba if the Cuban government starts taking the proper steps to open up its own country and its own -- and provide the space and the respect for human rights that would allow the Cuban people to determine their own destiny. [10]

I changed the remittance laws so that family members could more easily send money back to Cuba, because that would give them more power and it would create a economic space for them to prosper. Within Cuba we have changed the family travel laws so that they can travel more frequently, as well as laws that relate to educational travel. [11]

And so we’ve made these modifications that send a signal that we’re prepared to show flexibility and not be stuck in a Cold War mentality dating back to when I was born. [12] On the other hand, we have to see a signal back from the Cuban government that it is following through on releasing political prisoners, [13] on providing people their basic human rights, in order for us to be fully engaged with them. And so far, at least, what we haven’t seen is the kind of genuine spirit of transformation inside of Cuba that would justify us eliminating the embargo. [14]

I don’t know what will happen over the next year, but we are prepared to see what happens in Cuba. If we see positive movement we will respond in a positive way. Hopefully, over the next five years, we will see Cuba looking around the world and saying, we need to catch up with history. [15] And as long as I’m President I will always be prepared to change our Cuba policy if and when we start seeing a serious intention on the part of the Cuban government to provide liberty for its people. [16] But that’s always my watchword, is are we seeing freedom for the Cuban people to live lives of opportunity and prosperity. If we are, then we’ll be supportive of them.

MR. LERNER: Those conditions will suffice -- human rights, free political prisoners? No demand for a change in the economic structure, for example?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s very hard to separate liberty from some economic reforms. If people have no way to eat other than through the government, then the government ends up having very strict control over them, and they can be punished in all sorts of ways for expressing their own opinions. That’s not to say that a condition for us releasing the embargo would be that they have a perfect market system, because obviously we have trade and exchanges with a number of countries that fall short of a liberal democracy. [17]

But there is a basic, I think, recognition of people’s human rights that includes their right to work, to change jobs, to get an education, to start a business. So some elements of freedom are included in how an economic system works. And right now, we haven’t seen any of that. [18]

But let me just say this. Obviously if we saw a release of political prisoners, the ability for people to express their opinions and to petition their government, if we saw even those steps those would be very significant, and we would pay attention and we would undoubtedly reexamine our overall approach to Cuba if we saw a serious movement in that direction. [19]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/28/remarks-president-open-questions-roundtable

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My comment, posted to ABC blog

What if Cuba demanded that the US have free health care and higher education like it does, or ended use of the death penalty and runaway gun use, before it was “open to a new relationship”?

President Obama has either fallen into a 100 year old trap of assuming that the US has the right to shape Cuba’s domestic polity or is just looking for excuses.

He is badly informed about what is happening inside Cuba today.

Thanks to the assistance of Spain and the Catholic church, all persons deemed prisoners of conscience have been released. Those still imprisoned are guilty of violent crimes, including hijacking. China and Saudi Arabia and other countries have more serious problems of repression than Cuba does but that does not inhibit our bilateral relations with them.

Cuba is in the early stages of transforming its economy and social system, similar to the first steps in China and Vietnam, but the direction is clear as every serious international reporter has documented. Obama could be taking positive steps to foster change instead of buying into the politics of the minority of hard liners in the Cuban American community who cannot recognize or tolerate self-directed evolution.

The President has acted forcefully on Cuban American travel and remittances but timidly on restoring the rights of the rest of us.

Cuba is one more issue where the excitement of campaign promises to meet with US opponents for real dialog has been replaced by tired rhetoric of conditionality.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/obama-open-to-a-new-relationship-with-cuba/