The president made a historic trip to Cuba last week in the wake of his groundbreaking moves to normalize relations.
As someone who has long opposed the embargo, you might think my support for this trip would be unalloyed. But I must admit to being of two minds on this topic.
Yes, the embargo was ineffective and needs to be tossed into the dustbin of history (my thinking on this is not likely to match many of yours—I don’t think the embargo was immoral, it just was bad policy). But that doesn’t mean that now was the time for a presidential trip.
After all, Cuba remains a totalitarian state, oppressing its people. So was anything gained by this trip? One argument is that President Obama was able to address the Cuban people, and that is seemingly so. Did what he said have special resonance or impact? Let’s take a look at the substance of his speech.
In his most famous poem, Jose Marti made this offering of friendship and peace to both his friend and his enemy. [. . .] Today, as the president of the United States of America, [. . .] Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here, we had to travel a great distance, over barriers of history and ideology, barriers of pain and separation. [ . . . ] Like so many people in both of our countries, my lifetime has spanned a time of isolation between us. The Cuban Revolution took place the same year that my father came to the United States from Kenya. The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born.
The next year, the entire world held its breath watching our two countries as humanity came as close as we ever have to the horror of nuclear war. As the decades rolled by, our governments settled into a seemingly endless confrontation, fighting battles through proxies. In a world that remade itself time and again, one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba.
I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.
If you don’t know, I am the child of Cuban refugees, now American citizens for many years. For me, the Cuba issue was not a remnant of the Cold War: It was about a brutal dictatorship. Now for the United States, brutal dictatorships were not necessarily a problem (see Pinochet in Chile, for example). But for me, Cuba was about that. And indeed, the Cold War is in fact long over. For Cuban Americans, the Cuba issue is not about the Cold War. And President Obama’s reduction of the issue to the Cold War is discordant to me. I wish he could have acknowledged that there was more to it than that for Cuban Americans.
The president continued:
Now, I want to be clear. The differences between our governments over these many years are real, and they are important. I’m sure President Castro would say the same thing. I know, because I’ve heard him address those differences at length. But before I discuss those issues, we also need to recognize how much we share. [, , ,]
[W]e cannot and should not ignore the very real differences that we have about how we organize our governments, our economies, and our societies. Cuba has a one-party system. The United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model. The United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state, the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual.
This is a rather anodyne description in my view. A “one party state,” well ... that doesn’t sound so bad. The word dictatorship carries a little more with it. Diplomacy, I get it. But are hard truths spoken? The president continued:
I must speak honestly about the things that I believe, the things that we as Americans believe.
As Marti said, “Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.” So, let me tell you what I believe. I can’t force you to agree. But you should know what I think.
I believe that every person should be equal you should under the law. (APPLAUSE)
Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, health care and food on the table, and a roof over their heads. (APPLAUSE)
I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear. (APPLAUSE)
To organize and to criticize their government and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. (APPLAUSE)
I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faiths peacefully and publicly. (APPLAUSE)
And yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. (APPLAUSE)
Not everybody agrees with me on this, not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. (APPLAUSE)
I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world. Now, there’s no secret that our governments disagree on many of these issues.
Better. Indeed, there’s the rub. The president continued:
The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution: America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world. Those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy. Not because American democracy is perfect, but precisely because we’re not. And we, like every country, need the space that democracy gives us to change. It gives individuals the capacity to be catalysts, to think in new ways and to reimagine how our society should be and to make them better. And there’s already an evolution taking place inside of Cuba, a generational change.
The president then proceeds to challenge Raul Castro directly:
President Castro, who I appreciate being here today. I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates that you do not need to fear a threat from the United States. And given your commitment to Cuba’s sovereignty and self-determination, I’m also confident that you need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people and their capacity to speak and assemble and vote for their leaders
Yeah, I liked that. And the president added this flourish:
Cuba doesn’t have to be defined by being against the United States any more than the United States should be defined by being against Cuba. And I’m hopeful for the future, because of the reconciliation that’s taking place among the Cuban people. You know, I know that for some Cubans on the island, there may be a sense that those who left somehow supported the old order in Cuba.
I’m sure there’s a narrative that lingers here, which suggests that Cuban exiles ignored the problems of pre-revolutionary Cuba and rejected the struggle to build a new future.
But I can tell you today that so many Cuban exiles carry a memory of painful and sometimes violent separation. They love Cuba. A part of them still considers this their true home. That’s why their passion is so strong, and that’s why their heartache is so great.
And for the Cuban American community that I’ve come to know and respect, this is not just about politics. This is about family, the memory of a home that was lost, the desire to rebuild a broken bond, the hope for a better future, the hope for return and reconciliation.
For all of the politics, people are people, and Cubans are Cubans. And I’ve come here, I’ve traveled this distance on a bridge that was built by Cubans on both sides of the Florida straits.
I first got to know the talent and passion of the Cuban people in America. And I know how they have suffered more than the pain of exile. They also know what it’s like to be an outsider and to struggle, and to work harder to make sure that their children can reach higher in America.
So the reconciliation of the Cuban people, the children and grandchildren of revolution and the children and grandchildren of exile, that’s fundamental to Cuba’s future.
Okay, President Obama got me with this. It’s just a wonderful passage. It speaks to bridging the divide between our countries beautifully. And maybe, just maybe, he hit the notes he needed to hit to make things better!
But I still think it was too soon. But heck, maybe it wasn’t. Obama has proven to be brilliant in many ways when it comes to foreign policy. Obviously he knows more about the situation than I do.
I admit to being a little torn. But I hope he’s right.