90 Miles Away and Closing

Recent policy changes suggest a new openness towards Cuba
Both Cuba and the United States have recently taken steps towards opening up relations after the half-century-long chill between the two neighbors. Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former longtime president, recently told The Atlantic, “The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.” (He later retracted the statement and insisted he meant the opposite.) Cuba has just implemented tentative free-market policies that reflect a new openness to capitalism. And with the U.S. embargo reaching its 50^th anniversary, the Obama administration has begun liberalizing its Cuba policy, easing travel restrictions and limits on remittances. But as long as the Cuban-American lobby retains its sway over elected officials, the embargo will probably remain in place, and steps on both sides will remain incremental.
A Questionable Embargo
Since its creation, the U.S. embargo against Cuba has been charged with many objectives. It once was meant to punish Cuba for nationalizing American businesses in the 1960s, and then to push Cuba to remove troops from Africa. Now, some have suggested it may even help prompt the development of democratic institutions in Cuba itself.
However, according to many analysts, the embargo has been counterproductive. Reese Erlich, author of Dateline Havana: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Future of Cuba, told the HPR, “[Cubans] hate U.S. policy towards Cuba; they don’t want to associate with anything that would be seen as pro-United States or so-called changes the United States wants Cuba to make towards democracy.” If Cubans will not acquiesce to American demands, and the American government will not accept anything short of Cuban democracy before lifting the embargo, the embargo policy may not change for a while yet.

Open for Business

The Obama administration is, however, committed to greater openness with Cuba. It has lifted restrictions on remittances and allowed companies to provide cellular service on the island. Most important, it has lifted travel restrictions for Cuban-Americans in the hope that they will return and serve as ambassadors for American capitalism and democracy.
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami, told the HPR that this move on behalf of Cuban-Americans is better than fully lifting the travel ban for all Americans. “American tourists would go to Cuba, go to the beaches, sit down, have a drink,” he said. “They would have no impact in society except giving money to the government, which runs all the hotels and all the businesses.”
The same concern is palpable for Cuban-Americans returning to the island to see their families. Daniel Balmori, a senior at Harvard and the president of the Harvard Cuban-American Students Association, said that for Cuban-Americans traveling home, the profiteering of the government in Cuba “presents an often tragic trade-off for many who do choose to travel and think about where exactly their taxed, converted and necessarily spent travel fortune goes.” Still, despite concern that the money is going to the government, the lifting of the travel ban for Cuban-Americans is reuniting families and reducing the isolation of the island’s inhabitants.
Cuba has taken even more drastic steps towards openness. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and current President of Cuba, recently announced a plan to fire 500,000 government employees and encourage them to find jobs in the small private sector on the island. And in April, the government started a pilot program to privatize barbers and hair salons. These moves suggest progress towards a free-market economy that might encourage further changes in U.S. policy.
Don’t Buy Tickets Yet
Despite these signs of change, a complete lifting of the embargo with Cuba seems unlikely at this juncture. As Louis Head, executive director of the Cuba Research and Analysis Group, told the HPR, “The degree to which Cuba is a policy concern in the United States is a function not of what goes on in Cuba, let alone anything whatsoever to do with human rights, but rather the degree to which the Cuban-American community asserts itself in ways that impact domestic politics.”
The majority of Cuban-Americans still oppose lifting the embargo and some supporters think there should be stringent preconditions. But there are some indications that views have softened in the Cuban-American community. And according to a recent CNN poll, 64 percent of Americans think the United States should lift the travel ban. They may just have to wait until Cuba is a different place before fully getting to know their neighbor.

Isabelle Glimcher ’13 is a Staff Writer.