[Marxism] Louis A. Perez, Jr.: Reshaping Cuba from Washington

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I just reread this article by Louis Pérez and think it continues to be 
timely (unfortunately time has not changed the situation).
Jane Franklin
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins

The News and Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina

Point of View: Published: Oct 31, 2007

Reshaping Cuba from Washington

Louis A. Perez Jr.

CHAPEL HILL - President Bush's reaffirmation of his position on Cuba
last week serves to remind us of the continuing short-sightedness of
U.S. policy. It defies logic.

With Vietnam and Libya, the United States establishes diplomatic
relations and expands trade and aid agreements as a policy of
constructive engagement to promote democracy; with Cuba the United
States maintains political pressure and increases economic sanctions
as a policy of punitive isolation in the name of promoting democracy.

And it is precisely that isolation -- of the United States -- that
bodes ill, for the government denies itself access to Cuba at a time
of change on the island.

The long-awaited transition in Cuba has begun. But political change
in Havana has elicited no policy change from Washington. The
president's speech last week indicates that he intends to "stay the
course" in regard to Cuba. The embargo has assumed a life of its own:
Its very longevity serves as the principal rationale for its
continuance.

To paraphrase the Otis Redding lyric, the United States has been
embargoing Cuba for too long to stop now.

But the president's comments bode ill for other reasons. The
administration that will not speak to the Cuban government now
presumes to speak to and on behalf of the best interests of "the
Cuban people." In the weeks following Fidel Castro's illness in 2006,
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Cubans directly that "all
of you must know that you have no greater friend than the United
States of America." Bush last week also reassured Cubans that "the
American people care about you."

These warm well-wishes are received with blank incredulity in Cuba,
for they come from an administration that has single-mindedly adopted
measures designed to worsen the conditions of daily life for the very
people for whom it professes to "care about."

The United States insists that the embargo is not directed against
the Cuban people, but rather against their government. In fact, the
people have borne the full brunt of punitive sanctions.

The embargo, after all, was conceived with the intent to politicize
hunger as a means to foment popular disaffection, in the hope that
Cubans, driven by want and motivated by despair, would rise up
against their government.

"The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through
disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and
hardship," a State Department memo insisted as early as 1960, and
advocated measures "to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow
of government."

The United States appears to have adopted the stance that it is OK to
punish the Cuban people for their own good. Not a good way to win
friends and influence people in Cuba.

Bush's speech, further, implies a far more insidious intent. The
president appears to be inciting Cubans to rebellion.

"You have the power to shape your own destiny," he exhorted. How this
would be achieved was not made clear, except that the president also
addressed the Cuban armed forces, and suggested portentously: "When
Cubans rise up to demand their liberty ... you've got to make a
choice." And the choice? To "defend a disgraced and dying order by
using force against your own people" or "embrace your people's desire
for change."

The phrase "using force against your own people" provides insight
into the meaning of the president's intent. Is this what the Cuba
policy of the United States has come down to: inciting Cubans to
rebellion and warning the armed forces against suppressing rebellion?

The administration's policy belies its claim to desire agency for the
Cuban people. It plans unilaterally for the future of a "post-Castro"
Cuba, apparently untroubled by the total exclusion of the people who
live there. When it comes to the matter of the future of Cuba, the
participation of the Cubans who live in Cuba is deemed unnecessary:
hardly reassuring to Cubans who are exhorted to shape their own
destiny.

Without the political will to engage a Cuban government in
transition, it is not certain that the Bush administration possesses
the moral credibility to engage the Cuban people. It would perhaps
best serve the interests of both countries for the United States to
show respect for the Cuban people by acting on the premise that
Cubans in Cuba know what is in their best interest.

(Louis A. Perez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of history
and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at
UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Cuba in
the American Imagination.")

========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN, CubaNews
Los Angeles, California
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraiso bajo el bloqueo"
======================================== 



========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN, CubaNews
Los Angeles, California
http://www.walterlippmann.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraiso bajo el bloqueo"
======================================== 




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