By Randy Alonso Falcón on February 5, 2021
Photo: Bill Hackwell
Last week a White House spokesperson announced that the Joe Biden government is willing to review and revise United States policy toward Cuba, which became notably harsher under the previous administration.
After many steps in the right direction taken in Barack Obama’s second term “with the goal of establishing relation between the two countries in spite of political and ideological differences,” the Trump administration dismantled all the progress made, and did as much as they possibly could to make future relations difficult.
Since June of 2017, when he signed a Presidential Order concerning Cuba before an irritable audience in Miami overflowing with anti-Cuba politicians, mercenaries from the Bay of Pigs attack, and paid employees of the anti-Cuba industry in the U.S., Trump applied 240 punitive measures against Cuba, at a rate of more than one a week.
The New York multi-millionaire with a legal address in Florida launched himself at Cuba’s jugular vein with great ferociousness, trying to beat down the Cuban government. He prohibited travel by U.S. citizens, drastically limited the amount of money that can be sent as remittances by Cubans located in the US their families in Cuba, and forced the closing of Western Union offices all over Cuba. He furiously harassed Cuban financial transactions and established a merciless persecution to prevent fuel from arriving in Cuba, did everything to block foreign investment in Cuba and even made Marriott give up administration of a Havana hotel under the Sheraton brand name – the only one that a U.S. company had in Cuba.
Educational, cultural, sports, and scientific exchanges between the two countries were also sabotaged.
The most abnormal decisions against Cuba made by Trump and his team were: first, the activation of Title III of the so-called Helms-Burton Law (which no previous administration had ventured to put into effect) to promote unprecedented and previously unheard of legal proceedings against any company that has invested in, or utilized, any installation or land nationalized by the Cuban Revolution — even though the owners at the time of nationalization were not then U.S. citizens; and second, in the final days of the administration, the inclusion of Cuba again on the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, a move harshly criticized by many U.S. sectors and by the international community.
As we can see, revision of these measures by the Biden administration will require a lot of work. Trump, Pompeo, Claver-Carone, and others of the outgoing government, with the enthusiastic support of Marco Rubio and other anti-Cuban members of Congress, have woven together a dense web of measures that will be difficult to unravel and that will limit, as much as possible, the implementation of the proposals for change announced as part of the campaign of the new White House occupant.
The will to make these changes has been reaffirmed now, but there are many obstacles in the way, ranging from the legal blocks to the active opposition of the anti-Cuban forces in Congress, who pretend to demand a process of equal concessions from each side in order to reverse these measures. This would make an asymmetrical relationship even weirder, since Cuba does not blockade nor attack the U.S., nor finance opposition forces in the United States, nor does it maintain a military base within the borders of its northern neighbor, nor does it put the U.S. on false manipulative lists.
But if Trump, on the basis of decrees and resolutions, could carry out his strange anti-Cuban offensive in just three and a half years, the Biden administration can do the same thing in the other direction, even though Cuba may not be a priority in these times of the pandemic and the economic crisis.
What occurred between 2014 and 2016, with the adoption of bilateral agreements in dozens of areas like the environment, health, science, law, sport, culture, education, and other areas, for the benefit of both countries, shows a possible positive direction, even in the midst of the differences. There are more than a few members of the current administration who know this.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau