Strait Talk

Barack Obama doesn't want you to know about it, but his administration just made the biggest move in more than a decade to open up Cuba.

BY ARTURO LOPEZ-LEVY | JANUARY 31, 2011

When U.S. President Barack Obama announced his decision this month to ease restrictions on Americans traveling and sending money to Cuba, he did it late on a Friday afternoon before a long holiday weekend -- a old trick from the White House playbook, used by presidents hoping to make controversial policy changes with as little uproar as possible from the U.S. Congress and the media. But Obama shouldn't have been so quiet about the move -- it is the best Cuba policy decision the United States has made in years.

The new directive reverses restrictions imposed by President George W. Bush in the run-up to his 2004 reelection campaign. In August 2003, a group of Cuban-American Republican politicians headed by then Florida state legislators Marco Rubio and David Rivera -- who were elected to the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, respectively, last year -- told the president that clamping down further on travel to Cuba would help win the support and enthusiasm of the older generation of Cubans in South Florida, a crucial source of Republican votes in a state that had swung the 2000 presidential election.

Obama's new policy restores the "people-to-people" contacts between the United States and Cuba that existed under Bill Clinton's administration, restoring the embargo exemptions for Americans traveling for humanitarian, religious, and academic purposes that were disallowed under Bush. More direct flights to the island -- albeit chartered ones -- will be allowed, and Americans now can transfer remittances of up to $500 per quarter, as long as they aren't going to the Cuban government or Communist Party.

The changes could not have come at a better time. Cuba has entered a period of profound change: The Cuban state is laying off between 500,000 and 1 million workers and opening up the nonstate sector to reform in hopes that the private economy can absorb them. An increase in private-sector jobs, along with planned cuts to government subsidies, is bound to loosen the strings of dependence that have tied Cubans to the state for half a century. It is a revolutionary redefinition of how Cubans relate to their government, and it means that the reforms will necessarily be not just economic, but political as well. Whether the Castros admit it or not, Cuba is moving in a direction that fulfills U.S. hopes for a more market-oriented, open society on the island.

Obama's reforms take advantage of this opening. The authorization of $500 non-family-related remittances, while paltry from a U.S. perspective, can provide a substantial boost for Cubans trying to open new businesses in a period of economic transition, particularly among black Cubans who are underrepresented in the exile community. More academic and research travel, meanwhile, will mean increased contact between U.S. academic communities and the new generation of students and faculty in Cuba, sparking lively debate at a time when the country needs it. In the last years of the Clinton administration, Cuban universities enjoyed contacts with more than 500 of their counterparts in the United States; the new rules will restore them. And the new directive makes it easier for religious organizations to sponsor travel to (and religious activities in) Cuba, a move that suggests the Obama administration has a sophisticated understanding of Cuban civil society: Cuban religious congregations are the largest and most relevant forces for liberalization on the island and are important interlocutors with the Cuban government.

Taken together, the actions answer the calls of the majority of the political opposition and civil society on the island for a new beginning in Washington's relations with Havana, one that advances their mutual aims without interfering in Cuba's internal affairs.

AFP/Getty Images

 

Arturo Lopez-Levy is a lecturer at the Colorado School of Mines and a Ph.D. candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.

THE GLOBALIZER

5:48 PM ET

January 31, 2011

Agree 100%.

Closure is almost always the wrong answer, no matter what the question, but for Cuba, it's the worst answer. I wish Obama would do even more on this.

 

JOHNRLEAR

7:22 PM ET

January 31, 2011

Progress

Also agree. It's just a shame that progress here means returning to where we were 12 years ago. Hopefully Obama will do more to force an opening on both sides of the strait.

 

USAMBCUBA

9:57 AM ET

February 1, 2011

A Quarter Loaf

Arturo - you are too generous in your commentary. The Administration did a calculated move and going back to where we started from 12 years ago is merely a rewind, not a bold step. Effectively they said politically - "this is all we are going to do with Cuba for now - we heard enough on this - don't come back until after the elections" A rewind is better than no wind, but the Administration must have its feet held to the fire, not coddled for doing what they should have done long ago. The keys to opening Cuba are policies of positive American influence which respect its sovereignty, and abandoning our insane policies of American interference that empower repression there. At least the Obama initiatives are a step in the direction that will produce better results for change. However, until the pro-travel, anti-embargo majority organizes itself into a voting and political financial bloc, our carousel of irrational U.S. Cuba policy will continue. That is about to change...

 

SCARLETT_156

1:27 PM ET

February 1, 2011

lol

The explanation for this is very simple: Now that Barry's been in charge for awhile, there is no longer any reason for Cubans to want to escape to the US.

 

RICHARDWALDEN

7:37 PM ET

February 3, 2011

Cuba "Opening"

Barack Obama's (and Hillary's) new Cuba "opening" let's the Rev. Pat Robertson and his flock travel to Cuba with nothing more than a self-issued letter of authorization from his own ministry. Contrast this to the Obama Administration's refusal to add humanitarian relief groups to its new policy change. For Operation USA, a leading US NGO, which delivers excessively (USG) screened and limited health care items to Havana's 3 main pediatric hospitals, it needs licenses from the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Department of Commerce's Bureau for International Security with advisory "input" from the US Departments of Defense and State. This is for everything from an aspirin tablet (usually ok) to pediatric dental x-ray equipment (not ok). In fact ,Operation USA cannot bring ANY hospital equipment to Cuba if it's less than 5 years old; no computers for pediatric hospitals if they have Pentium-III chips or more recent versions of that; generally no lab equipment; and, its trips to Cuba are limited to 5 days including travel days.

Forgive me, but is this an "opening"? Allow any religious missionaries and one-time academic visitors and maybe some students to go to Cuba without a specific (e.g., issued in advance on paper) license but keep America's best NGOs like Oxfam, etc. on line outside the Treasury and Commerce Departments asking for a license to "Trade Wirth The Enemy", a name which is carried in the original Congressional authorization of this curb on our right to travel and our moral obligation to help those in need?