Not a lot of Americans have been to Cuba. The U.S. embargo prevents ordinary American citizens from traveling to Cuba and spending their money there, though recent changes in the law allow certain people on humanitarian or special student visas to visit for limited periods.
Even then, however, they are subject to a myriad of rules guiding their spending habits on the island. While in Cuba on special license from the U.S. State Department, I was instructed not to spend more than $163 per day and allowed to bring only $100 worth of Cuban goods back to the United States. Not exactly a problem for a student traveling on a shoestring budget, but rather designed to keep money away from Cuba's ever-growing tourist industry. U.S. citizens traveling without the special student status were given far stricter spending regulations, effectively preventing them from spending any money at all while in Cuba.
Penalties for disregarding the embargo run high--you can be fined more than $10,000 and spend time in prison. Companies, even some non-American companies, risk legal harassment if they deal with Cuba, even through a proxy. Under the Helms-Burton Law of 1996, their executive boards can be sued by Cuban-Americans who lost property during the revolution. And while years went by without strict enforcement of the limitations on individuals, the Bush administration has made it policy again to enforce the embargo in its entirety.
Why the embargo?
Why all this trouble over one of our smallest and nearest neighbors? It's a more complicated question than it may appear at first. Yes, our parents' generation hid under their desks during the often-misunderstood Cuban missile crisis, but that was nearly 40 years ago and had more to do with the Soviet Union than the young Fidel Castro. Finding justifications for the embargo that can stand up for even a moment in the absence of a Cold War mentality has required a bit more imagination on the part of Congress and the State Department. Now that being a commie isn't enough, there must be a new demon, and they've found one that will make everyone feel guilty and squeamish--human rights abuses.
One poor representative of the American Interest Section in Havana, sent to answer our questions and criticisms of the embargo, justified it like this: \It is a human rights issue. Our principle beef is that there are not real civil liberties."" When pressed repeatedly to name specific human rights abuses in Cuba, he would only answer, ""The civil and political rights of the people here are very, very limited."" Namely, voting makes little difference and freedom of the press is a sort of sick joke.
A few gross hypocrisies stood out in his response. First, hearing a representative of the U.S. government grandstand about human rights in Latin America is jarring to any student of history. This is, of course, the same U.S. government that played a principal role in the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected government in favor of Pinochet, funded El Salvador's bloody extermination of large portions of its rural population and stood silently by during Argentina's discrete purging. Ever since Cold War politics lost any validity, human rights have remained a secondary issue. So you'll have to forgive me if I hesitate a moment or two when the U.S. government claims a sincere pursuit of human rights in making its foreign policy. The bloody history of Latin American politics testifies otherwise.
The second hypocrisy, though, is far more important. Refusing to trade with a country because their elections are corrupt, their press isn't free and political dissidents are kept quiet sounds a little radical for a government that sponsored China's entrance into the World Trade Organization and signed a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam. The short list of our most rapidly growing partnerships reads like an Amnesty International hit list. Obviously human rights in the countries America engages with economically is not typically a top priority.
What is more troubling than inconsistent policy, however, is its effect--or lack thereof--on Cuba. While many Americans protested the privileged economic relationship the United States entered into with China, most of us that were there felt the trade relationship could be the beginning of an admittedly very long road to democracy. It has certainly been a vehicle for economic reforms already. In Vietnam especially, change is already visible. There are no better capitalists than the children who sell postcards and gum on the streets of Saigon, and the communist government is experimenting with reform. In both cases, the relationship to America played a principal role in the changes taking place.
In Cuba, little reform was visible and the prospect of peaceful change seemed distant and dim. Obviously, if the goal of the embargo was to bring democracy and freedom to the Cuban people, it has failed miserably. At best, it has prolonged the tiny country's grim ordeal. At worst, it has deliberately stifled the only industry that could ever offer the Cubans an escape from poverty, barring their largest tourist market from visiting the island.
So why the embargo, really?
For whatever reason, American politicians seem obsessed with Fidel Castro. Year after year they have stubbornly clung to the embargo in a perfect portrait of American irrationality. And, year after year, Cuba--not Fidel Castro--has suffered for it. Or perhaps worse, Cuba has stagnated for the sake of the pride of the most powerful nation in the world. Regardless, it is clear the U.S. policy toward Cuba has very little to do with concern for the well-being of the Cuban people still on the island and far more to do with an inherited grudge against a single, controversial leader.
So, again, why all this trouble over one of our poorest neighbors? When we met with President Castro last December, one of my fellow students posed the question to the notoriously long-winded man himself.
""Oh, I'll answer that,"" he said, as we braced for another hour-long exposition. ""Out of habit.""
When the man is right, the man is right.
