12,000 Flags for 12,000 Patriots

Not so in 1993. When a beleaguered President Clinton realized that key members of his own party in the Congress, plus Republicans, would stymie his effort to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, he turned to Powell to get him out of the mess he had created. The result, crafted by the Joint Staff in the Pentagon working for Powell, was DADT.

Why would I broach this subject on The Havana Note?

Because like DADT, U.S. Cuba policy is wrong, overdue for change, and ripe for the beginning of that change.

Continue reading "Two Policies, Two Wrongs" »

Dr. Mirta Roses, PAHO Director, talks with Cuban medical personnel at the La Paz University Hospital, Port-au-Prince.

By Gail Reed, M.S., International Director, MEDICC
Nearly 1,000 Cuban and Cuban-trained Haitian doctors—already the largest contingent of medical relief workers in Haiti since the January 12th earthquake—are being joined by graduates of Cuba’s Latin American Medical School (ELAM) from the Americas and Africa. Among the first to arrive will be seven US physicians—all young women--who studied at ELAM and are on their way to Haiti today. At least a dozen countries’ ELAM graduates are expected to begin working with the Cuban doctors, nurses, and support staff before month’s end.

Continue reading "Cuban-Haitian Medical Teams in Haiti Go International" »

By Sarah Stephens, Center for Democracy in the Americas

If you're thinking about a vacation this year, may I recommend North Korea?

I am not kidding. If you visit this website, "North Korea 1 on 1," you will see some pretty impressive itineraries. They offer a 13-day trip coinciding with the annual May Day Festival. Other trips enable American tourists the chance to see "card stunts" featuring thousands of school children holding up colored cards, and great displays of choreography and artistic performances by tens of thousands of gymnasts and dancers.

You don't have to worry about U.S. government restrictions. Americans can travel to North Korea freely; scheduling and affordability (tours costing $4,000 per person are not unusual) seem to be the only barriers. And what won't stop American tourists from visiting North Korea are political differences or threats posed to the United States by the North Korean government.

What are those threats? As the World Fact Book published by the CIA summarizes them:

North Korea's history of regional military provocations, proliferation of military-related items, long-range missile development, WMD programs including nuclear weapons test in 2006 and 2009, and massive conventional armed forces are of major concern to the international community.

These facts aside, the Obama administration places some values on maintaining citizen-to-citizen connections with North Korea. It even allowed the New York Philharmonic to play a concert there. If you can afford the ticket, and the idea of traveling 6,300 miles to get there doesn't daunt you, U.S. policy seems to say -- knock yourself out. Go.

But, if you'd rather stay closer to home; if you'd rather visit a destination that welcomes Americans; if you'd like to go to a place which offers no security threat to the United States (as a variety of respected, retired senior military officers have said repeatedly); please do not even consider visiting Cuba. It's off limits. Visiting the island without a license can subject you to civil fines -- even prosecution. Coming to Cuba as a tourist from the United States is flatly illegal. Even the New York Philharmonic can't play there -- they tried to get to Cuba last year, but the Obama Administration wouldn't let them go.

So, our policy under President Obama boils down to this: engagement is for the North Koreans (the guys with nuclear weapons), but we'll continue to isolate America from Cuba (whose army, the CIA says, lacks replacement parts and sufficient fuel). Engagement, he seems to say, works better the further we are from home, and only with nations that threaten our security, while Cubans will learn more about real democracy and American values when our government ignores both to keep us from traveling there.

It's a glaring inconsistency, "the audacity of nope," a policy where common sense has taken a holiday.

It’s been more than ten years since Juan Formell and the band he founded, Los Van Van, Cuba’s most popular salsa band for decades, played a concert in Miami. In 1999, thousands of Cuba exile protestors threw rocks, bottles and eggs at the intrepid concert goers. Last night, Juan Formell and his band returned to Miami, heartened by the overwhelmingly positive reaction in Miami to the Juanes concert in Havana last year. And while three or four hundred protestors showed up, ten times as many were able to attend the concert, in relative peace. Times sure have changed.

Or have they? Writing in yesterday’s Miami Herald, Alina Fernandez Revuelta shows us just how much some few things stay the same.

Continue reading "Los Van Van Return to Miami" »

A Pennsylvania farm

But compared to the other challenges the President faces on his export growth goal, Cuba may not be such a heavy lift after all.

Continue reading "40,000 Jobs is a Good Start" »

Cuba has announced that the delayed meeting with the US on immigration issues will take place in Havana next month. The discredited Cuban Adjustment Act is on the table.

Bruno Rodriguez said negotiators will meet Feb. 19 in Havana and Cuba wants Washington's help in combating people smuggling, often carried out by gangs with souped-up speed boats that ferry Cubans out of the country. While some head for Florida, most arrive on the Caribbean coast of Mexico or Central America and make their way north to the U.S., where they usually are allowed to stay….

Under U.S. law, Cubans captured at sea are usually deported while those who reach American soil can apply for residency — making Mexico an attractive route. Cuba has long denounced Washington's so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy as encouraging illegal immigration.

This should be a no-brainer as both pro and anti-reform groups in the US want to end a policy which elevates Cubans above illegal immigrants from Haiti, Central America and China.

Reformers see the current policy as providing economic motivation for dangerous trips and extortionate payments to traffickers.

Anti-reformers see their political base in Miami diluted by thousands who come to the US without obsessive hostility to their homeland and quickly want to send back remittances and make family reunion visits.

The ludicrousness of the situation is illustrated by aspiring migrants in Mexico learning Cuban accents and family histories to sustain forged documents in order to present themselves as qualified for admission at the US border.

Continue reading "Migration Talks Stage 2" »

Photo credit: Reuters

In his State of the Union address tonight, the President told Congress that the U.S. cannot afford to hang back while our competitors beat us to new markets. He called for America to double its exports, and expand every market opportunity we can. I thought to myself, really? Because the International Trade Commission concluded last year that we could expand U.S. farm exports to one country ninety miles away by half a billion dollars. That could nearly double our food exports to Cuba (which in 2004 was our 25th largest buyer) over the slumping 2009 numbers.

My jaw dropped to hear President Obama spend a good two minutes on the themes you hardly heard in 2009: trade, the Doha round, and keeping our "key" partners South Korea, Panama and Colombia - all of which signed Free Trade Agreements with the Bush Administration and to which so many Democrats have become increasingly allergic. If the President really was signaling he's willing to twist some Democratic arms on a trade agenda Republicans have been pushing for, I'll be shocked if a natural farm export market like Cuba doesn't end up on it.

News that the whole of USAID's efforts in Cuba may be suspended indefinitely appears in today's Miami Herald. One longtime ex-grantee laments that the arrest by Cuban Authorities of Alan Gross, USAID subcontractor, may mean "the whole pro-democracy program is going to be dead."

With or without the arrest of Mr. Gross, this program's days were numbered, and not only because of the 2004 GAO critique. The Secretary of State had promised a thorough review of Cuba policy when she appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for her confirmation hearing. That review has not seen the light of day yet, delayed by staffing gaps. Yet even in the absence of Clinton's promise, it doesn't make sense that the Cuba program, so at odds with the way USAID works in the rest of the world, would blithely continue as it always had once the Obama Administration staffed up.

It is unfortunate for everyone that the review took so long, but it is particularly unfortunate for Mr. Gross. The only satisfactory outcome is that Cuba releases him, perhaps on humanitarian grounds.

It is jarring that the people quoted in the article don't say anything more about him. They are more concerned that the money keep flowing, because -- as one grantee argues, "the civil society movement in Cuba is giving clear signals it is awake."

Continue reading "Should Have Seen This Coming" »

Source: Associated Press

On Friday, the Washington Post published an editorial on U.S. policy and the case of Alan Gross, an American subcontractor for USAID's democracy program in Cuba, who was arrested in Cuba in early December 2009. The editorial concludes that the U.S. Congress should (continue to) withhold the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba until Mr. Gross is released.

Only in U.S. Cuba policy can we talk about holding back millions of generous Americans from an island and then pay a clandestine handful to ‘reach out’ to the people instead.

Continue reading "Wash Post Forgets Foreign Policy Basics" »

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After years of delay, AFP reports that work will at last begin on a restoration of Ernest Hemingway's Cuban home, Finca Vigia.

The Finca Vigia Foundation began the effort in 2002, winning supporters from across the political spectrum. But they also attracted the kinds of opposition one would expect to an effort that would knit together Cubans and Americans on a shared labor of love.

Continue reading "Saving Finca Vigia" »