AP Report: Alan Gross Knew the Risks in Cuba
Readers of The Havana Note have surely had their fill – and more – of the case of Alan P. Gross, the USAID subcontractor arrested in Cuba in December 2009, and now serving a 15 year sentence for crimes against the Cuban state. So I hesitate to write even one more word on a subject so thoroughly discussed, at least on these pages. But an investigative report by the Associated Press’s Desmond Butler brings key, new details to light that beg a second look if for no other reason than because they change the light in which the U.S. has portrayed the case that has managed to bring U.S.-Cuban relations to their lowest point since the George W. Bush administration.
In the more than two years since Gross’s arrest, Cuban authorities have shared little information publicly on the case (though they have insinuated more than once that he was a spy), while the U.S. government has insistently cast Gross as an American humanitarian aid worker wrongly incarcerated for activities that would be legal anywhere else in the world. (Actually, they wouldn't be legal anywhere else in the world, and certainly not in the United States, where we don't take kindly to unregistered foreign agents roaming around our country.)
Those of us who follow U.S.-Cuban affairs closely shook our heads and wondered why the Cubans hadn’t picked up an American contractor for USAID before. That's because the USAID Cuba program is authorized under a 1996 U.S. law seeking regime change in Cuba, and in 1998 Cuba responded by criminalizing cooperation with that law (by disseminating or accepting funds or materials, for instance by the U.S. government).
History has a lot to do with it. The United States has been trying to either destabilize Cuba, assassinate its leaders, starve its people into rebellion or similarly isolate and punish the island nation for more than fifty years. Both sides have broken faith on previous attempts at rapprochement. And so working in Cuba, even in the most transparent of cases, is not a simple assignment.
Judy Gross, Alan Gross's wife, suggested last year that Gross’s employers at Development Alternatives Inc. underplayed the threat to Gross if he were caught by Cuban authorities, implying that Gross wasn’t totally unaware of the potential consequences of his actions. But Gross’s own trip reports make clear he understood the risks he was taking. “This is very risky business in no uncertain terms,” he wrote in one of his trip reports.
Cuba Embargo Hits 50: Twisting the Half-a-Century Away
The U.S. embargo turned 50 years old this week. It probably won't surprise most folks to learn that the night before President John F. Kennedy signed a total U.S. embargo of Cuba into force, he asked an aide to buy 1,000 Cuban cigars (just to be safe, the aide got 1,200). Surely Kennedy would have been shocked to learn that his massive stockpile would run out long before his embargo would; just days before his assassination, Kennedy had approved a secret meeting to take place in Havana between a senior U.S. diplomat and Castro. But the meeting never took place, and Kennedy's embargo has remained a fixture now for half a century. Over at the Daily Mail, Lee Moran offers perspective on this week's milestone:
"When the embargo began, American teenagers were doing The Twist, the U.S. had yet to put a man into orbit around the Earth and a first-class U.S. postage stamp cost just 4 cents."
In Cuba, U.S., Party Politics Are Slow to Change
With the Cuban Communist Party Conference, the first of its kind, held in order to maintain steady progress on economic reforms laid out by the 6th Party Congress last April, now concluded, and with the Republican primary battle in full promise-the-moon mode this last week, it’s clear that both in Cuba and the United States, some things remain painfully slow to change.
While significant economic reforms have gained momentum on the island for the last year or so, issues we might consider more political – such as migration reform or legalization of multiple political parties – aren’t on the immediate horizon. Raul Castro called for greater accountability in the media and "democracy" in government decision-making. Though Castro himself has pointed to the need for migration reforms, so that Cubans who work abroad aren’t forced to leave the country and their possessions permanently, for instance, he told Parliament in December that he considers it a complicated and delicate issue, one which (shocker alert) is inextricably linked to the longstanding U.S. embargo of Cuba. This weekend he dispelled any notions that Cuba will turn away from a one-party model of government. Why? Because to do so would be “to legalize the party or parties of the [U.S.] empire.” In one respect, of course he’s right – it would be hard to stop Cuban exiles from pouring money into and trying to shape the agendas of newly legalized political parties on the island. But despite the obvious counter-productivity and “meddlesome”-ness of U.S. policy, it cannot always be the reason why Cuba’s leaders refuse to take a given course. Just as the U.S. must not wait for Cuba to adopt policies we think it ought to, Cuba should not wait for the U.S. to suddenly offer a “new beginning” with Cuba.
Of course, that is the change that President Obama promised nearly three years ago – a “new beginning” with Cuba. On the campaign trail, he sniffed at the Bush administration’s tough-talking pandering to the hard line segment of the Cuban American community, which in truth accomplished nothing, neither its swaggering determination to bring about the Castros’ demise, nor any improvement in conditions for Cubans. The Obama administration did make a number of tactical changes to the policy, including expansions of travel for certain sectors, notably for Cuban Americans his campaign surely hoped would return the favor in 2012. But none of these limited changes broke any truly new ground (with the exception of allowing additional airports to serve licensed travelers), and in fact, its refusal to fully reform the controversial USAID or Radio and TV Marti programs it inherited from the Bush administration signaled it wasn’t so comfortable with change after all.
Meanwhile, this week the Republican presidential hopefuls – minus Rep. Ron Paul - pedaled furiously backward into Florida, land of the hard line Cuban exile (and a few other voters).
Republican Presidential Candidates Talk Cuba at Tampa Debate
I missed the umpteenth Republican presidential primary debate in Tampa tonight, which is a shame because all four of the remaining candidates addressed the subject of Cuba, specifically, how would they respond to the (hypothetical) news of Fidel Castro’s death.
Well, I didn’t miss much, with Gingrich, Santorum and Romney all singing on the same broken record. Lacking any substantive answers at all, Gingrich and Santorum calculated you can’t go wrong with a hard right turn, with the Castros' deaths being lynchpin to any change in the U.S. or Cuba. Santorum picked up on reports (unsubstantiated) of jihadists in Cuba's close ally, Venezuela, and Gingrich talked about covert ops to take down the Cuban government should Fidel Castro pass away. Romney offered up this vacuous comment:
"You work very aggressively with new leadership and try to move them forward to a more open degree."
Seems no one told Romney, or the other candidates, that Fidel Castro isn’t in charge in Cuba anymore and that the new leadership – or what passes for it - is already comfortably established in Havana. The major psychologicial shift got under way when Fidel fell ill in the summer of 2006 and handed power temporarily to his brother and Defense Minister, Raul Castro. Once Raul Castro officially became president in 2008, and Fidel chose not to interfere (at least publicly) in his brother’s handling of domestic affairs, the shift was complete.
Just one candidate, Rep. Ron Paul, said not what he thinks people want to hear but what he thinks they need to hear - his honest opinion:
"We're living in the dark ages when we can't even talk to the Cuban people.”
Eyes Wide Shut, USAID, State Double Down on Cuba Programs
The phrase “exercise in futility” can easily be applied to to the United States' half-century old embargo of Cuba. But lately there is an even more disconcerting trend among U.S. policymakers, which can best be described as conducting our fruitless policy toward Cuba with “eyes wide shut.”
How else to describe the recent comments from senior USAID and State Department officials in response to a blistering - and vital - critique of U.S. taxpayer-funded democracy programming in Cuba, which was published in The Miami Herald by Fulton Armstrong, a former senior staff member to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry? USAID's Mark Feierstein and State's Michael Posner responded to the criticism, which they have the right and responsibility to do, but their response is another disappointing indication that this administration remains inexplicably committed to a policy of willful ignorance when it comes to Cuba. (The president himself has made comments in the past year - decrying Cuba's lack of movement on political prisoners and on the economy - which made him sound as if he hasn't been briefed on the subject since taking office.)
In their letter to The Miami Herald, Feierstein and Posner argue that USAID's Cuba program is "comparable" to other democracy programs in the world. They neglect to mention that, unlike other USAID programs, the Cuba program is authorized under what amounts to a regime change mandate (see the Helms-Burton Act, sections 205 and 109), which is likely why, unlike in other less-than-chummy host countries that seem to tolerate U.S. democracy programming, USAID has no office on the ground and no cooperation agreement with the host government.
Feierstein and Posner also neglect to mention that it was this very regime change mandate - which underpins USAID's Cuba program and under which Alan Gross traveled at least 5 times to Cuba - that helped land the Maryland subcontractor in a Cuban jail cell more than two years ago, and not, as they argue, because he was “helping Cubans access the Internet.” It may be true that the Cuban government wants to limit most or certain Cubans' access to the internet, and it may even be true that this was the real reason why Mr. Gross was arrested. But denouncing Cuba's motivations doesn't help free Mr. Gross.
Helping Alan Gross to understand Cuban law before he traveled to the island would have better served him. Instead, Feierstein and Posner disingenuously suggest that we can choose not to accept Cuban law. In what other foreign country may a private American citizen flout local national security laws and expect to go free because the United States government thinks it's an unfair law? Surely Feierstein and Posner can't be unaware of this advise offered to any traveler on the State Department website: “While in a foreign country, you are subject to its laws.” Or, of the warning USAID gave to grant applicants in 2008 that Cuba might harshly sanction Cubans or foreigners carrying out activities under Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Act.
Cuban Taxi Drivers Says the Darndest Things
Ten years ago, family-run paladar restaurants, were the (shrinking) bastion of cuentapropismo in Cuba, tiny, over-regulated oases of creativity and the-customer-knows-best level service. More than one government official, Havanatur van or state-owned taxi in those days discouraged patronage and a few even declined to take me and groups with which I traveled to paladars. (Though, certainly, many others obliged us without a second thought.) Those days are clearly gone – and good riddance.
On my way to one paladar last week, our taxi driver fielded a few questions about the changing Cuban economy and his role in it. He pays 31 CUC a day to rent his taxi from the state, and after paying for gas and maintenance, he still clears about 15-20 CUC a day. That means he makes in one day what the average Cuban without access to hard currency (or to CUCs) makes in a whole month. We asked what he thinks about the changes afoot in Cuba, and whether he feels hopeful, or perhaps that change has come too little, too late to the island. He expressed optimism, offering this candid response: “Yo creo en Raul. Nunca creia en Fidel.” (I believe in Raul. I never believed in Fidel.)
That comment was followed by one even more ubiquitous; everwhere you go, more Cubans are saying things like, “If I work hard, I'll make more money.”
Cuba News in the New Year
Aside from the Pope's announced visit to Cuba, and some bits of news on the economic front - like need-based aid for Cuban home renovations - there isn't much in the way of news you can use out of Cuba. For instance, Fidel Castro didn't die, despite the trending on Twitter earlier this week. But, if you're nonetheless curious for something to read on the world's most inaccurately foretold death, Fernando Ravsberg obliges over at The Havana Times, reminding us just how often Fidel Castro has (er, has not actually) died in the media., and analyzing how a journalist knows what and when to report, and in the process, explaining the many paradoxes of Cuba.
Back to news you can't use, we return to the U.S. Congress. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is not happy with the Smithsonian Institution, which is hosting several learning tours to Cuba this year. With travelers paying $5,400 each to join the trips, I think Ros-Lehtinen can rest assured that no taxpayer funds were used to arrange these trips - surely that's enough dough to cover the staff time! I kid, but I can't think of why else this latest huff by a Cuban American member of Congress made both The Hill and the The Washington Post blogs, other than for the possibility of a congressional hold on funds for a beloved, venerable U.S. institution. (The Washington City Paper also picked it up, but noted that the Smithsonian's travel division isn't federally funded. Oops.)
Speaking of travel, Pope Benedict XVI has finalized his agenda for his upcoming visit to Cuba later this spring. His trip coincides with the 400th anniversary of the discovery by Cuban fishermen of the image of La Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre (so dubbed for the copper mining town in which the shrine now housing La Virgin can be found). As such, El Cobre will be his first stop in Cuba, upon his arrival to Santiago de Cuba, on the east side of the island. I've been to El Cobre - it's an amazing place (and I'm not even Catholic). Imagining everything that goes with a Papal visit anywhere, but especially to a site like this in the Cuban countryside, I'm incredibly excited for the people of El Cobre, of Santiago de Cuba, and from all over the island who will likely travel to see the Pope make this important pilgrimage.
Finally, writing in the Huffington Post, Yoani Sanchez offers up the year past in review. It's not a pretty picture, not only for the increasing harassment and detentions of Cuban dissidents - and of course, the sudden passing of Ladies in White leader Laura Pollan - but also because Sanchez gauges little hope from Raul Castro's economic reforms (or, "updates", as I've previously noted the government calls the ongoing process) among Cubans in the street. (The latest just announced reforms include opening more professions up to self-employment on January 1, and the establishment of a government fund for need-based home construction/renovation aid.) It's a pessimistic view, and not hard to imagine given how long the Cuban people have been waiting for an economic system that works for them. So, I'm looking forward to being in Havana next week and gauging the changes - and how people have greeted them - for myself. While I may be too busy to blog it while I'm there, I hope to come back with lots to write about.
Christmas In Havana Back On: President Prevails on Cuban Family Travel Rules
Whenever someone asks me why we have the same anachronistic policy toward an island nation 90 ninety from our shores that we have had for half a century, I generally tell them that Cuba simply "doesn't matter." In a big-picture sense, our policy hasn't changed (or has only gotten hotter) since the Cold War ended and left two combatants behind on the field.
But this week, Cuba finally mattered, and it tested the resolve of a U.S. president. After nearly a week of brinksmanship over bigger, far more sensitive issues played out, there were a slew of bills ready to be packaged and voted on by a weary, anxious-to-get-out-of-here Congress, but for a provision that would have ruined the Christmas and New Year holidays for thousands of Cuban Americans and their families in Cuba. But after House Republicans filed a bill yesterday morning offering Democrats a take-it-or-leave it choice on their Consolidated Appropriations Bill for FY 2012, a White House seeking to protect a campaign promise fulfilled - unrestricted family travel to Cuba - prevailed, and the House leadership agreed to remove the offending provision if Senate Democrats would then move the agreed upon bill. The bill to be voted on is here, and the Cuba provision that had been in Division C (Section 634) is gone.
Count me among those who doubted the president and the congress. Not at first, of course. For months I thought the president's advisors' veto threat was enough to settle the Cuba question early. But for the Cuba provision to stay in the bill nearly to the very end tells us that the House Republican leadership -presumably urged on by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart - believed the president and the Senate Democrats would cave. It also reminds us how very much Cuba matters to a certain few. It was a sobering reminder to all the Cuban Americans these few claim to represent how very far these representatives would go to pursue their personal ideology on Cuba - regardless of whom in their districts it might harm.
The White House stood firm and stood up for those Cuban Americans, and Senate Majority Leader Reid stood by the president (he's not exactly a Cuba sanctions reformer). But there were casualties, to the lobby no one expected to lose.
BREAKING NEWS: Deal on Cuba Travel Could End Omnibus Stand-off
"House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., has agreed to reopen the pending nine-bill spending package and rewrite language that sought to reinstate the Bush-era travel ban to Cuba, a move designed to address White House concerns and win the backing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, according to senior Republican and Democratic staffers.
Republicans said Rogers was reluctant to make the move and is doing so with the understanding from Reid that if the Cuba travel and gift language is dropped and Obama’s existing travel policy is protected, Reid will release the conference report for full House and Senate consideration. Rogers worked with Reid’s staff late into Wednesday night and continued talks on Thursday morning. A deal announcing this arrangement is anticipated in the coming hours."
Read the whole story here. I think I'll withhold comment til the deal is actually sealed.
Claver-Carone's "Cuba Omnibus Clarification" Could Use a Fact Check
Yesterday the Miami Herald picked up a claim made by Mauricio Claver-Carone on his blog Capitol Hill Cubans that the family travel restrictions proposed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (and now included in the omnibus spending bill filed by House Republicans early this morning) wouldn't be so bad as the "hyperbolic" media insists on reporting:
The media seems unable to escape hyperbole regarding the Cuba provision being discussed in the Omnibus Appropriations bill. So without speculating on the end-result, here are some important facts:
. . . Legally, the provision would restore the Bush Administration's limit of one-trip every three years. However, since the Omnibus is a spending bill with a one-year duration, the practical effect of the provision would be to limit Cuban-American travel to only one-trip in 2012 -- both reasonable and humanitarian (and akin to the Clinton Administration's prior limits).
This would be an significant clarification to make if it were in fact true (though, significant to a point: I know I like to see my family more than once year and so I imagine it shouldn't change any minds truly committed to family rights). But anyone who follows Congress as closely as does Mr. Claver-Carone ought to know that non-time limited policy riders often get attached to one-year spending bills, much to the chagrin of the appropriators and to opponents of such riders. These policy riders only expire when they look like this:
"Sec. 632. During fiscal year 2012, for purposes of section 908(b)(1) of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (22 U.S.C. 7207(b)(1)), the term "payment of cash in advance" shall be interpreted as payment before the transfer of title to, and control of, the exported items to the Cuban purchaser." [Emphasis added]
The provision above was first included in a spending bill in FY 2009. It continues to be included each subsequent year because of the clause "During fiscal year." Nowhere in the Diaz-Balart amendment does it say the provison expires with the end of the fiscal year. But please, don't take my word for it: Read it for yourself here (page 358, section 634).