By Arturo Lopez-Levy and Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado

Scarabeo 9, the semi-submersible oil rig contracted by the Spanish company Repsol completed its journey from Singapore to Cuba. Repsol’s rig will explore Cuba’s exclusive economic zone, an area in the Gulf of Mexico of about 112000 square kilometers. Oil exploration in the zone is being contracted to several foreign companies such as Venezuela’s PDVSA, Malaysia’s Petronas, and Vietnamese PetroVietnam.  Cuba’s Ministry of Basic Industry estimates the oil reserves in the zone are between 5 billion to 9 billion barrels of oil. CNN GPS host Fareed Zakaria referred to Cuba’s total oil potential as between 5 billion and 20 billion barrels of oil. 

The start of the oil exploration will not derail Raul Castro’s reform program. At a minimum, oil will not come from the offshore wells soon enough, while the reforms are needed immediately. The Cuban government needs to create jobs for the million and half workers that are supposed to leave the government sector in the next two years as part of the reforms program proclaimed last April by the Cuban Communist Party in its VI Congress. It must also alleviate critical situations of poverty in the five most eastern provinces, where unrest has been rising. With or without oil, the Cuban economy sorely needs to develop an environment in which businesses and individuals feel confident to invest.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff's visit to Cuba has generated considerable debate. Some question the appropriateness of the presidential visit after the death of Wilmar Villar while others go further by criticizing what they identify as appeasement and under emphasis of human rights in Brasilia's relationship with Havana. It is obvious that Brazil's policy is not as effective as could be and that new initiatives could increase Brazil’s impact on Cuba's reform process. That said, it is important to recognize the merits of the policy designed by the Itamaraty in light of Cuba's political liberalization, rather than democratization, and the inherent synergy between a transition to a mixed economy and the expansion of rights and freedoms.

Brazilian policy toward Cuba is not one-dimensional. It implies a convergence of economic interests and strategic regional leadership with values ​​from a Brazilian left committed to democratic governance. The Brazilian Foreign Ministry also employs a combination of principles of international law. As emphasized by then-President Cardoso during the democratic crisis in Peru 2000 and Venezuela in April 2002, state sovereignty is not a shield to violate human rights but as a principle should be respected. That position is reflected in the critical distance that Brazil, since its own transition to democracy, has taken toward the U.S. policy of confrontation aimed at forcing a regime change in Cuba.

I would like to share with the readers of the Havana Note this interview with Douglas Fehlen from Education-Portal.com. The direct link to the interview is at the end of the text:  

Scholar Advocates for Increased Academic Partnership Between U.S. and Cuba

By Douglas Fehlen

Education-Portal.com: In a ForeignPolicy.com article, you praised President Obama's January decision to ease restrictions on academic travel to Cuba. Why do you support this policy change?For decades, the United States has maintained no formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, enforcing severe travel and trade restrictions against the country all the while. Arturo López-Levy, Ph.D. candidate and research associate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, is a longtime critic of American policy toward the Caribbean nation. The University of Denver scholar believes that recent changes in American policy - including relaxed regulations on educational, cultural and religious travel - have the potential to transform the relationship between the two countries.

Writing in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Steven Kurlander comes to Senator Marco Rubio’s defense, accusing The Washington Post of publishing a hatchet piece against the senator who has merely confused the “circumstances and timing of his parent's flight from communist Cuba.” 

“No one really cares how or when his parents got here,” Kurlander writes. Only, that just isn’t so, and Kurlander proves it by making his case with this opener:

“I am the child of a refugee, a Holocaust survivor's son.” 

And then with this:

“Maybe because I am the son of a Holocaust survivor, I understand the confusion Sen. Rubio may have surrounding his parent's story . . .  it may be just that his parents did not really talk much about their flight to Florida at all.

Rubio is instead the latest victim of a debilitating ethos of character assassination rampant in our press and blogosphere that wrongfully dissects a politician's rendition of his personal history, taking facts out of context to destroy his or her credibility. From a child of the Holocaust's perspective, this assault on Rubio's story was totally unfair.”

Kurlander returns to this, his own personal narrative, throughout the op-ed, because apparently it gives him authority on the matter.  No, really, it does.  Our personal narratives help each of us relate to those around us and in turn for others to relate to us.  And these narratives especially help us relate to public figures whom we haven’t even met but who ask us for our trust.  The more we identify ourselves within the framework of our chosen narrative, the more we need to preserve it.  These narratives are frameworks we construct based on our experiences (real or perceived), what we want to be, and to what we think others will relate.  Kurlander surely knows that his “son of a Holocaust survivor” narrative will encourage people to listen to him, at least on the subject of suffering.  And, speaking as someone of Jewish heritage (you know I had to do that), it most certainly does get my attention.

Why are revelations about one of the Republican Party’s brightest rising stars necessarily a character assassination?  If memory serves, this is a basic lesson in college level journalism class: public figures put themselves out there- and Rubio has repeatedly put his family's Cuba story out in front (though not always the same version of it), like in his Senate campaign ads, for instance.  Marco Rubio has benefited from repeating this narrative that his parents fled Castro's Cuba.  It’s his badge of honor.  Why else would he utter a statement like this: “Nothing against immigrants, but my parents are exiles.”

Late Friday afternoon, Senator Marco Rubio revised the biography that appears on his office website.  He had no choice.  Throughout his political career, he has deceived Floridians, adoring Republican audiences and donors, journalists, fellow officeholders and others by claiming that his parents fled the Cuba of Fidel Castro.  This is a lie exposed by hard journalism in the Washington Post.

Every Cuban American knows the precise time and purpose of his family’s departure from Cuba.  The idea that Rubio never knew the facts until this moment – and that no family member ever bothered to correct the error before now –is absurd. While Rubio’s parents, Mario and Oriales, did adopt the anti-Castro position of many exiles who are opposed to the communist course taken by the Cuban revolution, the date of their emigration was not 1959 and the cause of their departure was not the current Cuban government.   They left Cuba in 1956 as exiles from a tyrannical regime; that of Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar, the right-wing dictatorship that Fidel Castro overthrew.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson and Arturo Lopez-Levy

According to a New York Times story , in his recent visit to Havana, former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson told Bruno Rodriguez, Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations, that by releasing Alan Gross, Cuba could begin a process of being removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list. Since both Richardson and the State Department have repeatedly declared that they have been working together on this issue, this is practically a confession that Cuba’s inclusion on the state sponsors of terrorism list is a sham.

The list of terrorist sponsoring nations should be a bargaining tool for dealing with, well, countries that engage in or sponsor terrorism. The misuse of an otherwise effective foreign policy tool must give pause to responsible members of Congress and the Washington intelligence community.  First, it focuses efforts and resources in the wrong direction, taking eyes and dollars from where the real threats are. Second, it sends the wrong message to other countries, diminishing the impact of a warning to countries such as Iran and Syria and the groups they sponsor such as Hezbollah and Hamas.  Third, it weakens the capacity of US allies like Israel , who are real targets of terrorist threats, to make a case for the isolation or monitoring of countries such as Iran whose presence on the list is justified.

Despite the tensions associated with the upcoming 2012 election campaign in the US, a dialogue between Washington and Havana, as proposed by the Cuban Foreign Relations Minister Bruno Rodriguez, is also in the interest of the Obama Administration, which has nothing to gain from more conflicts in its relationship with Cuba. President Barack Obama's positions favoring dialogue without preconditions, increasing people to people contacts, and reaching mutually beneficial agreements on bilateral issues were never predicated on sympathy for Fidel or Raul Castro, but rather on the conviction that diplomacy and contacts between societies are the best ways to promote US national interests.

By that standard, the balance of the first three years of the Obama administration's relationship with Cuba is positive. The increase in cultural, family, humanitarian and religious travel to Cuba accelerates current reforms in Cuba, improves the image of the US in the hemisphere, and strengthens domestic political trends favoring an engagement policy that is less dependent on the Miami right and more consistent with democratic values and US strategic and economic interests.

How do you know that an Italian newspaper report that Hezbollah is looking to establish a presence in Cuba is bogus?  When Rep. Michelle Bachmann picks up the story and runs away with it.

"There’s reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is potentially looking at wanting to be part of missile sites in Iran and, of course, when you’re 90 miles offshore from Florida, you don’t want to entertain the prospect of hosting bases or sites where Hezbollah could have training camps or perhaps have missile sites or weapons sites in Cuba. This would be foolish.”

Actually, there has been just one report, in an Italian newspaper, which then got picked up and spread around by a number of conservative U.S. blogs.  I am in no position to evaluate the intelligence collected by that newspaper (and it doesn't offer sources), but, as the Wall Street Journal's blog Washington Wire points out, Cuba's presence on the U.S. terrorism list isn't due to any Hezbollah link - it's largely become a political bargaining chip.  And if you doubt that, just ask Bill Richardson.

While Bachmann frets over that one, a group of her colleagues fire off a threatening letter to Spain's Repsol, warning the company to dump its Cuban deep water exploration plans, you know, if you know what's good for you.  The signers warn that "grave civil and criminal" penalties come with violations of the "comprehensive" Cuba embargo.  But even the embargo isn't so comprehensive as to stop a foreign company from drilling in Cuban waters, so long as there aren't U.S. parts, people or expertise involved.  Which, of course, is exactly what scares so many in the industry about the impending exploration in Cuba. 

Not this group, though.  Nowhere in the letter does the group express any concerns around what impact drilling could have on the environment, particularly in the event of a spill.  But it could certainly "harm [Repsol's] commercial interests with the United States," and it might "run afoul of pending legislation."   I think that was a mistake.  In fact, I'm sure had Ros-Lehtinen and Sires, the leaders of the letter effort, invited her to join them on their letter, Michelle Bachmann could have come up with one heck of a nightmare scenario that would have capped the letter off quite nicely.

Oh, I jest.  Serious industry experts warn us to be prepared to prevent or respond to any disaster before drilling begins.  According to Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich, the issue has gotten - as it should - attention at "very high levels of the government."

The High Holidays are the expression of the supreme Jewish belief in reconciliation and every individual’s capacity to recognize his or her mistakes and change for the better. The Cuban government should view Alan Gross’ recent statement as expressing repentance for his unconscious participation in American government sponsored regime change policies that violated Cuban sovereignty. Mr. Gross, an American Jew from Maryland, interested in civil society development was arrested in Dec. 3, 2009 by the Cuban authorities. He had gone to Cuba five times as a subcontractor of Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), a private company serving contracts awarded by the Bush Administration under the Cuba program of USAID.

The extensive coverage the media has given to an very small number of vocal Cuban-Americans who opposed the celebration of a concert held in Miami by Cuban artist Pablo Milanés stands in stark contrast to the sentiment of the majority of the exile community, which has gone largely unreported. For years, we have seen how the media has sensationalized protests by these (most likely the same) small number of exiles who, blinded by their hatred for the Cuban regime, have worked tirelessly to maintain the status quo in both Washington and Havana.

These Cuban-Americans have every right to feel hurt and even hatred as many suffered greatly at the hand of the Cuban government several decades ago. They came to this country in search of freedom and the right to voice their beliefs and we should respect and protect their right to do so. The media has done more than its share to defend these protestors and their rights. But this small minority of Cuban-Americans does not represent the entire exile community. Unfortunately, headlines such as “Exile groups oppose Cuba musician Pablo Milanes’ Aug. 27 concert in Miami,” do little to report the true diversity of the community and sensationalize the small but vocal minority whose main purpose is to make headlines. More damaging however than the sensationalist headlines and all the attention that is given by the media to defenders of the status quo, is the lack of attention given to the majority of the exile community that has long advocated for and supported greater contact between Cubans on both sides of the Florida straits.