United States: Easing of embargo a symbolic gesture?

Miami, Florida, Jan 14 (IPS/Patrick Smikle) -- It has long been accepted that when it comes to U.S.- Cuba relations, United States policy makers have to keep a sharp eye on Florida's large Cuban-American community which is highly political, well organised and until recently, united in its opposition to Fidel Castro and firmly in support of the U.S. trade embargo against the communist regime.

Now, while organisations like the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and elected politicians like Miami Congresswoman, Ileana Ros- Lehtinen, remain as strident as ever in their opposition to any softening of American policy toward Cuba, more moderate voices are emerging and are calling for a review of U.S. policy and for modification or scrapping of the embargo.

The White House appears to have benefitted from the emergence of this more moderate element insofar as they have supported the administration's most recent moves to ease the embargo and have served to counter the predictably strident responses of the traditional Cuban-American spokespersons.

"These measures are a tentative first step toward dismantling what is a failed United States policy for the past 40 years," says Alfredo Duran of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, a moderate organisation which opposes the embargo and argues that it has been counter-productive and has strengthened the Castro regime's grip on power.

The measures announced by the White House last week ease travel restrictions between the U.S. and Cuba.

Direct mail between the two countries will now be allowed, ending a 37-year situation where mail between the U.S. and Cuba had to pass through a third country and a letter from Miami to Havana could take up to five weeks to be delivered.

American businesses will be allowed to sell food and agricultural supplies to Cuban non-governmental organisations such as Church groups, cooperatives and small independent restaurants.

The process for granting permission for Americans to travel to Cuba will be streamlined with a view to facilitating more scientific, cultural, humanitarian, religious, journalistic and athletic exchanges.

Any American will be allowed to send up to 1,200 dollars a year to anyone in Cuba except to a senior government official. Prior to these measures only Cuban-Americans could send money to Cuba, and only to relatives.

Apart from the easing of travel restrictions, Alfredo Duran does not expect the changes to have any major impact on Cuban society.

He says the Cuban government will not allow a situation where groups purchase food and agricultural supplies from the United States as that would reduce the government's control over the outflow of hard currency.

He expects the regime to oppose the proposal for direct mail. "They do not have the planes and therefore will not be able to share in the profits," he says.

As far as the remittances are concerned, "what the measures have done in part is to legalise what has been going on. Everybody sends money to Cuba legally or illegally. A great majority of the Cuban community in Miami actually have been breaking the law," he says.

"The significance of these measures is mainly symbolic," says Duran. "They send a message that it is time to review and change U.S. policy toward Cuba."

And it is that symbolism and that message which concerns organisations like Mothers Against Repression (MAR), a more hardline Miami-based Cuban exile group.

MAR spokeswoman, Sylvia Iriundo worries that the measures will give the impression to groups and governments in Europe and Latin America, "many of whom have never supported the embargo anyway", that the US is not serious about enforcing it.

She says the measures are "out of sync with the Cuban reality", and cannot work "where there is a totalitarian government".

With regards to the sale of food and agricultural supplies to non-governmental groups, she insists that apart from the Church, there are no independent NGOs in Cuba and that given the regime's monopoly of distribution networks, any food and agricultural supplies reaching the island will benefit only "Castro's coffers."

Republican members of Congress Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Ballart, both Cuban-Americans, have denounced the new measures, declaring that any food sales to Cuba are illegal under the Helms Burton Law.

Ros-Lehtinen, who gained notoriety last year when she summoned Caribbean diplomats based in Washington and threatened them with punitive measures over their countries' increasingly close relations with Cuba, was briefed by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright prior to the measures being announced. The special treatment does not seem to have softened her position.

"I had lots of questions and got very few answers," she told reporters after the briefing. "For example, where is the international verification in place to make sure that this (food) gets to the Cuban people?"

She says the sale of any products to NGOs in Cuba would "afford Castro a substantial opportunity to prolong his rule, because a majority of these are controlled by the regime."

"Castro is the real issue, not U.S. policy," she says, "but every time we change something, we give the impression that we're the ones to blame, not him."

((Diaz-Ballart, wrote in the Miami Herald that "the U.S. embargo constitutes the most important leverage available to the Cuban people in their struggle to achieve democracy." He denounced elements in Bill Clinton's administration, some members of Congress, "pro-Castro groups"
and "amoral business interests" who he said "want to embrace Castro, do
business with the tyrant, exploit Cuban workers, and keep the Cuban people in a state of brutal oppression."

And Republican Senator, Connie Mack, asked "How can we sell agricultural products without selling to Fidel's machine of oppression?"

The moderate voice among the politicians was Democratic Senator Bob Graham who supported the Clinton administration's argument that the initiative was a way of improving contacts with the Cuban people while still trying to isolate the Castro government. "These changes are consistent with current law and further our effort to separate the Cuban people from their brutal, authoritarian government," Graham says.

Comments from Cuban-Americans in the academic community have been cautious but tending toward moderation.

Professor Lisandro Perez of Florida International University says it appears that the Clinton administration has taken "the path of least resistance, rejecting a tough policy review but approving minor changes."

Juan Carlos Espinosa, Professor of Cuba Studies at the University of Miami, says that at some 800 million dollars a year, remittances from exiles is Cuba's single largest source of foreign exchange, surpassing tourism and sugar.

Even if most of this money ends up in the national treasury he says, the multiplier effect is a source of empowerment for ordinary Cubans.

Espinosa applies the same line of reasoning to the issue of food and agricultural supplies being sold to Cuban NGOs, declaring it to be a positive move, once the mechanisms can be worked out.

"Aspects of the embargo have failed while others, such as the economic sanctions have worked. The policy should be reviewed along these lines...sticking with what has worked and magnanimously removing what has failed," he says.

However, given that any further amelioration would likely result in an even more hostile response from the hardline elements in the Cuban-American community, and given the importance of Florida in national elections due in the year 2000, Espinosa is predicting that there will be no further changes for now.

Declared one newspaper columnist sarcastically, whatever the impact of the new measures in Havana or in Washington, Florida has benefitted.
"At least it knocked Monica and the impeachment trial out of the headlines for a few days.")