CUBA: OBAMA EXTINGUISHES THE HOPES HE RAISED

By Leonardo Padura Reprint | | Print |

This column is available for visitors to the IPS website only for reading. Reproduction in print or electronic media is prohibited. Media interested in republishing may contact romacol@ips.org.

HAVANA, Nov 18 2009 (IPS) - A little over a year ago the world was swept by surprise when it learned that Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. We had been witness to a change that many felt was unthinkable: a young black man renowned for his intelligence became president of the most powerful country on earth, one that had been a bastion of racism and that in recent years has become a hotbed of conservatism, an exporter of war, and neo-liberal economic Eden.

The election of Obama ignited widespread celebration and hope for change in Cuba too, whose people, simply because they were Cuban and (in many cases) wanted to live where they were born, have suffered since 1962 under a US-imposed financial and trade embargo which in its time (one of the peaks of the Cold War, the apparent end of which the world just celebrated) was supposed to break the country with hunger and topple its government.

For three -or more- generations of Cubans, the standoff between the governments of Washington and Havana has been like a nightmare seemingly impossible to awake from. In addition to the material shortages that the embargo/blockade may or may not have caused (it did, and many) its existence has raised along the Florida Straits a wall of intransigence and hostility that has affected millions of lives. The blockade has been used again and again to justify every shortage on the island and has eroded chances for a better future for the Cuban people, who are the real victims of this policy which in fifty years has failed to overturn the Cuban government.

When in April 2009 the Summit of the Americas was held in Trinidad and Obama made his debut as president and introduced his promised policy of closer relations with Latin America, he listened patiently to the demands of almost all countries of the region to end the blockade and normalise relations between the two neighbours. This fanned the hopes of many Cubans. Obama rightly lifted restrictions on travel to the island by Cubans living in the US and on sending remittances. Academic and cultural contact was extended, and there was talk of various agreements, like reestablishment of direct mail service between Cuba and the US, or improving communications by giving Cuba access to the American fibre optic network.

The wall that had outlived the Cold War moved, and the steps taken, though not particularly profound, revived the hope that the embargo might be lifted and relations normalised between Havana and Washington.

Then on October 28 the US government declared before the UN General Assembly that it would maintain the current embargo and do so for the same reasons cited by the previous eight administrations, since 1962. Cubans’ hopes were dashed and many asked themselves, “Is this the same young and charismatic Obama that promised change and was elected just a year ago? Is this Obama, who extended a policy intended to vanquish a country with hunger, the same man who just accepted the Nobel Peace Prize? Can this champion of easing tensions sincerely think that the embargo of Cuba, condemned by almost the entire world, including the harshest critics of the Cuban regime, is more likely to induce change than it is to harden its stance? Is this clearly intelligent man not capable of grasping that in fact it is lifting the embargo that will bring about change in Cuba?

Until October 28 I had a dream: that the US representative to the United Nations, backed an administration committed to intelligence and opening, announced that his country was going to lift the embargo. This decision would have been an act more in keeping with the Obama who moved the world with his victory. But this dream did not come to pass, and we Cubans will continue to suffer under the nightmare that has oppressed us since 1962, when President Obama was less than a year old, and the political system still in power was already in place, despite the embargo. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into more than fifteen languages. His most recent work is The Man Who Loved Dogs, featuring Leon Trotsky and his assassin Ramon Mercader as central characters.