CUBA: US Policy of Isolation in Crisis, Analysts Say

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 24 1998 (IPS) - The 36-year-old U.S. economic embargo and policy of isolating Cuba seems to have entered into crisis in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s historic visit here, observers say.

The signs have come from other nations, international bodies, and even the United States itself at a speed impossible to predict a few months ago.

Although the Pontiff’s January visit failed to trigger an immediate collapse of the communist government of Fidel Castro as some hoped, it did bring enormous changes in the treatment of Cuba.

The Pope openly criticised the unilateral measures applied by Washington against Havana since 1962, and called for the world to open to Cuba, and for Cuba – with all its “magnificent possibilities” – to open to the world.

Local analysts point out that those countries that were interested in closer relations but did not approach Cuba for fear of economic reprisals from Washington now seem to have found the perfect justification in John Paul II’s message to do so.

Those who have continued demanding democracy in Cuba, meanwhile, have once again become embroiled in the old argument over the best method to promote change: isolation or closer ties.

The closer ties current seems to be gaining strength, based on the argument that 36 years of embargo were enough to demonstrate that the policy hasn’t worked.

On the eve of last weekend’s second Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chilean Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Insulza said the Pope “accomplished more in Cuba in one trip” than what the Organisation of American States (OAS) had achieved with its almost four-decades-long policy of isolating Cuba.

Cuba, expelled from the OAS in 1962, was the only country in the hemisphere excluded from last weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Chile.

Nevertheless, the Cuban issue was very present at the summit. Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien announced that he would visit the island Apr. 27-28, Barbados – in the name of the Caribbean region – called for Cuba’s complete reinsertion, and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso described Cuba’s presence as essential in order to speak of a unified American continent.

But Cardoso also wondered why the Castro government “does not take steps towards democratisation” if it was able to take such great strides in the social arena.

In official circles in Cuba there has never been so much talk about the possibility of a lifting of the U.S. embargo, although the government recognises that it could still take time.

“The United States is increasingly on its own,” Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Relations Mery Flores said Tuesday in Geneva, after Cuba’s victory in the UN Commission on Human Rights.

For the first time since the Cuban question became part of the Commission’s agenda in 1992, Washington’s motion to condemn Cuba was voted down by 19 votes against, 16 in favour and 18 abstentions.

That same day, the Dominican Republic announced that it had reestablished diplomatic relations with Cuba, which had been broken off in June 1959, seven months after the triumph of the revolution led by Castro. Guatemala had done the same on Jan. 27.

Spain, meanwhile, named its ambassador to Havana this month, putting an end to a diplomatic crisis that broke out in 1996. And Mexico called Tuesday for Cuba to be re-admitted into the OAS.

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations reported that Cuba now has some level of relations with 164 nations, including the offices of U.S., Costa Rican and Honduran interests.

El Salvador is the only Latin American country that has failed to establish some kind of ties with Cuba.

Doubts about the efficacy of the U.S. embargo are even starting to surface among underground opposition groups in Cuba. The Cuban Social Democratic Current called an open forum on U.S. policy towards the island, which it sees as an obstacle for democratisation in Cuba, said the group’s president Manuel Cuesta.

The New York-based United States-Cuba Economic Trade Council, which provides information on Cuba to more than 300 members of the U.S. business community, said some 2,000 U.S. executives planned to visit Havana this year.

And early this year, the Chamber of Commerce, legislators and prominent public figures in the United States got together to discuss the creation of an anti-embargo lobbying group.

Local observers say that if the business world’s interest in the Cuban market continues to grow, it could lead to a gradual lifting of U.S. sanctions against the island.

“This is not even a controversial issue among our trading partners,” John Howard, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s director of international policy, recently told the Herald Tribune. He added that there is a broad and growing consensus that “our policy towards Cuba does not make sense.”