Jesse Ventura is leading a trade group to Cuba, but critics of Fidel Castro are angered by his action.
When I heard that statement on a local radio station recently, I did a double take.
I consider myself a strong critic of Fidel Castro, but I think that Gov. Ventura’s trip to Cuba is an excellent idea. The more quickly and deeply the United States extends its economic interaction with Cuba, the more quickly Cuban communism will fade away.
One need only look at how China has evolved since President Nixon established relations with that country three decades ago to see why it makes good sense for the United States to restore trade with Cuba.
First, a little history about Cuba:
Cuba and Puerto Rico are anomalies in Latin America in that they did not achieve independence in the second or third decade of the 19th century, as did other countries. Cuba did have an indigenous independence movement that was on the verge of success in the late 1890s when the United States intervened, defeated Spain and began to exercise political control.
Thankfully, Cuban and U.S. opposition to colonial rule prevented that from happening, but U.S. diplomatic, military and economic power played a greater role in Cuba than in any other nation for the first six decades of the 20th century. U.S. businesses and U.S. organized crime had marked influence in successive Cuban regimes, elected as well as dictatorial.
Historians may long disagree over how benign or malignant U.S. influence was in the Cuban economy and society before Castro came to power. It is clear, however, that a significant fraction of the Cuban population welcomed less interference and greater autonomy.
Out of the revolution led by Castro soon emerged a classic Leninist-Stalinist regime. Again, historians will long argue whether that was predestined by Castro’s political beliefs or resulted from shortsighted policies by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations under perceived or real pressures of the Cold War.
The United States imposed an embargo on trade and finance by U.S. firms with Cuba. Further, we tried to overthrow Castro by sponsoring an invasion of Cuban refugees. The Castro regime invited a Soviet military presence to the island and sponsored hapless guerrilla uprisings in Colombia, Bolivia and elsewhere.
All of that is water under the bridge. Cuba switched from being a quasi-U.S. colony to a de facto Soviet client state. With liberal funding from the former Soviet Union, the Cuban revolutionary regime achieved significant improvements in nutrition, health care and education for the majority of its people. Still, human rights, political speech and overt homosexuality were squelched in the classic Eastern-bloc communist style.
With the collapse of communism, the aid that had kept the Cuban economy afloat disappeared. Like all other communist economies, Cuba never managed to produce anything efficiently, regardless of how well it did in health and education.
Only a few intellectual dinosaurs believe that communism will survive Fidel Castro by more than a few months or years. But those in the Miami refugee community who think that they are going to return and reclaim their political and economic position on the island are equally benighted.
Change will come to Cuba after Fidel and his brother Raul are gone — that much is clear. The only question is how change will come and what form it will take.
Former President Nixon decided, as part of a greater Cold War strategy, to make an opening to Red China. Mao Zedong will go down in history as one of the great murderers of the 20th century, whose repression was far worse than anything ever done in Cuba, but Nixon rightly decided that engagement was better than confrontation.
It is doubtful that the opening of the Chinese economy that began in the late 1970s under Deng Xiaoping would have happened if the United States and China still had been locked in the face-to-face enmity after the Korean War. China’s future still contains great uncertainties, but it is clear that the world is a much safer place with a China that has enjoyed 30 years of 7 percent annual growth than with the China that had just emerged from the Cultural Revolution.
Similarly, whatever transition Cuba will make after the Castro brothers pass on is likely to be easier the more integrated Cuba is into the global economy. The U.S. embargo serves principally to reduce such global integration.
It also serves as an excuse for the economic failures of the past 40 years. Castro and many Cubans refer to the embargo as a blockade. The two are quite distinct. An embargo is a ban on trade or investment by one nation while a blockade involves using military force to stop any trade.
The United States has not had significant trade or investment relationships with Cuba for 40 years, but that has not stopped myriad other nations from conducting business with the Cubans. With the exception of a few manufacturer-specific spare parts, there is little made in the United States that cannot be procured from other nations.
Cuba’s failure to produce enough goods to meet the needs of its people is just another in a long list of failures of communist systems. The U.S. embargo has virtually nothing to do with it. If President Bush really wants to do away with Cuban communism, abolishing all restrictions on trade, investment and travel between this country and Cuba would be the quickest way to do it.
Let U.S. citizens travel to Cuba and let Cubans travel here. Lavishly fund a program of scholarships modeled on the Rhodes and Fulbright programs to bring thousands of young Cubans to study here. Let thousands of slavering U.S. hot-rodders trade high-mileage Tauruses for ’53 Chevys.
The only people who gain from the embargo are a small cohort of Cuban geriatrics in Dade country who, like the restored Bourbons in 1815, “have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” The rest of us Americans, Cuban- and North- alike, would be better off with as much contact as possible.
© 2002 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.