Fair Play for Cuba - written by Corrado Rosca

When the broad topic of foreign relations throughout Latin America was raised in the context of the 2012 Republican presidential debates, Rep. Ron Paul boldly shouted out ....."And that goes for Cuba as well; we should be friends with Cuba and trade with Cuba." For some reason they didn't call the men-in-white-coats to wrestle Ron Paul into a straight-jacket and drive him away in a wagon. He had dared assert the unthinkable right on national TV and even worse, he made the statements right there in Florida in the week before an election in which he was seeking the support of Floridians.

Everybody knows that the Cuban-Americans concentrated in Florida are a well regarded voting bloc in and that they are said to be vehemently Anti-Castro and Pro-Embargo. Ron Paul asked them why? Why would they not want to visit their homeland, to wander the streets where their grandparents lived, to visit lost cousins, to sit in the town square and enjoy the traditional food and culture for a few days? Maybe there are even gravesites of their ancestors deserted and unattended. Maybe some of the older generation of Cuban immigrants would even desire their own final resting place back in the homeland. Why would these folks choose to turn a cold shoulder to their heritage and their birth right?

Ron Paul also asks us why we choose to deprive ourselves the right of traveling to Cuba and trading with that nation. We certianly find no negative issues in trading with the Peoples Republic of China which is the biggest Communist nation on earth. China is our Most Favored Nation. We don't worry about whether or when the oppressed Chinese people are going to rise up and throw off the yokes of Communist tyranny. We are too busy buying everything the Communist Chinese produce to worry for one minute about their politics.

Oh, but Cuba! What a threat to our way of life the Cubans are indeed.

In case nobody noticed in the last 52 years the sanctions, the trade embargo, the travel ban and the propaganda assault have not been any particular threat to the Cuban regime. It's actually hard to think of any other Country on earth that has been governed by one party as successfully as has Cuba for 52 years (and still going strong). The sanctions have been fabulously successful in keeping American ideas out of Cuba. Ideas like Democracy, freedom and human rights have not been flooded onto Cuba's shores. The State Department has made sure that Cuba has remained properly isolated and well protected from that entire democracy hubbub that troubled the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Castro never had to worry about that stuff being imported. We made sure of it.

I guess the strategy has been to starve them out. This hasn't had any effect either. First of all they are in no way isolated. Canadians, British, Germans, French, Jamaicans and Spanish citizens apparently all love to visit Cuba and they have been doing so in record numbers. The Cuban Tourist industry is flourishing. The only isolated group is we ourselves. We do not allow ourselves to enjoy Cuba. It is illegal for us only! As for the punishment of depriving them of the cornucopia of American goods and products enjoyed the world over they really haven't noticed the difference. They have shopping malls full of Nike sneakers. They drink Coca-Cola. They have French Vodka. They drive Toyotas. What we won't sell them somebody else gladly will provide. They need rice and wheat. They buy it from Russia. Ours is better and cheaper and closer but Obama and Clinton won't let our farmers send any of their exports to Cuba.

I am sure someone could find the poverty in Cuba and "prove me wrong." But the fact that there is obviously embargo-related stress on the Cuban economy and that there are masses of poor people in Cuba does not make the case for the sanctions. Jamaica has no sanctions, Haiti has no sanctions. How have those island nations benefited from our helping hand? Those nations are perpetually much poorer than Cuba is and they enjoy our full economic cooperation. The point is that we can not control the economies of these independent jurisdictions all that much, either pro or con. We can choose to be friends or enemies but either way the people in those countries will have to make it on the own to the largest degree. We can, however, continue to punish ourselves. We can pay triple for sugar. We can make American Airlines fly Caribbean zigzag routes that don't cross Cuba while Air Jamaica enjoys full fly over privileges. We can continue to pay $125.00 a night to stay at a resort hotel in Santo Domingo or San Juan while our Canadian friends pay half that much money to play on wide white sand beaches near Havana. We can continue to act like stupid bullies while everyone else in the world makes peace and enjoys each others friendship and trade.

I don't remember all of what happened in 1959. I have read that the Mafia got driven out of Cuba the night of the Revolution and they later teamed up with exiles from the old Batista regime to0 be equipped and egged on by the CIA to launch ridiculous attacks on the island. I have read that these same so-called anti-revolutionary groups may have participated in the assassination of Kennedy in retaliation for their perceived betrayal by him in the infamous Bay of Pigs military defeat. I have read that these same dopes were still agitating for power and attention during Nixon's administration and may have been front in center in the Watergate break-in. What I have not read, however, is just what exactly has happened in the immediate past thirty years that keeps us tied to these hard core crazies and drives a foreign policy that placates a few dozen old bar stool soldiers of fortune at the expense of the freedoms of the other 325 million forward thinking Americans. Barack Obama, were you even born in 1959?