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NEWSLETTER
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U.S.-Latin America-Cuba: A Sixty-Five-Year Love-Hate Triangle By Cristina Eguizabal
Alan Riding, the legendary New York Times correspondent, referred to U.S.-Mexico relations as that of “distant neighbors” in his book of that title in 1984. Accurate at the time, it is no longer true. Twenty years of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) changed that. Mexico and the United States have become as close neighbors as Canada and the U.S. traditionally have been.
That latest alteration in the centuries-old relationship binding the two wary neighbors is only one example of the shifting nature of alliances over time between the U.S. and its Latin neighbors.
Consider Cuba. In contrast to Mexico, that island nation, the other neighbor on the U.S. southern border, was until 1959 the Latin American country most densely linked to the U.S. It was its “closest neighbor”, so to speak. At a time when other Latin American economies were modeled on state-centered import-substitution development strategies, Cuba’s was already wide open to foreign direct investment, primarily from the U.S.
But that changed after January 1, 1959, at neck-breaking speed, and I saw it happen. I was there: a schoolgirl who in December 1958 was in third grade at the American Dominican Academy in Havana and a year later did not have a school to go to. My American friends and teachers had been evacuated by their government and there were no more private schools to attend because private education had been eliminated.
U.S.-Cuba relations deteriorated rapidly: the U.S. economic embargo, imposed as a response to Cuba’s nationalization of U.S. property; the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion; Cuba’s expulsion from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Missile crisis in 1962 marked the lowest points in the relationship. By 1963 Cuba and the U.S. had become “the most distant of neighbors” and have remained so ever since.
Cuba-Latin American relations have gone sometimes on parallel tracks in the same direction, other times in opposite directions. Once Cuba was firmly established in the Soviet Camp, a fact that President John F. Kennedy had accepted as a pragmatic compromise in order to end the 1962 missile crisis, Washington’s obsession became to avoid “another Cuba” in Latin America, both by means of carrots—such as the Marshall Plan-inspired Alliance for Progress—and sticks—based on counterinsurgency strategies and, if necessary, direct intervention, as in the Dominican Republic in 1965.
The outlook appeared promising in 1975 as Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was trying to normalize U.S.-Cuba relations. Then Mexico and Costa Rica sponsored a vote at the OAS freeing member states to re-establish diplomatic relations with the island nation. Most Latin American governments did so.
But Fidel Castro’s decision to send troops to Angola to help the new independent nation resist the invasion by South African troops ended the unborn détente with the U.S. Kissinger was furious. Recent declassified documents show that, with the authorization of President Gerald Ford, he even ordered contingency plans to bomb Cuba. Fortunately, he was not able to act on them. Then Jimmy Carter won the 1976 presidential election with a completely different agenda concerning Cuba.
President Carter renewed the U.S. attempts to re-establish some kind of normalcy in its relations with Cuba and Interest Sections were established in each capital. Havana agreed to release a significant number of political prisoners and allowed Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives on the island.
Cuba was not the only preoccupation on Washington’s Latin American agenda. President Carter and Omar Torrijos, Panama’s leader, signed the first Panama Canal Treaty, ending more than 10 years of on and off negotiations. The 1977 treaty set the road map for steps that would give Panamanians total control of the interoceanic path in the year 2000. Latin Americans, the Cubans included, loudly celebrated the beginning of the end of U.S. control over the canal. Maybe, it was thought, Washington and Havana could reach a settlement of their disputes, which included expropriations of U.S. property without compensation and the continued U.S. military presence at Guantanamo Bay.
But all hopes were crushed when, on April 1, 1980, a Havana city bus crashed against the gates of the Peruvian Embassy with five Cubans on board demanding political asylum. A tit for tat ensued, resulting in the Cuban government’s decision to discontinue protection to the Peruvian embassy. By April 5, 750 people occupied the residency and by April 6 some 10,000 were crammed in the perimeter of the grounds.
In a gesture of defiance, Fidel Castro opened the port of Mariel to anyone wanting to leave Cuba as long as they had someone to pick them up. Cuban exiles organized a boatlift that ultimately brought approximately 125,000 Cubans to Florida on 1,700 boats.
The Mariel exodus had profound consequences in the U.S. The whole episode added an additional front to the already embattled President Carter. Having to deal with the Iran hostage crisis, he really did not need this new tough nut to crack. More generally, in the U.S. the marielitos began changing the racial and ideological composition of the Cuban-American community since the newly arrived Cubans were, in general, of modest origin, had been raised in Cuban revolutionary schools and had a more nuanced perception of the regime’s successes and failures.
The Reagan years were years of increasing tensions in the hemisphere. With the Cuban Communist Party’s very important role in supporting Central American insurgencies, for the first time since 1962 the U.S. began publicly to invoke “roll back”. A famous quote of Secretary of State Alexander Haig, cited by President Ronald Reagan’s well-regarded biographer, Lou Cannon, “Give me the word and I’ll make that island a f… parking lot”, is still making the rounds in Venezuela’s Chavista circles.
After the end of Soviet subsidies that had for decades kept the island’s economy afloat, we all thought the Castro brothers’ days in power were counted. However, neither widespread rationing of food and fuel imposed by the so-called “special period,” increased repression of reformist voices nor, most important of all, the trial, conviction on drug trafficking and treason charges and execution of Cuba’s top military hero, Arnoldo Ochoa, were enough to unseat the former rebel commanders.
While the Cuban leadership was weathering probably its worse crisis ever with the Ochoa debacle, in Washington the Cuba debate followed familiar narratives: a demand for tightened economic sanctions on one side and a proposed policy of constructive engagement, à la canadienne, on the other.
But a third narrative was emerging: carrots and sticks. Get hard on the Cuban regime, but be open to the people. The Cuban Democracy Act, co-sponsored by Congressmen Robert Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, constitutes the best embodiment of this last narrative. It tightened the embargo by prohibiting foreign-based subsidiaries of U.S. companies from trading with Cuba, and banning travel to the island by U.S. citizens and family remittances. But it also opened the possibility of “people to people” contacts. Those were later expanded by President William Clinton to include new travel regulations licensing travel to Cuba for humanitarian, religious and educational purposes.
Enter the Ford Foundation, which took full advantage of this opportunity to upgrade its funding supporting U.S. academic institutions’ faculty and student exchanges with Cuba. The most important of those were the Cuba Exchange Programs at Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and Harvard Universities and the City University of New York.
In August 1994, desperate for food and fuel-powered transportation, Cubans began to flee the island by the thousands, often in home-made rafts. Following the 1989 scenario, Fidel announced on August 11 that Cuban police would no longer stop people trying to leave the island as long as they did not try to hijack boats or planes. This decision set the scenery for the “balsero crisis”.
High-level negotiations between Washington and Havana were brokered by Mexican President Salinas de Gortari and the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, a Fidel Castro confidant. The negotiations, although difficult and protracted (a final accord was reached only in May 1995), yielded a new migratory regime that is known today as wet foot-dry foot: If you make it to U.S. soil, you are granted political asylum. If you are detained at sea you are sent back. Washington and Havana agreed to meet thereafter once a year to discuss migration issues.
Then came another setback. Less than a year later, on February 24, 1996, the Cuban air force shot down two Florida-based aircrafts belonging to the anti-Castro exile group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four young Cuban-Americans. The group had been formed to aid Cuban refugees trying to flee the island and flew regularly over Cuban airspace. In reaction, President Clinton ordered a new ban on commercial flights between Cuba and the United States, restricted Cuban diplomats from traveling outside of their posts in New York and Washington, and authorized compensation from frozen Cuban bank accounts for the families of the victims.
More important, the president declared that he would "move promptly" to reach an agreement with Congress to pass the Helms-Burton legislation. Anti-Castro forces in Congress were able to toughen the original bill by adding a new clause that codified the embargo into law. No longer would it be a presidential prerogative to lift sanctions against Cuba; now it would take majority votes in Congress to do so.
Washington and Havana were back to square one. And then Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in 1998 and exhorted the country “to open itself to the world and the world …to open itself to Cuba.” Taking advantage of the Pope’s exhortation, President Clinton restored direct charter flights and eased restrictions on remittances.
Six months later it was the turn for “baseball diplomacy”. On March 26, 1999, a chartered flight with the entire Baltimore Orioles team on board took off for Havana. Two days later they defeated the Cuban National team, 3 to 2. Five weeks after that the Cuban team repaid the visit by traveling to Baltimore where they beat the Orioles, 12 to 6.
Relations seemed to be improving. At the Foundation, we thought it was a good time for us to go to Cuba to look for interesting ways to expand our grantmaking. The idea was to take full advantage of OFAC licensing opportunities and try to fund directly Cuban organizations.
We had a license that authorized us to travel to the island. The problem was the Cuban government did not want us there, not even as visitors. The Foundation had played an important role as a funder in post-war Europe supporting non-Marxist liberal intellectuals who were seen by the Soviets as mercenary anti-Soviet cold warriors. Fifty years later the Cubans suspected we were trying to replicate the experience.
We applied for the visas and waited several months but nothing happened. Then one day, out of the blue, I got a call from the Cuban Mission at the U.N. inviting us to reapply and this time, “bingo”, we got the visas for Brad Smith, the Peace and Social Justice Vice president; Anthony Romero of the Human Rights and International Cooperation unit, and me, the program officer responsible for the Cuba program. We eschewed the Miami charter route and traveled instead through Cancun on regular commercial flights.
Havana was everything we had heard: frozen in time and decrepit, but incredibly beautiful. Our itinerary was mostly suggested by the Cuban authorities except for three meetings with people I knew from my previous life in Costa Rica: Humberto Solás, one of Cuba’s cinematographic luminaries; Isabel Jaramillo Edwards, a Cuban academic of Chilean descent, and Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Havana’s Vicar General.
When I began working with Cuba, a Cuban-American friend gave me the best advice anyone has given me regarding my work at the Foundation: “Treat Cuba as if it were a normal country”, and I did. It allowed me to keep my sanity.
Once back in New York after our Cuba trip, I invited a group of people who had experience with Cuba: some who had done research in Cuba, others who had worked with European and Canadian NGOs; program officers responsible for working with Cuban counterparts in other foundations and, why not, Cubans from the island.
In Havana, following normal business etiquette, all the people we met handed us their visiting cards with addresses and telephone numbers (there was no e-mail in Cuba at that time). So I picked up the phone and began calling people, inviting them to come to New York. With an invitation from the Foundation they would be able get a U.S. visa and, if they had a visa, we did not need a license to pay for their travel.
Next thing I know I get a visit from two Cuban U.N. Mission diplomats who scold me for breach of protocol. In Cuba at the time you could not contact directly Cuban citizens. You had to go through the ministry of foreign affairs. Needless to say, with the exception of Solás, the filmmaker who had privileges linked to his status in the film world, nobody else was allowed to travel. Until very recently Cuban citizens living in the island needed an exit visa.
After that meeting and endless discussions, we decided to move the program from the U.S.-Cuba axis and adopt a more regional/global approach. We funded organizations in Latin America (Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic) and in Europe (Spain, France, Poland and the Vatican). It was a good move. But we hit a snag: During the presidency of George W. Bush, relations with Cuba deteriorated once more. Academic exchanges almost stopped, Cuban scholars were systematically refused visas to visit the U.S. and licenses were issued in dribs and drabs.
After President Barack Obama was elected we thought things would start moving swiftly again, but they did not.
President Obama had hoped to normalize relations with Cuba after taking office in 2009 but his ambitions were complicated by Cuba’s arrest that year of Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen working in Havana for a USAID-funded project. Gross was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of espionage.
On the OAS front things did move a bit. On June 3, 2009, foreign ministers of OAS member countries assembled for the organization’s 39th General Assembly in Honduras and voted unanimously to lift Cuba's suspension from the organization.
Cuba’s apparent disinterest notwithstanding—Havana has not asked for its reincorporation to the OAS—Latin Americans, particularly Venezuela’s allies, began pressuring hard for the inclusion of Cuba in the Summit of the Americas, a hemispheric gathering of heads of state that takes place every three to four years.
The first one, convened by President Clinton, was held in Miami in 1994. In 2012, the Presidents of Venezuela, Ecuador and Nicaragua refused to attend the meeting in Cartagena, Colombia, and the presidents of Bolivia and Argentina left the meeting before its conclusion. Cuba’s inclusion in the Inter American system was not the only contentious issue, but it was an important one.
The next summit, the seventh, took place in Panama in April. Panama announced from the start that Cuba would make its guest list regardless of how Washington felt about it.
Below the surface things were moving. President Obama had been urged from different quarters to be bolder. Earlier in 2014, Pope Francis wrote to both Obama and Cuba’s new president, Raúl Castro, and urged them to “initiate a new phase in relations” between their countries. The two leaders complied and quiet negotiations were held in Ottawa and the Vatican for almost a year. A deal was finalized at the Vatican in October.
The Foundation played a tangential role in this dramatic move forward on the long journey toward U.S.-Cuba rapprochement. A long-standing Foundation grantee in Argentina, the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a human rights NGO, had earlier approached the Argentinean pope and asked him to lend a hand. Clearly he was receptive.
On December 17, the day the Cuban people honor San Lazaro/Babalú Ayé’s, one of the most revered saints/orishas of Catholics and Santeros alike, Presidents Obama and Castro announced simultaneously that they would re-establish diplomatic ties.
But the agreement went further than that. In true Cold War fashion, as part of the accord, Castro agreed to release Alan Gross as well as an unnamed Cuban citizen who spied for the U.S. and has been in a Cuban jail for nearly 20 years. President Obama, in return, released the three remaining “Cuban five”, a quintet of Cuban intelligence officers who were imprisoned for spying on U.S. soil.
This time the Cubans seem really serious. The backdrop to Cuba’s volte-face owes much to the unraveling of the Venezuelan economy. For several years, Cuba has been kept afloat by 80,000 barrels of oil a day from Caracas under a deal set up by Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s deceased Bolivarian leader and protégé of Fidel Castro. It has been widely reported that Raúl Castro, who succeeded his older brother Fidel in 2008, and Nicolás Maduro who succeeded Chávez four years later, are not as close as their predecessors were.
Following the joint announcement in January, Washington unveiled new travel and trade regulations that will allow U.S. travelers to visit Cuba without first obtaining a government license. Airlines will be permitted to provide commercial service to the country in addition to charters, and travelers will be allowed to spend money there with their U.S. credit and debit cards. In addition, U.S. insurance companies will be allowed to cover health, life and travel insurance for individuals living in or visiting Cuba, and U.S. companies will be authorized to invest in certain types of selected small businesses.
Then, in April, immediately after the summit meeting, President Obama made a major announcement that the United States has removed Cuban from its list of states sponsoring terrorism. That move, along with ongoing conversations between the United States and Cuba, will certainly boost Washington’s standing in the region.
However, the suspense goes on. The Castro-Obama drama has already been replaced by an unfolding Maduro-Obama drama following steps by Washington to revoke the visas of top Venezuelan officials and freeze their bank accounts.
I left the Foundation in 2008 so I have not been involved in its Cuba programming since then. However, as an outside observer with many Cuban and Cuban-American friends I have learned of many old partners who continue to receive Foundation support and of new partners who have allowed the program to engage more closely with the Cuban authorities.
In particular, and symbolic of the changes moving relations between the two countries forward, is the Foundation’s continuing support for the Cuban National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), which is led by Mariela Castro Espín, a well-regarded LGTB rights advocate who happens to be Raúl Castro’s daughter.
Cristina Eguizabal, a former director of the Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida International University, worked for the Foundation from 1995 to 2007 in its Latin America and Caribbean program, its Human Rights and International Cooperation program and in the Mexico City office. She now lives in San Salvador.
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