CUBAN TRANSITIONS

One does not even have to look at the fallout regarding Cuba’s non-presence at this year’s Summit of the Americas to know that it was a total failure. The incident with the Secret Service Agents and women-of-possibly-ill-repute, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s dramatic exit follow the US and Canada’s unwillingness to support in her campaign for the Falkland/Malvina Islands, and Obama’s refusal to let go of the US’s quixotic quest for hemispheric free trade zone all show that the US is out of touch with Latin America and needs to radically revamp how it views the region if wants to stop being embarrassed in its dealings with its closest neighbors. At the time, it highlights the newly emerging power of a Latin American political bloc, one that forges across ideological lines. The issue of Cuba, and the US’s insistence to stay in the Cold War as Latin America looks to enter a 21st-century global reality, shows the drastic reversal of long-held beliefs the US needs to shake about Latin America.

Cuba wound up being the straw the broke the camel’s back at the Summit of the Americas this year, the issue that forced Latin American leaders to break with the US and refuse to continue using the Summit as a meeting place until the US stepped in line to regional demands. Even before the summit, several leaders, including Rafael Correa refused to attend this year due to Cuba’s refused admittance. At the summit, every country in the OAS, besides Canada and the US, called for Cuba to be present at future meetings involving the organization. When the two refused to capitulate, it was decided that no future meetings would be held until Cuba was able to join in. Unlike in summits passed, no declaration was passed; with the US disagreeing with nearly every other country on every single issue, there was no point in pushing a joint document “Hopefully in three years we will see Cuba” said Colombia’s president Juan Manuel Santos, referring to the scheduled 2015 meeting, which many countries said they would not attend if Cuba was not invited. The fact that otherwise strong ally to the US Presidente Santos is even calling for Cuba at the summit should be enough proof to show that the US is very out of touch with the rest of the hemisphere in its refusal to normalize relations with its neighbor 90 miles to the south. US adversary Evo Morales went even further, calling the US’s overbearing decision to not have Cuba at future summits akin to that of a dictatorship. Obama, on his part, said that he was stuck in a “time warp” with regards to the Cuba issue. The embargo is nearly half a century old at this point; who’s in the time warp again, Mr. President?

As Latin America finds its political wings and becomes a force in its old right, and as globalization loosens the US’s hegemonic grasp on the world, we need to adopt our foreign policy to ensure that we our treating our neighbors with respect, not as colonies. Only then can we ever hope to achieve long terms goals of increased economic activity in the region. As China looks to encroach on formerly American markets, and the MERCOSUR economy grows even larger, America will have to work harder to achieve economic goals. Part of this will be revamping political relations, particularly with Cuba, in order to ensure these goals are met. In my last blog post, I talked about the benefits of engaging Cuba and lifting the embargo. However, the problems encountered at the summit show that the embargo’s problems go beyond that. It is absolutely not in America’s interests to sacrifice decent relations with half of the world simply because one tiny island refuses to submit its economy to ours. As the embargo begins to lose its historical relevance, and as Cuba continues to find ways to go around the embargo without sacrificing its revolutionary government, it simply becomes increasingly unteneable and nonsensical to maintain it. Cuba already has a much better PR program that the US in Latin America, sending doctors where we send counter-insurgency Special Ops and DEA agents to fight an unwinnable war on drugs. Moreover, as we continue to support other dictators and nefarious characters throughout the world, as well incarcerate obscene amounts of our citizens, our calls about refusing to talk to a dictatorship who wrongfully imprisons its people are going to ring hollow. It’s time the US started looking realistically not only at Cuba, but at our relations as a whole. Ending the embargo, or at least engaging in higher level talks with Cuba, is a doable first step towards righting these wrongs.

Quotes taken from the Al Jazeera and New York Times articles of the 2012 Summit of the Americas