Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence
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We believed at the beginning that when we established the fullest equality before the law and complete intolerance for any demonstration of sexual discrimination in the case of women, or racial discrimination in the case of ethnic minorities, these phenomena would vanish from our society. It was some time before we discovered that marginality and racial discrimination with it are not something that one gets rid of with a law or even with ten laws.28
The speech was remarkable because Cuban officials had treated the open discussion of race—or any issue that divided Cubans into socially constructed categories—almost as if it were counterrevolutionary.
The “official silence” about racial inequality, de la Fuente argues, actually “contributed to the survival, reproduction, and even creation of racist ideologies. . . . [Racist] discourse found fertile breeding ground in private spaces, where race continued to influence social relations among friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members.”29 However, Cuban leaders have countered the taboo in the twenty-first century, as Fidel Castro’s 2000 speech suggests. Notably, Raúl Castro acknowledged the persistence of racism during his opening speech to the Seventh Congress of the Cuban Communist Party in April 2016. “The fight against any trace of racism that impedes or halts the rise to leadership roles of Black and mixed race Cubans,” he declared,
must continue without respite. To consolidate the results in this important and just policy of the Revolution, we must work systematically, with foresight and intentionality. A matter of this importance cannot be at the mercy of spontaneity or improvisation.30
Yet scholars are still unable to determine the extent of racial disparities because the government does not collect the necessary data. For this reason, Morales argues, a key step in overcoming racism in Cuba is to require that official statistics “be gathered by color.” Even though all Cubans benefit from an “extraordinarily humanitarian social policy,” he writes in a blog widely read in Cuba, “we have historically different starting points, the experiences from which are transmitted generation to generation, carrying with them a colonial and neocolonial history of five hundred years.” He concludes that “the only way to obliterate this complex reality is to base social policy on inequalities that actually exist.”31
Dialogue
The absence of discussion in Cuba about institutional racism, and the “silence” about the way darker-skinned Cubans suffer more than lighter-skinned Cubans from the growing inequality on the island are akin to the lack of meaningful dialogue between Cubans on the island and those in the diaspora. Greater openness and dialogue about both issues would likely benefit everyone.
As Morales recommends, a first step with regard to racism would be for the government to gather the necessary data for analysis. It also should encourage open debate of the subject and follow up with serious efforts at amelioration. Speaking from the audience in May 2009 at a conference sponsored by Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Mariela Castro Espín criticized use of the term “Afro-Cuban.” She argued that it embodies a redundancy, because every Cuban has some African blood, every Cuban is of a mixed race. But, she acknowledged, discrimination against Cubans with darker skins exists in Cuba, which is a problem that needs solving without dividing people into tribal-like categories. Her comments echoed those of Fidel Castro in 1959, which we noted in chapter 8, when he emphasized the unity of all Cubans and condemned discrimination “against a Cuban . . . over a matter of lighter or darker skin.” The problem of racism in Cuba will not disappear if the government tries to sweep it under the rug. It is more likely to emerge with violence and anger if such a discussion is suppressed, which would not benefit any Cuban.
Jorge Domínguez suggests that both Cuba and its diaspora would also benefit from increased dialogue that would enable the country to involve émigrés in its development. He argues that such a dialogue would need to occur within the diaspora. In fact, the likelihood that diaspora Cubans will play a greater role in Cuba’s future has been increased as a result of more family travel, “thanks to the measures taken by the US government in 2009 and accepted by the Cuban government,” Domínguez notes. This “has already generated multiple dialogues within many Cuban families. These valuable dialogues represent a breakthrough in communications.”32
Notes
1. Recorded telephone interview with the authors, July 22, 2016.
2. José María Heredia, “Niágara” and “Himno del Desterrado,” in Poesias de Don José Maria Heredia, 98–103, 156–60.
3. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 37.
4. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 37–38.
5. Eckstein, The Immigrant Divide, 15.
6. Gustavo N. López, “Hispanics of Cuban Origin in the United States, 2013” (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, September 2015), 1, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/09/15/hispanics-of-cuban-origin-in-the-united-states-2013.
7. Susan Eckstein and Lorena Barberia, “Cuban Americans and Their Transnational Ties,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 267.
8. Nelson Amaro and Alejandro Portes, “Una Sociologia del Exilio: Situación de los Grupos Cubanos en Estados Unidos,” Aportes, no. 23 (January 1972): 13.
9. Associated Press, “Castro Tells Rally Cubans Are Free to Leave Country,” New York Times, September 30, 1965, 1, 2.
10. Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants, 61–68.
11. The Cuban Adjustment Act, Public Law No. 89-732, November 2, 1966.
12. Eckstein and Barberia, “Cuban Americans and Their Transnational Ties,” 267.
13. Masud-Piloto, From Welcomed Exiles to Illegal Immigrants, 54.
14. Jens Manuel Krogstad, “Surge in Cuban Immigration to US Continues into 2016,” FacTank, Pew Research Center, August 5, 2016, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/05/cuban-immigration-to-u-s-surges-as-relations-warm.
15. Fulton Armstrong, “US-Cuba: Migration Policy Growing Tortuous, Dangerous,” AULA Blog, Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, February 4, 2016, https://aulablog.net/2016/02/04/u-s-cuba-migration-policy-growing-tortuous-dangerous.
16. Roberto González Echevarria, “Exiled by Ike, Saved by America,” New York Times, January 7, 2011, A23.
17. Ecsktein, The Immigrant Divide, 16, 19.
18. Jens Manuel Krogstad, “After Decades of GOP Support, Cubans Shifting toward the Democratic Party,” FacTank, Pew Research Center, June 24, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/24/after-decades-of-gop-support-cubans-shifting-toward-the-democratic-party.
19. López, “Hispanics of Cuban Origin in the United States,” 2.
20. López, “Hispanics of Cuban Origin in the United States,” 2.
21. Eckstein, The Immigrant Divide, 27.
22. Steven A. Holmes, “Miami Melting Pot Proves Explosive,” New York Times, December 9, 1990, E4.
23. Alejandro de la Fuente, “Recreating Racism: Race and Discrimination in Cuba’s Special Period,” Socialism and Democracy 15, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 68.
24. De la Fuente, “Recreating Racism,” 77–79.
25. Pew Hispanic Center, “Cubans in the United States,” Fact Sheet, August 25, 2006, http://www.pewhispanic.org/2006/08/25/cubans-in-the-united-states.
26. De la Fuente, “Recreating Racism,” 69.
27. Esteban Morales, “Notas Sobre el Tema Racial en la Realidad Cubana de Hoy,” Esteban Morales Domínguez Blog, September 2011 (authors’ translation), http://estebanmoralesdominguez.blogspot.ca/2011/09/notas-sobre-el-tema-racial-en-la.html.
28. Fidel Castro Ruz, “Speech at the Cuban Solidarity Rally,” New York, September 8, 2000, http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2000/ing/f080900i.html.
29. De la Fuente, “Recreating Racism,” 81.
30. Raúl Castro Ruz, “The development of the national economy, along with the struggle for pea
ce, and our ideological resolve, constitute the Party’s principal missions,” April 18, 2016 (Granma International translation), http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2016-04-18/the-development-of-the-national-economy-along-with-the-struggle-for-peace-and-our-ideological-resolve-constitute-the-partys-principal-missions.
31. Morales, “Notas Sobre el Tema Racial en la Realidad Cubana de Hoy.”
32. Jorge I. Domínguez, “Dialogues within and between Cuba and Its Diaspora,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution under Raúl Castro, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
Chapter 20
Helms-Burton, US-Cuban Relations, and Terrorism, 1995–1998
Although US policies on Cuba mean relatively little in Washington, the implications of even the most trivial policy have enormous impact on the island. In Cuba, every nuance and component of US policy carries potentially profound consequence. Indeed, for Cuba, US politics constitutes a major determinant in the creation and implementation of both foreign and domestic policy.
—Soraya M. Castro Mariño, Cuban political scientist1
Helms-Burton
At mid-decade, Cuba’s leaders finally were able to take a deep breath. With two successive years of growth in the gross domestic product, the worst of the early 1990s was over.2 US efforts to wreak havoc on the island had immiserated many, but the regime had survived. The revival emerged largely in the service sector, as a result of increased tourism, and from more than two hundred joint venture agreements with Western companies by 1995.
Cuba’s staying power frustrated anti-Castro hardliners in the United States. They also feared that President Clinton’s advisers were pushing him to reduce tensions with Cuba.3 National Security Council staffers Morton Halperin and Richard Feinberg, in fact, had been advocates of improved relations with Cuba before entering the Clinton administration. At the State Department, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Peter Tarnoff had negotiated the 1994 migration accord that ended the “rafter” exodus by sending 25,000 Cubans to Guantánamo Naval Base. Meanwhile, the Cuban government made it easier for the United States to have further negotiations by releasing several prominent political prisoners. In June 1995, Eloy Gutiérrez Menoyo made his peace with the Revolution. A founder of the counterrevolutionary terrorist organization Alpha 66, Gutiérrez Menoyo had spent twenty-two years in Cuban jails.
However, the fortunes of the anti-Castroites also turned favorable at the start of 1995. Republicans in Congress had gained House and Senate majorities in the 1994 midterm elections, which made Jesse Helms (R-NC) the new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Dan Burton, a right-wing Republican from Indiana, became chair of the House International Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee. Cuban-Americans had donated generously to both of their campaigns, and Burton’s first hearing as subcommittee chair focused on Cuba. The star witness was Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the CANF, who proclaimed that “the Cuban-American community could not have expected a dearer friend . . . to assume the chairmanship.”4
Helms recognized that the Cuban economy had begun to rise from its nadir because of foreign investment, which then became the focus of his energies. In February 1995, he and Burton sponsored bills in the Senate and House titled “The Cuban Liberty and Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act,” aimed at discouraging investment in Cuba and further limiting trade.
In presenting his version on the Senate floor, Helms made clear its intent—the overthrow of the Cuban government. Yet he noted that he would allow Cubans to decide “whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or horizontal position.” Otherwise, he gave them no choice, saying, “but he must and will leave Cuba.”5 The lengthy and detailed measure, which became commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act, read as if it were a formal indictment of the Cuban government. The bill mandated that US sanctions could be lifted only after Cubans elect a new government “democratically” and that it “does not include Fidel Castro or Raúl Castro.”
Cuban political scientist Soraya Castro likened Helms-Burton to the 1901 Platt Amendment, writing that it would “bring Cuba back to the status it had early in the twentieth century, when the United States dictated the destiny of the Cuban nation.”6 Similarly, Harvard scholar Jorge Domínguez asserted that the law “is quite faithful to the theme of the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary. It claims for the United States the unilateral right to decide a wide array of domestic policies and arrangements in a nominally sovereign post Castro Cuba.”7
The House and Senate versions of Helms-Burton were not identical, and neither commanded an immediate majority in its respective chamber. Helms and Burton were willing to bide their time, a Senate staffer told us in an interview, hoping to pressure Democrats into supporting an amalgam of the legislation during the 1996 presidential election year. They had little idea how Cuban-American militants would enable the legislators to pass a law they only dreamed might be possible.
Cuban-American Militants Take Charge
New Immigration Policy Provokes Anti-Castro Hardliners
At the start of 1995, conditions at the Guantánamo Naval Base were bleak. The Cuban detainees had few recreation facilities and their main food staple was C-rations. Some had begun to mutilate themselves, “injecting diesel fuel in their veins,” hoping to be sent to the United States for treatment.8 In April 1995, General John Sheehan, commander of the US Atlantic Command, warned the White House that some Cubans were likely to stage riots on the base during the summer months, when the temperature would rise past 120 degrees Fahrenheit, endangering both US soldiers and the refugees themselves.9 His warning propelled the administration into new talks with Cuba. The Clinton administration needed a way out of a dilemma its September rafters agreement had created. If the US government did nothing, it would have to deal with a restive group of exiles who saw no end to their quasi-imprisonment. Yet if Clinton permitted the Guantánamo Cubans to emigrate to the United States, he would be encouraging a new wave of rafters who believed they could reach their desired destination after suffering the naval base conditions for only nine months.
So Clinton sent Tarnoff back to negotiate with Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón, first in New York and then in Toronto. The talks were so secret that officials on the State Department’s Cuba desk were not informed for fear they would try to scuttle the mission. The result was a policy known as wet foot–dry foot. The Clinton administration announced that it would admit most of the 25,000 Cubans housed at the naval base. But to discourage future rafters, the US Coast Guard would thereafter return to Cuba any migrants it intercepted at sea. (Those who managed to touch dry US territory would continue to be classified as political refugees and given parole status.) In turn, the Cuban government pledged it would take no punitive actions against those whom the United States returned, and it would permit US diplomats to make periodic visits anywhere in the country to ensure that returning rafters were not punished.
Anti-Castro Cuban exiles and their allies in Congress responded to the announcement with outrage. But José Basulto, a Bay of Pigs veteran who had engaged in violent actions against Cuba in the 1960s, also was fed up with the so-called Cuba Lobby in Washington. Traditional lobbying for new laws was too slow and unreliable for him. Basulto had founded Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that flew small planes over the Florida Straits in search of Cuban rafters who needed assistance. While US media generally described Brothers as “humanitarian,” Basulto’s goal was to destabilize Cuba. In frequent broadcasts on Radio Martí and Miami radio stations, he encouraged Cubans to leave the island, promising to find them and notify the US Coast Guard to bring them to the United States. But that promise was no longer viable after the September 1994 agreement required the Coast Guard to send rafters to Guantánamo—and following the May 1995 agreement, back to Cuba.
Brothers to the Rescue Repeatedly Violates Cuban Airspace
In July 1995, Basulto found a new raison d�
��être for his organization: provoking the Cuban government in the hope of derailing rapprochement. With a Miami television cameraman on board, he flew low over the Malecon, Havana’s waterfront roadway, dropping religious medals and bumper stickers along the route.10 The Malecon is lined with tourist hotels, apartment houses, office buildings, and Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Relations. That evening, Miami’s NBC affiliate station aired film of the mission. On subsequent flights, he dropped leaflets advocating that Cubans rise up against their government. Cuban officials assert that Basulto’s planes made more than twenty-five such flights, a claim the US State Department partially validated.11
Given Basulto’s background, Cuban security officials viewed the flights as a serious threat. He had come to his “humanitarian” project late in life, claiming he had converted to nonviolence after engaging in militant actions for many years. After the Bay of Pigs invasion, he worked with the Central Intelligence Agency on Operation Mongoose, but left the terrorist program allegedly because he was frustrated by its slow pace. He then orchestrated a spectacular raid on a Havana tourist hotel where he believed Fidel spent his leisure time, firing scores of rounds at the building from small cannons.12 “We were pretty [lousy] terrorists,” he told the Washington Post in 1997, “because somebody else would have got explosive ammunition.” He devoted the remainder of the 1960s to anti-Castro activities with violent groups in South Florida, believing “that the only hope for the Cuban people lay in the physical elimination of Fidel Castro.”13 In the 1980s, he again worked with the CIA, training and helping the contras to launch terrorist attacks against Nicaragua.14
The Cuban government protested Basulto’s flights officially to US authorities on at least four occasions. It did so informally as well, once to Rep. Bill Richardson (D-NM) and on another occasion to a group of former high-ranking US military officers visiting Cuba. The group then reported to the National Security Council staff that Cuba was likely to shoot at future flights that violated Cuban airspace.15 From Cuba’s perspective, Basulto’s flights were akin to Al Qaeda pilots flying over Washington and dropping innocuous leaflets. The risk was too great that on a future flight Basulto might switch from leaflets to bombs. Cuban exiles had done that before. Yet US officials made minimal efforts to stop the flights. When asked by a radio interviewer what pressure the US government had placed on him, Basulto joked that the authorities had been “on vacation.”16