CUBA After Fidel

...This made daily life more difficult for the U.S...

...Named Radio Marti, after the Cuban patriot, the Administration had proposed the station to Congress in 1982 as a reward to the U.S...

...It will not be a boring country in the future...

...Flexibility May Wane What it may not have, though, is a country given to flexibility...

...There is nothing in the stores, but people have what they need...

...scene...

...Rafael del Pino Diaz, an Air Force hero who fled Cuba in May 1987...

...Even as Reagan had succeeded in getting Cuba essentially to back down on Radio Marti, Sen...

...Yet, their exemplary discipline does not seem to pervade the whole island...

...But there is less certainty how it will develop...

...Cubans still look to him for assent...

...resolution...

...At the end of 1986 Cuba revoked permission for the U.S...

...This unprecedented display of Cuban counterintelligence prowess was prompted in part by Radio Marti interviews with Gen...

...citizenship last year and named him a delegate to the 1987 commission session...

...In its first term, the Administration also tightened the economic embargo against Cuba...

...Cuba has utterly confused me," he moaned...

...to endorse the Contadora peace plan (and later the Arias plan), and promise to withdraw all of its military advisers from Nicaragua if other foreign forces were also removed from the region...

...But the way that Washington would most likely secure its interests is to deal with Cuba now, with Fidel at the helm...

...Cuba sought to portray his claims as part of a widespread CIA disinformation campaign, and the interests section documentary focused Cuban popular attention on U.S...

...This view of Cuba is what continued on page 11 continued from page 6 animated the 1960s attempts to assassinate Castro...

...The problem for Cuba's aging leadership is that while the institutionalization of the last 30 years means that Cuban communism can be maintained without Castro's charisma, they still have not found a way to institute dynamic change without him...

...Rigidity Only by contrasting this weak U.S...

...In the face of seeming bureaucratic immobilism, he sought a mechanism that would maintain a revolutionary drive...

...This was followed by an announcement in February 1988 that Cuba would be willing in principle to withdraw all of its troops from Angola...

...leader leaves the Philip Brenner is an associate professor of international relations at The American University where he teaches foreign policy in the Washington Semester Program...

...4The United States responded by privately threatening to close the diplomatic post, though it is unlikely that such a move was seriously contemplated...

...But under the terms of the law he was here a sufficient period of time to qualify" for citizenship...

...human rights delegation in Geneva...

...A spokeswoman at the right-wing Cuban-American Foundation told NACLA that while Valladares has family in Miami, he has never lived in the United States and that he was granted citizenship "maybe in order to facilitate his being an ambassador of the United States...

...They seem to have a genuine confidence that the revolution will endure...

...Its most enduring feature is the 30-year-old assumption that the United States will be able to subdue the island once again when the Cuban leader dies...

...interests section (the diplomatic mission in Havana) to receive goods by way of transport charter flights from the United States...

...Everyone fulfills his job quota, but there is nothing in the stores...

...Obviously Valladares didn't stay physically in the U.S...

...Secretary of State Haig threatened to go "to the source" of instability in Central America--that is, Cuba-while deliberate leaks about new plans for military strikes against Cuba circulated through Washington...

...It may have also served as a base for covert operations or espionage...

...Sorzano orchestrated the embarrassing 1987 effort to condemn Cuba in the UN Human Rights Commission...

...It ruled that no one could hold a government position while holding a corresponding post in the party...

...They are the result of the revolution and are its best representatives...

...The search for a way to institutionalize change in part explains the "rectification campaign" begun enterprises were disbanded...

...In contrast, the United States appears to have accepted the Cuban overtures reluctantly and essentially maintained its demands intact...

...Cuba also reached out to negotiate REPORT ON THE AMERICAS its differences with the United States, but the two high-level meetings that resulted were brief and unproductive...

...Popular Cuban joke U.S...

...tourist traffic by banning the expenditure of dollars in Cuba except for journalists, scholars and Cuban exiles...

...Relations with Cuba (Westview Press), and is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, The Cuba Reader (Grove Press...

...Among other charges, del Pino alleged that Cuban military morale was low because soldiers in Angola were becoming infected with AIDS...

...Thus in theory a minister could not also control the party department responsible for policy in his or her ministry...

...After six months the agent who was sent to Cuba still had not reported back, so a second agent was dispatched to locate him...

...The Cuban response was to return the threats with invective hurled at the Administration...

...The Freeze Deepens The agreement floundered early in the second Reagan term...

...The interests section provides human intelligence-of the sort common from any embassy-that would be costly and difficult to obtain otherwise...

...But the documentary provided filmed evidence of several instances when interests section personnel left money and communication equipment at hidden locations, where they were to be picked up by Cuban double agents who uncloaked themselves during the television programs...

...interests vis-a-vis Cuba...

...The United States is likely to have a communist neighbor long after Castro is gone...

...policy toward Cuba has an eery, frozen-in-time quality...

...But this is not the only problem with Washington's approach...

...Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, for example, said in an interview last year that he expected the next generation of Cuban leaders to come from today's Young Communists...

...they have a realistic sense of life...

...Released from jail in November 1982, Valladares stayed briefly in Paris, then settled in Madrid...

...response to the profound hostility that the Reagan Administration had previously exhibited, would it be possible to describe Washington's position as positive...

...Dan Mica (D-Fla...

...blocked Cuban participation in international meetings by refusing to attend if Cuban delegates were invited...

...In contrast to 1986, a few Cuban scholars have been given visas to attend this year's meeting of the Latin American Studies Association, and other academics have been approved entry on a "case-by-case basis...

...intransigence...

...This means that after Fidel the United States will probably be faced with a country less open to change, and perhaps less willing and able to be flexible...

...It recalls the most hateful days of the Cold War, and continues to hold out the hope that the Cuban revolution can be destroyed...

...In one sense, Cuba's policy toward the United States might be described similarly as "After Reagan...

...In mid-March, the commission avoided a vote on the U.S...

...conducted hostile naval exercises out of the U.S.-controlled Guantdnamo Naval Base in Cuba...

...There is little indication that these efforts are working...

...He also noted that since restoration of the immigration accord, prohibitions on Cubans visiting the United States have been relaxed...

...But, he asserted, the United States also had altered its stance: "We didn't walk out when the Angolans brought the Cubans into the room...

...A simple policy of waiting for Fidel's demise has allowed U.S...

...However dramatic, these events do not suggest a respite in the Cold War, or even a warming trend...

...In practice, the ban prevented virtually all Cuban scholars, students, journalists and artists from participating in scholarly meetings in the United States, lecturing at U.S...

...First must come the will...

...Still, seven years of U.S...

...Effectively, relations between the two countries entered into an even deeper freeze during the next two years...

...In both cases, Cuba went quite a distance to accept the U.S...

...and pressured weak, dependent allies in Latin America to end relations with the island...

...Rodriguez, 75, argued that he is heartened by the self-criticism he finds common among Young Communists...

...Cuban officials express the hope that tension between the two countries will ease when the U.S...

...officials have little expectation that such change could occur under Fidel Castro's leadership, because, as Skoug said in 1986, "he has sworn eternal hostility to the United States...

...In turn, President Reagan issued a proclamation in October 1985 that barred entry to the United States for officials of the Cuban government or Communist Party, or their representatives...

...In July 1987 Cuban television aired a seven-part documentary that detailed clandestine intelligence activities involving diplomats stationed at the interests section...

...he admonishes and cajoles...

...In May 1985, the United States initiated propaganda broadcasts to Cuba that were modeled after Radio Free Europe though nominally under the control of the Voice of America...

...hostility offers the Cubans little choice other than to wait until 1989...

...officials assume that Cuba will be more pliable after Fidel Castro passes away...

...The findings will be considered at the 1989 session...

...A Cuba that wished to live in peace and harmony with its own citizens and with its neighbors...

...Then in November 1987, Cuba and the United States suddenly restored the 1984 immigration agreement, after Cuba dropped its insistence on obtaining the right to air radio broadcasts in the United States over a clear channel...

...However, in 1984, Havana offered the Reagan Administration an irresistible plum: talks about the repatriation of excludable Cuban exiles who had come to the United States during the 1980 Mariel exodus...

...It did so after Cuban officials attended meetings for the first time between U.S...

...The most significant factor driving Washington policy, though, is the assumption that has guided it for nearly thirty years...

...In effect, it de-linked its objection to Radio Marti-which it had Barbuditos: Taking after Fidel already modified by proposing a reciprocal program beamed to the United States-from the immigration accord...

...It is not clear that such a jump will be possible...

...position, and virtually dropped its own demands...

...Kenneth Skoug, head of the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs, suggested this in 1984 when he remarked: "Havana may someday realize that its own best interests would be served if it again joined the American mainstream...

...Nobody works, but everyone fulfills his job quota...

...And the Administration has been captured by its right-wing constitu6ncy in Congress and the CubanAmerican community...

...universities or engaging in exchange programs...

...But U.S...

...This would mean that a cohort of potential leaders, who are in their thirties and forties today, will be skipped over...

...U.S...

...and Castro demanded a return to moral incentives instead of material benefits as a stimulus for production...

...At the same time the Communist Party began a process of developing checks and balances...

...People have what they need, but they complain about their leaders...

...MARCH/APRIL 1988 5Cuban's invitation to investigate conditions in the island's prisons...

...In effect, U.S...

...He still implores and inspires...

...Notably, the Administration continued to pursue its propaganda campaign against Cuba in the UN Human Rights Commission, though in its similar effort last year all but one of the Latin American members of the commission voted against the U.S...

...Though Cuban leaders rarely talk about Cuba after Fidel, the subject nonetheless significantly occupies their attention...

...and Rep...

...Ever the spoiler, at 61 Fidel Castro appears to be in good health...

...This is the import of the popular joke about Cuban life...

...policy could be aptly called "After Fidel...

...added a $100,000 feasibility study for a "TV Marti" to the December 1987 continuing resolution...

...severe regulations were imposed on the exchange and sale of homes...

...In part, the Administration has been shackled by its anti-Cuba experts...

...One State Department official acknowledged in an interview that the Cuban actions represented "movement on their part...

...Now officials seem prepared to wait for him to leave and, as he grows older, anticipation of his departure feeds U.S...

...attempted to confiscate Cuban publications...

...He found the first agent living in a hotel, despondent...

...and to strengthen its military forces with additional equipment and mobilize 1.5 million people-out of a population of 10.2 million-into Territorial Troop Militias...

...leaders to avoid facing difficult questions about real U.S...

...There is no unemployment, but nobody works...

...to improve its ties with Latin America, so that today it has diplomatic and trade relations with 15 countries in the Hemisphere (including Canada...

...The Cuban Revolution is sustained by institutionalized mechanisms-largely through the Communist Party, as well as through other mass organizations...

...officials...

...Lawton Chiles (D-Fla...

...They are valiant and critical...

...An official on the State Department's Cuba desk insisted in early March that the Cuban exile, who according to the New York Times "speaks no English," has resided in the United States...

...On February 27 the Miami Herald reported that "Although Valladares lives in Madrid, the Reagan Administration granted him U.S...

...intelligence activities...

...resolution by unanimously accepting the *Editor's Note: Former Cuban prisoner Armando Valladares was named in November 1987 to head the U.S...

...journalists described relations between the two countries as approaching the tension levels of the 1962 missile crisis...

...Going to the Source" The Reagan Administration came into office on an anti-Castro platform, and quickly focused on Cuba as an enemy...

...A Respite...

...Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams continues to shape overall policy toward Cuba...

...Jose Sorzano, senior director for Latin American affairs on the National Security Council, had previously headed the zealous Cuban-American National Foundation...

...By this time visiting U.S...

...He is the author of the just published PACCA book, From Confrontation to Negotiation: U.S...

...U.S.-backed UNITA forces in Angola fought against Cuban troops while the United States intransigently refused even to meet with Cubans on possible solutions to the wars in southern Africa...

...Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker and Angolan leaders...

...They were responding to the demands of rightwing Cubans who had been calling for television propaganda broadcasts to the island in order to destabilize the Cuban government...

...would be welcomed back in the community of American states...

...The United States denied any wrongdoing...

...Cuba was thus hardly surprised by Radio Marti's inaugural broadcast, but responded by suspending the immigration accord...

...Whatever the Cuban motives, though, the television series was a provocation, especially because four of the alleged 100 intelligence agents were working at the interests section when the programs aired...

...It appears that Cuba is sending strong signals that it is quite open to dialogue with the United States...

...They constantly complain, but they turn out in droves to cheer Fidel Castro...

...While Havana had always declared that it would maintain its forces only as long as requested by Angola, President Castro also had declared in 1986 that Cuban forces would not leave Angola until apartheid was ended in South Africa...

...In December Valladares was given the rank of ambassador and named to lead the delegation...

...In December 1984 an immigration accord was signed under which approximately 2,700 exiles would be returned and 20,000 Cubans would be permitted to migrate annually to the United States...

...As recent Cuban overtures to Washington suggest, this approach has not been the only guide for Cuban policy...

...Cuban community for its support of Republicans in 1980...

...cut off U.S...