A Politics-Driven Policy: Washington's Cuba Agenda is Still in Place-For Now
LeoGrande, William
The anachronism of U.S. policy toward Cuba grows ever more striking as the Cold War recedes into history. As the United States draws old Cold War enemies into its trade and diplomatic orbit,...
...As early as September 1991, the U.S...
...The effort was endorsed by a pantheon of prominent former officials including former Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker, former World Bank president A.W...
...and Cuban governments...
...Most of the Cuban-American leadership are people who came here in the 1960s and 1970s...
...3 3 Shortly thereafter, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the National Trade Council (representing some 500 multinational corporations) began to develop a coordinated lobbying strategy against unilateral sanctions...
...4 From 1989 to 1993, Cuba's GDP fell by at least 35%.5 Consumer goods of all types became extremely scarce, unemployment rose, and the standard of living contracted abruptly...
...3 0 In Washington, not only was the wisdom of CANF's hard line called into question, so was its political muscle...
...Majorities also favored unrestricted travel to Cuba (53%), sales of medical supplies (66%), and sales of food (56%), numbers that had all increased since the 1997 poll...
...8. Juan Triana Cordovi, "Cuba's Economic Transformation and Conflict with the United States," in The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, eds...
...Chamber of Commerce after a three-day visit to Cuba in 1999...
...Government Decision to Return Boy to Cuba," Gallup News Service Poll Releases, January 12, 2000...
...In 1995, the investment law was amended to allow 100% foreign ownership in certain industries, and bureaucratic reforms made Cuba more attractive...
...soldiers died...
...policy were so large and bipartisan that a renewed battle is likely next year, even with Republicans controlling Congress...
...We need a new approach...
...1 0 Remittances began to climb...
...Thomas W. ULippman, "Business Groups Urge Clinton to Disallow Suits Over Seized Property in Cuba," Washington Post, July 6, 1996...
...Guy Gugliotta, "Cuban American Foundation Is Determined Not to Founder After Loss of Its Leader," Washington Post, January 21, 1998...
...POLICY and ethically unacceptable" because of its impact on the poor...
...Nevertheless, by 1990, rough estimates of the cash remittances being sent to Cuba totaled about $150 to $200 million annually...
...The greedy businessmen, the Chamber of Commerce, won't do away with the embargo...
...Among recent emigres, however, "the concern is to help their families...
...As the campaign to pick Clinton's successor got under way, there was no reason to think the Gordian Knot of U.S.-Cuban relations was about to loosen...
...and signed a comprehensive trade agreement with Vietnam (where some 58,000 U.S...
...PFrez-Lbpez, "The Cuban Economic Crisis of the 1990s and the Extemal Sector," pp...
...Paul J. Kiger, Squeeze Play: The United States, Cuba, and the Helms-Burton Act (Washington, DC: Center for Public Integrity, 1997), pp...
...His son, Jorge Mas Santos, took over as CANF's chairman, but his strengths were more as a businessman than a politician...
...In October of this year, a majority of Cuban-Americans (52%) favored a "national dialogue" between Cubans abroad and Castro's government over family issues, up from just 36% in 1991...
...After the Soviet Union collapsed, however, Cuba began to actively court foreign investment...
...government sought to limit remittances by reducing the maximum amount allowed from $500 per quarter for a Cuban recipient to $300.12 During the Sharp divisions within the Cuban-American community opened more political space in Miami for moderates who favored greater engagement with Cuba...
...Trade Representative Carla A. Hills, and former National Security Advisor and Secretary of NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON U.S...
...politicians are notorious for avoiding anything the slightest bit controversial, large majorities in both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress voted to lift major elements of the embargo against Cuba-the ban on selling food and medicine and the ban on travel...
...POLICY Defense (in the Reagan Administration) Frank C. Carlucci...
...Companies Say," New York Times, September 11, 1996...
...3 4 In early 1998, coinciding with the Pope's trip to Cuba and his call for an end to the U.S...
...2 (Summer 1997), pp...
...Weiner, "Pope vs...
...The battle then shifted to the Treasury Appropriations bill, and in late July this year, the House voted overwhelmingly for amendments to halt enforcement of all food and medicine embargoes (301 in favor and 116 opposed) and to cease enforcing the ban on travel to Cuba (241 to 174...
...Embargo...
...after the end of the Cold War, when business played a key role in pressing for normal trade relations with China and Vietnam, interest in Cuba was negligible...
...Congressman (now Senator) Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) authored the Cuban Democracy Act in 1992 to tighten the embargo in the explicit hope that it would speed Castro's demise...
...embargo, Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba was inaugurated...
...2 9 Lawmakers who had been content to leave Cuba policy to the CubanAmericans began to have second thoughts...
...But since the Agriculture Appropriation contained funds for a great many popular domestic programs, neither Congress nor the president was willing to block its final adoption just a month before the U.S...
...87, No.1 (January 1997), pp...
...Ana Julia Jatar-Hausmann, The Cuban Way: Capitalism, Communism, and Confrontation (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1999), p. 89...
...Neither of these obsequious candidates seemed likely to spearhead new initiatives toward Cuba...
...citizens were paying attention Elian is welcomed home as he arrives at Jos4 Marti international Airport in Havana...
...The prohibition on remittances had no noticeable effect on the availability of dollars in Cuba...
...1 8 older Cuban-Americans who left Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s tended to take a much harder position than younger ones who left in the 1980s and 1990s, or were born in the United States...
...The political and financial power downric of conservative Cuban-Americans, organized most effectively in the 1980s by Jorge Mas Canosa in the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), gave the community virtual veto power over U.S...
...2 4 The dilemma for Cuban-American political leaders, including CANF, was that most U.S...
...Frank Newport, "Majority Support for Eliln Raid Continues, Even Though Public Disapproves of Method," Gallup News Service Poll Releases, May 2, 2000...
...15-17...
...Even Vol XXXIV, No 3 NOVEMBERIDECEMBER 200039 Vol XXXIV, No3 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2000 39REPORT ON U.S...
...On the right, the fall of Communism conjured visions of Castro's imminent collapse, and spurred efforts to increase U.S...
...citizens saw Elidn's case as a matter of parental rights rather than a symbolic confrontation with Cuban Communism...
...Oscar Corral, "Elidn Custody Case Unites Miami's Cuban-Americans," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 23, 2000...
...This is really an unholy alliance between the usual suspects who are always anti-embargo, the church groups and now, Wall Street," she said...
...No Cuba's e president since has enjoyed that lux- hardshi mury...
...8 (February 20, 1993...
...Republican leaders in the House prevented the proposal from being considered there, but this year it reappeared, sponsored by another farm state Republican in a tight race for re-election, Rep...
...Thousands of Cuban school children cheering Elidn Gonzdlez's return home after nine months in the United States...
...Peter H. Stone, "Cuban Clout," National Journal, Vol...
...Democratic nominee Al Gore's electoral strategy, drawn from Clinton's 1996 play book, was to keep Florida in contention by making inroads into the Cuban-American vote...
...military forces to save the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961...
...currency, so dollars could only be used on the black market...
...Victor Bulmer-Thomas and James Dunkerley (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp...
...Policy is slipping loose from the stranglehold of the CubanAmerican right as more and more Americans, including many Cuban-Americans, realize that their interests lie in a less hostile relationship with Cuba...
...Unlike the exiles of the 1960s, they did not harbor the same depth of ideological animosity toward the Cuba they left behind...
...April 2001 will mark the fortieth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Washington still clings to the same uncompromising policy that led to that infamous failure...
...It's the same people, with the same proposals, with the same votes, and they will lose graciously, as they always have," said Senator Torricelli...
...His dominance of Miami's political scene was so great that there were no obvious successors to fill his shoes...
...By this legislative legerdemain, a proposal intended to relax the embargo on Cuba was transmuted into a law that actually tightened the embargo...
...When Castro first opened the island to joint ventures in the 1980s, the laws governing foreign investment were strict and inflexible, reflecting the government's residual ideological hostility...
...Both chambers approved Agricultural Appropriations bills containing the Nethercutt proposal, which opponents did not even try to challenge on the floor...
...247-266...
...By 1998, there were 357 joint ventures with partners around the globe...
...Businesses Encouraged to Explore Trade With Cuba," Washington Post, July 28, 1999...
...9. "Cubans Complain Sanctions Are Hitting Them While Missing Mark of Castro," Baltimore Sun, September 2, 1994...
...Four decades of animosity will not be reversed overnight, of course...
...pressure...
...Only Cuba has been left out...
...CANF in particular lost influence...
...In Miami, rivals on the right openly challenged the efficacy of CANF's Washington-focused strategy of lobbying the political establishment, prompting CANF to announce a new program of direct aid to Cuban dissidents...
...2 In 1996, Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Congressman Dan Burton (R-IN) cosponsored the Cuba Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act to deter foreign corporations from investing in Cuba...
...This financial straightjacket meant that the practical effect of lifting the food and medicine embargo was nil, and the Cuban government denounced the measure as a fraud...
...Most Say EliAn Belongs with Dad," Miami Herald, April 4, 2000...
...to Cuba--moments that are rare-Cuban-Americans appeared lawless, fanatical and contemptuous of the United States...
...2 1 In November 1997, Jorge Mas Canosa died of cancer, depriving the Cuban-American right of its most dynamic, charismatic and politically astute leader...
...foreign policy, decisionmakers--even presidents-have followed the path of least resistance by leaving the policy of hostility in place...
...In polls of the community conducted every few years since 1991, scholars at Florida International University (FIU) have consistently found solid majorities (between 63% and 82%) in favor of either maintaining or tightening the U.S...
...Karen DeYoung, 'U.S...
...Republican leaders, however, were determined to use their control of the rules to thwart the will of both the House and Senate...
...That this small boy should be returned to Castro, to the Cuba of socialism-or-death, was unthinkable...
...argo is less sensible, light of economic p, it looks ght cruel...
...3 6 Rep...
...Trade Bans Are Boomerangs, U.S...
...The later immigrants, from the Mariel boat-lift onwards, were primarily economic rather than political refugees...
...A few dollars equaled a month's wages in pesos, and many basic consumer Vol XXXIV, No 3 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2000 0 0 at 37REPORT ON U.S...
...Diplomatic relations, broken in 1961, are not yet fully repaired...
...courts if they "traffic" in expropriated property...
...corporations in tions Millennium Summit, held in third countries (a ban President Gerald Ford lifted in 1975), thus halting some $768 million in annual trade, 90% of which involved Cuban imports of food and medicine...
...8 Despite their undiminished hatred of Fidel Castro, Cuban-Americans were also moved by the plight of their brethren, and responded by increasing the flow of both in-kind assistance and cash remittances...
...between those who still have relatives there and those who don't," explained FIU Professor Lisandro Pdrez...
...Support for sending the boy back to Cuba with his father grew from 56% in January 2000 to 67% in April...
...Foundation directors and their political action committee, the Free Cuba PAC, contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to dozens of sympathetic Congressional and presidential candidates in each election cycle-a total of several million dollars from 1979 to 1998...
...7-12...
...government could verify that the supplies were being used appropriately, a stipulation the Cuban government rejected...
...Michael Krinsky and David Golove (eds...
...91-108...
...Miguel Angel Centeno and Mauricio Font (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997), pp...
...56 4. Carmelo Mesa-Lago, "Is there an Economic Recovery in Cuba...
...15-20...
...8 (1998), pp...
...1994 rafters crisis, when President Clinton angered Cuban-Americans by interning rafters at Guantanamo Naval Base rather than paroling them into the United States, he won CANF's support by agreeing to cut off cash remittances and end most charter flights to Cuba, making family visits more difficult...
...Legislators who opposed CANF's demands to keep EliAn in the United States suffered no negative political consequences, proving that the foundation was not invincible after all...
...to Relax Embargo on Cuba," Washington Post, January 14, 1998...
...2 2 Without Mas Canosa's hand at the helm, CANF seemed adrift, lacking a clear strategy...
...The balance of political forces on the issue of Cuba is in flux for the first time in decades...
...CubanAmericans had been sending such aid ever since 1978, when family visits were first authorized by the U.S...
...Its inability to prevail in the Elidn case represented the foundation's first major defeat after a string of victories stretching from Radio Marti to Helms-Burton...
...We're saying on behalf of the American business community that it's time to look at this another way," said Thomas J. Donohue, president of the U.S...
...Stone, "Cuban Clout...
...Demonstrators trampled the American flag and denounced their adopted homeland in front of the television cameras...
...Thomas W. Lippman, "Business-Led Coalition Urges U.S...
...Who does well there?...It's the Canadians, the Germans, the French, the Italians...
...In 1989, approximately 70% of Cuba's trade was conducted with the Soviet Union and another 15% with Eastern Europe, all of which was disrupted...
...In both the House and Senate, majority coalitions have emerged composed of liberal, anti-embargo Democrats and Republicans from farming districts whose constituents are eager to sell food to Cuba...
...1 Conservatives in the Cuban-American community, led by CANF, opposed sending remittances on the grounds that they helped Castro stabilize the economy and therefore prolonged his rule...
...In each case, the proponents of engagement argued persuasively that contact with Western markets, commerce, and culture would spur economic and eventually political reform...
...But with the Soviet Union gone and Cuba dependent upon world markets, the quickest and surest way for Washington to reassert its hegemony over Havana would be to tear down trade and travel barriers, allowing the allure of U.S...
...5. Jorge F. P6rez-L6pez, "The Cuban Economic Crisis of the 1990s and the External Sector 1998,"Cuba in Transition (Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy), Vol...
...Early in the Eliin Gonzdlez affair, both Bush and Gore pandered to Cuban-Americans, recommending that the case be sent to family court in south Florida, where the community's clout might well have outweighed rights of a loving father who also happened to be a loyal Cuban Communist...
...Such measures were not universally supported among CubanAmericans, many of whom were more immediately concerned with the well-being of their families than with punishing Fidel Castro.1 3 In practice, Clinton's effort to limit remittances failed...
...Louis Uchitelle, "Who's Punishing Whom...
...policy still rests on the premise that Castro's government is incompatible with U.S...
...To most members of the community, Elidn's future belonged in the United States, as vindication of the choice they had made in leaving Cuba...
...Ask Bill Marriott or the guys at the Hilton, do they want to let everybody else in the world buy up those beaches...
...David W. Moore, "Americans Approve of U.S...
...Maria Werlau, "Update on Foreign Investment in Cuba: 19961997,' Cuba in Transition (Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy) Vol...
...Guillermo J. Grenier and Hugh Gladwin, FIU 1997 Cuba Poll (Miami: FIU Institute for Public Opinion Research, 1997) at httpiMwww.fiu.edu/orgs/ipor/cubapoll/report.html...
...Yet in the midst of the presidential campaign, a moment when U.S...
...2 7 This paroxysm of rage proved disastrous for CubanAmerican political influence beyond Miami...
...he first change has been the embargo's loss of legitimacy...
...Gugliotta, "Cuban American Foundation Is Determined Not to Founder...
...That such a dramatic turn of events could come about in an election year, without leadership from either of the presidential nominees, suggests that something significant has begun to change in the domestic political dynamics of the Cuba issue...
...In both the House and Senate, Republican leaders faced majority coalitions in favor of ending the embargo on sales of food and medicine--coalitions composed of liberal Democrats and Republicans from farming districts whose constituents were eager to sell food to Cuba...
...embargo...
...2 0 The Pope's visit and his call for "Cuba [to] open itself to the world and...the world [to] open itself up to Cuba" gave further legitimacy to Cuban-Americans who favored a shift in U.S...
...Sergio Dlaz-Briquets and Jorge F. P6rez-L6pez...
...POLICY The explanation for the persistence of the Cold War in the Caribbean lies more in politics than policy...
...Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), one of the three CubanAmerican members of Congress, reacted contemptuously to the formation of Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba...
...7 (1997), pp...
...At this moment of transition, it had to face its greatest challenge: the arrival of Elign Gonzdlez...
...Since Cuba is no longer important to U.S...
...POLICY A man walks down a street in Old Havana...
...Cuba in Brief, Winter 1997 (Washington: Center for a Free Cuba), pp...
...As the security imperative that drove U.S...
...Jorge Mas Canosa's ready access to Congress and even to the White House was testimony to the success of CANF's strategy of positioning itself as the political voice of CubanAmericans.16 Cuban-American attitudes have always been more diverse than CANF acknowledged, but they have been predominantly anti-Castro...
...The anachronism William M. LeoGrande is Professor of Government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C...
...By so blatantly ignoring the expressed will of both chambers of Congress, the embargo's supporters may have diminished their ability to preserve it from future legislative assaults...
...Anglo counterdemonstrators threw bananas at Miami's city hall to symbolize their anger at living in a "banana republic...
...Until recently, there has been no countervailing constituency...
...Restrictions in the law severely limited the practical feasibility of medical sales...
...embargoes on food and medicine, including the one against Cuba...
...William Booth, "Tighter Policy Exposes a Rip in Anti-Castro Fabric," Washington Post, August 24, 1994...
...1 7 However, CANF's unrelenting opposition to humanitarian assistance, family visits and remittances, even in the face of Cuba's economic crisis, put it at odds with many of its constituents...
...9 As Cuba's standard of living plunged in the early 1990s, access to dollars became a critical determinant of people's quality of life...
...3 7 In August 1999, however, to the surprise of almost everyone, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a proposal by conservative John D. Ashcroft (R-MO) to end all U.S...
...But most importantly, U.S...
...interests and must be forced out of power by pressure...
...His vice-presidential nominee, Joe Lieberman, was one of the Senate's top recipients of CANF campaign contributions...
...His most recent book is Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 (University of North Carolina Press, 1998...
...See, for example, Eunice Ponce and Elaine De Valle, "Mania over Elian Rising," Miami Herald, January 10, 2000...
...By including food and medicine, the embargo against Cuba constituted the most severe sanctions Washington maintained against any country in the world, including countries with notably worse human rights records like Indonesia and Afghanistan, and reputedly terrorist states like Iraq and Iran...
...Food became scarce, because the government could no longer afford to import it.6 The suffering endured by ordinary Cubans during this crisis prompted a significant humanitarian response in the United States...
...Jonathan P. Decker, "Smuggling Cash to Cuba Rises in Defiance of Embargo," Christian Science Monitor, May 24, 1995...
...Tim Weiner, "Pope vs...
...These later arrivals were overwhelmingly in favor of family travel and humanitarian trade, whereas the older Cuban-Americans were opposed.' 8 "There's a split in the Cuban American community...
...2 5 Sixty percent supported the federal government's decision to forcibly seize Elidn from his Miami relatives...
...3 5 By focusing specifically on the sales of food and medicine, this coalition was able to harness both the humanitarian impulses that arose in response to Cuba's economic hardship and the pecuniary interests of the business community--a combination that proved surprisingly powerful...
...Grenier and Gladwin, FlU 1997 Cuba Poll...
...By WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE Next year Fidel Castro will confront his tenth U.S...
...3 1 As European trade and investment grew, U.S...
...Ironically, HelmsBurton crystalized this discontent because its extraterritorial pretensions threatened to disrupt trade relations with Europe, Canada and Latin America...
...POLICY goods were available only in dollar stores...
...By 1994, the estimated value of private cash transfers to Cuba had risen to $500 million a year...
...A number of new and existing non-governmental organizations (NGOs) launched relief projects, including Pastors for Peace (which refused on principal to seek the required licenses from the U.S...
...Candidate Bill Clinton endorsed the Torricelli bill in the vain hope that he might curry enough favor among Cuban-Americans to win Florida...
...The embargo on trade, initially imposed in stages from 1960 to 1963, remains in place...
...George R. Nethercutt (R-WA...
...Republican nominee George W. Bush, whose brother Jeb is governor of Florida and a loyal CANF ally, never wavered from the hard line...
...Jon Nordheimer, "Cuban Group Forges Link to Clinton," New York Times, August 26, 1994...
...pressure is intended to make Cuba an example to other Latin Americans of the dire consequences of defying Washington...
...Whether the impulse is humanitarian or profit-centered, the calls for gradual engagement are growing...
...Cuba's potential market was much smaller than Vietnam's, not to mention China's, but the main reason for the lack of corporate interest was Cuba's uninviting business environment...
...2. Clinton's endorsement of the Torricelli bill produced some $275,000 in campaign contributions from Cuban-Americans, including some CANF directors, but only 18% of Cuban-Americans in Florida voted for Clinton in 1992, and he lost the state to George Bush...
...he size of the majorities in the House and Senate favoring a change in U.S...
...Vol XXXIV, No 3 NOVEMBER/DEcEMBER 200035 Vol XXXIV, No3 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2000 35REPORT ON U.S...
...Wealthy, well-organized, single-minded, and strategically concentrated in the key electoral states of Florida and New Jersey, Cuban-Americans punished any public official who even hinted at a policy of engagement with Cuba...
...When Pope John Paul H visited Cuba in 1998, he explicitly criticized the embargo as "unjust 36NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36REPORT ON U.S...
...Embargo," New York Times, January 21, 1998...
...The collapse of European Communism plunged Cuba into deep economic crisis...
...Richard Boudreaux and Mark Fineman, "Catholic Leaders See the Start of New Cuban Era," Los Angeles Times, January 26, 1998...
...2 6 For many Cuban-Americans, however, the forcible removal of Elidn from his Miami kin and his return to Cuba produced a sense of betrayal unmatched since President John F. Kennedy refused to use U.S...
...Omar Everleny PFrez Villanueva, "La Inversi6n Extranjera Directa en Cuba," paper prepared for the 22nd Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, Florida, March 16-18, 2000, pp...
...For years, business had been notoriously absent from the debate over Cuba...
...licenses would only be granted if the U.S...
...411437...
...Bolstered by improved mail and telephone service, the family ties between Cubans in the United States and Cubans on the island had become too well established and too important to be so easily severed...
...Rebecca J. Fowler, "Cash Flow to Cuba Barred," Washington Post, August 21, 1994...
...The Committee for Cuban Democracy (CCD), led initially by Alfredo Durdn, became a significant alternative voice in the late 1990s, as did Cambio Cubano, led by NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38REPORT ON U.S...
...Don Finefrock, "Businessman Criticizes Fellow Cubans," Miami Herald, April 28, 2000...
...This loss severely reduced Cuba's import capacity, and the resulting shortages of key raw materials like fuel and fertilizer caused huge production Fidel Castro addressing the United N shuge production New York this past September...
...Getting cash to Cuba faced similar obstacles, and until 1993, it was illegal for Cubans to hold U.S...
...Desperate to acquire hard currency, the government legalized the holding of dollars in 1993 so that it could capture part of the remittances stream...
...At a moment when most U.S...
...The growth of in-kind assistance was slow during the 1980s, however, because the Cuban government sharply curtailed the number of Cuban-American visitors, and mail service was unreliable...
...408-412...
...John Newhouse, "A Reporter at Large: Cuba," New Yorker, April 27, 1992...
...Cuban-American local officials implied they would not obey federal authority or even control civil disorder...
...Like the China Lobby that held U.S.-China relations hostage for nearly a generation, CANF proved to be a paper tiger...
...3. Larry Rohter, "Pope Asks Cubans to Seek New Path Toward Freedom," New York Times...
...Some analysts argue that U.S...
...The bastardized bill was approved, and the President signed it.39 Supporters of the embargo snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, but their triumph may prove to be Pyrrhic...
...As the United States draws old Cold War enemies into its trade and diplomatic orbit, only Cuba has been left out...
...government or private-sector financing to purchase food or medicine...
...They are not likely to have family in Cuba anymore...
...With far more pesos in circulation than there were goods to buy, the peso-dollar exchange rate ballooned from 20 to one in 1991 to a peak of 120 to one in 1994...
...72-98...
...Overnight, Cuba had to find new suppliers for its imports and new markets for its exports...
...Alfonso Chardy, "Cuban-American Leaders Aim to Separate Local Issues, Castro," Miami Herald, May 5, 2000...
...After Cuban MiGs shot down two planes piloted by Cuban-Americans from Brothers to the Rescue, President Clinton signed Helms-Burton, thereby surrendering his power-and that of his successors-to normalize relations with Cuba...
...goods, tourists and investment dollars to pull Cuba back into the economic orbit of the United States...
...election...
...provided economic aid to North Korea (the most thoroughly unreconstructed Communist regime in the world...
...Mireidy Fernandez, Anabelle De Gale and Curtis Morgan, "Polls Show Americans Split on Using Force: Most Backed Reunion of Father and Son," Miami Herald, April 25, 2000...
...The biggest blow, however, was the loss of Soviet economic assistance-between $3 and $4 billion a year...
...Refugee Remittances: Conceptual Issues and the Cuban and Nicaraguan Experiences," International Migration Review, Vol...
...37...
...7 Except for CRS, these NGOs combined their direct aid campaigns with popular education projects aimed at mobilizing public opinion against the embargo on humanitarian grounds...
...Max Castro, "Transition and the Ideology of Exile," in Toward a New Cuba: Legacies of a Revolution, eds...
...In the early 1970s, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Assistant Secretary for Latin America William D. Rogers could contemplate normalizing relations with Cuba, confident The emb 4 they would face no domestic oppo- and less sition of any consequence except "perhaps some demonstrative and in Cuban exile terrorist acts...
...For two decades, CANF dominated the debate on U.S.-Cuban relations...
...6. Mesa-Lago, "Is there an Economic Recovery in Cuba...
...Then they imposed a "compromise" on the conference committee reconciling the House and Senate versions of the Agricultural Appropriation: Embargoes on sales of food and medicine would be lifted, but Cuba was denied any U.S...
...28-44, 76...
...Treasury Department), U.S.Cuba Medical Project, Madre and Catholic Relief Services (CRS...
...The Helms-Burton legislation also inscribed the embargo into law, preventing the President from normalizing relations by simply revoking the executive orders that originally imposed it...
...Department of State, "Humanitarian Assistance," http,/Awww.state.govAwww/regions/whacuba/humani_aid.html...
...policy toward greater engagement...
...1998...
...Richard Garfield and Sarah Santana, "The Impact of the Economic Crisis and the US Embargo on Health in Cuba," American Joumal of Public Health, Vol...
...31, No...
...Every year since 1992, the United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling on Washington to end the embargo, last year by a margin of 152 to two...
...The declining political power of the CubanAmerican right coincided with the mobilization, for the first time, of an organized constituency with an interest in improving relations with Cuba--the business community...
...corporations began to worry about losing a potentially lucrative market to foreign competitors...
...386-413...
...POLICY former political prisoner Eloy Gutitrrez-Menoyo...
...Mike Clary, "Pope's Cuba Visit Fosters Attitude Shift," Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1998...
...2 8 "The picture that is being painted is an unstable Miami," lamented Governor Jeb Bush, "a Miami that cannot control itself...
...Rescued at sea floating in an inner tube, six-year old Elifin became an immediate icon to the CubanAmerican community--the "miracle boy" saved by divine intervention, the symbol of Cuba's youth, of Cuba's future...
...In addition, the law reinstated the ban on trade with Cuba by the subsidiaries of U.S...
...The United States has granted permanent trade status to China (where the Communist Party is no more respectful of human rights than in Cuba...
...The 1992 Cuban Democracy Act purported to facilitate humanitarian aid by allowing donations of food and sales of medical supplies, but its actual impact was just the opposite...
...In Mas Canosa's shadow, other leaders did not flourish...
...3 2 Cuba also became a focal point for the business community's discontent with Washington's use of unilateral economic sanctions in general...
...In his bid for reelection, however, Clinton carried Florida, winning more Cuban-American votes than any Democratic candidate before him...
...policy waned, the political strength of the Cuban-American lobby waxed...
...losses in both manufacturing and agriculture...
...First, they stripped the anti-embargo provisions out of the Treasury Appropriations bill...
...United States Economic Measures Against Cuba (Northampton, MA: Aletheia Press, 1993), pp...
...3 Its impact was severe...
...policy aggravated the shortages in Cuba, especially of medicine...
...25, No...
...January 26...
...107-127...
...By 1993, production had been interrupted at 70% of industrial plants, agricultural output had declined an estimated 36%, and Cuba's sugar crop, the principal source of foreign exchange earnings, had fallen from eight million tons in 1990 to just four million...
...In the past year, however, glimmers of a new political dynamic have appeared that may eventually produce a significant shift in U.S...
...Karen Branch, "Penelas Put Himself into Prominent Spot with Tough Talk," Miami Herald, March 31, 2000...
...2 3 A Miami Herald poll found that 91% of CubanAmericans in South Florida believed Eliin should stay in the United States...
...Organized by the Chamber of Commerce, this coalition was an unusual alliance of some 600 business organizations and 140 religious and human rights groups dedicated to repealing the embargo on food and medicine...
...From 1992 to 1999, the Treasury Department granted licenses for $227 million in humanitarian medical assistance...
...Juan 0. Tamayo, "Cuban Economy: Abominable in 1998," Miami Herald, July 9, 1999...
...Scott Wilson, "In Miami, Cuban Exile Group Shifts Focus," Washington Post, September 14, 2000...
...t first, conservative Cuban-Americans and their allies on Capitol Hill were confident that with the Congress under Republican control, they could turn back any legislative effort to ease the embargo...
...A Politics-Driven Policy 1. William D. Rogers, "Cuba Policy After the OASGA ([Organization of American States General Assembly]," May 17, 1975, report from Assistant Secretary William D. Rogers to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Dialogue with Castro: A Hidden History," edited by Peter Kornbluh and James Blight, New York Review of Books, October 6, 1994...
...3 8 Moreover, the Republican leadership added provisions to the bill that locked the ban on travel to Cuba into law...
...Clausen, former U.S...
...Without a national security rationale, the embargo is less and less sensible, and in light of Cuba's economic hardship, it looks downright cruel...
...president, with the antagonism between the United States and Cuba little changed from when the conflict commenced four decades ago...
...Business associations were drawn into lobbying on Cuba in 1996 to pressure the White House to waive implementation of Title III of the law (which enables Cuban-Americans to sue foreign corporations in U.S...
...In Congress, liberal Democrats repeatedly introduced legislation to exempt sales of food and medicine from the embargo, arguing that U.S...
...CubanAmericans simply sent funds through third countries or carried them by hand, traveling through Mexico, Jamaica or the Bahamas.1 4 In 1998, after the Pope's visit to Cuba, Clinton lifted the restrictions on remittances, and by the end of the decade, they reached between $800 million and a billion dollars annually.' 5 Divisions in the Cuban-American community over family contacts were the first indication that the political power of the right was eroding...
...But at the dawn of the new millennium, the ranks of unreconstructed Cold Warriors who demand that we hold fast to the policy of hostility are getting thinner and thinner...
...7. U.S...
...All of our friends...
...1 9 These cleavages opened more political space in Miami for moderate Cuban-Americans...
Vol. 34 • November 2000 • No. 3
