Engaging Cuba much better than sanctions

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/01/2023 (720 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For whatever reason, Cuba never seems to be far from the political radar screen of both the U.S. and Canada. In mid-November, representatives of Democratic Spaces, a Canadian-Cuban human rights organization, called for Ottawa to impose punitive sanctions on members of the Cuban government.

The aim was to punish the government of Miguel Díaz-Canel for the July 11, 2021 harsh crackdown on Cuban protesters and anti-government demonstrators. In a letter to Global AffairsCanada, the group stated plainly: “The United States has used its Magnitsky legislation to impose a variety of targeted sanctions on Cuban officials and entities with responsibility for the human rights violations in the aftermath of the July 11 protests. Canada should do the same and impose targeted sanctions.”

I’m not convinced the sanctions idea will make any difference at all. And I seriously question the timing of such a reflexive move.

In early August, a deadly fire at an oil storage facility in Matanzas, Cuba’s largest port for importing crude oil and diesel (mostly used to generate electricity), was severely damaged. That was followed by rotating electrical blackouts in other parts of the country.

To its credit, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sent roughly 100 sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) — such as fire-resistant pants, helmets, gloves and coats — to assist Cuban firefighters seeking to quell the blaze in Matanzas.

Given the animosity of U.S.-Cuba relations under the Trump administration, this PPE (along with technical firefighting assistance from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) was regarded as a constructive, and in some ways unprecedented, humanitarian gesture.

Indeed, USAID is not typically viewed in a positive light on the island — particularly its highly questionable work on “democracy-promotion” programs in Cuba. But it appears this time the U.S. government was responding favourably to a specific request from Havana.

Seven weeks later, Category 3-strength Hurricane Ian inflicted significant harm on the western region of Cuba (damaging some 100,000 homes). At least two people were killed, thousands in the Pinar del Río province were evacuated, and heavy flooding devastated many parts of Cuba’s important agricultural sector.

Shortly thereafter, USAID once again stepped up and offered to provide Cuba with US$2 million in humanitarian assistance (to be channelled through international aid organizations working on the island). As Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, noted:

“We appreciate humanitarian assistance offer made by the U.S. This material contribution that is worth US$2 million, channelled through the International Federation of Red Cross, will add to our recovery efforts in support of the victims of the ravages caused by Hurricane Ian.”

In the past, the Cuban government almost always politely rejected any humanitarian assistance from the U.S. But the sharp change in tune was indicative that Cuba is in dire economic straits at the moment — and it needs all the outside humanitarian aid that it can secure.

To be sure, food and pharmaceutical shortages, electrical blackouts and rising prices and supply-chain issues have all contributed to a precarious situation in Cuba today.

Of particular political significance to the Biden White House is the thorny issue of unprecedented Cuban migration. Approximately 220,000 Cubans were encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Coast Guard authorities, at either the U.S.-Mexican border or at sea, in the fiscal year 2022 (a 471 per cent increase over 2021).

That has created a major electoral headache for Biden as he eyes a second presidential term in 2024.

During the first two weeks of November, high-ranking U.S. officials travelled to Havana to meet with their Cuban counterparts. There was a laundry list of issues on the bilateral agenda: migration (including the Cuban Family Reunification Parole program restarted in August), consular and visa services, human rights and “political prisoners.”

Much of the bilateral trouble stems from U.S. diplomatic reports of so-called “Havana Syndrome” (or concussion-like or brain trauma injuries) in 2016, when Washington shuttered its consular/visa services at the U.S. embassy in Havana in late 2017.

The two countries have now come to agree that U.S. visa processing in Havana (rather than in Guyana) should be ready to resume. That, in turn, would facilitate the legal migration of some 20,000 Cubans to the U.S. annually.

In return, the Díaz-Canel government has agreed to accept an unspecified number of Cuban migrants sent back to the island from the U.S. via deportation flights.

Clearly, U.S. President Joe Biden (and Barack Obama before him) recognizes that deteriorating conditions on the island are not in the best interests of the U.S. (or Canada). Accordingly, they both came to the conclusion engaging the Cubans across a wide swath of issue areas is better than punishing and isolating them — something successive Canadian governments have embraced since the early 1960s.

So notwithstanding what our friends in Democratic Spaces are advocating, now is definitely not the time to reverse that practice.

» Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.