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Trump Risks Snuffing Out Cuba's Glimmer Of Non-Communist Independence

Alan Diaz
/
AP via Miami Herald
Cuban-Americans campaign for Donald Trump in Miami in October.

COMMENTARY

In June I moderated a Miami panel on renewed U.S.-Cuba relations. The panelists, all  Cuban-Americans, represented the pro- and anti-normalization sides. But the normalization team had the momentum.

Washington-Havana détente “is the new normal,” one pro-engagement panelist assured the audience. “There’s no going back,” he insisted.

Except there is.

In fact, we may zoom back on January 20 – when Donald Trump becomes President Donald Trump. During his campaign he promised conservative Cuban-Americans he would nix normalization unless Cuba’s communist regime coughs up more democratic reforms.

And lo and behold, those Cuban-American voters may have put Trump over the top in the key swing state of Florida. They’re the big reason he scored a surprising 36 percent of Florida’s Latino vote, according to a Florida International University exit poll.

RELATED:Caught Between Trump's Rise and Fidel's Demise, Younger Cubans Voice Anxiety

So will Trump now "terminate" U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba, as he suggested last week? President Obama resurrected those relaciones two years ago this month by executive fiat; President Trump could just as easily fiat them away again. But even if he doesn’t go that far, Trump can still jettison enough of the U.S.-Cuba truce – especially the economic ties Obama’s opened – to make the new bilateral bridges sink into the Florida Straits.

And they could stay sunk until Trump leaves the White House in either four or eight years.

That’s especially likely since any Trump action will almost certainly provoke a Cuban reaction – perhaps renewed crackdowns on dissidents or a tighter squeeze on free enterprise – which will probably elicit more Trump action. And so on.

Were Trump to halt the new wave of U.S. travel, he’d be choking the Cuban private sector Washington wants to foster – and the island's one genuine glimmer of non-communist independence.

We thought we were finally done watching that futile, cold-war “Groundhog Day” when Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced normalization on December 17, 2014. But it turns out the groundhog saw its shadow. So settle in for perhaps a lot more diplomatic winter.

And let’s be clear that Trump and his Cuban exile fans won’t be the only ones to blame. Obama has made a number of normalization concessions, most noticeably taking Cuba off the State Department’s sponsors of terrorism list. But Havana has given little in return – insisting the U.S. drop its trade embargo against Cuba first.

What the Cubans don’t seem to get (or perhaps get too well?) is that Obama doesn’t hold every lever here the way Castro does in Cuba – that only the U.S. Congress can kibosh the embargo, and it now needs to see Havana pony up something first. Perhaps more than anything else, that means the up to $8 billion in property the Cuban Revolution seized from U.S. citizens and companies in Cuba.

In Washington, meanwhile, pro-normalization forces themselves may have overreached – trying to get the embargo lifted wholesale instead of more realistically going after components like the ban on U.S. tourist travel to Cuba. Any legislative victory of that kind would have been harder for Trump to "terminate."

A BETTER JEEP

Either way, the only hope for keeping normalization alive may be the deep investments U.S. travel-related companies like hotels, airlines and cruise lines – including, as of today, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian – have made in Cuba the past two years. In fact, the influx of American tourists (sorry, Americans who travel to Cuba under one of 12 designated exchange categories) is one of the few facets of normalization making a difference so far.

Credit Carol Guzy / McClatchy via Miami Herald
/
McClatchy via Miami Herald
Cuban entrepreneurs visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to urge Washington - and Donald Trump - not to reverse U.S.-Cuba normalization.

That’s mainly because it’s overburdening Cuba’s state-run tourism infrastructure and raising demand, and cash, for privately-run restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts (like the room I had last week in Havana) and the Cuban entrepreneurs who supply and service them, from soap makers to farm cooperatives to accountants.

Were Trump to halt that new wave of U.S. travel, he’d be choking the same Cuban private sector Washington wants to foster – and the island's one genuine glimmer of non-communist independence.

Just how urgently Cuba needs that entrepreneurial blood seemed symbolically apparent last weekend when even the jeep carrying the ashes of Raúl’s brother and predecessor – Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who died November 25 – broke down on its way to Santiago. Should America turn its back on Cuba now, it risks abandoning the very Cubans who can build a better jeep – and maybe ultimately a freer country.

Tim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. Contact Tim at tpadgett@wlrnnews.org
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