Opening Cuba: The Most Constructive Foreign Policy Shift in Decades

The opening of Cuba is the biggest thing to happen the travel industry in a long time. It’s hard to think of an event of comparable magnitude since Nixon’s opening of China. It’s going to be a huge windfall to the travel industry, as well as to a broad range of businesses, including farming, technology … you name it.

And that’s only business. It’s also going to be a huge event from a cultural point of view that these two neighboring countries, estranged for half a century, are going to finally be able to know each other again.

The term “pent-up demand” is being used to describe the enormous hunger Americans have for Cuba. But what we are seeing with Cuba rises to a much greater magnitude than what can be described on a corporate balance sheet. This is the beginning of the removal of a barrier analogous to what Winston Churchill called “The Iron Curtain,” when the Soviets started cutting themselves off from the West after World War II.

The U.S and Cuba, next door neighbors with histories bound up together, have had an opaque barrier between them for 50 years keeping them from interacting with each other even in the most simple terms, such as buying a bottle of Cuban rum or a box of cigars.

The barrier has been maintained by the U.S. government and the U.S. government has always had the power to take it down. It served little purpose except possibly to unite the Cubans behind Fidel Castro, precisely the opposite to its intended effect.

Stuck in Time

In 1959 at the time when Fidel Castro overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista, the United States was in a state of hysterical fear over the Soviet Union’s successful launching of the satellite Sputnik two years before. The U.S. didn’t even have a space program yet, and the USSR had already demonstrated the capacity to put satellites into orbit around the earth. It was a power that the U.S. had good reason to fear. The Soviets also had nuclear weapons.

In the early years following World War II, misunderstandings between the U.S. and the USSR had led to a retrenchment in opposition of the two superpowers that had only a few years before defeated the Nazis in partnership.

The revolution in Cuba took place in an environment of fear of the “Red Menace.” Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, testified years later that the attempted invasion of Cuba by the U.S. was authorized in “an atmosphere of hysteria.”

When the invasion failed, American officials became even more enraged and unleashed a series of attacks and covert actions to overthrow Castro. That caused Castro to lean on the Soviets for protection. That set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world closer to an all-out nuclear war than ever before or since.

In an effort to unseat Castro, the U.S. put a trade embargo on Cuba. But the embargo and ongoing covert attacks by the CIA through its Operation Mongoose had the opposite effect to what had been intended. Instead of unseating Castro, the actions against Cuba united the Cubans behind the leader in defense against the aggression of the giant to the north.

The embargo, launched during a state of hysteria, became institutionalized. With respect to the Cuban exiles who had been hurt or lost property because of the revolution, there was little opposition to the embargo decade after decade. Now 50 years later, defying all odds, Castro is still in power, much longer than any other world leader from that period. A good case could be made that without the embargo he could not have lasted so long.

The bottom line to that history is that no matter how you feel about Fidel Castro, the embargo was counterproductive and served little purpose. Now the U.S.-Cuba cold war is beginning to thaw and the people of U.S. and Cuba can become acquainted.

Even though the embargo is still in place until Congress acts, the move by Obama to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba is huge, as monumental as Nixon’s opening of China. Its repercussions may be as great.

China still calls itself communist. It still has an authoritarian, not a democratic government, and has human rights issues that American politicians cannot officially approve of. And yet it is our biggest trade partner now. The potential for change from the normalization of relations with Cuba may not be as large as with China, but the changes are likely to be profound.

Up Close and In Person

I am one of the still relatively few Americans who have had the opportunity to visit Cuba under the people to people programs. And I, like seemingly everyone else who has gone, fell in love with it.

One of the biggest reasons Americans are so strongly attracted to Cuba is that it is forbidden fruit. Another attraction that is often mentioned is that Cuba is “untouched” and it is like traveling through time. And people talk about the rich arts culture and how refreshingly different it is from the U.S. They say, “See it now before it – inevitably – changes.”

It’s a place where you are not going to see the big corporate brands like McDonald’s and KFC dominating the landscape as they do around the world. That alone makes it very different from most places one can visit now.

And though Cuba is a poor country, it has world class public education, public health systems and a rich artistic scene. How did it accomplish those things while under embargo by the greatest economic power in the world?

These are questions that travelers may seek to answer when they visit Cuba.

We tend to visit other countries with the underlying attitude that ours is better, and that may be no more than healthy patriotism. But it’s also good to go with the idea that any country can teach us something. Every country does some things better than we do.

So Cuba’s economy has stalled, limped along for decades, the people have suffered from shortages. Life has been hard for them. Few Americans would be envious of their situation. But having learned to live under economic hardship, they have developed in ways that are unique to them.

Besides advanced public health and education systems, Cuba has developed advanced organic farming methods. And the country has cultivated its arts to a glorious level. Because Cubans have little access to Internet and all the media entertainment that we have, they have developed in other ways.

In Cuba music is not only an experience of pushing a button and listening to recordings through a big sound system. When you hear music, which is just about anywhere you are in Cuba, it is usually live music.

And when kids want to get together for fun, they don’t have video games and the myriad forms of media, entertainment and distractions that we have. So many of them channel a lot more of their youthful energy into more fundamental activities, the arts, such as music, dance and painting, as well as sports, such as soccer and baseball.

So while it’s good to appreciate your own home, it’s also good to travel to other countries with an open mind and be ready to admit that in some ways they may have it together better than your own country.

Learning from the Past

Raul Castro has said that although relations are normalizing with the U.S., Cuba is still communist. We could discuss all afternoon what that word means in various contexts: in Marx’s 19^th century writings, in Russia in 1917 or in 1950, in the U.S. in the 1930s, in China in the '60s or today. The word obviously takes on many different meanings.

But if Cuba’s being communist means that its economic development will be controlled and that Cuba will not suddenly turn into another generic destination cluttered with KFCs and McDonald’s, I will not mind very much. We have plenty of places where we can partake of those products.

Hopefully, like other countries that have been developing in recent times, the Cubans will learn from the mistakes of the past, such as in destinations where the beautiful landscape has been obscured by overbuilding of glitzy, high rise hotels. Hopefully Cuba can incorporate the lessons of sustainable development and sustainable tourism as it progresses.

From my experience in Cuba, I see a people eager for interaction with Americans, and eager for change. But they want change in a Cuban style, not necessarily exactly the way corporate America would envision it. They are open to influence. They want to try some of the good things the free market can bring them.

They don’t want to be a colony of the U.S., either in official terms such as Puerto Rico, or in unofficial terms, such as Cuba was between the Spanish American War and 1959, when the country was functionally a colony of the U.S. American corporations held most of the productive land, and the Mafia ran the show in Havana to a large extent. Rank-and-file Cubans were left out of the prosperity of their own country.

One Cuban I spoke to at length about political matters told me, “We don’t want elections like you have. We just want the best man in charge.”

During the years when Cuba was under embargo and was undergoing repeated covert attacks and sabotage from the U.S., they had reason to hunker down behind the strongest leader they had. It was good reasons we gave them to stay loyal to Castro.

Now that relations are beginning to thaw and the people-to-people encounters are having an effect on both countries, there is a good chance that the embargo will be lifted at some point and normal relations can really begin. When that happens, the siege mentality in Cuba will lift. And that will free Cubans to think more expansively about their future and how they want their independent country to develop.

And I think that will solve whatever issues the U.S. had with Cuba 100 times better than the embargo ever did.

Viva Cuba!

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