People will assess the impact of President Barack Obama’s historic trip to Cuba for years to come, but a long conversation with Cuba’s oldest and best-known human-rights leader shortly before the US president’s visit left me skeptical that there will be significant changes on the island anytime soon.
I talked with Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, 72, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, hours before he returned to Cuba after a family visit to Miami last week. He was detained for 3½ hours on his arrival in Havana on Saturday, and is scheduled to attend a private meeting between Obama and a small group of Cuban dissidents in Havana on Tuesday.
Sanchez is one of the founders of Cuba’s human-rights movement and an interesting political figure. After breaking with the Castro dictatorship in the 1960s, he founded the commission to keep track of the regime’s human-rights abuses and became one of the government’s most vocal critics. But at the same time, he has always opposed the US trade embargo on Cuba and has supported the re-establishment of diplomatic ties.
Still, Sanchez has no illusions that Obama’s trip will bring about any important changes on the island. In fact, there has been “a big increase” in repression of peaceful oppositionists since Obama’s December 17, 2014, opening to Cuba, he told me. There were more than 2,500 short-term detentions for political reasons in the first two months of this year.
What do you think about Obama’s assertion that new US trade ties with Cuba will bring about incremental economic changes, which in time may result in greater political freedoms? I asked him.
“I only know four or five words in English, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s what you call ‘wishful thinking,’ ” Sanchez said. “There have been no real reforms in Cuba, but only small administrative changes, which are not laws and can be reversed anytime.”
Why are you afraid that these small “administrative changes,” such as greater freedom to travel abroad for Cubans, will be reversed? I asked.
Because it has happened many times before, Sanchez responded. “The Castro brothers need to keep alive the image of a foreign enemy. The image of a foreign enemy is indispensable for any dictatorship. And when there isn’t a foreign enemy, they create it, as Jimmy Carter learned the hard way,” Sanchez said.
Carter, much like Obama today, opened up a US diplomatic mission in Havana — known as a US interests section — in 1977, and wanted to continue improving ties with the Cuban regime, Sanchez explained. But Fidel Castro sabotaged these efforts by unleashing the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which badly hurt the Carter presidency.
“Carter extended his hand, and Castro bit it,” Sanchez said, adding that Obama should keep this in mind. Castro ordered the Mariel boatlift in order to create a conflict with the United States and keep alive the Cuban regime’s excuse for repression at home, he added.
Won’t things change now that Raul Castro vows to retire in 2018 and Fidel Castro is about to turn 90? I asked. Sanchez bit his lips, in a signal of skepticism.
“I imagine the Castro family will stay in power under a (rotating) formula such as that of Russian President (Vladimir) Putin and (Dmitry) Medvedev. Real power will continue in the Castro family’s hands,” he said.
Sanchez said he supports Obama’s trip because it helps undermine the Cuban dictatorship’s excuse that it can’t allow fundamental freedoms because of an alleged US aggression, although he is under no illusion that Obama’s public speech in Havana — even if it’s allowed to be broadcast on the island — will have a huge impact.
Castro may allow Obama to say what he wants “because later, with his huge domestic and foreign propaganda machine, and with police intimidation, Castro can erase his message from people’s memory,” he said.
My opinion: I agree. Even if Obama makes a strong speech in Havana, Cuba’s dictatorship will soon “erase” that message from people’s memories with an avalanche of political propaganda.
Only a major international diplomatic offensive to help restore fundamental rights in Cuba, now that the Cuban regime’s claim of a continued US threat sounds increasingly ridiculous, can start to bring about a political opening on the island. Without that offensive, the impact of Obama’s trip will be minimal and short-lived.