by Georgie Anne Geyer
Universal Press Syndicate,
Updated January 27, 1999
WASHINGTON -- When Gen. Vernon Walters was sent to Havana in 1982 to see whether Cuban President Fidel Castro was ready for any kind of rapprochement, he returned with an especially insightful message for President Reagan. "I told the president that we don't have anything Fidel wants," Gen. Walters told me many years later. "If we recognized him, he would be like the president of the Dominican Republic."
In short, Walters was one of the few to realize instinctively that any real recognition of him by the hated empire of the "americanos" would only make the Cuban revolutionary, with his grandiosity and his expansive ideological posturing, into a nobody. And if there is anything that Fidel Castro will not go down in history as being, it is a "nobody."
Now we have an interesting new test on January's 40th anniversary of Castro's triumphal march into Havana: Does the United States today have anything that Fidel Castro wants? Or are we in for another repeat of those apparent "changes" in Cuba that emerge cyclically every time the cunning Cuban leader wants to look as if he is liberalizing, but that somehow in practice are never realized?
The newest test case, of course, lies in the details and in the intentions of the significant foreign policy change announced by the American administration this week. The plan calls for substantially expanded flights to Cuba, allows all U.S. residents to send up to $300 per quarter to Cuban families who are not members of the Communist Party, restores direct mail, and authorizes the sale of food and agricultural goods to private entities and farmers inside Cuba, among many other things. Also in the works are plans for an exchange of baseball teams.
In announcing the new policy, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made clear that it had been hammered out 1) partially in response to Pope John Paul II's "inspiring pilgrimage to Cuba" just a year ago this month, and 2) in order to seek "to expose additional elements of Cuban society to democratic practices and values by encouraging additional ... exchanges between our two peoples."
It is indeed a deft and sophisticated change in policy, and it was hammered out by two of our finest Latin Americanists, former diplomats Bernard W. Aronson and William D. Rogers, in conjunction with the Council on Foreign Relations. (The new policy very deliberately does not deal with the American trade embargo against Cuba, despite the efforts of pro-business lobbyists to tie the embargo to any changes.)
So now we watch very carefully what Fidel Castro does next.
Early reports from Havana say the canny Cuban dictator's response is "cool." And you can bet your booties that it is!
Because if character is destiny, and it is, he will soon be doing, in response to these new "overtures," exactly what he has done repeatedly in the past. In 1995, when a similar policy change was in the works, for instance, he shot down the two unarmed planes of the Cuban exile group "Brothers to the Rescue," thus guaranteeing that there would be no changes. The still-undeniable fact is that Fidel Castro does not want any American "opening" that would give Americans any real power or influence in Cuba and thus erode his absolute power.
In his Jan. 1 speech in Santiago de Cuba on the 40th anniversary of his victory, for instance, it was all "Socialismo o Muerte!" ("Socialism or Death!") Capitalism had failed, in particular the new "neo-liberal" philosophy of the many new Latin American leaders who had opened their markets and sinisterly denationalized their economies! Free market proponents were only "religious fanatics" who were creating an evil market-based "secular religion" that would end in an already looming "ideological battle"!
Anyone who looks for transformation in the soul of Fidel Castro should plan for a lifetime job.
Moreover, Castro always knows exactly where he wants to go. As I outlined in my biography of him, "Guerrilla Prince: The Untold Story of Fidel Castro," he does not really care about the U.S. embargo, for it suits his real purpose, which is the isolation of Cuba. The one reason he would like the embargo lifted is that it would make it possible for him to get international loans.
Still, despite his intentions, there are today many more reasons than previously as to why such changes in American policy could begin to open up Cuba. Out of the economic desperation that has brought Cuba from the very top of the Latin American economic heap in 1959 to the very bottom today, Castro has had to allow approximately $2.2 billion in foreign investment into Cuba (even though most of that is essentially investment in the Cuban government, with foreigners primarily in management). There is also, by all accounts, a growing independent farmers' movement, as well as small private restaurants and hotels. If foreign money can get to these Cubans, it could make a great difference (even though it would also surely bring forth one of Castro's clampdowns).
Cuban workers, meanwhile, are "given" by Castro to the few foreign firms, mostly Canadian, Spanish and Italian, who are working in Cuba. The firms pay him in dollars; he pays his serfs in worthless pesos.
Still, we can say that this is an excellent and hopeful move by Washington. For even all these years later, the two countries, so close yet so far, live with a conundrum. We do have things that Fidel wants -- such as outside economic help and total independence -- but, just as in 1982, those are not the things that the United States is willing to give. Fidel has things the United States wants -- such as an end to the conflict and also an end to his dictatorship -- but he has no intention of giving those, either.
And Fidel will never, ever countenance being like the president of the Dominican Republic.
Copyright 1999 Universal Press Syndicate