Those versed in The Godfather trilogy will recall a scene from the second installment depicting Castro’s 1958 incursion on Havana. The well-heeled and fully corrupt — American and Cuban — are drinking and dancing in the new year, oblivious to the advancing occupiers.
But the libations turn to panic as dictator Fulgencio Batista’s home forces are overrun, sending the partiers running into the streets. Chaos has descended, and not even their privilege and power can save them from the revolution years in the making.
In the world of actual events, Batista, his family and a loyal few fled Cuba one step ahead of the communist onslaught. He lived in exile until his death in 1973. And a new, immanently hostile era between Cuba and the US was begun.
Cuba’s history is far more complicated than most Americans know, let alone appreciate. Rich in culture and tradition, the nation has nonetheless witnessed the near-eradication of its indigenous population (Taino), brutal invasions by four Western European powers, and triangulation as a proxy for nuclear brinksmanship. As educator and theologian Elesio Perez-Alvarez describes it, Cuba is a land of resistance.
Post the barely avoided nuclear nightmare (and earlier ill-fated attempt to assassinate Castro) relations between the Cuban and US governments have for the most part ranged from bad to worse. There have been halting, measured attempts by the last three Democratic administrations to improve relations with Havana, but none have survived the party line Republican executives that followed.
That dynamic is playing out again as the Biden administration begins easing harsh restrictions put in place by anti-negotiation, tunnel-visioned Trump handlers. While less expansive than those enacted under Obama, the new measures will: make it easier for families to obtain travel visas for visiting relatives in Cuba; authorize more commercial and chartered flights to Havana and a handful of other cities; allow groups to fly to the island for the purpose of education or business with pre-approved companies; lift the $1,000 family cap for remitting funds between families with members in both countries and; restore the Cuban Family Restoration Program, which will allow legal US residents with family members in Cuba to enter the US via an accelerated process.
Taken together these policies are vast improvements over the knee-jerk restrictions so favored by anti-relations Republicans. Inevitably some progressives are pushing for a more robust approach; while the usual cast of pre-outraged GOP legislators, governors and constituents want to keep doing the same old Cuba things, only harder.
Making sense, as is often the case, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy offered up some advice both camps would do well to follow: “I hope this announcement is the beginning of a wholesale renunciation of a discredited policy that is beneath our country and has exacerbated the hardships inflicted on the Cuban people. The federal government needs to get out of the business of restricting how or where Americans can travel and spend their own money. That is not what the world expects of our 233-year-old democracy.”
Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2022
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