Caribbean & Central America - March 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

President Barack Obama has hinted at further measures to ease travel and trade restrictions with Cuba ahead of his visit to the island on 21-22 March. However, White House efforts to nudge Cuba’s Communist government to reciprocate by way of measures to improve human rights and fundamental freedoms on the island appear to have got short shrift in Havana, raising concern among critics that the trip could disappoint.

US government sources have hinted at a new package ahead of the Obama visit, to include additional changes to travel, trade and banking rules. Reportedly, the president is in particular mulling new reforms to make it easier for individual Americans to visit Cuba under the 12 permitted travel licence categories. To date, Americans travelling to the island under one of these categories typically must do so in tour groups (unless visiting family members). The administration is also considering possible revisions and clarifications as to how the dollar can be used in trade with Cuba, according to US press reports.

The Obamas will be accompanied on their trip by a bipartisan group of up to 20 members of congress, underlining the broadening coalition of support on Capitol Hill for the normalisation of US-Cuba ties. Republican Senator Jeff Flake (Arizona), a leading GOP advocate for the restoration of relations and the removal of the US embargo on Cuba, has confirmed that he will be on the trip.

Republican presidential contenders Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (both of Cuban heritage) strongly oppose Obama’s moves, and have vowed to roll back all his measures to date if elected. However, in reality US business and popular support for engagement with Cuba is now the majority sentiment in the country and an eventual Republican president might find it politically difficult to dismantle the new arrangements, especially given the growing high profile US business interests on the island, ranging from AirBnB to Cargill and to leading American airlines, currently preparing to re-establish scheduled services to Cuba from various US airports. The other candidate within earshot of the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, has backed Obama’s moves to renew ties with Cuba; in inimitable fashion, the real estate mogul declared he would build a ‘Trump Tower’ in Havana.

The objections of Cruz, Rubio and others to Obama’s Cuba policy are centred on the fact that the government led by President Raúl Castro appears to have made little or no effort to allow for more fundamental and political freedoms in Cuba, as urged by the White House as part of its re-engagement. Cruz and Rubio have accused Obama of being “an apologist” for the Communist government. Reports coming out of Cuba suggest that the government continues with persistent low-level aggression against dissidents, with the security forces routinely rounding up and jailing them for short periods, in an effort to deter organised public activities.

On his trip, Obama will meet both with President Castro and Cuban dissidents, and hopes to deliver a public speech addressing all Cubans, according to the White House. Anticipating criticism, Obama said, in a series of tweets, that his trip aimed “to advance our progress and efforts that can improve the lives of the Cuban people”. “We still have differences with the Cuban government that I will raise directly. America will always stand for human rights around the world.”

In similar vein, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes noted: “As the President has said, Cuba will not change overnight, nor will all of the various differences between our countries go away. But the guiding principle of our Cuba policy – our North Star – remains taking steps that will improve the lives of the Cuban people. That will be the President’s message on his trip – where he’ll have the opportunity to meet with President Castro, and with Cuban civil society and people from different walks of life. Yes, we have a complicated and difficult history. But we need not be defined by it. Indeed, the extraordinary success of the Cuban-American community demonstrates that when we engage Cuba, it is not simply foreign policy – for many Americans, it’s family.”

Josefina Vidal, director of US affairs at the Cuban foreign ministry, has made clear that Cuba is willing to have a frank mutual discussion between equals. “Cuba is open to speaking to the US government about any topic, including human rights…we have different ideas [about rights], in the same way that different ideas exist about other topics like democracy, political models and international relations”, she noted.

Kerry’s visit scotched

These difficulties of interpretation, and Cuba’s sensitivity to any suggestion of interference in its internal affairs, were evidenced with the abrupt cancellation of a trip to the island by US Secretary of State John Kerry, who told a congressional hearing on 23 February that he would go to Cuba for talks on human rights ahead of the Obama trip. On 3 March, officials confirmed that Kerry’s visit had been cancelled, saying that the State Department and its Cuban counterpart had failed to reach “common agreement” on aspects of Kerry’s trip, including his ability to speak with dissidents.

Kerry later spoke to the Cuban foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez. A defensive-sounding State Department spokesperson, Jon Kirby, said that both men had committed to making Obama’s trip a success. He insisted that “the President has every expectation of meeting with dissidents down there in Cuba. There’s no question we continue to have concerns on the human rights issue in Cuba, and we’ve been very candid and frank about that, publicly and privately.” White House spokesman Josh Ernest echoed that, stressing that details of the trip were still being finalised. Marco Rubio, however, was scathing, noting that “the President of the United States, as the leader of the free world, should never have to negotiate the right to meet freedom fighters or raise issues of concern when travelling abroad”.

• Over 1,000 detentions in January

In January, the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation recorded 1,414 political arrests on the island. It said that most were short-term detentions