His government recently legalized a tranche of previously restricted professions for so-called cuentapropistas , people working for themselves, outside of the state sector. One prospective investor, the Cuban-American entrepreneur Hugo Cancio , told me that he believed that long-standing restrictions on investments by Cuban-Americans would soon be lifted.
So he is leaving as he came in, as a revolutionary, handing off to a new leadership that is more in tune with the new Cuba reality and a changing world. Beyond the pandemic and the economy, Cuba faces other existential questions, which, as ever, revolve around its relationship with the United States. He indicated that the U. As something like a new Cold War approaches, this time with China, but accompanied by increasingly hostile chessboard maneuvering from Russia, the U.
Countries such as Cuba—and, for that matter, Venezuela and Nicaragua—have entered the realm of the known perturbables: places of concern that need keeping an eye on, but which, amid all the other crises in the world, feel containable. Recent inroads made by China to the region are also a preoccupation. Six decades after the missile crisis, then, there are new sources of geostrategic tensions in the hemisphere, and they no longer necessarily involve Cuba. Garcia, like his fellow Cuban-American Hugo Cancio, maintains relationships with some Cuban officials, and occasionally serves as a behind-the-scenes messenger between Havana and Washington.
Terrorist Watch List up until Even now, as President-elect Donald Trump appoints racists and white nationalists to his cabinet, there are calls for the Black Lives Matter Movement to be labeled a terrorist organization. Fidel Castro has been and will continue to be one of the most controversial leaders of the 20th century and as we continue national dialogue on the different perspectives of his leadership, we must avoid martyrdom as well as vilification.
Just as we condemn the suppression of dissent in Cuba and discuss the demographic makeup of the Cuban prison population, we must also acknowledge the active role Cuba played in the decolonization of Africa and the Caribbean, the training of professionals from these areas and efforts of Cuban medical and educational professionals throughout the Global South over the past 50 years.
Nana Brantuo is an educator, researcher and writer. A doctoral student, she centers her academic interests on the mobility, migration and the educational experiences and trajectories of African and African descendant peoples. Her academic work has taken her to various states and countries around the world with her most recent travels taking her to Cuba and Haiti.
Support Provided By: Learn more. Thursday, Nov The Latest. Many people in the U. But the president of the United States cannot do that unilaterally. Lifting the embargo would require Congress to either certify that Cuba has become sufficiently democratic according to the Libertad Act or pass a new bill overturning it. The Cuban government has a history of political repression and fiscal mismanagement, both of which harm the economy. For example, it tightly controls who may obtain state-issued licenses to start their own businesses.
It bans independent labor unions , which would protect workers from exploitation. Finally, few countries still limit trade or diplomatic relations with Cuba because of the embargo. They have created laws that help protect their businesses from retaliatory U. Just as it blames the U. Indeed, the U. The United States even occupied Cuba , in the early 20th century. Gilsinan: Not in all cases on the right side of history, right?
Certainly not on the right side of the Cold War, and elsewhere in Africa— Angola , for example. If you look at the history carefully, the Eisenhower administration kind of pushed Fidel right into the arms of the Soviets. They were kind of thin-skinned about his anti-American rhetoric.
When Castro was here the CIA secretly met with him and tried to recruit him to try to identify the communists in his government and get rid of them. Batista, who he overthrew, was such a thug. I worked with Fidel and his office on organizing 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs [in ]. And we all saw you as a very romantic figure. Until after the revolution when you lined those guys up at the wall and shot them. Kornbluh: There was a series of turning points. The executions were not really the turning point, but they became kind of a propaganda asset for the Eisenhower administration.
And then suddenly human rights was an issue after the revolution, when it never was before. The turning point was the agricultural reform, which nationalized land that was held by U.
And kind of an overreaction to the first Soviet mission to Cuba, which at that point was not a military relationship. Fidel only declared Cuba a socialist state after the preliminary attack in the Bay of Pigs, at the point he understood that they were going to be attacked by the United States.
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