We Are Cuba! by Helen Yaffe

Author:Helen Yaffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300230031
Publisher: Yale University Press

RAPPROCHEMENT AT LAST?

As head of the United States Department at Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Relations, Josefina Vidal led the Cuban team in those secret talks. We met in late December 2016, three weeks before Obama handed over to Trump. ‘There are many factors,’ Vidal responded when I asked what had motivated the Obama rapprochement. ‘Cuba’s resistance and determination were key elements, number one. History had shown that pressure, preconditions and aggression do not work with Cuba.’127

Internationally, ‘the loss of US prestige resulting from the failed policy maintained towards Cuba provoked an unbearable isolation for the United States government’, explained Vidal, pointing to the increasing number of countries at the United Nations General Assembly voting in favour of the Cuban resolution to condemn the US blockade.128 ‘It was also seen very clearly when all of Latin America and the Caribbean told the United States: “no more Summit of the Americas without Cuba, no more regional meetings without Cuba. Cuba must participate”.’ This support was ‘recognition of what Cuba, with its modest resources, has done in favour of those countries, not only in material support but also in defence of regional interests.’ With rapprochement, Washington moved to eliminate an irritant in US relations with Latin America as a necessary step in the process of regaining and reinforcing US control over the region.

Despite the extraterritorial imposition of the US blockade, since the 1990s the revolutionary government had diversified trade and secured international investment partners. The pace of these collaborations sped up with the economic reforms introduced from 2011. In 2013, the Mariel Special Development Zone and super-port were opened with Brazil as a major partner, and in 2014 a new international investment law was approved. US business interests watched with frustration from the sidelines as their rivals moved into ‘the Cuban market’.129

In summer 2014 the presidents of Russia and China visited Havana. During Putin’s trip, USD 32 billion of Cuba’s Soviet-era debt was written off, leaving just USD 3 billion to be paid over 10 years in joint projects. ‘We will provide support to our Cuban friends to overcome the illegal blockade of Cuba,’ Putin said.130 Two weeks later, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed 29 trade, debt, credit and other agreements in Havana and thanked Cuba for advancing cooperation between China and Latin America.131 Meanwhile, the European Union had become Cuba’s biggest external investor, accounting for 20 per cent of total Cuban trade. ‘Very pragmatically,’ said Vidal, ‘the United States realised that the only country left out, by its own choice not because of Cuba, is the United States.’

Domestically, a shift in the balance of forces managing Washington’s Cuba policy meant a policy change on Cuba might at last be possible, enabling Obama to leave a legacy in an area that most presidents had steered clear of. His administration calculated that there was more to gain through ‘engaging’ Cuba than there was to lose in a conflict with a political elite that was losing its leverage. US policy was considered a failure, said

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