What has happened with the efforts to normalize relations with Cuba? This story reminded me of that effort:
Some U.S. port cities are putting plans in place to increase travel and trade with Cuba — just in case relations with the communist island begin to thaw.
U.S. lawmakers are still far from lifting the 47-year-old trade embargo on Cuba, but the election of Barack Obama, along with a Democratically controlled U.S. Congress, has some city leaders banking on improved relations.
In New Orleans, city officials met recently with trade and Cuba experts to discuss how to rekindle relationships in Cuba and bolster trade with the island if relations improve. Leaders also plan to take part in a trip to Cuba with Tulane University this fall.
Anyone?
MikeJ
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=ae9up7eu4TpI
Napoleon
The right is going to go nuts when he lifts the ban. We are going to hear non-stop how the policy is just about to work even though Castro managed to become either the longest serving head of government or second longest serving out of something like 160 countries on Earth with the policy in place. Abject, demonstrative failure is no bar to the right claiming they are right.
PeakVT
What has happened with the efforts to normalize relations with Cuba?
I think the administration wants to extract concessions of some sort from Cuba before relations are normalized. That strikes me as a bit silly since flooding the island with tourists would do much more to change Cuba. IMHO, the administration should open travel and unconditionally offer to Cuba the same level of relations the US has with Vietnam.
MikeJ
Cuba is already overrun with tourists. Granted, there will be a lot more once the US joins every other country on earth in trading with Cuba. Being huge, rich, and 90 miles away makes it certain we’ll send a lot of tourists. But don’t believe the right wingers when they talk about Cuba being cut off from the world.
Jay C
@Napoleon:
What Napoleon said: although the Right’s response is more likely to be wrapped in their patented mixture of self-righteous anger (Communists! Communists!), maudlin sentimentality (what about the exiles??); and orgiastic Obama-bashing (Sellout!), fanned by every talk-radio blowhard in the land.
By any objective measure, US policies towards Cuba have been a bucket of fail for the last 50 years, but OTOH, “objective measures” haven’t applied to Cuban issues in that entire time, either: and probably won’t for another couple of decades. Not til the Castros, and the entire generation they turned out of Cuba are all dead.
Barry Soetoro
Those against it will change their minds once they see all sorts of money-making opportunities coming out of Cuba besides tourism and cigars. Maybe we’ll get some real sugar in our soft drinks or something. More MLB baseball players. Furniture.
Limbaugh won’t have to buy his Cuban cigars off the black market or sneak off to screw little brown boys–well, at least he’ll get his Cuban cigars legally…
geg6
If there is any policy on the American agenda that’s a no-brainer, it’s Cuba policy. I have never understood it because it never made an ounce of sense. And if we finally normalize relations and travel and trade after all this time, we will simply be doing what we should have done if anyone had had a brain back in the 60s. Stupid, stupid, stupid for almost 50 years. Be good to see this particular version of stupid gone forever. And just for the asshole who was saying we Dems have such a love affair with JFK that it rivals the GOP love affair with Reagan’s corpse, JFK was an idiot especially in regard to Cuba. I’ll give him the good handling of the 13 days in October, but otherwise he was no better than any neocon you can name today.
Svensker
Even when I was a Repub the Cuba thing seemed absolutely dumb. How can you consider yourself a “free” American when your government won’t allow you to go somewhere you want to go? What kind of “free” is that?
My Repubs friends explain that it is “defending freedom” to not allow Americans to travel freely.
The government wiretaps us to defend freedom, too.
Orwell was so good.
South of I-10
There has been a lot of talk about this in LA for the last couple of years. The Rice Growers are particularly excited about trade restrictions being lifted. This is about making money for the Port of NO. Here is an article about the Port and lifting the embargo. There is also talk of expanding the Port of NO to capture increased traffic in the Gulf from the widening of the Panama Canal. I am sure the Cuba angle plays into this as well. I do find it somewhat ironic that here in LA, with its surplus of wingnuts, how many people are excited about free trade with Cuba.
DBrown
People – it isn’t American tourist changing Cubian people’s attitude but the fact that many Cubians will be able to afford a short trip (via small boat) to the US and see us. That will change their attitude. Europe and even SA were beyond the means of most Cubians. If we lift our sanctions, that will change.
Shuff
Roll Wave! Sorry…I don’t get to show alumnus pride very often.
Persia
@Svensker: The other thing I never got was that a lot of Communist regimes have been weakened and continue to be challenged because of good ol’ fashioned capitalist desires, caused by, you know, Western goods and media going in and out of those countries.
Roger
DBrown says
“People – it isn’t American tourist changing Cubian people’s attitude but the fact that many Cubians will be able to afford a short trip (via small boat) to the US and see us. That will change their attitude. Europe and even SA were beyond the means of most Cubians. If we lift our sanctions, that will change.”
I have spent a great deal of time in Cuba and am not sure what about their attitude needs to change. They watch american TV and movies. They like Americans. Most of the Cubans I have met are happy with the education, medical and housing policies of the government. They want the ability to make more money and they would like to have a free press. They are not isolated in the ways I thought they were from reading the newspapers.
Brian J
I have no idea if this is even remotely plausible, but if the island is as underdeveloped as I imagine it might be, and if there’s any sort of possibility of relations thawing to the point that American investment could find its way there, wouldn’t that be good for all involved? Perhaps it’s not logical to expect this, but aren’t there a lot of organizations in Florida in particular that might like a shot at any opportunities in Cuba? No, it’s not a huge country, but any sort of chance to make money would seem like an appealing reason to open up relations with the government, or so I imagine most would believe.
burnspbesq
@Brian J:
Infrastructure and sustainable agriculture, cool.
Not sure I would like to see Havana become the southernmost suburb of Miami, complete with a full load of trashy American consumerism.
Brachiator
@Brian J:
A thaw in relations is not going to change the fundamental backwardsness of the Cuban economy. This will need at least the passing of Castro and the old regime, who have a death grip on a fundamentally unworkable Communist model. Cuba has shrugged off attempts at economic development from Canada and Mexico, which have not been as constrained by the US embargo.
The irony is that the Castro regime is in many ways as debilitating as the corrupt regime it replaced. The NPR program Fresh Air recently featured an illuminating interview with T.J. English on Cuba in the 1950s (‘Havana’ Revisited: An American Gangster in Cuba):
A US thaw in relations presents an opportunity for greater transformation in Cuba, but it would be at best a welcome first step.
Wile E. Quixote
No way man! We have to keep the embargo! We have to keep the pressure on Cuba. Sure, it’s been almost 50 years since the embargo was enacted, but it’s going to work, any day now it’s going to work, and when it does we’ll be greeted as liberators by the people of Cuba. WOLVERINES!
Wile E. Quixote
@geg6
I’ve always found the Democratic love affair with JFK to be puzzling. If you look at the 1960 campaign JFK was far more of a cold warrior than Richard Nixon was, and lied through his teeth every chance he got to play up the missile gap hysteria. Everyone likes to point out JFK’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but if he’d had his shit together there never would have been a crisis. And JFK was a whiny little bitch about Cuba, blaming everyone but himself for signing off on the Bay of Pigs invasion. There’s also no credible evidence, despite decades of hagiography by Arthur Schlesinger and others that JFK was going to pull US troops out of Vietnam after the 1964 election.
And JFK didn’t do jack shit about civil rights until he absolutely had to, his policies were entirely reactive in nature. Indeed the best thing that JFK ever did for civil rights was take a bullet to the head in Dallas in 1963. LBJ was able to use Kennedy’s death to get Congress to agree to passing the most controversial parts of the 1964 act, Title II, which prohibited discrimination in public accomodations engaged in interstate commerce and Title III which prohibited state and local governments from denying access to public facilities on the grounds of race, gender, religion or ethnicity. JFK was more useful as a martyr in getting legislation passed than he ever was as president.