Fidel Castro’s cynicism apparently knows no bounds. Recently at a conference in Havana for Cubans living abroad, regime spokesmen claimed they were dedicated to re-uniting Cuba’s divided families and blamed the United States for impeding this process.
Given that deception and manipulation are Castro’s stock in trade, it is important to set the record straight.
The mandate of President Bush’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (CAFC) was to provide recommendations on ways the United States can help the Cuban people bring about an expeditious end to the dictatorship; and, secondly, on how the United States could assist a free Cuban government meet its humanitarian and reconstruction challenges, if requested.
As the Commission looked at new means to hasten a transition, it identified six inter-related tasks: empowering Cuban civil society; reducing financial flows to the regime; undermining the regime’s "succession strategy" (i.e., from Fidel to Raul Castro); breaking the regime’s blockade of information to the Cuban people; increasing public diplomacy efforts abroad to counter Cuban propaganda; and encouraging multilateral efforts to challenge the Cuban regime.
We found that Castro had built an elaborate apparatus to profit enormously from the humanitarian aspects of U.S. policy. Although family visits may be undertaken with the best of intentions by Cubans abroad, Castro’s dollar-devouring mechanisms have turned such visits into an important component of this massive profiteering.
Unwilling to permit open market activities which would free the productive energies of the Cuban people, the regime has chosen instead to exploit this source of foreign exchange through its control of charter flights’ access to the island; its dollar stores, designed to capture cash brought into Cuba; as well as through the numerous fees it charges travelers. The Commission estimated that the regime was able to generate close to $100 million in hard currency through family visits to the island in 2003.
In short, the policy has had the effect of lining the pockets of Fidel Castro and his repressive elite, and facilitated the ability of some Cubans in the United States to effectively "commute" between the United States and Cuba primarily for economic reasons.
This cynical manipulation of Cuba’s divided families allows Castro to divert scarce resources to maintain his grip on power and free him from his obligations to meet the basic needs of the Cuban people. Dollars and donated goods, although provided with good intentions by U.S. persons, are in fact helping to keep afloat the Castro regime.
On this question, the Commission tried to strike a balance between enabling Cubans to reasonably assist immediate relatives in Cuba and reducing the regime’s manipulation of family visits to generate hard currency. This produced the recommendation of one visit every three years to visit immediate family; a reduction in the amount of cash a person may carry for expenses while traveling in Cuba; and limiting the length of stay to 14 days.
Measures to alleviate the hardships of a portion of the Cuban population--including cash remittances of $100 a month and gift parcels of unlimited food quantities and $200 a month in medicines and medical supplies--remain largely intact.
In the end, what the United States seeks is the reunification of all Cuban families in a free Cuba. We want Cuban families to be free of the fear, intimidation, and manipulation that are the hallmarks of Castro’s tenure in power. We cannot succeed in this effort without the support of Cubans living in exile. The time has long since passed for Cuba to retake its rightful place in the democratic community of nations, befitting its long history of struggle for freedom.
