Pressure to end embargo mounts
By ELIZABETH LLORENTE
Staff Writer
Ignacio Alfonso has grown impatient with the economic embargo that the
United
States has maintained against Cuba longer than he has been alive.
Alfonso, a 39-year-old restaurateur who fled Cuba with his family in 1970,
says that
the embargo has failed to bring democracy to Cuba. And so, he says, the
United
States needs to lift it.
"Over 40 years, the embargo has done nothing," says Alfonso, whose family
owns a
Cuban eatery in Union City. "Fidel Castro has found ways to get around
it and survive
it. It hasn't been much more than a political symbol, and it has just worsened
things
for people on the island."
Alfonso's criticism of the embargo is no longer the anomaly it once was
in the ethnic
community. A growing number of Cuban-Americans say the time has come to
approach Cuba differently.
Although their condemnation of the Cuban government, and Castro in particular,
is
deep and unwavering, this emerging group has come to believe that the embargo
is
ineffective, and that its removal may be what hastens political change
in Cuba.
Perhaps American tourists and businesses can, in large numbers, capture
the
imagination of Cuba's people, they say, and inspire them to demand more
freedom
and a better quality of life.
To be sure, surveys show that more than half of the nation's Cuban-Americans
still
appear to support the embargo. But the shift in the community from near-unanimous
support just a generation ago is making itself evident on several fronts.
Most Cuban-Americans walking along Bergenline Avenue in Hudson County on
a
recent Monday said they want the embargo lifted. Alfonso says about 80
percent of
his Cuban-American customers oppose the embargo.
In March, 250 people in Miami gathered for a conference on reassessing
U.S. policy
toward Cuba. A local newspaper writer observed: "The March 28 event was
a
milestone. ... Never had so many Cuban-American political activists gathered
in the
heart of el exilio to express opposition to the 41-year-old embargo."
The shift is also reflected in polls. A new poll, conducted by Bendixen
and
Associates, shows that while 61 percent of Cuban-Americans in Miami want
the
Bush administration to continue the embargo, the community was nearly evenly
split
on the effectiveness of the embargo and on keeping travel restrictions.
"Certainly, the Cuban-American community is changing," says Wayne Smith,
who
directs the Cuba program at the Center for International Policy in Washington
and
who headed the U.S. Interests Section in Havana under the Carter administration.
"It's become clear to many Cuban-Americans that this embargo is not going
to work,
and that perhaps the best way to bring reform to Cuba is to reduce tension
between
the United States and Cuba and to begin to engage," Smith says. "Many other
countries do business with Cuba; a unilateral embargo never works. The
hard-liners
really no longer speak for all Cuban-Americans."
Jorge Acosta, an attorney in West New York, calls the embargo fiction.
He notes that many aspects of the embargo - such as a provision that bars
executives of overseas-based corporations that do business with Cuba from
traveling to the United States - are rarely enforced.
And Acosta says the sanctions are rendered meaningless because of the many
people the United States allows to travel to Cuba; journalists, scholars,
and those
who have relatives there, among others.
Acosta questioned how Cuban-Americans can insist on an embargo while making
frequent trips there and sending $800 million each year to relatives on
the island.
The $800 million is one of Cuba's top sources of revenue.
"If this government is not going to enforce the embargo, and make it real,
then they
should just lift it," says Acosta, who is 45 years old and left Cuba in
1966. "If there
were a real embargo, where no one could travel to Cuba and Cuban-Americans
who
are here were not allowed to send all that money back, maybe it would work."
Experts on both sides are well aware of the change in attitude. They attribute
it to
several factors.
One, they say, is purely generational. Younger Cuban-Americans are more
flexible
about how to bring democratic change to Cuba. Another factor was Elian
Gonzalez,
the boy who drifted near U.S. shores after the boat carrying him and a
group,
including his mother, capsized during their attempt to flee Cuba.
Many Cuban-Americans sympathized with the older exiles' well-publicized
anger over
the return of Elian to Cuba, but also felt that this fueled the image of
the community
as intolerant. Finally, there is the sheer frustration of waiting for the
embargo to
dismantle the dictatorship in Cuba.
The four-decade-old embargo, which has been tightened twice in the last
10 years,
generally bars trade with Cuba, and restricts Americans from traveling
there for
personal or business reasons.
The mixed views on the embargo are unfolding in the Cuban-American community
at
the same time that a parallel debate heats up on the national level.
During a historical visit to Cuba in May, former President Jimmy Carter
depicted the
embargo as a Cold War relic and urged the United States to abandon it.
But in a
speech in Miami marking the 100th anniversary of Cuban independence, President
Bush vowed not to lift the embargo without significant democratic and economic
reforms by Castro. Bush also vowed to veto congressional efforts to ease
the
sanctions.
Cuban-American supporters of the embargo say it is unfortunate, but not
surprising,
that others in their community are pushing for a U.S.-Cuba policy change.
"Some of the most passionate anti-Castro people I've known have given up
on the
embargo and say it should go," said Jose Manuel Alvarez, a specialist on
Cuba and
the former chief foreign policy adviser to Rep. Robert Menendez, D-Union
City.
But embargo supporters say it has forced Castro to take important steps
toward
more openness in the hope of seeing the sanctions lifted. Without that
pressure, they
say, Castro would never have allowed the visits by Carter or Pope John
Paul II in
1998. They also say that lifting the embargo would flood Castro - whose
government
holds a virtual monopoly over the island's economy - with capital that
he might use to
finance leftist revolutions and anti-American movements around the world.
"When the Soviet Union gave Castro billions in subsidies every year, the
Cuban
people still lived in poverty, they got none of it," Alvarez says. "At
the same time,
Castro sent troops to Angola and used the aid to export his revolution
to other
countries."
"Castro is not just another tyrant," Alvarez, 52, says. "He's the only
living dictator who
tried to get the Soviet Union to nuke the United States. Now, Castro's
developing at
least the capability for biological weapons, and he's got the right connections
with
rogue states to cause us migraine headaches."
Embargo supporters express exasperation over the popular notion that exposing
the
people of Cuba to Western icons such as Gap jeans and Coke will bring down
communism.
"Europeans and Canadians have been vacationing in Cuba for years, and it
hasn't
made a dent in the dictatorship," said Bergenfield resident Clara Nibot,
who is a
fixture at pro-embargo rallies.
But others think the influence of American tourism and business in Cuba
would
inspire the island's people to fight for freedom and a better life. They
say that
exposure to Cuba would allow more Americans to witness the failings of
the Castro
regime, which they say too often is romanticized in this country.
"The exposure will open eyes on both sides," Alfonso says.
In New Milford, Steven Llanes finds himself in the middle of this debate.
The 23-year-old son of Cuban immigrants favors keeping the embargo as long
as
Castro refuses to hold contested elections, release political prisoners,
and allow
freedom of speech. But he also believes the United States and Cuba must
embark
on diplomatic relations - something many hard-liners vehemently oppose.
"I understand the emotionalism of the Cubans who don't agree with sitting
at the
table with Cuba to have talks," says Llanes, who is pursuing a master's
degree in
public policy at Harvard University. "Their liberty and everything they
worked for were
torn away from them. My grandfather was a political prisoner.
"I don't think they've done anything wrong in their struggle for democracy
in Cuba. My
generation has to build on that struggle with new and creative ways to
approach the
problems in Cuba and between the two countries. We're going to be the ones
who
will see the fall of Castro and the Cuba that will come after that."
Copyright © 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc.