No More Tropical Fish

To Cuban-American elected officials: The intellectual debate is over. The embargo is dead. These officials need to stop waving the bloody shirt of suffering to justify a policy that is intellectually bankrupt and that has supported the very regime that they have sought to bring down.
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My mother had a gift for Cuban proverbs. In her later years, when asked how she was doing, she would reply, "I am like the Royal Palm, feeding the hogs and waiting to be hit by lightning" (it flows much better in Cuban Spanish). One of her better aphorisms was "stop thinking about tropical fishes," alluding to the end of a fanciful idea or illusion. Cuba, the U.S. and the Cuban-American community have filled an entire aquarium with tropical fishes (pecesitos de colores) over the course of a 50-five year profoundly dysfunctional three-way relationship.

It begins with the Cuban government which is stuck not so much in the rhetoric of the Cold War, as in an older and more intellectually arcane construct of 19th Century Marxist dialectics. The economic debacle of Cuba's centrally planned and controlled economy is a direct result of this failed illusion. The Cuban propaganda machine works overtime labeling the United States the imperialist archenemy of Cuba and all developing nations and any U.S. action no matter how well intentioned gets automatically labeled another sinister plot by Yankee imperialists to dominate the world.

This miscasting and misinformation is targeted with particular ire upon segments of the Cuban American community who are painted as members of a "terrorist mafia". Never mind that it's been decades since the any acts of true terrorism -- including the single most horrific one which consisted of bombing a Cubana Airlines passenger plane in Barbados in 1976- by any group remotely associated with Cuban-Americans. And never mind that Cuban American largesse provides $3 billiom plus to the people of Cuba every year.

Not to be outdone, the U.S. government -- and in particular the same segments of the Cuban American community the Cuban government label "terrorists" -- have historically never missed an opportunity to criticize that government's actions, no matter how constructive. One good example is the deployment of a substantial number of Cuban health care workers to Ebola-stricken West Africa -- an act which widely praised by the world community. (Two months before President Obama's historic December 17, 2014 announcement, State Department representatives at a press conference were bending over backwards to avoid praising these efforts.)

The new chapter in U.S.-Cuba relations that began in December is the perfect opportunity to empty the aquarium, get rid of the fantasies, and begin operating from facts.

The Cuban government's economic mismanagement and repressive governance will now become more evident externally, but more importantly, to its own people. There are no more Yankee imperialists ready to topple the revolution and devour the country. Havana is now full of Americans; not U.S. marines piling out of amphibious vehicles, but middle aged Hemingway aficionados, smoking cigars and drinking mojitos at sunset on the veranda of the Hotel Nacional.

It's time to face the music of democracy and economic development. It's time for the island's rulers to take a step back and ask themselves what kind of future they want for their people. There is an opportunity now to re-forge the nation as a peaceful, tolerant, prosperous, open and law abiding society. There is an opportunity to consolidate the positive aspects of their rule in universal health care and free education for all. There are no credible external threats. It's time to let Cubans express themselves freely because the colossus of the north has dropped its shield and sword and is offering a helping hand in the construction of a vibrant economy. The exiled children of Cuba -- now transformed into hyphenated Americans, smart, well trained and burning with desire to help their brethren on the island -- are flocking back to their ancestral home not to destroy, but to help build a brighter future if they are allowed to do so. Cuba's leadership should extend an olive branch to the Cuban-American community and unite the Cuban family.

For the U.S., the exaggerated threat of a small, impoverished nation right next door will be exposed for the falsehood that it is. Cuba has trouble supplying enough fuel to get produce to markets, much less provide fuel to its fleet of decrepit soviet-era jet fighters. It's time for demagogues to stop using events that happened 50 years ago as harbingers of new national security threats. Russia is not the Soviet Union. Despite Putin's hostility, and Cuba's astute use of current tensions, the cold truth is that beyond a few exhibition flights by old bombers and port visits by rusting research vessels, Russia is unable to project power across the Atlantic in any sustainable manner.

And for my beloved Cuban-Americans, the extraordinarily accomplished and peaceful tribe to which I proudly belong, it is time for each one of us to do a gut check, and empty our little fish tanks.

I dare not speak for my multifaceted community, but I will share my flashes of insight about our public servants.

To Cuban-American elected officials: The intellectual debate is over. The embargo is dead. Anti-Castro hardliners had a 50-year run dictating U.S. policy towards Cuba and the truth is they have nothing to show for it. They need to listen to what their many constituents have said in recent polls by The Atlantic Council and Florida International University, and not to what their few hardline contributors are saying. The majority of Cuban-Americans support the policy of engagement. Cuban Americans are voting with their feet and going to see their families in Cuba in record numbers. They are actively helping Cuban businessmen as they make their first forays into the exciting world of entrepreneurial activity. It is their constituents who are providing the micro financing and entrepreneurial expertise to build the small private restaurants -- the "paladares" -- which are becoming the hallmark of Havana's nascent tourism scene. The conversation in Miami since December has been muted and restrained. No one is burning tires on Flagler Street in outrage over the opening with Cuba. There are more than a dozen daily flights to Cuba out of Miami International Airport to the island; are South Florida's politicians seriously contemplating shutting these flights down to "punish" the Castro regime?

These officials need to stop waving the bloody shirt of suffering to justify a policy that is intellectually bankrupt and that has supported the very regime that they have sought to bring down. Many of these politicians, including two Presidential candidates, have never set foot on the island; they have never tasted a "piruli"-the super sweet Cuban candy-, ran "tierra colorada"-Cuba's highly fertile red colored soil- through their fingers, or smelled sugar cane (the very aroma of Cuba) as its being processed in a sugar mill. Talk about fanciful ideas, their Cuban mirage is composed of childhood images, simplistic clichés, talking points and sound bites. Many of them have a visible and troubling disconnect with the daily lives of everyday Cubans. It is interesting to note that a recent clandestine survey in Cuba run by a Mexican firm showed Pope Francis and President Obama as the two most popular political leaders for Cubans. Fidel and Raul Castro came in sixth and seventh; Cuban American legislators did not register in the results. Their protestations of concern for the very Cubans they claim to support ring hollow--particularly when the first piece of legislation related to Cuba that they can come up with relates to compensation for property claims that were written off for tax purposes decades ago.

Hardline politicians' support for the valiant struggle of political dissidents, while laudable on the surface, has the perverse effect of targeting those same dissidents for repression. Their use of the image of a bloodied dissident to bolster their political campaigns, while gleefully backing deeper relations with a Chinese government which persecutes dissidents on a regular basis, and a Saudi government that beheads people and brutalizes women, is disingenuous at best and hypocritical at worst. It is time to end the grandstanding and generate creative and effective policies to empower the Cuban people so they can build their own future. Finally, it's time for them to remember that they are American elected officials and that their primary duty is to safeguard the best interests of the United States of America -- not to run for Mayor of Havana, or Little Havana for that matter.

It is long past time to let go of the vision of struggle and confrontation, and embrace the vision of peaceful transformational change from within; time to understand fully that the future of Cuba, its prosperity, tranquility, fairness, justice, respect, inclusiveness, tolerance, dignity and form of governance will and must come from within. That path runs from Maysi to San Antonio, winding its way through its green mountains, fruitful valleys, sugar cane fields, tobacco groves, villages, towns and cities; through Bayamo, Holguin, Santiago de Cuba, Camaguey, Santa Clara, Trinidad, Matanzas, Cardenas, La Habana, Mariel and Pinar del Rio, and not through Tallahassee, Houston, Jersey City or even Washington D.C., as glorious a symbol of freedom as it is.

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