Maintaining and even expanding the Obama administration’s Cuba policy or going back on the position followed by the U.S. government after 17D? That is the dilemma that has marked the Cuba topic in the U.S. election campaign and has dictated the guidelines of the nominees.
It was to be expected. After more than half a century of hardline, inherited and strengthened by the different administrations, the rapprochement between both nations starting December 2014 has tinted the political panorama of that country and has divided the opinions of its protagonists. And Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have not been able nor wanted to run away from that conflict.
As the election campaign advanced, both contenders started defining their opinions about Cuba until they got to the position they currently have. However, this does not mean that such a perspective is coherent with positions assumed with respect to this in the past, or that they are even true and not a game on the political board that the campaign supposes.
Let’s start with Hillary, favored by the polls prior to the elections. The Democratic Party nominee today favors continuing the line of the outgoing administration. “I support the efforts of President Obama with Cuba and believe we must put an end to the failed embargo and replace it with a more intelligent method that empowers Cuban businesses, Cuban civil society and the Cuban-American community to generate progress and put pressure on the regime,” she said only a few days ago to the magazine People in Spanish.
Clinton has defined this position throughout her campaign, even way before being nominated officially as her Party’s nominee. In a speech given in Miami on July 31, 2015, she promised to expand on what had been done until then by the Barack Obama government and hinted that the rapprochement with Havana would contribute to improving U.S. relations with the region.
“For years our unpopular Cuba policy has moved back our position with Latin America,” she said then. “Now we have a strategic opportunity for U.S. interests. The embargo on Cuba must finish once and for all. I understand the skepticism…but we have been promising progress for 50 years. We can’t wait anymore for a failed policy to bear fruit.”
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However, Hillary didn’t always think this way. In 2000 she affirmed that she “was not willing to vote to lift the embargo,” a criterion she maintained at the start of her first presidential campaign in 2008. But already in a debate that same year, she relativized her position when affirming she was willing to work with a new Cuban government, as long as it shows some progress on the road to “democratization.”
It seems the change of the now nominee was consolidated during her term as Secretary of State in Obama’s first administration. As such she urged the White House to review the Cuba policy, because in her opinion the blockade “what not meeting its goals.” She recognized this in her book “Hard Choices,” presented in June 2014, in which in addition she estimated that the opposition by some Congress elements to the normalization of relations had damaged the U.S. as well as the Cuban people.
In July of the same year she went further when affirming that she was willing to travel to Cuba. “I would go someday, yes,” she said in an interview given to the channel Univisión. On that occasion she confirmed her wish to witness the normalization of relations between both nations, “and that subsequently there be a greater to and from of U.S. people.” It is then not surprising that the announcement of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations on December 17, 2014 was interpreted as a political gift by President Obama to his presumable successor; a gift that she honors with her current position toward the island.
The case of Donald Trump is more picturesque and contradictory, as is the New York magnate himself. His attitude toward the largest of the Caribbean islands displays the course of his own interests. While in the first confrontations with the other Republican Party candidates he distanced a bit from the more radical discourse against Cuba, once officially nominated as a GOP nominee his position has channeled to the traditional line of his political group, harder with the island and opposed to the rapprochement promoted by the current U.S. government.
The people of Cuba have struggled too long. Will reverse Obama’s Executive Orders and concessions towards Cuba until freedoms are restored.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 12 de octubre de 2016
In a meeting in September in the James L. Knight Carter Auditorium of Miami, Trump affirmed that he would be aligned “with the Cuban people in their struggle against communist oppression.” He also said that if he is elected he would revert the opening toward Cuba unless there are “religious and political freedoms on the island” and “the regime of the Castros listens to our demands.”
Previously, the Republican nominee had already criticized “Obama’s concessions toward Cuba.” And he did so in the debate between the candidates to his Party’s nomination held in March in the University of Miami, where he opined that the United States should reach an agreement more favorable to its interests. He also advanced that if he were elected president he could close the U.S. embassy in Havana until a better arrangement was reached.
However, despite these differences Trump distanced himself from the most extremist discourse of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and was in favor of some change in his country’s policy toward the island. “I believe there has to be something [that changes relations with Cuba]. After 50 years, the time has come, my friends,” he said then. This point of view, closer to the pragmatic vision of the businessman than to the political commitment, even when it has disappeared from his discourse, could suggest a return to such a perspective if the context were to favor it.
In fact, a bit after visiting the Café Versailles in Little Havana in late September, in his effort to get the backing of the Cuban community in Miami, the Republican nominee was surprised with revelations that cast doubt on him. The influential magazine Newsweek affirmed that the now White House hopeful violated the U.S. blockade on Cuba in the late 1990s.
The operation, put forward by Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts through a third company, was carried out a bit before the multimillionaire attempted for the first time to enter the presidential race as a Reformist Party candidate. In that campaign he promised to maintain the embargo and said he would not invest one dollar in Cuba if there wasn’t a political change, which in light of what Newsweek published looks like a lesson on cynicism.
Faced by the revelation, denied by Trump’s staff, Hillary Clinton accused her rival of placing his interests above the laws of his country, while figures of the Republican Party itself expressed their concern about the event. But beyond the anecdotic, and contrary to what these “incoherencies” could indicate, if something seems clear it is that the businessman-cum-politician has his compass well directed by opportunism and convenience. And if he were to be elected president, nothing could guarantee that he would meet to the letter something he said at some time. Who would believe it!
TN: Clinton and Trump quotes are translated from the Spanish.
Authors
OnCuba Staff,
OnCuba editorial staff
