Want to see reform and development in Cuba? Stop denying Cubans the tools to do it themselves.

The Washington Office on Latin America's posted an article on three harbingers of change in US Cuba policy late last month. The first, and most significant of these, I think, is the recent statement by US Representative Kathy Castor from the Tampa area calling for an end to the US embargo on Cuba. The authors also noted the visit of popular Cuban dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, which in itself may signal a small but important shift in policy within Cuba. Last, they point out that the US is apparently considering removing Cuba from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism. While I would tend to doubt the possibility of Cuba being removed from this list any time soon, it seems that Representative Castor's position on the embargo--the first ever from Florida to oppose it--is indicative of a growing shift in attitudes among younger generations of Cuban Americans, Floridians, and Americans, more generally.

While the debate over US policy towards Cuba has raged for decades, barring major changes on the island, the status quo will likely continue for several years.  There are are however, several assumptions and implications about our Cuba policy and economic sanctions more broadly that I find worryingly absent in public debate on the issue.

One issue is the startling lack of a voice for Cubans living in Cuba. Many writers in the US portray a kind of arrogance or detached patrimonial concern for "what's best" for Cubans (I realize that I have limited standing here, advocating policy, having never been to the island, etc.). This is true on the left and the right, and includes Cuban Americans. Those who advocate reform, which include left-leaning reformists and free-trading conservatives, often do so believing that increased contact and trade between Americans and Cubans will encourage and equip Cubans to resist and overthrow the Castro regime. Those who oppose reform have traditionally cited the argument stemming from hard line Cuban American quarters that increased travel and trade "provides a source of hard currency for the Castro regime." Both positions tend to depict Cubans themselves as mechanisms--pawns even--in a quest shared by left and right to undermine communist rule: liberals hope to empower the people, while conservatives worry that the regime will itself be empowered at the expense of its people.

This manipulation (good intentions aside) for the sake of political change undergirds the logic of US sanctions levied against any regime. There are some exceptions to this generalization: in Iran, targeted sanctions are supposed the restrict the ability of elites (but clearly affect the citizenry) to finance and procure material for their nuclear project; in North Korea, sanctions famously targeted the ruling clique's taste for luxury goods. But in the majority of cases, sanctions are a blunt attempt to make the lives of enough of the citizenry miserable enough that they rise up and either overthrow the regime or force it to change or abandon the policy that triggered sanctions in the first place. The problem with our public discussion of sanctions though, is an overreliance on the the economic damage wrought by sanctions as an indicator of their success. In other words, if we see that sanctions are wreaking havoc on the economies (and lives) of a country, we generally say they are "working."

But the discussion usually stops there.

Throughout the 1990s sanctions against Iraq inflicted hyperinflation rates upwards of 4,000 percent, sky high child mortality rates, and a death toll of up to 500,000. Even in Cuba, while the economic policies of the Castro regime have done the most damage, sanctions have clearly had a major impact on the economics of families, communities, and the state--otherwise, why keep them around? Yet unlike many sanctions, those deployed against Cuba can hardly be considered "targeted sanctions." In fact, defined by the GAO as some of the most comprehensive on any country, the current embargo (recent adjustments notwithstanding) is nearly total.

In this sense, sanctions have "worked." In both the Iraqi and Cuban cases though, the people did not (or could not) force the kind of hoped-for change in policy or regime. Iraqis who did rise against Saddam in the post-Gulf War period were pummeled by chemical weapons. More recently, in Iran, another state to experience devastating sanctions, thousands who protested against rigged elections in 2009 were violently dispersed by regime thugs.

The Cuban opposition faces a different obstacle. US policy towards the island encouraged an "exit option" for many of those with the inclination or means to oppose Castro over the course of 50 years. This escape valve limited the effectiveness of groups who, absent a receptive destination for political exiles and refugees 90 miles from Cuba, would have exercised their "voice," (in the terminology of the late Albert Hirschman) and sought reform from within. (This is not to say that Cubans have not bravely resisted the Castro machine--indeed, many have paid dearly for doing so--only that the resistance movement was seriously weakened by so many having left the island.) In other words, while it seems clear that sanctions have achieved the proximate goal of damaging the Cuban economy over the course of half a century, there is no question that they have failed in the secondary goal of affecting change on the island.

Worse, many, including the widely read dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, argue that the sanctions have only strengthened the Castro regime, allowing it to blame the US for decades of economic disaster and enabling it to survive well past its expiration date. Change to US policy then, should at the very least adopt a "first, do no harm" standard, and take away the ability of the Castros to blame US policy for their failures.

Beyond simply eliminating a tool by which the Castros oppress their own people, removing the embargo is the right thing to do because it restore the dignity of Cubans who have for generations been treated as pawns in the US government's conflict with the Castro regime. I am under no illusions that foreign policy calculus equally weighs strategic and humanitarian interests; it doesn't. Nor do I believe US policy towards Cuba is made in a political vacuum; it isn't. I am also not one to gush over recent liberalizing reforms on the island, positive though they may be. I do however join with others who see the potential for economic growth, and by extension empowerment of everyday Cubans as a result of increased trade and travel to the island, as a good in and of itself. And if an empowered Cuban populace also contributes to US policy objectives, well, maybe that is just a bonus.

Colombian Peace Negotiations

In November 2012, the Colombian Government sat down with representatives from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and began what has become a sincere, if tentative, process of negotiating an end to the longest running civil conflict in the hemisphere. Now into its third month, there are some signs of progress and some signs of imminent and increasing strain.

The talks, hosted by Cuba, revolve around five main points of contention: land distribution and development, demobilization, political participation for (future) ex-guerrillas, drug policy, and victims' rights. For now, negotiators are focused on the issue of land distribution policy, at once the root of the conflict and perhaps the closest thing to low hanging-fruit in these negotiations. Recent initiatives by the Colombian government have given a little ground in this area. Last year, the government launched a land restitution scheme aimed at putting land (around 2.5 million hectares in 2012) back into the hands of people who have fled the conflict.

In a country where approximately 1.15 percent of individuals control just over half of the country's farmland (according to the UNDP), there is clearly a long way to go. And, the going will likely get tougher; the government would like to distribute only fallow federal lands, while the FARC focuses on land concentrated in the hands of the conservative agro-export elite.

Writing for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Adam Isaacson notes that so far, both sides have come to the table in sincerity and have shown collegiality and respect for secrecy. There have been almost no leaks and despite the end of a unilateral FARC ceasefire on January 20 and resumption of hostilities, the parties have remained at the table. Interestingly, the government's refusal to declare or participate in any ceasefire (unlike during previous talks), may serve to strengthen the possibility of achieving a deal--particularly considering the fact that the FARC is considered to be the weakest it has been in decades.

Several potential obstacles could, however, derail the process. As negotiators continue to dig in to the land reform issue, the question of what land to redistribute and to whom will be tricky. WOLA's Isaacson observes that the country's largest association of cattle-ranchers has joined former president Alvaro Uribe in strenuously denouncing the negotiations. The two parties have not begun to address the question of political integration of ex-guerrillas, or the issue of drug policy reform--two issues that could raise the ire of many Colombian groups as well as the international community (the U.S. included).

The Santos administration has expressed its unwillingness to continue negotiations past November, 2013. As a result, the pace of the negotiations has become a real challenge. Further, assuming a deal is reached (far from a safe bet), implementation of the plan is an unknown. The government would like to put the resolution to a referendum while the FARC would prefer to institutionalize the outcome through a constitutional convention. Finally, the country's other long-standing rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN) has not been included in the negotiations. It is unclear whether the ELN could be folded into some kind of agreement, or if the two groups would have to start from scratch. The specter of disaffected farqueros defecting to the ELN or forming a splinter organization raises the important question of how consolidated the FARC really is: if a deal were reached, could they deliver?

Many Colombians as well as international observers (myself included) are cautiously optimistic. A large majority--71 percent--in a December 2012 Gallup poll indicated they supported the peace negotiations. When asked about their expectations for a deal though, they were somewhat ambivalent: only 43 percent expressed optimism.

Changing public support for the US trade embargo on Cuba

Digging through some grad school papers, I'd like to share some work I did on public opinion towards the U.S. embargo on Cuba, before it becomes totally irrelevant.

The question I had concerned an apparent growth in support for trade and travel normalization towards the island. The "embargo" refers to the trade sanctions placed on Cuba in 1961 and strengthened or modified several times since. The GAO calls it "the most comprehensive set of US economic sanctions on any country."

When the Cold War ended in the 1990s and the communist threat had presumably been defeated, Cuba watchers predicted that the fall of the communist regime was imminent. We see how that panned out. Yet despite continued abuses by the Castro regime, Americans, who were once staunchly opposed to easing trade restrictions towards Cuba, are now generally supportive of trade liberalization according to polling over the last twenty years as shown in the figure below (which draws from 19 polls conducted between 1990 and 2009 in which respondents were asked specifically about their opinion on the trade embargo against Cuba). 

Admittedly, certain polls do show an ambivalent opinion on the embargo and one actually shows Americans still supporting the policy. Whether American opinion is firmly planted in either camp is beyond the scope of this paper to prove. More likely, Americans in general are either uneducated on the matter or unconcerned with it, and as a result, ambivalent. Nevertheless, while certainly not uniform in the degree of opposition towards the embargo, the results indicate that the trend away from the strong support for the policy in the 1990s, and more or less towards support for normalization today, is clear.

What accounts for this change? The changing demographics in the Cuban-American (CA in figure 2) population—particularly in the southern part of the state of Florida—has led to a perceivable change in attitude in that population and as a result, the American population in general concerning policy towards Cuba. Understandably, Americans of Cuban descent are a tiny minority of the population and cannot possibly account for the total swing in opinion.

However, because Cuban-Americans are a relatively distinct group--50 percent living in Miami-Dade, Florida alone, and generally an older population--among Latinos, and foreign policy making is a peculiar process (relative to other policy processes), their influence is outsized. The fact that Florida is a swing state and a major electoral prize for presidential elections certainly doesn't hurt. But Americans' views of foreign policy issues tend to be more "expert"-driven than other policy areas. Unless they perceive a strong division among experts--knowledgeable and outspoken officials, business elite, members of the press, etc.--they are likely to accept the current policies as status quo. The most outspoken and influential elites have, until recently, tended to support hard-line policies towards the island.


And what, exactly has changed? Well, the demographic makeup of the influential Cuban-American population (especially in south Florida) has changed, or, more accurately, continued changing (since the 1980s) and may have reached a tipping point.

Perhaps the most important shift in demographics among Cuban-Americans is the percentage of foreign born vs. those born in the United States. A 2002 University of Miami report shows that in 1980, the large majority, 78%, of Cubans living in America were born abroad. Ten years later, that figure had dropped to 72%, and by the year 2000: 68%. By the year 2008, when the Pew Hispanic Center last produced its Cuban-American profile report, approximately 60% of the population was foreign born. While such a profile is still unique among Hispanic populations in the United States, it demonstrates a significant change in the population over time.

Hidden within the unique age and SEC makeup of Cubans in America is an important division amongst early émigrés (pre-1980) and late émigrés (post-1980).

The first large waves of Cuban emigrants began leaving the island in the 1960s and 70s because of political oppression from the Castro regime. These groups, who had learned to survive amidst the conservative Batista regime and were in turn abused by the Communists, were driven to leave the island by politically based attacks coming from newly powerful leftists. The rationale for leaving the island then, was clearly political for most of the early groups of émigrés. United States policy concerning these groups was also very generous. Where the Cuban authorities were happy to allow dissidents and opponents leave the island, American authorities instituted policies granting immediate citizenship and even financial aid to new arrivals.

In the late 1970s and especially in 1980, emigration patterns from Cuba began to change. As Cuban exit restrictions grew stronger and Castro’s main political foes were mostly gone, emigration declined. However, in 1980, a spike in anti-Castro sentiment—which some attribute to increased visitation from Cubans living in America—led to a unilateral decision by the regime to allow those who wished to leave the island to do so from the northwestern port of Mariel.

The main driver behind the Mariel boat lift and most subsequent emigration was economic, not political. As islanders watched their economy and infrastructure decay, dreams of prosperity in the US created a strong incentive to leave. The Marielitos, as they are known, were an economically disadvantaged group compared with the pre-1980 groups. While Castro also released some criminals and mentally ill persons, the poor and working class and dark-skinned made up the largest portion of the 1980 and following emigrant groups. Finally, these groups, who were largely raised and socialized in communist Cuba, did not receive the same generous treatment from the United States upon arrival and were less welcome than their conservative, more affluent older counterparts were.

While sons and daughters of the pre-1980 group of emigres adopt some of their parents’ animosity towards the Cuban regime, young Cubans as a group tend to be very much more open to the possibility of diplomatic, travel, or trade liberalization. As they come of age, and become more influential in business, media, and social spheres, their weak support for (or perhaps lower concern with) hard-line policy towards the island will continue to influence broader public opinion.

Excluding the surge in Balsero arrivals in 1994, the stabilization of immigration patterns since 1980 has resulted in destabilization in the Cuban-American population in recent years. A steady stream of economic refugees from the island, combined with an aging conservative, hard-line population of political refugees and a growing influence of younger, liberal Cuban-Americans has resulted in a changing profile that looks nothing as it did 30 years ago.

In short, the more things have stayed the same, the more they have changed.