Cuba in the Western Hemisphere: What Has Changed?

Abstract

introductionOn 17 December 2014, the presidents of Cuba and the US, Raul Castro and Barack Obama, announced simultaneously to the world the decision of an exchange of prisoners releasing the three Cuban intelligence operatives still in jail in American prisons - Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero - and the subcontractor Alan Gross, imprisoned in the island. Together with Gross, a CIA agent of Cuban origin was also released, and an agreement was reached to set free certain opponents of the Cuban government. The unexpected news that exceeded the expectations of millions of people around the world was the decision to re-establish the bilateral diplomatic relations broken for more than 50 years. We are referring to a historical bilateral conflict centred on the denial of the right of Cuba to be sovereign and independent, based on geopolitical criteria and security reasons of the US, which occurred with the triumph of the Revolution in January 1959. This was an event that carried the contradictions to extremes because of the socialist definition of the Cuban process and the inclusion of the former Soviet Union in the conflict between the two countries. It is a history of revolutionary Cuba that includes the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs; the execution of terrorist acts by the CIA and anti-Cuban organisations established in the south of Florida that have caused thousands of victims being dead and wounded; the greatest nuclear war threat ever lived by humanity in October 1962 and an economic, financial and trade blockade that has caused billions of dollars of losses to the Cuban economy.1The potential change in relations between the US and Cuba must be understood in the context of how Cuba's relations with Latin America have evolved over the course of the last 25 years since the demise of the socialist bloc.2 In 2009, a milestone was reached when Cuba and El Salvador, following the election of Mauricio Funes to the Salvadorian presidency, re-established full diplomatic relations. It meant that for the first time since soon after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Cuba had full diplomatic relations with all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. It will be argued in this article that the range of Cuba's diplomatic relations in the hemisphere has played an important role in the decision by the Obama administration to be the final country in the region to restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba. As will be discussed later, the unfolding of the Summits of the Americas process has apparently been at least partially responsible for the change in US policy. At both the 2009 summit in Trinidad and the 2012 summit in Colombia, Latin American leaders strongly urged the Obama administration to end its decade-long embargo on the island and more importantly, at the 2012 meeting indicated that their participation at the scheduled summit in Panama in 2015 would be contingent upon Cuba being invited. Since the inauguration of the process in Miami in 1994, the US had insisted that Cuba could not be invited as it was not a 'democratic' country as defined by the US. As the Panama meeting approached, key Latin American countries made it clear that Cuba needed to be invited. For its part, Cuba indicated no willingness to democratise as defined by the US. As a result, the Obama administration faced unusual pressure from Latin America to change in some manner its policy towards Cuba.We do not assume the re-establishment of the relations with the US to be a determining factor for the present relations of Cuba with its Latin American and Caribbean neighbours - in spite of its permanent influence on them - but as a result of long-undervalued realities that were acknowledged by President Obama in his speech, when he declared that the policies applied against Cuba for more than 50 years had not met their goals, but had been a real failure. By real failure, he meant that the Revolution had not been defeated. …