"Gesture for gesture"

After the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, visited Cuba in February, he told reporters about a conversation he had with Raul Castro. Castro, at one point, brought up the issue of five Cubans – the “Cuban Five,” or los cinco heroes, as they are called in Cuba – who were arrested in 1998, convicted on espionage and other charges, and are in federal jails today. According to Cardinal Bertone, they discussed the issue “with the eventual possibility of an exchange.” I don’t know of any clarification of this conversation that came from the Cuban side to explain who might be exchanged for the five.

A clarification came last week in Brazil in a press conference Raul Castro held with the Brazilian president. There, Castro was asked about the U.S. embargo, relations with the United States, and Cuban prisoners. The transcript (in Spanish) is in Granma; an English-language news story in Granma contains some quotes from the press conference; AP coverage here.

In the press conference, Raul says that a former president (of the United States, I assume) urged him in a letter to make gestures to improve relations with the future Obama Administration. “I told him that the time of gestures is over in Cuba, that they have to be bilateral gestures, no more unilateral gestures.”

He went on to say that under “absolute equality of conditions,” Cuba is willing to talk with the Obama Administration.

And in response to a question about dissidents in prison: “We’re going to do gesture for gesture; those prisoners you speak about, they want them released; let them tell us tomorrow, we’ll send them there with their families and everything; let them return our five heroes to us, that is a gesture by both sides, and of the supposed political prisoners in Cuba.” (My translations.)

The Bush Administration rejected the idea, as AP notes.

It’s hard to tell precisely what signal Raul was trying to send here, or even if he planned to send a signal had reporters not asked about human rights issues. The point about unilateral gestures and concessions is clear enough, and if you want to be optimistic you can take it as a positive signal that he is willing to engage in reciprocal concessions. On the other hand, if “we’ll send them there” means that dissidents would be released on condition that they and their families leave their country, then in this case he is proposing an idea with which no U.S. Administration would be likely to agree.

Earlier comments on the issue here.