Well, it was not a summit meeting where the United States just
preached.
Instead, the Latin American nations at this summit, as elsewhere, are
trying to lead the United States to think differently about the war on drugs
that is ravaging many of their countries.
The host, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, pointed out that that
war was declared by President Nixon in 1971, but in fact dates back 100 years
to the International Opium Convention.
Santos also expressed what seems to be very close to a hemispheric
consensus: that Cuba should be at the next Summit of the Americas regardless of
the issue of Cuba’s suspended membership in the OAS and any steps it may take
to regain its seat, regardless of the Inter-American Democratic Charter,
regardless of anything. Contrary to the U.S.
position, the idea seems to be that it’s just a meeting, and Cuba should be
there.
Whether Cuba would want to attend if invited is another
issue altogether.
This issue and that of Argentina’s claim to the Falklands caused the
summit to end without a consensus declaration.
(New York Times story here.)
Santos’
opening address on Saturday was built in part around the theme of building
bridges, a theme he invoked as he noted the failure of “isolation, the embargo,
indifference, looking the other way” in his discussion of Cuba. This passage in his address was interrupted
by sustained applause:
Another
example of the consequences of not overcoming the paradigms of the past – of
the absence of bridges and creativity – is the case of Cuba.
Isolation,
the embargo, indifference, looking the other way – these have all shown their
ineffectiveness.
In
today’s world this path cannot be justified.
It is an anachronism that keeps us anchored to a Cold War era that was overcome
a few decades ago.
Just
as it would be unacceptable to have another hemispheric meeting with an
incapacitated Haiti, it would also be unacceptable without Cuba present.
We
cannot be indifferent to a process of change inside Cuba that is becoming more
and more broadly recognized; and also, this change should continue.
It
is time to overcome the paralysis that comes from ideological stubbornness, and
to look for minimal consensus so that this process of change may succeed. For whose good? Well, for that of the Cuban people.
And
for that we need to build bridges.
2 comments:
The people of Latin America are not idiots. They have been turning to more progressive governments for generations, throwing off the yoke of imperialism which we and the Eureopean's had laid upon them. They saw the Batista government for what it was; a U.S. backed dictatorship, virtually enslaving a large portion of the population. The Castro revolution was overwhelmingly popular, and remains in the eyes of the world the legitimate government of Cuba. Half a century of lies out of Miami have not changed that perspective. End the embargo against the Cuban people and the constitutionally questionably travel ban which prevents Americans from freely visiting this friendly and peaceful country.
Cuba is not black or white. It is grey.
By this I mean that the Cuban government did some positive things while it was enjoying a Soviet subsidy but now it has serious problems because it has a disfunctional economy and it is a totalitarian dictatorship with serious human rights violations.
But this does not mean that the way to help it to come out of its crisis peacefully is by continuing to enforce economic sanctions against its government which affect its population.
This is not only inhuman but stupid!
The way out is to conditionally lift the embargo by stages through negotiations in exchange for progress in political democracy, human rights and a establishing a free market economy.
Neither the continuation of the embargo nor its unconditional lifting is the way to go.
Let's use the lifting of the embargo for leverage to achieve for the cuban people the democratic rights and the economic progress we would like them to have.
THE MIDDLE ROAD IS THE BEST WAY FORWARD!
CANTACLARO
Post a Comment