August 22, 2011 | Print This Post Print This Post
Haroldo Dilla Alfonso
HAVANA TIMES, August 22 — Every time the general/president talks about
updating something, I really don't understand what he means. It's
probable that he's doing this for that very reason, so that no one will
understand him. In this way he can buy some more time so that he and
his companions can finally figure out what they're going to do.
It now turns out that Raul Castro has announced an "updating" of Cuban
immigration policy – undoubtedly a derivative of the right to touristic
travel that they promised in the "Guidelines" document.
What's more, he did it in passing, without giving details; it was like
routine information passed out to the deputies and the public, without
debate or consultation. This was one more example of the slight
transparency that characterizes him and that animates the Cuban
political system.
Positive steps
Even with this being the case, I find this a positive step for several
reasons.
Due to the existence of an arbitrary and repressive immigration policy
directed against the Cuban population — one that is well below the
minimum standards recognized in this area by the broad international
community — Cuban society has suffered greatly over the last several years.
Emigrants are exiles, forced to pay amazingly large amounts of money to
a parasitic government only so that it allows them the right to travel.
In this process they find themselves victims of expropriation,
humiliated in their own land, separated from their families and from
their homes, and frequently prevented from returning. In other times
they were described as social scum and criminals, while they and their
relatives were physically attacked by hostile crowds of political lynch
mobs.
Right now it doesn't matter as much that the United States tried to use
the immigration issue against the Cuban government, particularly during
those years when the island's government represented a revolution
(though that has ceased to exist for some time now). What now matters
is that the Cuban government has been guilty of conspiring against its
own society through immigration regulations that are frankly obscene.
Umbrella. Photo: Sarah Waisvisz
If General Raul Castro tries to modify this situation to the benefit of
both the island and the émigré communities, if somewhere on the planet
there's an émigré who will be able to travel to the deathbed of a dying
relative without having to request permission, any step towards such a
situation deserves recognition. I therefore personally salute the general.
But it should be very clear, especially for those who like to waste
their energy on applauses, such success will not come through minor
modifications like the normalization of relations between those who
emigrated and island society, all of whom constitute a part of the nation.
No solution is possible if there is not full and total recognition of
the right of Cubans to travel abroad and return to their homeland at
will. There is no possible solution if this right is not recognized for
all Cubans who emigrated and if the government does not restore all
civic rights that it expropriated when those individuals left for other
countries.
Differing objectives
However I don't believe that the expectations of the general/president
are heading along these roads of redemption. The diagnosis of RC is
always the same tune with a few slight variations in the composition:
Migration is a weapon of Yankee imperialism, the US Cuba Adjustment Act
is an obstacle; and there exist good migrants who contribute
remittances, dance salsa, miss the flag and aren't interested in
politics. Nothing indicates a critical review of the policy that has
been used against the population to control it and has racked up a
tragic balance of human rights violations.
What the Cuban government is seeking is a better use of the economic
potential of emigrants. With absolute sincerity, RC has declared that
the priority at the moment is "to restore the international credibility
of the Cuban economy gradually." That's why when there are citizens
living abroad, the government perceives them only as sources of
remittances, tourists and possibly investors.
Cuban street. Photo: Sarah Waisvisz
Where there is a national diaspora, the Cuban government only perceives
the existence of an economically flourishing community that possesses
close to 150,000 businesses concentrated mainly around Florida (The
annual sales levels of these is ten times more than entire Cuban export
of goods, and they produce just under half of the island's total GDP as
stated by the government).
That's why I don't expect changes sufficient to achieve the
normalization of relations between the two communities. I do expect a
reduction or elimination of the excessive payments that the Cuban
government is currently required to make, a simplification of the
immigration process, the lifting of prohibitions against specific types
of migrants (for example the balseros of 1994), and a few other measures
that will make exchanges more fluid.
These are small changes, but healthy changes. They will relax the
ominous political controls on island society and inevitably move the
field of politics toward an area of greater freedom – to the detriment
of the authoritarianism of the Cuban political system.
But this will also demand of the exile community a mature and
constructive attitude, one superior to the acquiescent emotions that
overflow from our Raulist-Lite (displaying the clamorous intransigencies
of rigidity in extinction). We will need to see ourselves as a modest
part of a complex process in which we were never scum and will never be
saviors. We need only recall an article published in Pinar del Rio:
"Todos somos Cuba" (All of Us Are Cuba).
That's already a lot, don't you think?
A Havana Times translation of the original published by Cubaencuentro.
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