The debate in the United States about Cuba frequently relies on ossified categories. Cuba is characterized as “communist” and a “dictatorship,” concepts that have long epitomized evil for Americans.
U.S. media routinely detail poverty, inequality, and lack of economic growth in Cuba—and attribute these ills to its political and economic system. Poverty and inequality in Puerto Rico, Haiti, or Flint, Michigan, on the other hand, are not attributed to capitalism or free markets, much less to “democracy.” Puerto Rico may suffer from “financial crisis,” “debt,” and “bankruptcy,” but these problems are typically analyzed as having complex and specific causes, rather than being the result of capitalism.
Since U.S. commentators consign Cuba to a frozen past of abstract “communism,” they spend a lot of time speculating about when change might occur, while their own ideological blinders prevent them from seeing the dynamics of historical change that have existed in Cuba all along.
When Fidel Castro stepped down from power in Cuba, temporarily in 2006 and permanently in 2008, U.S. commentators wondered obsessively whether “change” would occur. “Real change,” The Economist insisted, “will start only after Fidel’s death.” Sure enough, upon Fidel’s death in 2016, a new rash of articles asked, for example, “Cuba after Castro: How Much Change, and How Quickly?”
In some ways it has been the United States that has refused to change.
In some ways, though, it has been the United States that has refused to change. Oblivious to the actually existing Cuba, consecutive U.S. administrations have remained frozen in an abstract Cold War opposition to Cuba’s “communism” and “dictatorship.”
Meanwhile, Cuba’s economic history has been anything but static, and the reforms since the 1990s have been especially radical. One could almost say that Cuba has been in a process of constant change. The collapse of the Soviet bloc, which Cuba depended on for some 85 percent of its foreign trade and aid, sent the economy into a tailspin. Since 1993 Cuba has been experimenting with allowing new types of private enterprise, developing an enormous tourist industry, and encouraging foreign investment. The streets of Havana today bustle with small businesses, wifi zones, and foreign tourists. While the country’s economy is still struggling and many Cubans are frustrated with their lack of access to consumer goods and cutbacks in social services, Cuba today looks nothing like it did in the depths of the economic crisis of the early 1990s.
In 2014, President Barack Obama brought about a historic opening in U.S. relations with Cuba, establishing diplomatic relations, expanding travel and business opportunities for U.S. citizens, and traveling to the island to meet with its President, Raúl Castro. The visit was a dramatic gesture, as was the re-opening, after almost sixty years, of the U.S. Embassy there.
Perhaps even more important to ordinary Cubans were Obama’s policy innovations. He relaxed restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba, and on remittances (money transfers made by migrant workers to their families in the home country), and on flights and cruise ships traveling from the U.S. to Cuba. During his visit, Obama made the requisite demands for “democracy” and free market reforms, but he broke with tradition by stating forthrightly that “the United States has neither the capacity nor the intention to impose change on Cuba.”
The Trump Administration has clearly backed away from Obama’s openness to allowing Cubans to determine their own future. Even as the Cuban presidency has now passed from Raúl Castro to a new generation under Miguel Díaz Canel, the U.S. President has prohibited individual educational, or “people-to-people,” travel authorized by Obama, and forbidden business dealings with entities affiliated with the Cuban military. This includes significant sectors of the tourist economy.
The main victims of the resulting steep drop in U.S. tourism have been precisely those small businesses that Trump claimed to back. “They’re saying they want to help us. But they’re not helping us, they’re killing us,” lamented the owner of a private bed-and-breakfast catering to individual travelers who are now blocked from visiting the island. One tour operator estimated a 25-30 percent drop in U.S. travel this year. Carrie Kahn reported from Havana that “overwhelmingly, I would say the Cubans I spoke with were worried about what they see as these changes, especially what they mean for those working in the growing private sector.”
In ideological terms, Trump greeted the transfer of power to Díaz Canel with full Cold War rhetoric. “We’re being very tough on Cuba because we want the people to have freedom,” Trump announced proudly. Vice President Mike Pence decried Cuba’s “tired Communist regime.” “We’re going to take care of Cuba. We’re going to take care of it,” Trump promised.
The Cubans must be back to wondering: Will the United States ever change? In the words of Cuban author Leonardo Padura, Trump’s policies “don’t help anybody . . . It would really be a shame to return to where we were before, to a state of hostility, confrontation, and tension.”
Aviva Chomsky is professor of history and coordinator of Latin American Studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. Her books include A History of the Cuban Revolution and The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics.