Pedro Szekely
La Habana, Cuba
President Donald Trump traveled to Miami last week to fulfill a campaign promise he made to the hardline anti-Castro community in Little Havana: terminating his predecessor’s carefully constructed détente with Cuba.
“Last year, I promised to be a voice against repression,” he told a crowd of cheering conservative Cuban-Americans packed into the Manuel Artime Theater, a symbolic venue named after one of the leaders of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. “And a voice for the freedom of the Cuban people. You went out and voted and here I am, like I promised, like I promised. I promised you, I keep my promises.”
The President then used his bully pulpit to denounce the Castro government, discredit the Obama policy of positive engagement, and demand that Cuba capitulate its system of government as a quid pro quo for improved relations. In a sure-to-be-futile attempt to coerce Cuba, Trump announced significant new restrictions on the freedom of U.S. citizens to visit the island, as well as on future U.S. commercial interaction.
“Effective immediately,” Trump declared, “I am cancelling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba.”
Well, not exactly.
According to a still-secret National Security Council options paper leaked to the press, Trump’s aides did consider giving Raul Castro an “all or nothing” ultimatum: improve Cuba’s human rights situation or face a complete cut off of diplomatic relations and economic ties. But National Security Council experts noted that such a draconian option would eliminate economic and political leverage over Cuba to extract reforms; prove costly to U.S. businesses that invested in Cuba; and jeopardize collaboration with Cuban authorities on national security issues.
The move would also hurt U.S. relations with Mexico and the rest of the Latin American region, which has consistently advocated for normalized relations between Washington and Havana.
Instead, Trump settled on a set of moderate sanctions backed up with heated rhetoric. Obama, Trump told his audience, had made a “terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime.” But “those days are over,” he claimed with typical bluster. “We hold the cards,” he said, and Cuba would “have no choice” but to comply.
Titled “National Security Memorandum on Strengthening the Policy of the United States Toward Cuba,” Trump’s eight-page executive order outlines “initial actions” that will “end economic practices that disproportionately benefit the Cuban government or its military” and “ensure adherence to the statutory ban on tourism to Cuba.”
From now on, according to the directive, U.S. citizens will no longer be able to travel to Cuba as individuals unless their purpose qualifies under specific exemptions to the travel ban, such as journalism, religious work, or academic research. The vast majority of travelers must now be part of a licensed “people-to-people” tour—a far more expensive way of seeing Cuba.
The vast majority of travelers must now be part of a licensed “people-to-people” tour—a far more expensive way of seeing Cuba—and will face government harassment and intimidation when they return.
Moreover, travelers will face government harassment and intimidation when they return. Officials can demand “full and accurate records of all transactions related to authorized travel” as proof of compliance with the travel regulations. Travel to Cuba will be regularly audited “to ensure that travelers are complying with relevant statutes and regulations.” And violators will be subject to hefty fines.
Among those restrictions is a ban on U.S. citizens, and U.S. businesses, doing any type of business with economic entities—hotels, restaurants, tour buses, stores—controlled by the Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A. (GAESA). GAESA is the largest state conglomerate, overseen by the Cuban military, controlling up to 60 percent of the economic activity on the island. The ban on contact with GAESA-associated businesses will significantly limit the expansion of a U.S. commercial presence on the island, as well as the number of hotels available to U.S. tour groups during their visit to the island.
“We must channel funds toward the Cuban people and away from a regime that has failed to meet the most basic requirements of a free and just society,” states the White House directive.
But the new regulations clearly will encourage the opposite.
On December 17, 2014—an iconic day that the Cubans refer to as “17-D”—President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced an agreement to reestablish diplomatic relations. Over the next two years of his presidential tenure, Obama used his executive authority to facilitate an increase in travel, still technically banned as part of the embargo laws, by authorizing direct commercial flights and permitting individual travelers to self-designate themselves as “people-to-people” tourists.
These travelers have often stayed at one of the 22,000 private homes available on AirBnB, putting money directly into the pockets of average Cubans. Individual U.S. tourists used private taxis to get around, providing money to drivers who are now a growing part of Cuba’s new private sector. They bought arts and crafts from street vendors who are ever-present wherever tourists are.
By the nature of their large size, however, tour groups will have to stay in state hotels—ones that are not controlled by GAESA—and be transported by state tour buses, not taxis. As a consequence, funds will actually be channeled away from the Cuban people and toward the state-controlled enterprises. The new restrictions also mean far fewer U.S. citizens will travel to Cuba—deterred by higher costs of the tours and ominous U.S. government threats.
The new restrictions mean far fewer U.S. citizens will travel to Cuba—deterred by higher costs of the tours and ominous U.S. government threats.
“Additional prohibitions and oversight on travel will only confuse Americans and dissuade them from visiting Cuba,” said Collin Laverty, the head of one of Cuba’s largest travel agencies. Having fewer travelers, he noted, will cause “significant economic hardship to Cuban entrepreneurs and average Cuban families, as well as Americans working in the hospitality sector.”
Trump has sacrificed U.S. support for Cuba’s private sector, as well as the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens to freely travel freely, for no logical reason but to check another reversal off his Obama legacy list. He has sabotaged a historic foreign policy achievement that has indisputably advanced U.S. national and international interests, and contributed significantly to major socio-economic changes on the island.
“While President Obama raised the hopes of Americans and Cubans alike with a forward-looking opening in diplomatic, commercial and people-to-people ties, President Trump is turning back the clock to a tragically failed Cold War mindset by re-imposing restrictions on those activities,” said former White House advisor Benjamin Rhodes about the new directive. “Trump’s actions have put relations between the United States and Cuba back into the prison of the past.”
The Cuban government has responded as any proud, nationalist, country would—particularly one with such a unique history of standing up to, and surviving, more than half a century of U.S. aggression. “Any strategy aimed at changing the political, economic and social system in Cuba—whether by pressure or imposition or through more subtle means—is destined to fail,” declared Cuban state news.
Rhodes also predicts that Trump’s approach will ultimately fail. “Trump’s announcement,” he wrote, “should be seen for what it is: not as a step forward for democracy, but as the last illogical gasp of a strain of American politics with a fifty-year track record of failure; one that wrongly presumes we can control what happens in Cuba.”
Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation project at the National Security Archive and is coauthor of the book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. This essay was also published in Spanish in the Mexican journal Proceso.