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Open travel, remittances best course for Cuba
Published in The Miami HeraldNovember 20, 2008
On Jan. 1, 2009, the Cuban Revolution marks its 50th anniversary. Three weeks later, Barack Obama will step into the Oval Office as the 11th U.S. president to face a Castro-led government in Havana.
Several plates full of problems await the new administration. Still, President Obama should quickly implement what he promised in Miami on May 23: ”I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island.” Simply reversing the shameful restrictions of 2004 won’t do. A bold move that puts Havana on the spot is in order.
Lifting all restrictions on family travel and remittances may seem like small potatoes. Yet, given where we are now, it could turn out to be a game changer. In 1979, the visits of 100,000 Cuban Americans helped trigger one of the most difficult domestic challenges that Havana has ever faced, the Mariel exodus. Today Cuban society is considerably more fragile. Merely rescinding the 2004 restrictions would suit the regime just fine.
The Cuba Wars, by Daniel P. Erikson, my colleague at the Inter-American Dialogue, has appeared in time for the coming rounds on U.S. Cuba policy. It is an engaging read of U.S.-Cuban relations under President George W. Bush. His treatment of Cuban Americans is especially fair and noteworthy, whether it be the Elián González case, the presidential recount in 2000 or the community’s growing diversity. The Cuba Wars, moreover, puts it all in the context of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11.
Erikson’s review of how the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba came about in 2003-2004 is particularly well done. The Iraq war stirred a hornet’s nest in the community. Why couldn’t the United States do the same in Cuba?
In August 2003, 13 Republican state legislators — including 10 Cuban Americans — wrote Bush a letter expressing ”disappointment and outrage” about his Cuba policy and suggesting that stalwart support for the Republican Party in Cuban Miami might be in peril. Two months later, the Commission was born. It eventually issued a 500-page, detailed tome meant to hasten the Cuban transition and placate the concerns expressed in the August letter. With an eye toward the November 2004 elections, the administration directed the aforementioned restrictions.
The Cuba Wars predicted that Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart would retain their congressional seats. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen did as well, but hers was mostly a foregone conclusion. The Republican victory may or may not indicate that Cuban Americans in their districts support current policy. Cuba, for once, was not the main issue in contention; the economy was.
What else might the election results show? An exit poll conducted by Bendixen & Associates in Miami-Dade County with nearly 12,000 voters (about 3,900 Cuban Americans) helps us look beyond the winners and losers. While John McCain took 65 percent of their votes, Obama won the county 58-42 and Florida 51-48. Two trends in the Cuban-American electorate stand to favor the Democratic Party in the longer term.
• Sixty-one percent of those who are U.S.-born and 65 percent in the 18-29 group preferred Obama.
• Cubans who arrived in the 1990s were split 49-51 percent between Obama and McCain while those arriving in the 2000s broke 58 percent for the Democrat.
Let’s not forget as well that, in the 2007 Florida International University Cuba poll, 55 percent of Cuban-American respondents agreed with unrestricted freedom to travel to the island, while 42 percent opposed the embargo outright.
Elections have consequences, and the case for changing U.S. policy on Cuba would have benefited immensely from one of the Cuban-American challengers winning. At the same time, Obama won the demographic groups that will only keep on growing as well as a total vote share comparable to Bill Clinton’s in 1996, which helped him win Florida.
I hope that Obama allows unrestricted family travel and remittances to Cuba. It’s not only right for humanitarian reasons but could also capitalize Democratic gains among recent arrivals and younger, U.S.-born Cuban Americans.
Confrontation simply hasn’t worked. Tightening the embargo after the Cold War was supposed to do the trick while more recent policies aimed to hasten the transition. Perhaps we’ve been barking up the wrong tree. Opening up may be the real hard line.
Growing pains of democracy, development
Published in The Miami Herald
July 3, 2008
Chile is Latin America’s success story. Per capita income has grown from $4,720 in 1990 to $13,936 in 2007. By leaving unperturbed market-based economic policies instituted in the 1980s, the Concertación, the center-left coalition in power since 1990, led Chile to where it is today. The next frontier is breaking the $20,000 mark in per capita income, which would denote the country’s full passage to development.
It’ll be a much steeper climb. Survey results by Latinobarómetro and CERC, two Santiago-based polling firms, paint a complex portrait of Chilean public opinion that explains why.
Take for instance the economy. In 2007, 30 percent expressed themselves to be very or somewhat satisfied with it. About 80 percent have consistently said that economic growth has largely benefited the rich. Close to 90 percent consider the private sector too powerful; most have unfavorable views of people in business.
These attitudes, which fly in the face of impressive progress, are stirred by the inequalities that democracy has barely touched.
- Some 85 percent discount that there is equality before the law.
- More than 80 percent see Chile in the vise of special interests.
- In the early 1990s, the perception gap between democracy’s legitimacy and its efficacy was relatively small: about 85 percent and 75 percent, respectively.
- Since then, both perceptions have declined — legitimacy stands at 74 percent, efficacy at 55 percent — while the gap doubled.
Let’s gain some perspective. Since 1987, poverty rates have fallen from 40 percent to 16 percent. Still, if Chile had levels of inequality comparable to South Korea’s, more than a million Chileans would no longer qualify as poor. Reducing inequality while sustaining economic growth is no mean task, but that is precisely what Chile must do.
By cracking the inequality syndrome, which in part means significantly increasing average incomes through higher productivity and better distribution, Chile would also lead Latin America on a front that bedevils the entire region.
Increasing prosperity has ironically complicated matters. In 1998, 60 percent agreed that a market economy was best for Chile; in 2007, only 46 percent did. Between 2005 and 2007, the percentage agreeing that a market economy leads to development fell precipitously from 62 percent to 41 percent. Those considering private enterprise indispensable likewise declined from 72 percent (2004) to 59 percent (2007).
Chile’s economy has slowed down. Nonetheless, I can’t imagine that public opinion in South Korea, Ireland or New Zealand would so readily belittle the market in an economic downturn. More likely, it would blame politicians, which Chileans vehemently do as well.
- Whereas in 1991, 63 percent said that politicians did not care about people like them, 85 percent did in 2007.
- Asked if politicians think only of people like them when an election is coming up, 73 percent agreed in 1991 while 93 percent did in 2007.
- In 1991, 66 percent agreed that no matter who’s in power, personal interests always prevail over the public good; in 2007, 82 percent did.
Politics, a long-standing Chilean strong suit, needs to midwife the current impasse.
Twenty years ago Chile passed the transition test with flying colors. The Concertación — a pact between Christian Democrats, Socialists and two smaller parties — can take much credit, but so can the conservative opposition. Even Augusto Pinochet gets some points for exiting peacefully.
Now the threshold is consolidating democracy. The political class must reach across the aisle to find common ground on a series of issues such as buffering inequality, improving education, creating jobs, energy, the environment, increasing investments and streamlining the state apparatus.
Left and Right need to look beyond upcoming elections — municipal in October, presidential in December 2009 — because the problems that Chile faces loom larger than who’s in power. A changing of the guard is no great tragedy; not meeting the charges ahead would be.
By the way, all of the above is actually good news: Chile’s problems are the result of success, not failure.