Fidel Castro’s Death Casts Doubt on
WASHINGTON—The death of Fidel Castro amplifies questions about the future of President Barack Obama’s effort to restore U.S. relations with Cuba, as both countries undergo momentous political
transitions.
In the U.S., President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January after sending mixed messages during the campaign about how he would approach Mr. Obama’s policy of restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba—at times saying he would reverse the effort, much of which has unfolded through executive orders that could be reversed.
“Fidel Castro is dead!” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, suggesting a celebration of the Cuban leader’s passing.
He added in a statement: “Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty.”
Mr. Trump spoke with Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Miami’s Cuban-born Republican mayor Carlos Gimenez to discuss Mr. Castro’s death, Florida officials said on Twitter on Saturday. Mr. Trump “expressed his support for and solidarity with the Cuban-American community,” a spokesman for Mr. Gimenez said.
In Cuba, Mr. Castro’s death marks the end of an era that brought U.S. relations to a hostile standstill. And although Mr. Castro’s brother, Raúl, has led the country for much of the past decade, the absence of the towering figure of the Cuban revolution could still affect U.S. relations.
Mr. Obama, who in March became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years, said Americans “extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people” following Mr. Castro’s death.
“We know that this moment fills Cubans—in Cuba and in the United States—with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation,” Mr. Obama said in a carefully worded statement. “History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”
Pedro Freyre, who heads the international practice at law firm Akerman LLP and represents several U.S. clients seeking to do business in Cuba, believes Mr. Castro’s death could help accelerate normalization.
“If there was one person who embodied the Cuban revolution, it was Fidel Castro, and now he’s gone,” Mr. Freyre said, adding that in Russia, China and Vietnam “it wasn’t until the revolutionary leader was gone that real change could be instituted.”
Yet divisions among U.S. political leaders were underscored almost immediately after Mr. Castro’s death was announced, raising the prospect that opponents of Mr. Obama’s policy could try to take advantage of this moment to halt advances in relations between the two countries.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Cuban-American and Republican presidential candidate this year, said in a statement: “Sadly, Fidel Castro’s death does not mean freedom for the Cuban people or justice for the democratic activists, religious leaders, and political opponents he and his brother have jailed and persecuted. The dictator has died, but the dictatorship has not.”
Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), a Cuban-American who has opposed Mr. Obama’s policy, said Mr. Castro’s death “represents an historic opportunity” for the U.S.
“Contrary to the romanticized idea being peddled by some, recent lopsided concessions in U.S. policy towards Cuba have not led to an iota of positive changes in the way the regime rules or the Cuban people live,” Mr. Menendez said in a statement.
Mr. Obama has long seen the sunset on the Castro regime as an opportunity for charting a new path for relations.
He campaigned in 2008 on softening U.S. policies toward Cuba and, once he won a second term in 2012, he authorized a secret effort to re-establish relations. In December 2014, the U.S. and Cuba said they had reached a deal to do so.
Cuban President Raúl Castro, right, with President Barack Obama at a joint news conference during Mr. Obama’s historic visit to Cuba in March 2016. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The president’s effort has met resistance in Congress, leaving him to implement it through executive actions that could be undone by his successor. Lawmakers have refused to lift the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, which the White House has said is the only way to fully restore ties between the two countries.
Mr. Trump’s contradictory statements over the past year don’t lend much insight into how he might respond to Mr. Castro’s death.
One sign of his intentions toward Cuba may be the recent naming ofMauricio Claver-Carone, a conservative, anti-normalization lobbyist and director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, to his transition team at the Treasury Department. The Treasury Department is in charge of enforcing embargo violations.
The appointment of Mr. Claver-Carone, who did not immediately answer an emailed request for comment, was widely seen by Cuban Americans as a signal that Mr. Trump is serious about reversing Cuba engagement.
The move also “alarmed the Cuban government,” said Richard Feinberg, a professor at University of California, San Diego, who recently wrote a book about Cuba’s changing economy.
Yet Mr. Obama’s policy of engagement is popular among many Republicans, said Javier Corrales, a Cuba expert at Amherst College in Massachusetts.
“All the fundamental interests—shipping companies, the farm lobby, oil, construction, Wall Street, and evangelicals, support it,” Mr. Corrales said. “If he tries to set the policy back, [Mr. Trump] will enter into a big conflict with important parts of his coalition.”
Other supporters of President Obama’s engagement policy, including many Cuban-Americans, point out that the U.S. embargo failed to dislodge the Castro regime after more than a half century, and even helped the Castros by giving them a convenient excuse for their failures.
“It gave the Cuban government an enormous amount of legitimacy, of being a state under siege, and an ability to coalesce against a common enemy which was the narrative of the government for 50 years,” says Carlos Saladrigas, chairman of the Cuba Study Group, a think tank of Cuban American entrepreneurs that lobbied hard in favor of Mr. Obama’s strategy. Mr. Saladrigas, a wealthy businessman, was a prominent backer of the U.S. embargo until he changed direction and started pressing for a policy of engagement.
Some observers view Mr. Castro’s death at 90 years old as the removal of a main impediment to change in Cuba.
While Raúl, known as a pragmatist, had pushed modest economic reforms, Mr. Castro had often sniped at the younger Castro’s reform efforts.
Mr. Feinberg said Mr. Castro’s presence held back reform in Cuba by igniting the passions of Cuban-American hardliners seeking to keep the U.S. embargo in place. With Mr. Castro’s death, “one of history’s longest grudge matches has finally been ended by biology," he said.
In his statement on Mr. Castro’s death, Mr. Obama urged Cubans to “recall the past and also look to the future.”
“As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said.
Write to Carol E. Lee at carol.lee@wsj.com, Jose de Cordoba atjose.decordoba@wsj.com and Felicia Schwartz atFelicia.Schwartz@wsj.comCuba’s Relations With U.S.
0 التعليقات:
إرسال تعليق