Politics of Color for Obama in Cuba

Miriela Mir Fonseca left her mother as well as four brothers and sisters behind in Cuba. Her relatives often don’t have enough to eat, she says.

So when President Obama recently lifted travel and remittance restrictions for the tiny island nation, Mir Fonseca considered it a blessing.

“With Obama, I can go home anytime I want,” said the 33-year-old, who works as a baker for a popular pastry chain in Buffalo, NY. “Can I tell you my dream? My dream is for my mother to come visit me, and for my brother to come here to help me start my business.”

Mir Fonesca is the face of a little-understood side of U.S.-Cuba relations. She is Afro-Cuban.
Fidel Castro’s relationship with blacks in the U.S. goes all the way back to when he stayed in Harlem after getting rejected by Western and European leaders attending a UN General Assembly meeting in 1961; he was welcomed by El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (also known as Malcolm X). Castro has chosen to visit and deliver speeches in Harlem ever since.

The tiny island nation has long offered to provide free medical school to African Americans, and took a harsh stance against South African apartheid, even as the American government would not.

Over the years, Fidel Castro has encouraged his country – about 60 percent of which is of African descent — to not only identify themselves with African Americans, but to have an affinity for them. And he used America’s racism to discredit U.S. policy on the island, according to Mark Sawyer, associate professor of political science at UCLA and author of Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba.

Obama’s election means the Cuban regime might not be able to demonize the U.S. as it once did.
But despite his reversal of Bush Administration policy toward Cuba travel, it more than likely will prove difficult to follow that with a quick end to the 47-year-old trade embargo.
For one thing, Cuban leaders aren’t sure the country is ready for the embargo to be lifted. That’s why we see mixed messagescoming from the Castro brothers about opening a dialogue with the U.S.

And Castro isn’t stupid. He saw what happened to the Soviet Union in the 1980s after it opened itself up to the West — its economy collapsed.

“Cuba is an island of 10 million people and it has a very small economy,” Sawyer said during a recent telephone conversation. “Opening up with the U.S. could potentially overwhelm their economy; and it could dramatically undermine Cuba’s power, control and its domestic policy.”
Like Mir Fonseca, Afro-Cubans tend to want the embargo put to rest; but they also want their families to maintain the gains of the revolution, such as universal health care and a guaranteed quality education. (Cuba has one of the highest life-expectancies in the world, and Castro is credited with basically eliminating illiteracy in the country.)

A report released earlier this year by Sen. Richard G. Lugar , R-Ind., recommended establishing a bipartisan commission to forge a new, multilateral strategy on Cuba with Latin America and the European Union. It also urged Havana’s reintegration into western-dominated international institutions, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, among other steps.

Borrowing money from the International Monetary Fund could impact Cuba’s domestic policy, by forcing the country to put caps on how much money it spends on education, health and poverty reduction. And it could affect how much Cuba can tax remittances. Currently taxed at 20 percent, that money allows Cuba to provide social services to its citizens.

Possible negotiations with the U.S. are further complicated by an issue that has a decidedly racial component.

When 25,000 elite, mostly white Cubans, fled the island between 1959 and 1993, Castro allowed their homes to be taken over by the maids and other servants – mostly black – who, in many cases, worked for the families that moved to Miami. “These wealthy families want to be paid back for their homes,” said Sawyer. “Under the radar, this is being talked about in terms of possible negotiations with the U.S.”

Cuba could be bankrupted if forced to repay wealthy exiles for their property, Sawyer said.
And that would further hurt poor black Cubans, like the realtives of Mir Fonesca.

As grateful as she is to be able to see her family more than once every three years, as the Bush Administration permitted, she wants more for them, and thinks ending the embargo would be the right start.

“Our families are starving,” she said. “We’re praying for a new start for the USA and Cuba.”