A Plea for Dialogue

Open Letter to President Bill Clinton


Dear President Clinton,

Put aside, for the moment, all the Cold War baggage, the thirty-five-year-old revolutionary abuses and expropriations, the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, the on-going anti-imperialist bombast of Fidel, the rancor of Mariel and our own historic, deep-seated paranoia of International Communism. At least deal with Fidel, Cuba and the Miami Junta objectively and dispassionately. Here we are in the midst of a baseball strike and all we hear about is the "need for dialogue." Everyone is so happy if and when both sides just sit down to talk to each other. Of course there must be dialogue! Duh!!! So where is the dialogue between Washington and Havana? Why should you be reluctant to talk with Fidel? So what if the Miami Cabal doesn't like that? Yes, they are politically strong, but the impartiality of authority (the wisdom of Solomon) is not without its cache as well.

The Miami Cubans represent a small, vocal group of angry people, some of whom deserved to be thrown out of Cuba thirty-five years ago no less than Somoza and some of his cronies deserved to be thrown out of Nicaragua in 1979. And they all moved (fled) to Miami, without incidentally, any fervent desire to become English-speaking, participatory United States citizens. Understandably, their first impulse was to re-group and return to Cuba. And now, still, thirty-five years later, of course they want their land back, their casinos back, their businesses and hotels and corruption (one doesn't need to be an Oxford Don to know that old Havana was deep in the pocket of the mob) back. Some businessmen and farmers did get ripped-off by the revolution and they do have a legitimate point of view, but for God's sake, not the only point of view if the whole truth could make its way through the embargo and the stupid rhetoric on both sides of the Straits. I'm sure that at Georgetown you too did your homework about "the origins" of World War I, that classic schoolbook study of culpability. So of course, you know that Germany was not solely responsible for the "guns of August". After all that scholarship can you now, in good conscience, simply lay the blame for all of Cuba's woes on the shoulders of one man?

Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that I can guess the one sure thing you learned about the Spanish-American War (probably most people's first awareness of Cuba) when you were in high school: Yellow Journalism. I know you learned this just as I did and as every other American has learned it. "Yellow Journalism" was hammered into us like Manifest Destiny. Of course we hadn't a clue what "yellow journalism" was when we were fifteen years old (I still don't know where the "yellow" comes from) but now we know what it was. Or do we? I hear and read things said about Cuba, by none other than our Attorney General for example, that make it sound like a "reign of terror" down there. And the mainstream press actually publishes stories about "condoms on pizzas in Cuba!!!?" Please!

The joke in Cuba is that the three successes of the revolution are education, health-care and housing; the three failures are breakfast, lunch and dinner. There is much truth in this. I know because during a month of riding my bicycle around the central part of the island I was hungry and thirsty much of the time. The people I stayed with were hungry and thirsty. The shelves of the state-run stores were empty. People are going without breakfast and lunch, and dinner is an unpalatable mix of bad rice and anything else to throw on top.

People are definitely hungry in Cuba. Obesity is only a footnote in their medical school textbooks. But they are not dying of starvation. We are not talking about Biafra or Somalia or North Korea. And while opposition to the government is not appreciated, it is not as though people are being dragged out of their houses in the dark of night and "disappeared" by soldiers pretending to be thugs. Furthermore, I can guarantee that the forensic archaeologists will never find any mass graves in Cuba like we find among our "friends" in El Salvador and Guatemala. Yes, they might end up as political prisoners, but lets not "Gulagize" the issue by comparing Cuba with Pinochet's Chile or Stalin's Russia. Life is not easy in Cuba these days, most people are really discouraged and angry but the fact is that the American public is getting another dose of "yellow journalism" by the innuendo and hyperbole coming out of Washington and Miami.

I must say that I have never experienced such generous, friendly, articulate people in any other country in Latin America -- and I have studied and traveled in every one of them from Mexico to Argentina. I have never seen as many hospitals as one sees in Cuba. And although skeptical at first, I have to admit that there are virtually no homeless people in Cuba. I rode my bicycle from one end of the island to the other crisscrossing it back and forth. I explored every neighborhood of Havana. I never felt threatened. There are simply no slums surrounding the cities or nestled disgustingly in every ravine and hillside like one sees in every other Latin American city. Streets are clean and one is not constantly nauseated by the acrid stench of sidewalk urine. The water is potable and the rivers run (relatively) clear without the reek of filth and garbage lining their banks as in all other Latin American countries. I know these things because I look for them in all my travels. I get tired and thirsty riding my bike all day. I stop and look over the sides of bridges. I turn into back alleys where the light is interesting. I stop and shoot a few baskets or play a few games of pool or ping pong. I get invited into people's homes and talk to them. I promise you that despite a great deal that is wrong with Cuba there are many things to celebrate there as well.

People ask, "Well, if things aren't so bad in Cuba why are so many people risking their lives on flotsam and jetsom to get out?" First of all, they generally don't imagine the ordeal of three or four days in the open sun-baked sea with nothing but a few gallons of water and their little ration of rice and beans; they all hope they will be picked up by the United States Coast Guard once they get beyond the twelve mile limit. Secondly, why not ask the same question about all the Central Americans and Mexicans flooding into the United States by the thousands every day? Their countries are not being blockaded and they are "democracies" and yet I promise you, the horrors from which they flee in Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico make Cuba look like Camelot.

The economic structure of Cuba, the ubiquitous State Socialism (Marxist-Leninism?) is an unmitigated disaster, an emotional and fiscal execration resulting in gross inefficiencies, shortages, bad service and discontent. This is a fact. Everywhere one is offended by a lack of quality and absence of free-enterprise. And yes, there is repression and no free press but this must not be confused with a "reign of terror" as painted by the Miami Cubans with their particular axe to grind. The fact is, today, a generation and a half after the "revolution", the people of Cuba are even/still joyful (yes, I use that word carefully) despite the daily struggle and myriad hardships imposed by a faulty economy and the peripheral effects of the embargo.

Several times a day, in half a dozen cities in central Cuba, people would ask me where I am from and smile when I told them California. First they would tell me that they have a friend or relative in Miami or Jersey City and then they would say, "Es una mierda aqui!" ("Life is shit here!") It may seem oxymoronic to speak of joy and shit in the same breath but things are relative. Would you like to hear about the misery (shit) I have seen in Peru, Bolivia, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala; the "democracies" we are so proud of, where people live in pestilential, muddy, waterless, sewerless, powerless ghettos of cardboard shacks threatened by rain, disease and crime…where children beg and sleep on the streets, where nuns are raped and murdered, where indigenous people are "disappeared" by the local militia? Other than tiny little pockets, which only an experienced slum-searcher like myself would notice, there are no such places in Cuba. When Cubans tell you life is "mierda" they say it with a blend of salsa.

While the Miami Cubans despise Fidel, the Islanders still share a sort of continuing, grandfatherly respect and fondness for him; after all, he is not an altogether unlikable fellow (In his youth he had the promise of a career in professional baseball.)To view him only as an OGRE will be to completely miss the meaning of the experience of most island Cubans. And, lets not forget that just two years ago, two years after losing their allowance from the Soviet Union, despite a flawed economy and the embargo, a third-world country to boot, Cuba still placed fifth in the Barcelona Olympics! Unlike East Germany's Olympic ascendancy, Cuba did it without drugs.

If nothing else, Fidel gave Cubans a sense of pride in being independent (from the United States, at least) and pride in being Cuban. (Needless to say, in order to really understand what the Cuban experience is we have to go back to times in the last century when there was talk -- in Washington -- of making Cuba a state, and then we have to look at the Spanish-American War and then the first Cuban Constitution with the "Platt Amendment" attached to it allowing for indiscriminate U.S. intervention, and then the establishment of Guantanamo Bay Naval Station at the eastern end of the island and not least of all, to the omnipresent fact of being tied inextricably to the purse-strings of Wall Street. If we cannot understand and empathize with how these things have grated on the Cuban soul, then we cannot understand the meaning of "Fidelismo" and contemporary Cuba.

And this is not to say that most Cubans do not desperately want change. They too want change and a socialist free-market. But to think that, defenseless, as they are, that they are going to martyr themselves on the streets of Havana in an effort to oust "granpapa Fidel," why, nothing could be farther from reality at this point. If nothing else, Cubans are the most intelligent, well-educated people in the world outside of western Europe.

Personally, I am convinced that there are people in high places in Havana who appreciate the Embargo (they call it a "blockade" of course) because it is the perfect foil for the flaws in their system. Everything wrong in Cuba is blamed on the "Blockade." Everything. Clearly, the best way to defuse Fidel is to end the "blockade" (embargo). As long as the Soviet Union was paying the bills Fidel and his friends could pretend that total state socialism was perfect -- and indeed, during the halcyon years of the eighties things seemed pretty good in Cuba. But now, with the rug pulled out, Fidel has to rely almost entirely on the "blockade" as scapegoat to maintain the pretense of the "glories of socialism". From my conversations with many, many people among the six cities of Havana, Pinar del Rio, Cienfuegos, Trinidad, Santi Spiritu, Santa Clara and Matanzas I would say that virtually everyone knows that the good times of the eighties were artificial, that there must be a healthy combination of socialism and capitalism in Cuba (I emphasize combination because virtually all Cubans appreciate their "socialist" schools, hospitals and homes). But to confuse their desire for change as a flirtation with the still-bitter agenda of Jorge Mas Canosa would be to repeat the mistake of Nicaragua.

Having said all of this, what disturbs me most is the unbelievably puerile approach to foreign policy still in effect in Washington. There was no love lost between my mother and father after their divorce when I was seven years old. But at least they talked. I hate to think of what might have happened to me if they had behaved the way most presidents in Washington have behaved toward Chile, Nicaragua and Cuba in the past few decades. Ronald Reagan simply refusing to talk to Daniel Ortega? Give me a break! What could the President of the United States have to lose by spending a few hours talking with Fidel Castro? Is our foreign policy, our esteem in the international community, and the destiny of eleven million Cubans to be governed by Cold War rancor and the vitriolic agenda of the Miami cabal?

Of course, I understand and even share some of their grievances; believe me, for several days lying cold-feverishly sick on a miserable sweat-soaked bed, having to use a toilet which didn't flush, the only paper the government newspaper (One can't say there isn't the ultimate freedom of expression with the Cuban press) no shower because there wasn't electricity to pump the water... all because of some bad fish because of a lack of refrigeration, I did not entertain happy, printable thoughts about Dr. Presidente, Generalissimo Fidel. But to legislate against a country without ever having been there or even having talked with the leader, and make decisions based only on the opinions of one side doesn't make any sense. No such behavior would stand up for a second in any court or even graduate seminar at Georgetown or Yale. When Hillary and Chelsea have an argument what is the first thing you do? You want them to resolve it and you want to encourage them to resolve it by dialogue don't you?

You yourself orchestrated that beautiful handshake between Mr. Rabin and Mr. Arafat last year. Now the IRA and Downing Street are talking (also thanks to your efforts). And, we are even talking with those inscrutable North Koreans, who really do represent a threat to our "national security" if, in fact, they do have a nuclear pistol in their back pocket. So, don't you think you could at least have lunch with Fidel and see if there isn't some common ground, some understanding, some humor, some way to move on to policies governed by dialogue rather than animus? Thanks.