Rolando H. Castañeda
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Open letter to President-Elect Barack Obama - 2008/11/05 07:49
Dear Friends,
This letter was sent certified to President-Elect Barack Obama as a request to change our nation's Cuba policy. This letter takes even more importance now that Hurricane Paloma is battering another section of the island.
There is a growing sentiment amongst Cuba's exile population that the policies detailed here are the way to go.
Lorenzo & I have been writing together on Cuba for quite awhile now. Our articles can be read in Spanish at www.democraciaparticipativa.net
November 5, 2008
The Honorable Barack Obama
President-Elect
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President-Elect:
We are really thrilled and extremely happy with your well deserved historic landslide victory. We need honest, intelligent, hard working and creative leadership.
We fully trust you and belief in the American people. As you have indicated so many times, we are a great nation that has faced successfully challenges and threats. And at each and every moment, we have risen to meet those challenges with resolve, confidence and ingenuity. We also share with you the fundamental belief that here in America, our destiny is not written for us, but by us. That is who we are, and that is the country we need to be right now.
We are hopeful that you can finally bring the real change we need to Washington in general and to the US Cuba relations in particular, but as you have indicated change never comes without opposition or fight. We have always been at our best when we have had leadership that called us to look past our differences and come together as one nation, as one people; leadership that have rallied this entire great country to a common and higher purpose.
Cuba and the United States have been closely linked —by geography, history, destiny and traditions— for many decades, but this relationship has not been healthy for many years. We cannot undo the past, nor evade its shadow. We can look forward to a different vision, however, which will also have very positive repercussions in the Western Hemisphere.
We strongly support and shared your position that after nearly 50 years of failure, we must turn the page and begin to write a new chapter in US Cuba relations to help advance the causes of freedom, democracy and progress in Cuba. Ten successive U.S. presidents have tried to restore U.S. influence in Cuba; none has succeeded. From the height of the Cold War to the present, Washington has pursued a rather ineffective policy of exclusion, hostility and embargo. The US government has tried to isolate Cuba, but has often founded itself isolated. On the most recent vote in the United Nations in last October, for instance, only two other countries of the world sided with the U.S., 185 with Cuba. U.S. policies toward Cuba have induced no positive changes on the island. Yet official U.S. attitudes and policies toward Cuba have remained entirely frozen.
To write this new forward-looking chapter, as you have indicated, we should address our national interests, and not partisan or local interests, at the forefront. We need to help foster a stable and peaceful transition in Cuba to avoid potential disasters that nobody wants and that could result in mass migration to the U.S. or the continuous perpetuation of the current regimen with its faults that they even recognized.
We also strongly support your position that Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a fundamental right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping change in the island and empowering the Cuban people. Consequently, we support your position to immediately grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to family visits and to send remittances to the island that can be reinstated by your presidential determination. We agree with you that Cuban people should become less depend on the government in basic and essential ways. They need to know that they count on the support and friendship of the Cuban Americans.
Under no circumstances, of course, should the US Government condone violations of fundamental human rights in Cuba. As you have already indicated, your Administration should call upon the Cuban government to release all political prisoners except those convicted of terrorist activities, and to guarantee freedom of expression and assembly as basic human and civil rights.
U.S. officials should engage immediately in appropriate discussions with authorities in Cuba to enhance bilateral cooperation on matters of shared concern —from anti-drugs campaigns, immigration, and public health to energy development, hurricane warnings and disaster relief. Washington should also expand support for educational, religious and humanitarian activities by Cuban civil society organizations.
We also support your proposal to establish an aggressive and principled bilateral diplomacy to normalize relations and to eventually eliminate the embargo, something which until now was unheard of, and that unfortunately has governed our relations for the last fifty years. The refusal to engage and recognize the government of Cuba after it has exercised control of its national territory for almost fifty years is an anomaly that your Administration could correct overnight, with minimal cost and considerable gains internationally.
As soon as the last of the political prisoners has been released, your Administration should ask Congress to authorize trade finance for U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba as well as a number of other measures to regularize economic relations, tourism and commercial trade to expand the already existing and increasing trade flow, which is limited to food imports by Cuba paid up front in cash.
Thank you for your kind attention to our concerns, and we wish you a very successful presidency.
God bless you, and God bless America and Cuba.
Respectfully,
Rolando H. Castañeda Lorenzo Cañizares
Rolando H. Castañeda is a Cuban-American economist; he retired from the Inter-American Development Bank. He resides in Washington, D.C.
Lorenzo Cañizares is a Cuban-American union organizer specialist of the Organization for the Pennsylvania State Education Association. He resides in Harrisburg, PA.
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