CUBAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS

Rear Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.)

Director, Center for Defense Information

INTERVIEWER & NARRATOR:

Sanford Gottlieb, Senior Producer

MARKETING & OPERATIONS:

Mark Sugg

PRODUCERS:

Matthew Hansen

Nick Moore

Daniel Sagalyn

Lori McRea

PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:

Sanford Gottlieb

PROGRAM PRODUCER:

Nick Moore

ORIGINATION:

Washington, D.C.

PROGRAM NO.:

539

INITIAL BROADCAST:

14 June 1992

CONDITION OF USE: Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR"

(Center for Defense Information).

(C) Copyright 1992, Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.

Videotapes also available.

CUBAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS

JOSE CARDENAS

Research Director, Cuban American National Foundation

Senator CONNIE MACK, (R-FL)

House of Representatives

PEDRO MONREAL

Center for the Study of the Americas, in Havana, Cuba

Rep. DAVID NAGLE, (D-IA)

House of Representatives

WAYNE SMITH

Johns Hopkins University

Author, The Closest of Enemies

Chief, U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, 1979-82

ALICIA TORRES

Cuban American Commission Research and Education Fund

Rep. ROBERT TORRICELLI, (D-NJ)

House of Representatives

CUBAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS

["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]

Admiral GENE LaROCQUE: Welcome once again to "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR."

In 1940, I visited Cuba for the first time aboard the battleship Arkansas. I was struck with the poverty of the people and the fact that we treated Cuba as a colony of America at that time. I wasn't surprised really in 1959 to see the Cubans turn to Castro and communism to get out of their poverty. We started out really in a very friendly way with Cuba and, over the years, we became almost bitter enemies.

Our program today is about US-Cuban relations, how they've evolved and what the situation actually is today. I know you're going to find this a different program on the subject than you've ever seen and I know you're going to find it interesting.

NARRATOR: It didn't take long after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 for Cuban-American relations to turn hostile. In 1961, the United States supported an unsuccessful invasion attempt by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA reportedly tried several times to assassinate Castro.

Ilona Maria Lorenz says she was sent to Havana on two occasions to kill Castro.

Excerpt from "Covert Agents Go Public":

ILONA MARIA LORENZ: "As far as an assassin, yes, I am trained, but I'm a lover, I'm not a killer. And I did not take anyone's life. I was ordered to."

NARRATOR: Also in 1961, the United States imposed an embargo on trade with Cuba that continues to this day.

For his part, Castro accepted Soviet troops, then Soviet nuclear missiles on Cuban soil, helping trigger the cold war's most dangerous US-Soviet confrontation. He actively aided revolutionary movements in Latin America during the 1960s.

In the 70s, Castro sent Cuban combat troops to Angola and Ethiopia to defend leftist governments against their enemies.

In the 80s, Castro aided the FMLN rebels in El Salvador and the Sandinista government of Nicaragua in its struggle against the US-supported contras.

But today the Soviet Union, which subsidized Cuba for three decades, is no more. The communist government of Cuba is struggling to stay afloat economically. For lack of oil from the former Soviet Union, oxen are replacing tractors on farms; bicycles are replacing cars. Fidel Castro's future is uncertain, despite advances for most of the Cuban people in health and education during the revolution.

Cuban combat troops have come home from Africa. Cuba is no longer a base for Russia or any foreign power and Castro has said Cuba will no longer help revolutionary movements abroad.

Renowned historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. participated, along with former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and others, in a conference in Havana on the Cuban missile crisis in January 1992. There, Castro announced an historic shift in Cuban foreign policy.

Dr. ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, Jr.: Castro said that Cuba would no longer aid revolutionary movements. He conceded it has done so, that it had participated in attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments in Latin America, such as Venezuela, but that, he said, was a long time ago; the world has changed, we have changed, and we're not in that game anymore.

NARRATOR: With these foreign policy and military changes, some analysts think it's time to begin normalizing Cuban-American relations.

WAYNE SMITH: The best way to overcome our differences is to reduce tensions between the two countries and for the United States to indicate to the Cuban government that, in Henry Kissinger's words, "it sees no merit in eternal hostility," that we are prepared to sit down at the negotiating table with them, begin to discuss remaining disagreements, conflicts of interests on an issue-by-issue basis.

NARRATOR: Wayne Smith served in the US Foreign Service for 25 years, six of them in Cuba. He was chief of the US Interests Section, our unofficial embassy in Havana, from 1979 to 1982. The incisive author of The Closest of Enemies, Dr. Smith teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

A well-financed and well-organized Cuban-American lobby exercises considerable influence in Congress and beyond. The most visible group in this lobby is the anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation, led by Jorge Mas Canosa, a wealthy Miami businessman.

American-born Jose Cardenas is the foundation's research director.

JOSE CARDENAS: Fidel Castro may have said he is no longer going to export revolution. That is not a decision he's made, in my opinion, to curry favor with the US Government. It was a decision dictated by geo-political reality. He can no longer afford to do it.

NARRATOR: The Cuban American National Foundation and others want the United States to increase the economic squeeze on Castro. Representative Robert Torricelli, the hard-charging Democratic chairman of the House Latin American Subcommittee, has introduced legislation to tighten the embargo on trade with Cuba. He emphasizes that Castro's government continues to oppress the Cuban people.

Representative ROBERT TORRICELLI (D-NJ): Cuba has not only violated those standards in the past, like much of the communist world, she uniquely continues to do so. And therefore, I think all democratic governments should be interested in seeing her reform.

NARRATOR: Outspoken Senator Connie Mack of Florida has also promoted legislation to tighten the trade embargo.

Senator CONNIE MACK (R-FL): And I don't see any way that a Fidel Castro changes. So, continued isolation, further isolation.

NARRATOR: Like Senator Mack and Congressman Torricelli, the Bush administration now sees US-Cuban differences focusing on internal Cuban political behavior, no longer on Cuban foreign policy. In a recent article in The Miami Herald, President George Bush wrote:

"There will be no normal relations with Cuba so long as the Castro dictatorship remains in place. We want to see a democratically elected Cuban government that would legitimately represent the Cuban people."

NARRATOR: What makes Cuba a special case?

For years, the United States had diplomatic and trade relations with the communist governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Those constructive contacts certainly contributed to the end of European communism.

The United States negotiated arms treaties and agricultural agreements with the largest and most powerful communist governments. American tourists visited the Soviet Union; Soviet tourists visited the American heartland.

And after years of trying to isolate communist China, the most populous communist country, the United States under President Nixon restored relations with China in the 1970s.

But today, no Cuban goods or services may be imported into the United States. No US products, technology or services may be sent to Cuba. And ordinary Americans may not spend money in Cuba, effectively keeping them out.

To achieve the administrations goal of forcing Castro from power, the embargo has its own logic: to further reduce Cuban living conditions and increase the level of dissatisfaction.

Congressman Torricelli sees two things that make Cuba a special case.

Rep. TORRICELLI: First, Cuba is on our borders and, there-fore, of direct interest. And second, because a million Cuban-Americans live in this country and, as citizens of America, they want it to be important and they're entitled to that view.

NARRATOR: To Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Cuban-American relations have become largely a reflection of domestic pressures in the United States.

Dr. SCHLESINGER: I think Cuban-American relations are a function of domestic American politics, primarily. I think the polls indicate that most Americans would welcome a restoration of relations with Cuba, as they have welcomed restoration of relations with China, communist China.

WOMAN-IN-THE-STREET: I feel that we have to open up and talk to them, and I think that's better. I think rather than keeping it closed, the way we have for so many years, I think we have to open up the dialogue.

NARRATOR: Historian Schlesinger points to the political impact of the Cuban-American community in South Florida.

Dr. SCHLESINGER: As long as a small group of angry, militant Cuban refugees in Dade County around Miami play the role they do in the Republican Party and in the -- as long as the right wing of the Republican Party adheres to that position, it's not going to be easy for a Republican administration to take another tack, particularly a Republican administration that has always been haunted by an exaggerated fear of its own right wing.

NARRATOR: The sponsors of the legislation to tighten the embargo against Cuba, however, come from both parties, and Governor Bill Clinton has endorsed it. Shortly after Governor Clinton embraced the legislation to squeeze Cuba more tightly, the Bush administration followed suit.

The administration overcame its reservations about the Torricelli bill's potential for generating friction with allies that trade with Cuba. The Miami Herald quoted an unnamed Cuban American as saying, "Whatever Bush officials might say, exiles' political muscle forced the administration to swallow its reservations."

Jorge Mas Canosa's Cuban American National Foundation issued a report in 1991 to study creation of a free market economy in a post-Castro Cuba. Jorge Mas predicts that a Cuba without Castro could quickly attract three to four billion dollars in new investments.

Mr. CARDENAS: I think that the elements exist in Cuba today for a much brighter future and perhaps a role as an economic bellwether for the Caribbean region. Cuba has a young workforce. It has abundant natural resources. It has an exile community, perhaps 20 percent of the population, that is skilled in the ways of the free market.

NARRATOR: The foundation's critics say it is playing into Castro's hands by giving the impression that wealthy US-based exiles are hoping to take power in Cuba. Former Cuban American National Foundation official Luis Rodriquez has declared: "We exiles have to assure Cubans that we won't meddle in a post-Castro government. They'd rather be with Fidel than with us."

Senator Connie Mack has a very different view of his Cuban-American constituents.

Senator MACK: People who are crying out for freedom are listened to in this country. And so, from that perspective, their involvement in American politics, their willingness to stand up and say what they think needs to be done gets listened to by most politicians, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, or conservatives or liberal. That message of freedom is one that rings very loud.

NARRATOR: Some Cuban Americans believe that more freedom will come to Cuba through more communication with the island. Cuban-born Alicia Torres is executive director of the Cuban American Committee Research and Education Fund, which favors normalization of relations.

ALICIA TORRES: The polls have shown -- throughout the years have consistently shown that the Cuban-American community is almost evenly divided on the issues of negotiations with Cuba. There is overwhelming support for resolving those issues that impact directly on their relatives, such as medicines, foods, telecommunications, travel.

NARRATOR: Jose Cardenas has a different reading of public opinion polls.

Mr. CARDENAS: Numerous polls show that the overwhelming majority of Cuban Americans favor a hard line towards Fidel Castro, favor the US moving from positions of strength in any initiative that it targets towards Cuba. And, of course, there are those who disagree with the majority, they exist, but they are basically a small minority.

NARRATOR: Alicia Torres says some Cuban-Americans are afraid to speak out on behalf of normalization.

Ms. TORRES: For many years, there has been a history of terrorism within the Cuban-American community. Those sectors of the exile community who have dared to speak out in favor of a normalization, of a rapprochement with Cuba, many of them have been killed and others have been threatened.

INTERVIEWER: In the United States?

Ms. TORRES: In the United States. And this is well-documented in Miami. The FBI declared Miami the "terrorist capital of the United States" back a couple of years ago.

NARRATOR: In Florida, the arguments over relations with Cuba have indeed become heated. David Lawrence, Jr., publisher of The Miami Herald, and two employees have received death threats because of the newspaper's editorials and news coverage of Cuba. Newspaper vending machines have been damaged and defaced.

Mr. CARDENAS: Cuban Americans simply are not the type of people that stand idly by when they see something is wrong and when they feel they've been wronged. And they will stand up and they will fight back. And I think that by criticizing a news- paper, it is not a violation of the First Amendment.

INTERVIEWER: But fighting back ordinarily in this country does not include threats. There were threats to the newspaper, were there not?

Mr. CARDENAS: Yes, but that was totally outside the Cuban American National Foundation. We do not take responsibility for the actions of some misguided individuals. We simply will stand by what was said by this organization. We condemn, and we did it publicly, those threats of violence.

Mr. SMITH: The majority in the Cuban-American community are sensible, law-abiding people. They have no regard at all for Fidel Castro, but they are pragmatic enough to understand that it may be through a policy of constructive engagement that everyone can achieve their objectives.

NARRATOR: With powerful groups favoring the increased isolation of Cuba and others supporting steps toward normalization, what effect might each of the conflicting policies have?

INTERVIEWER: What do you think the United States should do?

Dr. SCHLESINGER: I think it should relax the embargo and restore relations. I think it should -- this would be part of a negotiation that involves better treatment of dissidents in Cuba. We should get some human rights guarantees in exchange. But the longer we isolate Cuba, the more we create a defensive mood there. Cubans are proud people.

NARRATOR: Cubans are proud people, but Senator Mack says the issue is Fidel Castro, not the Cuban people.

Senator MACK: It confuses every rational thought in my being to read about a group of people who wants to normalize relations with Fidel Castro or continue to be involved in trade, which gives him hard currency, which keeps him afloat so that he can continue to be so repressive to the people of Cuba.

NARRATOR: Can the United States exert influence on Cuba while trying to isolate it?

Cubans have a strong sense of nationalism, shaped by their history. They were ruled by Spain for 400 years. Cubans fought guerilla wars to seek independence from Spain in the 19th Century. When the United States won the Spanish-American War in 1898, Cuba became an American protectorate.

The United States occupied Cuba for four years. To assure continuing US control, the so-called Platt Amendment of 1901 gave the United States the right to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever it wished. In 1903, exercising its rights under the Platt Amendment, the United States acquired the naval base at Guantanamo, which it still operates.

Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy ended the old form of domination in 1934. But a new treaty on Guantanamo permitted the United States to occupy the base until it is willing to give it up.

On the economic front, by 1929 American-owned sugar mills accounted for 75 percent of Cuban production. And American mobsters came to dominate Havana's popular night life, gambling and prostitution, as portrayed in the celebrated movie "The Godfather."

Excerpt from "The Godfather": ("Fredo") "To a night in Havana, Happy New Year."

Mr. SMITH: The roots of Cuban nationalism have to do simply with the desire of Cubans that their country be fully independent. I would say that this does not result in anti-Americanism: Cubans tend to like Americans and Americans get along well with Cubans. But it does result, of course, in the intense wish to be independent of the United States and not to be dominated, not to be bullied by the United States. Fidel Castro can tap that wish very effectively, and does.

NARRATOR: The participants in a roundtable discussion on Cuba at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in January 1992 concluded that:

"US policy is counter-productive and is one of the factors enabling Castro to remain in power. Castro plays the confrontation game extremely well. Over the years, he has been highly successful in manipulating the Yankee threat to mobilize the Cuban people behind his leadership and policies."

The participants, speaking for themselves, recommended that the United States "change the nature of the relationship in a way that opens up the island to US influence."

Congressman David Nagle of Iowa makes the case for changing the nature of the relationship with Cuba.

Rep. DAVID NAGLE: The more they can see that we're not now the colossus of the North, if in fact we were at one point in our history, the more they can see that it's an advantage for them and for us to drop the burden of being enemies and the benefits of friendship are greater, the quicker the evolution of a normal relationship with them will come about.

NARRATOR: For Jose Cardenas, on the other hand, the economic isolation of Fidel Castro has a specific purpose.

Mr. CARDENAS: Depriving him of the means to sustain his grip of power in Cuba or his ability to continue to buy the loyalty of many of the elite security and military units that allow him to stay in power.

NARRATOR: The economic isolation of Cuba can only be carried out with the cooperation of other countries. Representative Torricelli's legislation proposes to deny tax benefits to US companies whose foreign subsidiaries trade with Cuba. That commerce, The Miami Herald points out, is conducted under the laws of other countries. Down that path, says Wayne Smith, lies trouble with American allies.

Mr. SMITH: The Torricelli legislation, which is really authored by the Cuban American National Foundation, will cause serious problems between the United States and our principal allies and trading partners -- Canada, Great Britain, Spain and various other countries.

NARRATOR: The research director of the Cuban American National Foundation believes that a tightened US embargo can lead to two possible outcomes.

Mr. CARDENAS: Now there are various scenarios that one could hope for in the sense of a Czechoslovakian "velvet revolution," a mass uprising from below. The problem is that Fidel Castro's repressive apparatus is just so effective and he has such a tremendous grip on the island that it makes such a mass uprising that much more difficult.

The other scenario is perhaps a coup d'etat.

NARRATOR: However, Arthur Schlesinger saw no signs of upheaval in Havana early in 1992.

Dr. SCHLESINGER: But the atmosphere was not sullen and angry as it was when I visited Czechoslovakia, for example, in the mid-1980s, or on visits to the Soviet Union before Gorbachev came along. The atmosphere was not heavy with hatred of the regime. But there's a lot of discomfort, a lot of economic deprivation, a lot of criticism of privileges given to foreigners who have hard currency, a lot of lifestyle resentment, so to speak, and there's some very brave human rights groups in Cuba who are staying there and are challenging Castro's abuse of human rights.

But as I say, you don't get an overall sense of an upheaval about to come.

NARRATOR: The supporters of a tougher US stance say they want to bring democracy to Cuba. The Cubans say they are making political and economic reforms.

We spoke to Pedro Monreal, a Cuban from Havana's Center for the Study of the Americas, during his seventh visit to the United States.

PEDRO MONREAL: The perception in Cuba is that the US Government has been trying to impose on Cubans for the last 20 years the type of political system and the type of economic system that the US wanted, not what the people of Cuba wanted.

NARRATOR: In an effort to find new capital for its struggling economy, Cuba has encouraged joint ventures with foreign companies.

Mr. MONREAL: Tourism is definitely perhaps the most out-standing example in this case, because two-thirds of the tourists that goes to Cuba are operated by what we call tour operators, foreign tour operators.

NARRATOR: Senator Mack of Florida opposes foreign participation in Cuban joint ventures. His view is reinforced by talks with Cuban defectors.

Senator MACK: They have said to me that they thought tightening the embargo, that you have to do that. That's the only way that they know how to express their -- our desire, their desire to see that Fidel Castro goes.

NARRATOR: But Arthur Schlesinger and Wayne Smith say that Cuban human rights activists who remain on the island, subjected to severe repression by the government, want to see the US embargo relaxed.

Dr. SCHLESINGER: They feel that opening up Cuba to American goods, consumer goods and to American tourists would really undermine Castro's hold over the country. I think they're right. I mean, I think there's nothing that's more likely to show the futility of Castro's direction and of his economic policy than flooding the country with Americans.

NARRATOR: Some see US efforts to isolate Cuba as isolating the United States from Latin American countries.

Ms. TORRES: Most of our Latin American neighbors have chosen to engage Cuba, to participate in the process of debate that is taking place now as Cuba attempts to reinsert into today's changed world. We are being left out of that. The United States is being isolated from that process.

NARRATOR: The United States is all by itself in trying to bring change to Cuba, mainly through a policy of pressure and isolation. But US policy is not influenced by all the other countries that have chosen to engage Cuba. More and more, Cuban- American relations have become a domestic issue of American politics.

Admiral LaROCQUE: Well, I don't know about you, but I, for one, have been very concerned and uncomfortable with this over 30 years of hostility that has existed between the United States and Cuba. Cuba's so close, and yet so far away. It seems to me we ought to be thinking seriously about tearing down this wall that has been built between the United States and Cuba, a wall of hostility, a wall that prevents us from talking to each other, from traveling in each other's countries, from trading with each other. I think it's time that we looked at the situation very carefully.

I'm convinced that if we can talk and travel and trade with a country, we can improve the atmosphere and the relations between countries. We've seen plenty of evidence of that in our relations with the Soviet Union, for example, and with China. Travel, trade and talk. I would hope that in the days ahead, the months ahead, that our two governments would get together and let us do just that.

Until next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Gene LaRocque.