"TALKING WITH CUBA"

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Admiral Gene La Rocque (USN, Ret.), Pres., Center for Defense Information

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH: David T. Johnson

DIRECTOR of TELEVISION: Mark Sugg

PRODUCERS:

Glenn Baker

Jennifer Jones

Stephen Sapienza

Jon Lottman

PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER: Glenn Baker

SEGMENT PRODUCER: Glenn Baker

NARRATOR: Rick Bordman

VIDEO GRAPHICS: Jon Lottman

ORIGINATION: Washington, DC

PROGRAM NO.: 1127

INITIAL BROADCAST: 15 March 1998

CONDITION OF USE:

Videotapes also available.

"TALKING WITH CUBA" features commentary from:

Admiral Eugene Carroll, USN (Ret.), Deputy Director, Center for Defense Information

Congressman Jose Serrano (D-New York)

General John Sheehan, USMC (Ret.), former Commander, Atlantic Command

Dr. Delvis Fernandez Levy, Cuban American Alliance Education Fund

Wayne Smith, Center for International Policy

Dr. John Gilderbloom, University of Louisville

* * * * *

NARRATOR: U.S. law formally calls them "the enemy." But retired American military officers are meeting with Cuban officers in Havana. We haven't had diplomatic relations with them for over 30 years. Yet a former Republican senator is consulting with top Cuban officials on cooperative anti-drug efforts. The 37-year U.S. trade embargo prohibits selling food there. But American farmers and scientists are sharing know-how with their Cuban counterparts.

ADMIRAL EUGENE CARROLL: They want to be friends. They just won't surrender.

CONGRESSMAN JOSE SERRANO: Let's talk to them, let's help them move on to the next step.

GENERAL JOHN SHEEHAN: Nations that talk to each other don't fight each other.

TITLE SLATE:"Talking with Cuba"

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

NARRATOR: Forty years after the Cuban Revolution and seven years after the end of the Cold War, the United States continues to treat communist Cuba as an enemy.

REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R-FL) on House Floor: At times it seems unreal and implausible that only 90 miles from the shores of this great democracy lies an enslaved nation ruled by a ruthless communist dictatorship.

NARRATOR: The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 had a devastating effect on Cuba, which lost billions of dollars in aid. Combined with the effects of the U.S. trade embargo, the country plunged into a period of extreme austerity in the early '90's. Cuba is recovering slowly by opening up to foreign investment, privatizing small sectors of its centralized economy, legalizing U.S. dollars, and expanding its tourist trade to the point where tourism now tops sugar as the number one industry. And while official U.S. policy has further tightened the four-decade-old trade embargo with the aim of squeezing Castro from power, a growing number of voices in the United States are calling for expanding dialogue with Cuba.

ADMIRAL CARROLL: The impasse between the Cuban government and the United States government is so severe that there's no communications, they simply cut each other off.

NARRATOR: In October 1997, retired Admiral Eugene Carroll led a delegation which visited Cuba to discuss security concerns with top officials in the Cuban military and foreign ministry.

U.S.-CUBAN MEETING, TRANSLATOR FOR CUBAN VICE ADMIRAL PEDRO PEREZ BETANCOURT: It's very useful for us to have these kind of meetings, and it's very good to have you here for the third time.

ADMIRAL CARROLL: Our meetings with the Cubans help to clear the air on both sides. They listen to what we have to say and get some information. They also expect that the information we gather will be communicated back up here in one way or another. They know that we have contacts with the Department of State, the Defense Intelligence Agency. So they can in effect send a message to be sure that people up here know what they're thinking and saying and doing.

NARRATOR: Admiral Carroll, who has visited Cuba and met with officials there five times over the past decade, found the Cubans troubled by a recent Congressional bill.

ADMIRAL CARROLL: They are very concerned about a thing called the Graham amendment. Senator Graham had introduced into the defense bill an amendment which declared Cuba an enemy of the United States and ordered the Pentagon to say that they had studied the Cuban military capabilities and had plans to deal with a threat from Cuba. Of course, this is ludicrous. Everyone knows that Cuba doesn't pose any military threat. They don't have the means to threaten the United States, and yet here was an official act of Congress declaring them an enemy.

NARRATOR: General Charles Wilhelm, the top-ranking U.S. military commander for Latin America and the Caribbean, recently claimed that Cuban forces had been cut in half, to less than 70,000 active duty troops. He stated,

"That armed force has no capability whatsoever to project itself beyond the borders of Cuba, so it's really no threat to anyone around it."

The Cuban military staged an exercise for our cameras that demonstrated the type of conflict they are preparing to fight: a low-tech, "defense of the homeland" battle, featuring hand-to-hand combat and farming implements.

ADMIRAL CARROLL: They see evidence in everything the United States is doing that we really plan, someday, to invade them. To take over Cuba. We have visited their fortifications and their preparations for our invasion. They've dug thousands of kilometers of tunnels and stored weapons that they say they will bring out once we have invaded and fight us.

NARRATOR: Today, as much as 70 percent of the Cuban armed forces work in other sectors of the economy, such as farming and building hotels to accommodate the burgeoning tourist trade.

GENERAL SHEEHAN: About sixty percent of their equipment is in storage because they can't afford to maintain it. It is basically a constabulary force right now.

NARRATOR: General John Sheehan was the commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command until his retirement in 1997. When tensions were high during the 1994 Cuban migration crisis, General Sheehan initiated meetings with a Cuban general at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, where 40,000 Cuban refugees were housed.

GENERAL SHEEHAN: Anytime two militaries can get into a serious dialogue and discuss things of mutual interest, you break down barriers, you create the environment that precludes misunderstandings.

FADE DOWN/FADE UP

NARRATOR: The Pope's visit to Cuba in January 1998 focused world attention on this island nation with 11 million people 90 miles from Florida. While the Pope called for more freedom for the people of Cuba, he also criticized the U.S. trade embargo as "unjust and ethically unacceptable." Today in the United States voices from across the political spectrum are calling for lifting the embargo on food and medicine.

GENERAL SHEEHAN: Cuba is the only place where the net effect of an embargo is to lower the quality of life for the people at large. That is not part of America's tradition.

NARRATOR: General Sheehan joined with Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, a broad coalition that sought to bring attention to this issue on the eve of the Pope's visit.

GENERAL SHEEHAN: The coalition that has been put together to establish humanitarian food and medicine to the Cuban people, especially the needy, the children and the elderly, is a bi-partisan group of people. 82 congressmen from both sides of the aisle, American leaders across the business community, academic, humanitarian committees, understand clearly that the quality of life for the average Cuban citizen over the last couple of years has significantly deteriorated.

FORMER SENATOR MALCOLM WALLOP (R-WY) AT COALITION PRESS CONFERENCE: "In South Africa, during the height of the embargo against South Africa, never was there an embargo on food, medicine and humanitarian supplies. Not in the darkest days of the Cold War in the Soviet Union. Not in the embargo against Vietnam. Only in Cuba, and it's time this nation stood up and said, 'It's not in our national interest, it's not in our tradition, to wage war on civilians.' And that's what this does. I'm proud to be a part of this coalition."

NARRATOR: In Congress, bills in both the House and Senate call for lifting the embargo on food and medicine.

REP. SERRANO: We have a fixation with Fidel Castro. This is the only issue I know that is not about a country; it's about a person.

NARRATOR: Congressman Jose Serrano, a leading advocate of closer ties with Cuba, is one of more than 100 co-sponsors of the House bill.

REP. SERRANO: This may be the classic example of a government being out of touch with the people. The American people do not support the embargo on Cuba, those who know about it. This policy is driven like no other policy in this country by a handful of people in Miami from the Cuban community and a smaller handful in New Jersey.

NARRATOR: The wealthy Cuban exile community in south Florida, vocally opposed to any dialogue as long as Castro remains in power, has long dominated U.S. policy toward Cuba. But since the death in late 1997 of Jorge Mas Canosa, leader of the powerful Cuban-American National Foundation, more moderate voices have come forward.

DR. FERNANDEZ LEVY: We see a growing trend here, where Cuban-Americans are speaking up.

NARRATOR: Delvis Fernandez Levy runs the Cuban American Alliance Education Fund, a California-based group that seeks to reunite families separated by frozen U.S.-Cuba relations.

DR. FERNANDEZ LEVY: We feel that we represent the silent majority; that at least normalcy between people, normal relations between people. We are tired of waiting for governments to get their business in order, so I feel a great deal of pain for the separation of families, for the misery that is partly created by certain aspects of the embargo. It is very painful for us to see children going without proper medical care.

NARRATOR: The effect of the embargo on the Cuban health system has been particularly hard. Cuba offers free health care to all its citizens, and boasts life expectancy and infant mortality rates similar to those of the United States. But the embargo has contributed to shortages in everything from drugs at the neighborhood pharmacy to parts for X-ray machines. A study by the American Association for World Health found Cuban surgeons forced to re-use disposable gloves until they fell apart. The study found that the embargo deprives Cubans of access to nearly half of "the major global drugs" and pharmaceuticals, because these drugs are patented by U.S. manufacturers. A pediatric cancer ward lacked medication for supressing nausea in chemotherapy patients -- without the medication, the patients were vomiting an average of 28 times a day.

REP. SERRANO: By Latin American standards, they have a fine health care delivery system. But they know they have no gauze or syringes or medicine or aprons for the doctors or rubber gloves and they know who caused them that. So you see, we keep trying to tell them, 'This government that you have created all these problems,' and they know better than that. They know that they set up something different than exists in Latin America, and we did not help as a good neighbor.

NARRATOR: Supporters of the embargo point out that, through the Treasury Department, a procedure exists for applying for a license authorizing the sale of medical supplies to Cuba. But in reality, the red tape associated with the procedure has effectively made it a ban.

WAYNE SMITH: The State Department's position that licenses are routinely granted is absurd. It's patently untrue, and it's shameful that State Department officials resort to that kind of statement.

NARRATOR: Wayne Smith visits Cuba frequently as a senior fellow for the Center for International Policy. Formerly the Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, he has written several key books on U.S.-Cuban relations.

Mr. SMITH: So far as we have been able to determine, between 1992 and December of 1996, one license was issued to a U.S.-based company to sell medicines in Cuba.

NARRATOR: Perhaps stung by the Pope's comments, the Cuban-American National Foundation and other opponents of modifying the embargo have put forth an alternative proposal to make donations of food and medicine to Cuba.

DR. FERNANDEZ LEVY: We cannot have in place proper healthcare just with handouts, with donations. If a child is asthmatic, or if a person is diabetic, they need the insulin, they need the inhaler at the time of the attack, or when the doctor prescribes. I think that to turn Cuba into a beggar nation, or to turn Cubans into people depending on just handouts is unjust, is immoral. They should have control, just like you or I, over medical problems.

NARRATOR: The sale of food to Cuba is banned outright by the embargo. This rice, being loaded in Havana for shipment to another province, came all the way from China. Since the Soviet collapse, Cuba has been forced to institute a rationing system in order to ensure that everyone gets a fair share of limited supplies. Still, as a visit to a Havana ration store reveals, shortages are the rule.

OFFSCREEN VOICE (pointing to sign): This is a list of the ration distribution for this one store, and it gives the price, and what people will get per the ration card. As you can see here, there's no lard, there's no oil, there is really no soap to wash clothing with, there's no tomato juice and things like that. Another thing, what's happening here, she's indicated to us that the actual ration itself is not constant, it diminishes depending on what they have in supply.

NARRATOR: At this state-run bakery in Havana, workers do everything by hand, while customers line up for rationed loaves.

ANGRY WOMAN to CAMERA "Solo uno!"

NARRATOR: 'Just one loaf,' she complains.

NARRATOR: The government has implemented some free-market reforms to alleviate the food shortage, such as allowing markets where farmers can sell for profit whatever they produce in excess of government-set quotas. But the goods at these markets require cash most Cubans don't have unless they have access to dollars through the the tourist economy.

FADE DOWN/FADE UP

NARRATOR: In January 1998, former Senator Mark Hatfield led an American contingent to Cuba that included Wayne Smith and retired Admiral Benedict Stabile, former deputy commandant of the Coast Guard. They met with Cuban authorities to discuss how the two countries could better cooperate in stemming the flow of illegal drugs.

Mr. SMITH: Cuba is in a very key geographic position, in terms of halting the flow of drugs up through the Caribbean. Cuba in effect controls all the Caribbean approaches to the United States. In addition to that of course, it controls the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. So if Cuba were fully engaged in the struggle to interdict the flow of drugs, it could be a very, very valuable ally and partner.

NARRATOR: Shortages in fuel, radars, and other resources make it difficult for the Cubans to monitor their waters and airspace adequately for transiting drug shipments. But in an extraordinary case in 1996, the Cubans assisted the U.S. Coast Guard in making a major drug seizure at sea. They later sent officials to testify in a Miami court on behalf of the U.S. government.

Mr. SMITH: The Coast Guard had information there were drugs aboard. They went aboard, started to search the vessel. They took the crew off. But before they found any narcotics, it had drifted into Cuban waters. So they got off the vessel, and informed the Cubans. The Cubans boarded and eventually found 6 tons of cocaine. The Cubans fully cooperated. They turned the cocaine over to U.S. authorities for use in the trial, and they sent four Cuban officials up to testify against the defendants..

NARRATOR: But the U.S. government takes a position that cooperation on a case-by-case basis is sufficient, and opposes more systematic drug interdiction efforts with the Cubans.

Mr. SMITH: The United States I think does not move toward more systematic, toward fuller and more systematic cooperation with the Cubans, because then they might have to admit the Cubans are doing something positive, something to help us. Ninety percent or more of these narcotics that are coming through Cuban airspace and Cuban territorial seas, and around the ends of the island, are headed for the United States; they're not headed for Cuba.

NARRATOR: Rumors of Cuban government involvement in the drug trade surface from time to time in the Miami community. But according to General Wilhelm, "I am aware of nothing that has been brought to my attention would indicate that the Cuban government is complicit in that or encouraging it."

GENERAL SHEEHAN: I'm a firm believer in functional relationships with the Cuban government. The Coast Guard has a direct relationship, direct communications with the Cuban Coast Guard. We ought to do the same thing in the drug world. We ought to do that in as many different areas as possible because nations that talk to each other don't fight each other.

FADE DOWN/FADE UP -- AGRICULTURAL SHOTS

NARRATOR: Between Cuba's loss of its former Eastern bloc trading partners and the effects of the U.S. embargo, fuel, pesticides and fertilizers -- key elements in conventional agriculture -- have been in short supply. Cuban farmers have been forced to improvise, implementing a wide variety of alternative and organic farming techniques. Food First, a California-based development policy group, has been assisting by sending American farmers and biotechnology experts to Cuba. In place of pesticides, many Cuban farmers now use insects that are natural enemies to counteract each other. Meanwhile, concern in the United States about the health effects of pesticides has sparked a growing market for organic produce. Cuba today offers a large-scale experiment in environmentally-friendly agricultural techniques, and an increasing number of American farmers are visiting to see what they can learn from Cuban practices.

FADE DOWN/FADE UP

NARRATOR: The Pope's historic visit to Cuba brought symbolic juxtapositions that many feel herald an era of change. As he delivered a mass in Revolution Plaza, a giant poster of Jesus looked across at the image of Che Guevara. Castro himself listened and applauded, his traditional army fatigues replaced by a business suit.

REP. SERRANO: The Pope has never been in a country where upon his departure, everything has stayed the same. The revolution the church will create is one of discussion of even more social justice, but it is now an ally, open partner, equal partner in denouncing the U.S. policy.

NARRATOR: Although Cuba was officially atheist until 1992, today religion is being rehabilitated. More people are openly attending services. A Christmas store has even opened in Old Havana. And while the Papal visit drew attention to Cuba's Catholic heritage, it has sparked a renewed interest in other faiths as well.

DR. FERNANDEZ LEVY: Cuba is one of the most diverse countries in terms of religion, perhaps the most diverse in Latin America. Cuba has a very strong African heritage, and Africans brought with them their religions. There's a large community of Protestants, from Pentacostals to Presbyterians, to Jehovah's Witnesses. There is a small Jewish community that has been in place in Cuba since the late 1800s.

NARRATOR: That community numbers about 2000, with synagogues in all the major cities. In 1995 Delvis Fernandez Levy returned to Havana to celebrate Hanukkah with friends and relatives still living there.

DR. FERNANDEZ LEVY: Today there are many, many children or grandchildren of Jewish people are very interested and curious about the religion. And so there's like a renaissance, a renewal, not only for the Jewish community, but for all the Cuban people I would say there is a "looking into spiritual or religious things."

NARRATOR: Many see Castro's invitation of the Pope as an acknowledgment of Cuba's need to change.

Mr. SMITH: This I think signals a shift of Cuban society towards greater tolerance, toward greater freedom of religion, and that in turn toward a more open society, but at an evolutionary pace.

FADE DOWN/FADE UP - ARCHITECTURAL MONTAGE

NARRATOR: Cuba is home to some of the most spectacular architecture in the Americas. With a Spanish colonial legacy dating back to the 16^th century, Havana is graced with magnificent structures: El Morro castle at the gates of the harbor; the Cathedral of San Christobal; the Grand Theater; El Capitolio, modeled after the U.S. Capitol building. Thousands of splendid buildings, most built in this century, dot the city scape. But the wages of time, the struggling economy, and the Caribbean salt air have conspired to erode almost every building in the country. The houses along the famed Malecon waterfront reflect these conditions. Leaky plumbing and sewers add to the damage. Much of Cuba's unique architectural legacy is in danger of crumbling into irreversible disrepair.

Mr. SMITH: Old Havana is a treasure. Some of those old buildings are simply masterpieces; they are beautiful and should be preserved.

DR. GILDERBLOOM: Architects like myself and planners see Cuba as a real model in terms of perservation and its historic roots.

NARRATOR: Dr. John Gilderbloom and the University of Louisville have organized a conference in Havana on urban revitalization that has attracted experts from over 100 countries -- and sold out in the United States.

DR. GILDERBLOOM : People come to Cuba I think because they see a city that in a sense goes by the principles of sustainable development. Stores close by, emphasis on pedestrians walking or bicycles, parks that are nearby, and its creates a more functional, a more human scale- type city.

NARRATOR: Demand has been such that Dr. Gilderbloom is organizing a total of eight such conferences in Cuba through the year 2000.

DR. GILDERBLOOM: I work in America's inner cities, rebuilding inner cities with promoting businesses and housing development and so on. That paradigm, what we call sustainable development, more liveable cities that we can give to future generations, that paradigm that we're working on, we're developing, is what Cuba has asked to see there. You don't hear much about socialism any more, you hear the word "sustainable development." So it's an exciting time here in Cuba, and we need to get more Americans out there, working there, traveling there, and talking about their ideas.

NARRATOR: The Cuban government itself has undertaken an ambitious program of restoration, and has given the city historian's office unprecedented financial independence in revitalizing Old Havana. The Ambos Mundos Hotel, once home to novelist Ernest Hemingway, has recently been restored and caters to international guests -- including a growing number from the United States.

Mr. SMITH: I foresee a situation in which the American people pay less and less and less attention to our official policy. I think something like 30 to 35 thousand Americans traveled to Cuba last year as tourists -- simply ignored the embargo and went anyway.

NARRATOR: Americans are attracted to Cuba by its impressive architecture, its pristine beaches, and its rich culture. But they also feel a connection with the Cuban people, a sense of shared history.

REP. SERRANO: There is so much we can learn from Cuba, there's so much they can learn from us. We are historically tied to each other. You know, this July will mark the 100^th anniversary of the end of the Spanish-American War. American influence has been present ever since. It's a natural for us to be exchanging agriculturally, in the area of architecture, music, the arts, politics. Why not?

NARRATOR: As initiatives of such "citizen diplomacy" grow in number, contact between Americans and Cubans is serving to thaw relations despite official hostility.

ADMIRAL CARROLL: They see the need for improved relations with the United States. They want to be friends. They just won't surrender. If anybody came to the United States and said we'll talk to you about something once you've done what we want you to, we wouldn't agree. We'd say no, we'll talk on an equal basis and we'll decide what we're going to do in the future together. The Cubans are in exactly that position.

NARRATOR: Special funding for this program was provided by the Christopher Reynolds Foundation.

[End of broadcast.]

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

(Center for Defense Information).