EXECUTIVE PRODUCER:
Admiral Gene LaRocque (USN, Ret.), Pres., Center for Defense Information
HOST:
Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr. (USN, Ret.)
Deputy Director, Center for Defense Information
DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH:
David T. Johnson
DIRECTOR of TELEVISION:
Mark Sugg
PRODUCERS:
Glenn Baker
Jennifer Hazen
Daniel Sagalyn
Stephen Sapienza
PRINCIPAL ANALYST & SCRIPTWRITER:
Glenn Baker
SEGMENT PRODUCER:
Glenn Baker
NARRATOR:
Kathryn R. Schultz
VIDEO GRAPHICS:
Adam Luther
ORIGINATION:
Washington, D.C.
PROGRAM NO.:
932
INITIAL BROADCAST:
21 April 1996
CONDITION OF USE:
Credit "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" (Center for Defense Information).
President, Cuban National Assembly
GILLIAN GUNN CLISSOLD
Georgetown University Cuba Project
Rep. LEE HAMILTON (D-IN)
House International Relations Committee
JOHN KAVULICH
US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council
Dr. ERIC MARTINEZ
Director, Juan Manuel Marquez Pediatric Hospital
Rep. BOB MENENDEZ (D-NJ)
Co-Sponsor, Helms-Burton Act
ELOY GUTIERREZ MENOYO
Cambio Cubano
ROBERT MUSE
Muse & Associates
General ARNALDO TOMAYO
Cuban Air Force
investors and tourists arrive daily. Only two things have not changed in the 37 years since the Cuban revolution: Fidel Castro -- and US policy aimed at getting rid of him. Rep. BOB MENENDEZ (R-NJ): Fidel Castro has shown himself intransigent to change. Rep. LEE HAMILTON (D-IN): Castro is no longer a threat to the United States, he's no longer exporting revolution.
YOUNG CUBAN in Havana: Your country and my country are at war, very long, and we need now to finish that war -- and to begin a new way.
["AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" program introduction.]
ADM EUGENE CARROLL (USN, Ret.): "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR" recently visited Cuba to take a close look at conditions there. We found things looking up for the Cubans. There's considerable evidence of liberalization in their economy, in their political process and in their military areas. We found pronounced evidence of change just in the last three years. Our program today gives you a chance to take a look at those conditions, see what we saw, hear what we heard and hear Americans and Cubans talk about the future of our relations.
JOHN ROBERTS, CBS News, 25 February 1996:
"Two civilian aircraft were shot down by Cuba yesterday..."
NARRATOR: The tragic shootdown of two planes operated by a Cuban-American exile group caught most Americans by surprise, but in retrospect, it was a tragedy waiting to happen.
The pilots for Brothers to the Rescue boasted of frequent violations of Cuban airspace and just six weeks before the shootdown had dropped leaflets over Havana urging the Cuban people to revolt. Three days after that, commentators on Radio Marti, aUSGovernment-run station that broadcasts in Spanish into Cuba, taunted the Castro government.
RADIO MARTI Broadcast:
"This overflight evidently shows the deterioration of Cuba's ability to respond. It shows 'the apparent weakening of the regime in all respects. In this case, the so-called national defense. Either they didn't have the arms to shoot the planes down' or 'the radarman wasn't interested in defending the regime,' or 'the regime didn't have the fuel.'"
NARRATOR: Despite official Cuban protests to the State Department, the overflights continued. Two weeks before the shootdown, Cuban General Arnaldo Tomayo summed up their frustration.
GEN ARNALDO TOMAYO (8 Feb. '96) (through translator): I can't understand the -- what kind of air control does Florida have when I'm sure you're able to detect these aircraft leaving US territory toward Cuba. We would also like to see these acts of piracy against our country stopped. We have the means to bring them down any moment. We haven't done so precisely because we do not want to overheat the situation because then, of course, Cuba will be presented as a culprit.
Rep. STEVEN CHABOT (R-OH) (House debate): "Fidel Castro is a thug, an international outlaw..."
NARRATOR: In Congress, an emotional debate followed the shootdown and led to the speedy passage of the controversial Helms-Burton bill, aimed at toppling Castro by further tightening the economic squeeze on Cuba. Congressman Bob Menendez is one of the co-authors of the bill.
Rep. MENENDEZ: The Helms-Burton bill is designed to deprive the Castro regime of certain resources that keeps it propped up.
Rep. HAMILTON: I think what you have to do in this kind of a case is to engage, rather than to isolate.
NARRATOR: Congressman Lee Hamilton is the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee.
Rep. HAMILTON: I think the American national interest in Cuba is to have a peaceful transition from Castro to what eventually emerges after Castro. And I think Helms-Burton will make it less likely that that transition will be smooth and peaceful, more likely that it will be a difficult process.
NARRATOR: To understand US-Cuban relations today, we need first to look back at where they've been.
Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States took over from Spain as Cuba's colonial overlord. The US proclaimed its right to intervene at anytime in Cuban internal affairs and established a naval base at Guantanamo that remains to this day. Cuba became a playground for wealthy Americans with its nightclubs and casinos. Yet most of the Cuban population lived in wretched poverty. The corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista would string the corpses of tortured dissidents from lampposts as warnings to anyone who objected. In the 1950s these conditions fostered the rise of a people's moment and a bloody civil war.
UNIVERSAL NEWSREEL Narrator:
"New Year's Day 1959. Batista is finished. The road to Havana paved with glory for rebel chieftain Fidel Castro, 32-year-old man of the hour in Cuba."
NARRATOR: So when Castro rode victorious into Havana amidst cheering crowds, his reform-minded revolution was hailed around the world, including in the United States. But when he nationalized foreign companies and began redistributing land, the US came to see him as a threat.
The failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, in which 1500 CIA-trained mercenaries tried to trigger a coup against Castro, ended in humiliation for the United States, while making Cuba forever fearful of US military invasion. It also served to push Castro firmly into the Soviet camp.
FIDEL CASTRO (at rally) (Newsreel footage):
"What the imperialists can't forgive us for is making a socialist revolution right under the nose of the United States." (Translated.)
NARRATOR: Thirty more years of Cold War confrontation followed. The missile crisis of 1962 threatened to set off a nuclear war. The CIA tried repeatedly to assassinate Castro. And to this day, the United States has followed a policy of isolation toward Cuba, banning most American travel there and maintaining a strict trade embargo.
Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union provided it with an economic lifeline that permitted it to survive both the US embargo and the shortcomings of its own centrally planned economy. In the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union -- and, therefore, the end of Soviet aid -- the state-run Cuban economy began a free-fall, shrinking by 45 percent over the next three years.
GILLIAN GUNN CLISSOLD: The effect on the Cuban economy was absolutely catastrophic.
NARRATOR: Professor Gillian Gunn Clissold directs the Cuba Project at Georgetown University and is the author of Cuba in Transition: Options for U.S. Policy.
Prof. CLISSOLD: Colleagues of my approximate age and social status, who had previously been the Cuban upper middle class, lost 40 and 50 pounds.
NARRATOR: Castro called it "a Special Period in Time of Peace" and imposed austerity measures across the board. Food supplies were reduced to the point that by the summer of 1993, monthly state-allotted rations only provided enough for about 12 days. Fuel shortages paralyzed Cuban industry and led to private cars virtually disappearing from the streets. Quite suddenly, a society that had grown accustomed to a modicum of comfort in the heyday of the revolution found itself in a daily struggle to get by.
Over the last three years, Cuba has responded to the crisis with a variety of measured economic reforms. At the same time, Cuba's Communist Party leadership has expressed alarm at the social changes these reforms have engendered, changes the leadership may find threatening to its ability to rule.
Prof. CLISSOLD: There has always been a struggle within the Cuban government to balance the need for greater economic liberalization to keep the economy afloat, keep people fed, stop social unrest related to hunger, on the one hand, and on the other hand, not liberalize so fast that control is lost.
NARRATOR: Although the "Special Period" continues, the economy has begun a modest recovery and there's a growing sense on the street that "the worst is over."
ELDERLY MAN-on-the-street, Havana: Right now we have a "Special Period" and we laugh, we make love, we dance, and we drink, and we go out and we get a piece of bread with some buccula and we keep going. We don't take life so hard. We play along and we crack jokes, a psychological thing of the Cuban people. And we always on the go and we're always moving.
NARRATOR: The country has opened up to foreign investment and today more than 240 joint ventures and associations have been created, with investments totaling three-quarters of a billion dollars, so far. Because of the embargo, American companies watch from the sidelines.
JOHN KAVULICH: Is the American business community losing out? Yes.
NARRATOR: As head of the non-profit US-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, John Kavulich leads monthly visits to Cuba by interested American business leaders.
Mr. KAVULICH: There isn't a single CEO of a major US company that wouldn't want to return to Cuba, and many of them have said so publicly, as fast as humanly possible. Cuba represents a reemerging market. Those 11 million people have one of the highest awarenesses of US brand names and highest preferences for US brand names than almost any other non-English speaking country. So, for a US company, that's a gift in terms of exports, and exports create jobs.
NARRATOR: Each year, increasing numbers of foreign visitors flock to Cuba for its pristine beaches and rich cultural history. Tourism recently surpassed sugar as the country's number one industry.
In 1993, the US dollar, long a sign of northern oppression, was legalized. While food is still rationed, dollar stores have popped up that offer a variety of imported goods -- from jeans to perfume -- at decidedly First World prices.
Over 100 professions have been privatized, allowing people to go into business for themselves. In the Plaza de la Catedral, in Old Havana, artisans now sell their handmade wares.
Among the most popular new business ventures are the "paladares," or restaurants, operated in private homes. The paladares illustrate both the cautious nature of Cuba's recent reforms and the ingenuity of the people in circumventing the state-imposed restrictions. At Oscar's Casa Amigo Bar, as with all paladares, he is only permitted to employ family members, have seating for 12, and can only own the one restaurant.
OSCAR's Friend: They only allow three tables, no more, because then you would be in competition with the big restaurants, government restaurants.
NARRATOR: Undaunted, Oscar has already started construction of a second paladare in a friend's -- ah, "uncle's" house down the street.
Another recent change is the authorization of farmer's markets, where prices are not regulated by the government. Despite the high prices here -- $2 a pound for tomatoes, $30 a pound for meat -- there are throngs of Cubans willing and able to pay the price in order to supplement their inadequate rations.
The reason Castro has implemented these reforms while keeping one foot on the brakes is clear: The sudden influx of hard currency is creating a two-tiered society of dollar "haves" and "have-nots" that threatens to undermine the egalitarian ideals at the heart of the revolution.
RICARDO ALARCON: That's a real issue here.
NARRATOR: Ricardo Alarcon is president of Cuba's National Assembly.
Dr. ALARCON: We recognize that opening up to the market creates some inequalities, but there is no alternative. The alternative will be to permit our economy to continue decaying. I think it's more important for the interests of everybody, the entire society, to try to save the economy and to recover its momentum, as we have been succeeding, modestly, but we are in that path.
NARRATOR: Free universal education and health care have long been acknowledged as the crowning achievements of the revolution. At 95 percent, Cuba's literacy rate is on par with the world's most developed nations. But the influx of dollars has created a dilemma for Cuba's well-educated professional class. A waiter or taxi driver, with steady access to dollars, can earn many times what a doctor paid in pesos makes. This man is a public accountant and computer specialist, who instead drives tourists to the beach.
CUBAN MAN at Farmer's Market: I know I've studied all my life to get a career, I'm a professional. But there is no way I can make it that way.
INTERVIEWER: Because professionals are not paid --
Same CUBAN MAN: If I work for a salary, I will only get -- let's say 300 pesos, 310 pesos. That's not enough, not even to buy me my cigarettes.
NARRATOR: The economic changes have triggered calls for more political reforms.
YOUNG CUBAN MAN in Havana: We need more freedom, more democracy.
Prof. CLISSOLD: The simple fact that your employment is no longer dependent upon keeping a Cuban Communist Party boss happy with your performance, when your employment depends upon either keeping a foreign investor happy with your performance or keeping the clients at your small private restaurant happy with the food that you produce, then there is a evolutionary decline of the central government's leverage over your life. NARRATOR: As a result, Cuban authorities have recently cracked down on voices of dissent, fearing the loss of control.
Rep. MENENDEZ: Castro has shown us that he does not know how to react towards peaceful attempts to change. Concilio Cubano, a group of 130 different organizations pledged within Cuba -- not outside of Cuba, within Cuba towards peaceful democratic change, simply sought a national meeting and actually went to Castro and said give us a place to have this national meeting. The regime denied them. He jailed over 100 of those activists. He put under house arrest dozens of others.
NARRATOR: Some argue that the tightening of the US trade embargo, known in Cuba as "the Blockade," merely reinforces Cuba's defensive crouch.
Prof. CLISSOLD: Instead of more reform, Cuba may retreat even further into a seige mentality, where they argue just keep all control as tight as you possibly can because you're at war with the United States.
NARRATOR: The embargo even includes food and medicine, making it the most restrictive embargo in the world. Many medicines are only made in the United States and those that have to be shipped from Europe are prohibitively expensive.
Despite these challenges, Cuba's average life expectancy and infant mortality rate are comparable to those in the United States. Yet the scarcity of basic necessities make life a challenge for Cuba's doctors, as we found out on a visit to the Juan Manuel Marquez Pediatric Hospital.
Dr. ERIC MARTINEZ: We have no soap, but the hospital is clean.
INTERVIEWER: You have no soap.
Dr. MARTINEZ: No, no soap. We have difficulties in getting the products for cleaning, but again you see, the hospital is clean. How to explain this? Working more and better organization.
Dr. MARTINEZ (in hospital's cancer ward): Her name is Joanna. She is six years old. What is the diagnosis of Joanna?
DOCTOR on ward: She has a (inaudible) blastoma of the right kidney.
Dr. MARTINEZ: A tumor of the kidney.
DOCTOR: Malignant tumor.
Dr. MARTINEZ: These kind of patients need very expensive drugs, but not only expensive, but they need for a long time period. So, expensive and a long treatment.
INTERVIEWER: And the embargo makes it difficult to get that drug?
Dr. MARTINEZ: Of course.
Rep. MENENDEZ: If you look at our embargo, if you look at our policy, the things that people say are positive things happening in Cuba are not despite it, it's because of it.
NARRATOR: The international community has shown little interest in joining the US sanctions. In 1995, the United Nations voted 117 to 3 to condemn the embargo.
Rep. HAMILTON: It's really isolated the United States. We're in this curious position of having to impose an embargo, but of course you really cannot impose an embargo by yourself.
CUBAN MAN in Farmer's Market: At this moment, if the United States opens up the embargo, you can count on my clock 15 seconds of this. It will change completely.
NARRATOR: But US policy is headed in the other direction. The Helms-Burton bill is intended to further tighten the embargo by punishing other countries that trade with Cuba.
Rep. MENENDEZ: What this bill says is that you cannot illegally traffic in properties -- and not residential properties. We don't want to take the homes away of Cuban families.
NARRATOR: Under Helms-Burton, a property-holder in Cuba, whether it's the Cuban government or a foreign investor, can be sued in US court by Cuban-American immigrants who owned the property prior to the revolution, in effect giving them retroactive rights of citizenship.
ROBERT MUSE: It confers this right on to people who were not US nationals when they suffered this injury, thereby violating a cardinal principle of international law, the nationality of claims principle.
NARRATOR: Robert Muse is an attorney who represents Amstar, one of the US companies whose property was nationalized by Castro in 1960. Certified claimants such as Amstar believe the harm caused by the bill greatly outweighs any potential benefit.
Mr. MUSE: Most of our security, economic and otherwise, is a product of multilateral agreements, treaties that all have standing under international law. We can't violate that law as we choose and when we choose and retain the moral authority to demand compliance with that law by other nations.
NARRATOR: By discouraging foreign investment in Cuba, the bill is aimed at destabilizing the Castro government and hastening his departure.
Rep. MENENDEZ: And that's ultimately our goal, is the peaceful, democratic change within
Rep. HAMILTON: I think the Helms-Burton bill, by squeezing the Cuban people, by making life much more difficult for them, will not help bring about a peaceful transition, but could very well do the opposite. By squeezing them, by making life more difficult for them, it is more likely to bring about conditions of instability and even violence.
NARRATOR: A 1995 Pentagon study warned that "large-scale violence in Cuba...would generate intense pressure of US intervention." The Cuban military has adopted a permanent seige mentality in response to US hostility. Their extensive system of tunnels and training for "a war of all the people" would make any US military action there a bloody guerilla war.
Prof. CLISSOLD: The US Government has essentially adopted a lose-lose policy regarding Cuba. If the bill works -- which I don't think it will, but if it does, it will create a crisis in Cuba that will lead to bloodshed, probably lead to a massive migration outflow, which is not in the interests of the United States. If the bill does not work, then Castro is simply strengthened.
Rep. HAMILTON: Now he will use Helms-Burton very effectively. He will use it to fan the flames of nationalism. He will use it as a tool to re-entrench his own power.
NARRATOR: The ongoing belligerence of US policy has allowed Castro to point to an external enemy in order to motivate renewed commitment to revolutionary ideals, especially among the young. As if to prove the point, Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, has stated: "We are profiting from Helms. He has served us on a silver plate something that is crucial from an ideological point of view. Of course, we are going to play that card to death."
Under the Helms-Burton bill, the president has relinquished his decisionmaking power on Cuba to Congress. Now the trade embargo and other elements of US-Cuba policy are codified in law, changeable only by congressional vote.
Rep. HAMILTON: It ties the president's hands in knots. He cannot do what a president ought to be able to do, and that is to respond to the changing circumstances in the country. If Cuba did begin to move towards a democracy, under Helms-Burton the president would not be able to help the democratic forces in Cuba because Helms-Burton ties his hands, it restricts him.
NARRATOR: US-Cuba policy is heavily influenced by the wealthy exile community in South Florida, many of whom aspire to resume their privileged positions in a post-Castro Cuba. Spearheaded by Jorge Mas Canosa and the Cuban-American National Foundation, they make large campaign contributions to politicians who support anti-Castro legislation.
But there is a growing segment of the Cuban-American population that favors engagement over isolation toward Cuba.
ELOY GUTIERREZ MENOYO (through translator): With the end of the Cold War, it's time to have a good neighbor policy.
NARRATOR: Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo runs the Miami-based group Cambio Cubano, or "Cuban Change." He helped overthrow Batista during the revolution, but soon turned against Castro and led exiles on paramilitary missions against him. Although he was captured and jailed in Cuba for 22 years, he now advocates easing the embargo.
Mr. MENOYO (through translator): It is a policy that has been fed and continues to go through a minority group, a powerful group here that seeks to take control in Cuba. They are continuing to live back in the Stone Age as to the concept of what is happening on the island. NARRATOR: Despite the bitter political differences that mark the US-Cuba relationship, the two countries, just 90 miles apart, have much in common. Baseball is Cuba's national pastime. The US Capitol building is the model for theirs. And the streets are a living museum of classic American automobiles.
Rep. HAMILTON: In the long run, I believe that doing what's right is the best politics. And what is right with regard to Cuba is to follow our basic instincts as a people, to be fair, to be open, to increase contacts, to engage.
NARRATOR: Since 1898, the United States and Cuba have been in a continuous struggle,
the US seeking to control Cuba and Cuba trying to rid itself of US domination. If by 1998, the
two countries can find a way to evolve beyond the politics of isolation and confrontation, it will
be a centennial for all to celebrate.
ADM CARROLL: I hope that you have a better understanding about what's going on in Cuba today and what it means to Americans. There are sharp disagreements here about what we should be doing with respect to Cuba. Some favor a harsh policy of confrontation and pressure to bring about an overthrow of the Castro government. Others favor a policy of negotiation and engagement to bring about liberalization there without violence. Perhaps the fact that 34 years of pressure haven't brought down Fidel Castro yet, plus the enthusiasm of the Cubans for improved relations with the United States suggest that the time has come to rethink US policy toward Cuba.
Until the next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm Eugene Carroll.
NARRATOR: Special funding for this program was provided by the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation.
[End of broadcast.]
(C) Copyright 1996. Center for Defense Information. All Rights Reserved.