More red whine is being poured out of communist Cuba this week 鈥� and this time Deputy Foreign Minister Josefina Vidal is the whinemaker.
Before a Thursday sit-down in Washington between U.S. and Cuba officials to discuss the most serious surge of Cuban migration to the U.S. this century, Vidal griped that if only the U.S. lifted its financial sanctions against the island鈥檚 repressive regime, the enormous Cuban sea and land exodus would end.
SA国际传谋 is committed to providing the trusted news and local reporting you rely on. Please keep SA国际传谋 strong with your support today. now. Thank you.
鈥淭here is a differentiated and incoherent approach by the United States to the migratory issue,鈥� Vidal groused. While the U.S. is helping other Latin American countries 鈥渞eactivate their economies,鈥� she whinged, Washington continues its 鈥渃oercive measures鈥� on Cuba鈥檚 鈥渆conomic order.鈥�
I鈥檒l give you a second to stop chuckling at Vidal鈥檚 use of 鈥渆conomic order鈥� to describe Cuba鈥檚 Marxist catastrophe 鈥� which is caused much more by the regime鈥檚 dunderheaded dogmatism than by the U.S.鈥檚 trade embargo. I, too, think the failed, six-decade-old embargo should be lifted. But let鈥檚 say the U.S. could actually be persuaded to scrap it 鈥� and then let鈥檚 ask what Cuba is doing to persuade los yanquis.
Nada. In fact, Cuba recently has gone out of its way to dig a deeper embargo hole for itself. How else can you put it when the regime hands out prison sentences as long as 20 years to teenagers simply for having taken part in anti-government protests last summer?
READ MORE: Yes, cruise lines screwed up in Cuba, But engagement built up Cubans' sense of control
It would be laughable if it weren鈥檛 so deplorable to hear Cuba red-whine about the embargo while handing the U.S. every excuse to keep it in place. More laughable and deplorable, even, than watching Cuba morally contort itself making excuses for Russia鈥檚 homicidal invasion of Ukraine after decades of decrying U.S. intervention in Latin America.
Following Vidal鈥檚 logic, the U.S. is supposed to loosen the Cuba screws simply because the Biden Administration is helping other countries in Cuba鈥檚 barrio, like Honduras, improve the dystopian conditions that make them explosive sources of irregular immigration, too. It鈥檚 an argument worth considering. And debunking.
I, too, think the failed, six-decade-old embargo should be lifted. But let鈥檚 say the U.S. could actually be persuaded to lift it; then let鈥檚 ask what Cuba is doing to persuade los yanquis. Nada.
You鈥檒l find no more disgusted critic of the right-wing cabal that ran Honduras for the past dozen years 鈥� former President Juan Orlando Hern谩ndez and his thuggish National Party 鈥� than I was. I worried that funneling billions of dollars of U.S. development aid into Honduras while Hern谩ndez was still president 鈥� and while we maintained an embargo on Cuba 鈥� left Washington open to the kind of double-standard accusation Vidal is leveling this week.
But you鈥檒l notice I just wrote words like 鈥渇ormer鈥� and 鈥渨as.鈥� For all Honduras' benighted flaws, voters were able to kick the National Party out of power last fall. Soon after Hern谩ndez left office in January, Honduras' judiciary approved his long-awaited extradition to the U.S. on drug-trafficking charges.
DICTATORIAL INTRANSIGENCE
The point being: even in Honduras there are institutional doors open to reforming its hellish political and economic set-up. Those doors may look more like tight mail slots; but compared to Cuba鈥檚 they鈥檙e swinging barn doors.
So yes, there is a 鈥渄ifferentiated鈥� approach: Honduras offers at least a dull glimmer of hope for change; Cuba offers only the dull thud of dictatorial intransigence 鈥� which is never going to soften U.S. embargo intransigence, no matter how many Cuban balseros wash up on the Florida shore or migrantes walk up to the Texas border.
And the fact that the Cuban regime ignores that fact only heightens suspicions that there鈥檚 no bigger fan of the embargo than the Cuban regime itself 鈥� because it gives Cuba鈥檚 communists an all too convenient scapegoat for their island's own hellish reality.
Then again, that raises the question: why does the U.S. 鈥� at the insistence of exiles in Miami 鈥� keep gifting Cuba that goat? Why does it keep fermenting Havana鈥檚 whine?
More important: why does it keep letting the embargo add another layer of misery to the one the regime has already slammed on Cubans? Or rather: why can鈥檛 America find a way to overhaul the embargo that keeps its hurt on a culpable regime but off a blameless people? The people fleeing in another desperate, rickety-raft wave to the U.S.
None of this of course will be resolved when U.S. and Cuban officials meet on Thursday. U.S.-Cuba relations, to put it in Vidal鈥檚 whine-speak, are much too incoherent for that.
