By Omar Rafael García Lazo. Latin American Summary, June 9, 2024.
The author analyzes the scope of the latest measures adopted by the Biden administration on Cuba, highlights the electoral context in which they are announced and highlights the political interests they contain.
US President Joseph Biden ordered the Treasury Department to modify some regulations in order to “promote internet freedom in Cuba, support independent entrepreneurs in the private sector and expand access to certain financial services for the Cuban people.”
The measure was announced on May 28 and adds to Cuba’s withdrawal from a unilateral list related to collaboration in the “fight against terrorism.” As explained in Al Mayadeen, This does not imply the exclusion of the Island from another spurious and harmful list of supposed countries that sponsor terrorism.
The steps that Biden has been taking have several closely related aspects. He electoral interest It is one of them, and without a doubt the most decisive.
The campaign team of the candidate for re-election tries court an important sector of the Democratic partynostalgic for the “Obama plan” for Cuba, and apparently somewhat concerned about the White House’s support for the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people.
Biden, who has done nothing to curb the bloodlust of Benjamin Netanyahuconsidered that on Cuba’s side it could offer some incentive to the “Obamistas” to guarantee party unity, and its political and financial support for the campaign.
Let us remember that Obama tried through “soft power” to bet on the implosion of Cuba in the medium or long term, taking advantage of the generational change in the leadership of the Revolution, and the economic transformations on the Island.
He “Cuba problem” also fits into another aspect of this electoral issue: emigration. The occupant of the Oval Office has just signed a new executive order aimed at trying to reduce illegal immigration flows across its southern border. The worsening of the living conditions of the Cuban population, recognized by national authorities, has impacted these flows, although it is not the only or the main emitter.
However, the relationship between elections and emigration is evidentsince the US embassy in Havana has begun a unusual propaganda campaign aimed at convincing potential migrants to use legal channels if they wish to settle in the northern country.
This is, without a doubt, another example of customary cynicism of American politicsAnd, therefore, even though they promote legal ways to emigrate, they maintain the Cuban Adjustment Law in force, a strong incentive that for decades has stimulated illegal emigration from the Island.
The April meeting
An important precedent for these steps by Biden was a meeting that occurred last April at the White House. Representatives of sectors of Cuban emigration that were unconnected, as far as available information goes, from the most retrograde anti-Cuban groups settled in Florida, met there.
The hosts were Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Eric Jacobstein. who dealt with the present issues related to northern policy towards Cuba and emigration.
Many of the attendees are Cuban-American businessmen, academics, communicators and former “moderate” politicians who aspire to a less restrictive scenario between both nations, in order to achieve political change by promoting “democratic values” and expansion and development. of businesses and private companies within the framework of the transformations that the country is advancing.
As curious fact, one of those summoned was the director, the visible head, of the subversive platform El Toque, from where the Cuban currency is systematically attacked, in the style of Dólar Today in Venezuela, in order to accentuate the inflationary situation in Cuba.
A necessary clarification
Biden’s new measures, nor those to come, touch the essence of the economic, commercial and financial blockade against the Cuban people, nor the legal fabric built over decades to sustain it. Nor do they modify the bulk of the measures imposed by Donald Trump and maintained by him that tightened the siege to extraordinary limits.
Washington’s decision to support small and medium-sized private companies in Cuba, giving them facilities to operate outside the blockade, seeks to deepen the contrast between them and the Cuban public sector, mercilessly punished by a cruel economic war. In this way, an attempt is made, with the coverage of an active and toxic media machinery, to distort socialist concepts rooted in the Cuban people and pierce the national consensus around the Revolution.
Consequently, Cuba’s permanence on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism would be incongruous. as it affects the intended connection between the Cuban private business sector and US financial schemes. In that sense, it cannot be ruled out that before November Biden will exclude the Island from that list. If the long-standing candidate appreciates that this generates electoral dividends among the Democrats and a considerable part of the Cuban emigration, let no one doubt that he will do it.
Source: Al Mayadeen
