- Welcome to the UW-SP Colleges of Letters and Science
Community Lecture Series.
Tonight we have the opportunity to talk about US/Cuba relations,
and we have a couple of our experts
on campus involved in this.
The title of tonight's lecture is
"Rebuilding US/Cuba Relations."
And our speakers are from a variety of areas
and experiences in Latin America.
Our first speaker is Anju Reejhsinghani,
who's an associate professor of history and international
studies at UWSP where she teaches courses
on Latin America and the Caribbean,
transnational sports and the African and Asia
diasporas in the Americas.
She's a graduate of Princeton University where she got her AB,
the London School of Economics
where she has a diploma in economics,
and the University of Texas at Austin
where she has both her MA and PhDs in history.
In January 2013, Dr. Reejhsinghani developed
and led one of the UW-System's first short-term for-credit
study abroad programs to Cuba, now a recurring program.
I'm trying to get an invite to that program.
A specialist in modern Cuba, her current book project draws on
research conducted in numerous US and Cuban archives with a
generous support of the College of Letters and Science at UWSP.
Our second speaker is Jennifer Collins.
Jennifer is an associate professor of political science.
Her research examines the political participation by
indigenous and social movements in Ecuador and Bolivia
and in new left political projects in both countries.
She and I have often talked about trying to do a special
program in Ecuador ourselves.
She's a recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships
and has published several articles and book chapters.
Her most recent article reexamined the concept
of populism in light of the new left and was published
in the Journal of Latin American Studies.
She's currently working on a book manuscript that explores
the role of social movements and their relationships
with the Correa and Morales administrations.
She teaches classes in comparative politics,
Latin American politics, international development,
and peace studies.
During the summer of 2016, she co-led a study-abroad trip
to Cuba with Dr. Reejhsinghani.
So it's my pleasure to welcome our first speaker,
Dr. Anju Reejhsinghani of the Department of History.
Anju.
[applause]
- Thank you.
It's my pleasure to be here today with Dr. Collins talking
to you about US/Cuba relations,
which is a topic very close to my heart.
I've had the privilege now of going to Cuba for about 16
years, and I've seen the ups of that relationship,
I've seen the downs of that relationship,
and I have to say right now we're sort of in a waiting
period, which we'll talk more about.
But the nice thing is, having had that experience myself,
we've now been able to share it with our students.
So today our presentation will build both on our own knowledge
of Cuba through our study and our work as well as the
perspectives of our students, many of whom are here today.
So, thank you for coming.
Okay, let's see, hopefully I'm doing this right.
This is our most recent group
who went with us in summer of 2016.
They represented students from campus and, again,
some who are here, and also other folks
who are from the community.
I'm happy to say that this picture was taken
in front of the US Embassy.
Now, even a couple years before
we would not have been able to say that.
We could have said we were in front of the US Interests
Section, which was started in 1977 under President Carter.
However, in reality, we wouldn't have been able
to get that close.
A few years before, if we'd gone to the Interests Section,
as we did once in, I believe, it was 2013.
We drove by it in our bus, and we were told move along quickly
because it was not allowed
even to be near the Interests Section.
It was seen as threatening to the United States.
And so this is a happy face, a new age of US/Cuba relations,
especially during the Obama period.
However, if you turn around,
you'll see kind of a different face.
Something that's representative of the not so recent past.
This is a series of flagpoles that were built in about 2006 by
the Cuban government as a way of letting the US Interests Section
know that they didn't appreciate the propaganda that was rolling
on a digital billboard on the Interests Section wall.
They were saying anti- or counter-revolutionary things
that were obviously meant to provoke the Cuban government.
And so, in retaliation, the Cuban government
built 130 flagpoles that then were blotting out
the digital billboard.
So these still remain, although certainly don't serve the
negative propaganda purpose that they did before.
We have a more positive relationship.
But it's very possible, moving forward,
that we won't have such a positive relationship.
That building US/Cuba ties in a more positive direction is going
to take work, and if we don't commit ourselves to that,
possibly we'll see a return to these bad old days.
All right, when we think of the bad old days of US/Cuban
relations, we think of things like the Bay of Pigs invasion.
This is from a museum that we went to this past summer near
the Bay of Pigs, which is known as Playa Girón in Cuba.
And this, of course, is a museum from the Cuban perspective,
which does not see the Bay of Pigs as a fiasco,
a reason to be ashamed of our government,
but rather as a success.
And, again, if you're not familiar with this,
this is the attempt by the United States to overthrow the
regime of Fidel Castro by having a force of exiled Cubans invade
the island from the south and try to make it seem as though
the entire country was overthrowing the Castro regime.
In reality, though, that failed miserably.
We actually had a propaganda success for the Castro regime.
And this exhibit here in the museum says, in English,
"After Girón, all of the peoples of America
"became a little more free."
In the Cuban government's eyes, the success at Playa Girón,
at Bay of Pigs, simply meant that the United States could no
longer have whatever way it wanted in Latin America,
that it was possible to stand up to the United States.
Now, we also think of moments
like the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
This is a photograph taken with our group in 2013
of a hidden bunker that has now been celebrated,
is actually now open for tourism in--
Of course, like everything else, right? --in Havana.
The day we went there, it was about a couple months after
the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis,
and there was a little plaque that announced that this was a
space where Fidel, etc., had gone to plot, you know,
what they would if they were invaded or attacked by the United States.
Now, the missile crisis itself,
the details are fairly well known.
We know that this was about the fact that there was Soviet
missiles in Cuba, that ultimately those get removed,
an arrangement that suits the Soviet Union
by having missiles removed from Turkey.
However, for Cuba, the Cuban missile crisis wasn't
the unmitigated success of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In reality, this is a moment where Cuba is actually sidelined
from their own missile crisis.
They become less able to go ahead and change things
in the direction they wanted to.
So what this does for Cuba is it makes them realize that they are
not fully an autonomous country under the Soviets just like they
were not fully an autonomous country under the control
of the United States decades earlier.
However, for the United States, we seem as though we've accepted
the reality of the Cuban revolution.
We seem as though we've accepted Castro.
In reality, what we've done is move our opposition underground.
Our opposition to the Cuban revolution goes
sort of more underground as well.
So the blockade, as it's known in Cuba, or the embargo,
as it's known in the United States,
is something that still exists today.
I think there's this notion that with Obama and normalization
we've actually gotten rid of the embargo.
And in reality, it's now codified into law.
The congress would need to change many of the aspects
of the embargo to fully undo it.
It was actually initiated during the Eisenhower administration,
but it has been strengthened over time,
not by every administration, but often the way in which to punish
Cuba has been in the United States to simply
tighten the embargo, tighten the embargo.
Now, it's served many different purposes, right?
It was initially an attempt to punish Cuba for standing up to
the United States, for having a government that was in
opposition to what we wanted, for expropriating lands from US
corporations, for engaging in radical reform, etc., etc.
Over time, however, and especially as the Cold War has
ended, this has become a larger attempt to isolate Cuba,
to make Cuba less secure, less safe,
less desirable a place to live, and, over time,
removal of that embargo becomes contingent on regime change
of one sort or another, whether it's over regime,
as in no more Castros, which of course over time there will be
no more Castros, but more likely in the sense of market reforms,
democratization, open elections, embrace of human rights, etc.
In reality then, the embargo becomes a wedge against Cuba
even into the present day.
Something that we threaten to continue unless they change.
This conversation does eventually change over time,
and eventually we do start removing parts of the embargo,
but only those that can be done through executive action.
Now, for decades, Cuba was also isolated
from multilateral organizations.
They were excluded from the Organization of American States,
IMF, World Bank, etc.
They were isolated in the United Nations.
And what we're seeing now is that our policies in Cuba have
actually further isolated the United States,
and that normalizing relations with Cuba has helped the United
States to get back into the graces of multilateral
institutions in regions like Latin America.
Okay, the travel ban is a little bit different.
It's not exactly the same thing.
The travel ban is codified in the Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department has an
Office of Foreign Assets Control.
So, theoretically, you're not being kept from going to Cuba
because we can't really keep people
from going where they want to go.
What we can do, though, is prohibit them
from spending money there.
The Treasury Department has a series of regulations
that are pertaining to Cuba that essentially,
over a period of time, have banned US travel effectively
if not in every case.
And what I mean by that is tourism has not been allowed
for most of this period from 1963 to the present.
Now, there were some periods in which there was some openings.
Mostly during the Carter era, in which case
the travel ban basically got lifted.
During Ronald Reagan, it gets reimposed in 1982.
The Clinton administration does this very odd balancing act of
tightening the embargo, making it very difficult for Cuba to
trade with the US or to have other external relationships at
the same time that he opens people to people exchanges.
And my first trip to Cuba was actually in January 2001.
At that time, Clinton was still president.
We didn't know who was going to be the next president because there was that whole
Bush verses Gore thing going on, right?
But that was part of a larger group
of people to people exchanges.
So that was something that was embraced
for a number of years in the 1990s.
George W Bush severely restricts travel to Cuba in 2004.
And he does that in the lead up to his reelection campaign.
His first administration he basically ignored the issue
of Cuba until it became something
that he wanted to obviously get a lot of votes
out of the south Miami, south Florida crowd.
Now, the reasons for the travel ban have to do, again,
with opposition to Cuba.
If you're keeping hard currency away from the Cuban state,
if you're not supporting them economically,
then it's like a form of embargo.
You're keeping more money, more resources out of their hands.
This was not relevant so much during the Cold War.
Yes it would have been nice for Cuba to have more hard currency,
to have more visitors from the United States,
but they still had Soviet subsidies.
After the end of the Cold War, the collapse
of the Soviet Union, the loss of those subsidies,
and the collapse of Cuba's economy,
it becomes critical to have that hard currency coming in one form
or another, whether through tourist dollars or visitors who
are Cuban/Americans or through the form of remittances.
So keeping the travel ban going is a way of
strangling the Cuban state.
There's another reason, though, especially during
the George W Bush years, to have the travel ban,
which is to keep Americans from experiencing Cuba directly.
One of the many challenges we had when we were recruiting
for our study abroad program was simply trying to deal
with a lot of the misinformation about Cuba
because people didn't know folks who'd been Cuba.
They didn't have family who'd been to Cuba.
And it was really a challenge to try to, you know,
give people a different perspective
without literally taking them there.
So in many cases, what it took for changing people's minds
about Cuba is actually bringing them to Cuba,
letting them experience Cuba, talk to Cubans,
especially their own peers if they're students,
or faculty if they're faculty, etc.,
and can have an experience that they can relate to.
That's been a major rationale for keeping
that travel ban going.
Now, this isn't all negative, despite the fact
that we tend to think of that.
I'm sure you guys recognize him.
There have been efforts at rapprochement.
and they haven't only been democratic regimes.
I think one of the misinformation about the Cuba
relationship is that Democrats have opened up Cuba,
Republicans have closed up Cuba.
It's not nearly that simple.
There have been a lot of political expediences.
For instance, a lot of Obama's changes happened
in his second term as opposed to his first.
But in the John F Kennedy years, despite the Bay of Pigs debacle,
his administration was somehow able to find
a way to have a prisoner swap.
The exiles imprisoned for food and medicine
to the Cuban government.
In Richard Nixon's years, hijacking became a major problem.
It's hard for us to imagine post-9/11 but people used to
hijack planes all the time, and a lot of times they'd fly them
to Cuba or they'd fly them to the United States.
So there was a hijacking accord signed between Nixon and Castro.
Ford helped to loosen the embargo a little bit.
Carter obviously was probably the one who did the most,
especially creating these Interests Sections
that we saw at the very beginning.
The prosecution of terror acts against Cubans and the Cuban
government was something that Reagan actually was involved
with, despite otherwise being pretty negative
toward the Cuban revolution.
And in Bill Clinton's years, the desperate rafters who were
coming in the 1990s signal a reason for Clinton and Castro
to sit down and make arrangements
about migration issues.
Now, clearly the Cubans have a negative feeling
about George W Bush.
This is from the Museum of the Revolution in Havana.
He's holding his plan for a free Cuba upside down
because the implication is that he can't read.
He's wearing, of course, the swastika,
I guess backwards or something.
And the sign next to him talks about how he's a cretin
who is actually strengthening socialism
because of all his ignorant actions.
So not a lot of respect there.
Now, there have been changes, obviously,
under President Obama, but they took place in stages.
Roughly in 2009 and 2011 were the two major periods
in which he engaged in this.
Now, some of the achievements that were accomplished,
the very first achievement was allowing Cuban/Americans
unlimited access to their family members in Cuba.
If you had an uncle, a grandparent, a daughter, etc.,
in Cuba, you were allowed to visit that person
as much as you wanted to.
You could send that person as much as you wanted to
in the form of a remittance.
For those of us who weren't Cuban/American,
it was a little more difficult, but he did eventually make
people to people exchanges happen from 2011 onward,
which allowed us to have our trip in 2013.
If you were a non-Cuban, you could send remittances to Cuba.
You weren't allowed to send whatever you wanted,
but you could still send some money.
We had more charter flights.
We had the Cuban government being able to buy food
and medicine on credit.
We had more diplomatic contact between the two governments.
Now, these sound fairly minor,
and that's because they are fairly minor.
They're essentially a continuation of the Clinton-era opening,
which is a continuation of the Carter-era opening, right?
There's not a whole lot new here.
And that was one of the big criticisms
of President Obama before 2014.
He wasn't taking big, bold strokes.
He was simply allowing for some more opening.
He didn't want to really have that sit down between the two
governments because it was risky, politically risky,
both among democrats and among republicans.
So some of the reasons that the government does begin to move in
that direction is because there's a lot of pushback in the
United Nations, which votes year after year after year to condemn
the US embargo, in the Organization of American States,
which pressures the United States
to rescind the exclusion of Cuba.
Despite that, though, we are putting millions of dollars
towards so-called democracy promotion efforts,
including the US Agency for International Development,
creating a Cuban Twitter, and engaging in all sorts of covert
actions to the irritation of the Cuban government.
We are funding arms of propaganda,
the radio and TV Marti which are coming out of south Florida,
which are basically trying to, you know,
force propaganda against the revolution.
It gets jammed by the Cubans,
but nonetheless we're spending a lot of money there.
And ultimately this is an incremental policy.
It's important enough, though, that it's enough for us
to go to Cuba in January 2013.
Study abroad basically ceased to Cuba
during the second George W Bush administration,
and it reopened in 2011 when President Obama said,
yes, if you have a legitimate reason to go,
if you're one of 12 traveling categories, you can go.
And one of those, of course, was students.
Now, what that meant was we could create our own program,
and, believe me, it took a lot of doing.
From 2011 to 2013 I was working on this a lot.
This was our first group.
We're sitting on the beach in Varadero.
We decided, okay, we can't be tourists,
we can't enjoy the beach because, after all,
that wouldn't be acceptable under our category
of educator and students.
So instead we had class on the beach, which is awesome.
The papers were flying everywhere,
but we had a fantastic time.
The next year, we continued the program.
And this is my second group.
We went and here's the Plaza de la Revolución
in Cuba, in Havana.
This has Che in the background.
Camilo Cienfuegos is the other guy.
Another important revolutionary.
And so here's the group celebrating being able to
experience Cuba themselves.
And, again, a very diverse group.
We had some students from Minnesota as well.
But until the normalization process begins,
this is a very difficult endeavor.
And we are one of the only small
regional public schools that are going.
It's almost entirely private schools
or almost entirely wealthy schools, right?
And so for a school like ours to continue this program,
we really need a little more ease with all of this
so it's not so difficult on our end.
Ultimately, we do find this bombshell, late 2014.
You turn on the TV, you got Obama speaking here live,
you've got Raúl Castro speaking in Havana live.
Both of them announcing simultaneously
the resumption of diplomatic relations, not immediately.
It's going to take time,
but the first of many steps toward normalization.
Normalization itself is kind of an odd term because there was
really no normal relationship between the US and Cuba.
But nonetheless, President Obama said we are changing
our relationship with the people of Cuba.
Neither us nor the Cuban people have been served
by a rigid policy that took place,
that's rooted in events that took place before we were born.
And he believed that we could support the Cuban people
best through engagement.
Now, it's a little bit different tone with Raúl Castro,
who is the younger brother of Fidel,
who has been effectively in charge since 2006 and officially
in charge in Cuba since 2008.
He said, "Today, despite the difficulties,
"we've embarked on the task of updating our economic model in
"order to build a prosperous and sustainable socialism."
So normalization is portrayed
as a way to better Cuba financially,
to help it move toward a more market-oriented socialism
while not selling out the goal of the Cuban revolution.
"I call upon the government of the United States to
remove the obstacles hindering or restricting ties between
peoples, families, and citizens of both countries,
particularly restrictions on traveling, direct post services,
and telecommunications."
So, for the Cubans, the announcement of normalization
is a victory because what it means is now the United States
is unilaterally moving towards a more sane policy.
The United States, what we're saying is the former policy was
ineffective and there needs to be a change.
But I think, as Dr. Collins is going to explain to you,
there's a lot more going on
behind the normalization announcement.
- Okay. Good evening, everybody.
Though, yeah, we come to this really fascinating moment
of December 17th, it was actually my birthday,
in which this big announcement was made,
and it really did take everybody by surprise.
And so I'm going to start out by just talking about some of the
background things that happened leading up to this
and this really momentous kind of announcement
in December of 2014.
And I'll say also that all of this sort of negotiations that
took place more or less over the span of about two years before
we get to this announcement, the State Department of the United
States was not informed about this and the Cuban Foreign
Ministry was also not directly involved.
This was taking place at sort of the highest levels
of the relationship between our two governments.
So really, really interesting that we get to this.
And obviously this is Raúl Castro shaking the hand
of President Obama at the Summit of the Americas.
And it's a really fascinating story.
Who knows, maybe somebody will make a movie
about it one of these days.
But one of the-- Some different elements of this start,
first of all, over here with Patrick Leahy,
who's the democratic congressman from Vermont,
and he has been a longtime supporter of normalizing
or having better relations with Cuba
and sort of an advocate for that.
Back in 2013, in February, he went to Cuba on sort of a
peacemaking mission, peacemaking visit to the island.
And when he was in Cuba at that time,
he was approached by this woman over here.
She was married; she was the wife of
one of the members of the Cuban Five.
The Cuban Five was a group of five Cuban people who were sent
by the government basically sort of to, in Miami,
to spy on the exiled community in Miami who were engaged
in terrorist actions, planning terrorist acts,
and were suspected by the Cuban government of basically planning
and carrying out terrorist acts in Havana.
And so the Cuban Five were essentially Cuban spies who were
operating in Miami, infiltrating the exiled community to try to
find out what was happening and for potential attacks,
terrorist attacks, in Cuba.
And, in the mid-1990s, the Cuban Five were arrested by the
United States government, put on trial, and sent to prison.
And basically, they had been in prison for about 17 years.
There had been problems with this case, and, in fact,
there had been courts in the United States that determined
that the process was unfair.
But in any event, they were in prison.
And so the wife of Gerardo Hernández there approached
Leahy, and by this time she was in her mid-40s and she was
concerned, her husband had been in prison for 17 years,
that they would never be able to have children if, you know,
if they waited too long.
Or if he didn't get out of prison soon, I should put it that way.
So, basically, she asked Senator Leahy whether he would be able
to intervene to help them find a way to transport
her husband's sperm back down to Cuba.
And Leahy agreed and sort of started the process
of talking to different people in the Department of Justice.
You know, I mean it's kind of crazy.
But it actually happened.
And he sort of viewed this as an opportunity to make
a goodwill gesture to Cuba, a humanitarian gesture.
And also he sort of viewed this as a way,
we had also a prisoner in Cuba in that time, Alan Gross,
as a way to make a humanitarian gesture to the Cuban government
in order to perhaps improve the situation of Alan Gross
and to sort of, you know, open up better ties.
The outcome of this kind of, you know,
secret negotiation was ultimately Gema,
the little child that is pictured there.
And Leahy sort of, you know,
was speaking to the Obama administration.
There had also been indications from Raúl Castro that he was
interested in, you know, normalizing relations
and dialoguing with the US government but on the basis
of mutual respect between the United States and Cuba.
So we have this sort of first, you know, this first thing.
And this takes place in 2013.
This sort of interaction and this exchange.
And as things move forward, another important player
comes into play: Pope Francis, who becomes the first
Latin American pope in March of 2013.
And he also advocated for dialog and sort of helping to kind of
push or encourage the Obama administration to move towards
normalization and to sort of advance
with these secret talks that were going on.
The secret talks between the Obama and the Castro
administrations begin, and in 2014,
sort of in the midst of 2014, there were seven different
meetings that took place.
The Canadian government sort of helped to facilitate this.
So most of these meetings took place in Canada.
And then, eventually, in March of 2014,
there was a final meeting in the Vatican in Rome.
And that is where the sort of final agreement
between the two governments were made
on the eve of the final announcement
in December of 2014.
Okay, so here is just, you know, again,
a picture of Obama and Raúl Castro making this mutual
announcement December 17th of 2014.
And, on that same day, you have, basically, part of this,
a core part of this agreement was a prisoner exchange,
essentially, where the United States released the Cuban Five
and Cuba also released Alan Gross, pictured down here.
Alan Gross had been a subcontractor of the United
States government in Havana, and he had been arrested by the
Havana government for giving different sort of communications
equipment to groups in Havana.
And he was viewed as sort of, you know, as a spy in Cuba.
So we have this important, you know, prisoner exchange,
Alan Gross and the Cuban Five.
And this was, again, sort of a key part of this agreement
that was negotiated over this period in 2014 and, again,
momentously announced in December of that time.
Since the announcement in 2014,
Obama did take further important steps.
And, basically, during the Obama administration,
after that announcement, there was continued steps,
periodic steps that were taken by both governments to continue
to sort of move towards, to establish trust between the two
governments, and to take further steps towards this process
of normalization between the two governments.
2015, in April, very important.
The United States government removes Cuba from the list
of sponsors of terrorism.
The United States had had Cuba on this list for many years.
And so the United States government takes that step.
In July, and then in August, we have the opening
of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, and, basically,
the establishment of the sort of rechristening of the US
Interests Section in Havana now as once again the US Embassy.
So opening up, you know, sort of a direct diplomatic seat
in both of these countries.
2016, in March, the reestablishment
of direct mail services between our two countries.
And then, of course, importantly, in March of 2016,
Obama actually visits Cuba, and together with his wife.
And so here's a few pictures from that trip.
Very momentous.
President Obama was the first United States president to visit
Cuba while president since 1928, since Calvin Coolidge.
His trip was received very, very warmly by Cubans.
There was, you know, in fact a lot of people said, you know,
he was very popular in Cuba.
There was some talk about, you know,
that Raúl Castro might have felt jealousy
because Obama was so sort of popular in going to Cuba.
So, again, here we see some pictures of, in Havana,
in downtown Havana, Obama sampling Cuban cigars.
He's got to do that.
And even going to attend together a baseball game,
a mutually loved sport between both of our two countries.
Okay, so the trip in 2016, in August,
we have the resumption of commercial flights
between the two countries.
So now there are a number of different airlines that are flying.
When we went, we had to take a charter flight
from Tampa, Florida.
But now there are flights from New York
and from various different cities.
I don't think Chicago yet. - No.
- But from different cities in the United States,
you don't have to fly out of Florida anymore.
Also, just to-- in October of 2016,
Anju had mentioned that yearly there had been these votes
in the United Nations to object to the United States
embargo of Cuba.
In the last vote, the United States, very importantly,
very symbolically, abstains from voting to basically,
and abtains from that vote.
In the past, the United States, along with a few other--
Literally, in the last few years it was kind of Palau
and Israel were kind of the only two other countries in the world
that were voting against this resolution
to oppose this US blockade of Cuba.
In 2016, the United States again basically abstains from voting
against that resolution in the United Nations.
And then, finally, importantly, in 2017,
just days before President Obama leaves office,
he rescinds the wet foot, dry foot policy.
This policy had been implemented during the 1990s.
It was basically an adjustment to the Cuban Adjustment Act,
which that act gave Cubans
special privileges as immigrants.
If you were a Cuban, as soon as you got to the United States
you were granted a path, first to permanent residency,
and then eventually to citizenship.
Cubans, if they arrived in the United States,
if they made it to the United States,
within a year they could get permanent residency,
no questions asked.
And, again, this was sort of part of the US policy of trying
to sort of condemn Cuba, and the Cubans had also resisted
this policy and been angry about it for many years,
feeling that it was sort of spurring more incentives
for Cubans to leave Cuba.
And then, in the 1990s, basically Clinton sort of
readjusts this policy, with the wet foot, dry foot policy,
which basically said if Cubans were apprehended at sea,
in other words if they hadn't made it to shore,
then they would be sent back to Cuba or to another country.
If they were, if they made it over the border,
in other words dry foot, then they were
still allowed to pursue that.
So, again, right before Obama leaves office,
to the pleasure of the Cuba government,
he rescinds this wet foot, dry foot policy,
meaning that Cubans now do not have that same ability to
basically very easily become US citizens and get sort of
permanent residency after arriving here.
And there were a number of other developments as well.
Lifting restrictions in banking and finance and also continuing
to ease travel restrictions for US citizens.
All right, I'm going to put up a few slides now
of Cuba and our trip there
and use this to talk a little bit
about aspects of tourism in Cuba, which is very important
to the Cuban economy and is growing.
And I think one of the,
certainly one of the impacts of normalization
is an increase in US tourism.
But we're not the only ones that are going to Cuba.
In fact, Canadians, in particular,
have been going to Cuba for many, many years.
And, in fact, Cubans are the biggest,
the largest group of tourists that travel to Cuba.
Roughly about a third of the tourists
that go to Cuba are Canadians.
And then you have a lot of Europeans as well,
and also Latin Americans.
People from Argentina, from Brazil,
from other Latin American countries.
So Cuba has become a tourist destination.
According to some figures that I saw,
about 10% of Cuba's GDP right now,
tourism represents about 10% of their GDP.
So it is very important to the Cuban economy.
When we went in 2016,
Cuba was expecting to receive 3.7 million tourists.
Cuba has a total population of about 11 million people.
And there were projections that by 2030 Cuba may be receiving
as many as 10 million tourists per year.
So the sort of growth exponential in Cuba
for increase in tourism is there.
Okay, this is a picture of sort of downtown Havana.
And we can see the old cars.
Very popular with tourists.
And iconic, obviously, in terms of images of Cuba.
You can rent one of these cars and go for a ride on the Malecón
in these old US cars from the 1950s.
This is where we had our classes.
Really a beautiful-- What's called a polidor.
These are restaurants that are privately owned
and run privately.
So this is kind of one of the new sectors, if you will,
of the Cuban economy that has resulted from many of these
economic reforms that had been undertaken.
It started first under Fidel Castro but have really been
ramped up since Raúl Castro, his brother, became president.
So there has been a great expansion in terms of
significant expansion in terms of what's called the
cuentapropistas, or sort of self-employment.
And so a lot of this is in the tourist industry.
So, basically, people opening up their houses
and establishing restaurants, for example, in their houses.
This is an old house in Havana, and I'll just also point out,
I mean, there's a lot of vibrancy
in terms of Cuban culture and art.
We went to, we visited at night another sort of--
It's called La Fabrica or the factory,
and it's kind of this new kind of cultural center,
and they have all these different, you know,
sort of art installations and then they have music centers.
So there's a lot of kind of dynamism and energy,
and you can see up here, I mean, these beautiful--
She had all of these, the woman that owned this place
had all this kind of beautiful,
all of this is Cuban art by Cuban artists.
So this is where we had our classes.
And this is a good example of, you know,
of some of these polidores, these kind of restaurants in
people's homes, and we visited several of them.
And then also people opening up their homes, taking in,
you know, as sort of B&Bs, right?
So there are some several American companies
that are now working in Cuba.
Airbnb is-- Cuba is the highest growth rate for Airbnb in terms
of the number of kind of places that are being opened.
And as well as, you know, sort of cruise lines
are now starting to go to Cuba.
A lot of activity kind of in the tourist sector.
And here's just a few other pictures.
This is a beautiful area that we went to.
Yeah, the Zapata Swamp.
Lots of stunning, beautiful natural areas.
This is an area of sort of natural canals,
and there's lots of bird watching in here.
This used to be a place that Fidel Castro
used to go fishing a lot.
And there's a beautiful sort of eco lodge that is open to
tourism that we stayed at.
You can sort of see in the background.
Cuba has a lot of material, you know, sort of scarcity.
There are not a lot of-- If you go around Havana,
you're not going to see a lot of stores.
You're not going to be able to, you know,
kind of just go into a store and buy whatever you want.
There is a lot of material scarcity.
We visited an organic farm in Cuba.
There has been a whole sort of urban organic
farm movement in Cuba.
Very interesting.
And the woman who sort of gave us the tour of this farm
basically, sort of jokingly, said,
and she's traveled, and she said,
"Yeah, one of the things we really would like is
"we'd like to have a Home Depot."
Basically kind of signaling how difficult it is to
get kind of really basic things, like plastic sheeting.
And we sort of take these things for granted, right?
You can go in and buy whatever you need
for your home garden project.
So there is a lot of, you know, again,
there's a lot of kind of need for material things.
This is one thing that if the embargo, when it is lifted,
and I think it will be lifted, it can't last forever, you know,
that I think will be helpful, maybe not US chain stores
necessarily, but having more access to, you know,
to things and to trade, etc.
Here's another beautiful area
that we went to in Cuba called Las Terrazas.
This is an example, I think, of a real great potential
and realized sort of thing that Cuba has of eco-tourism.
This was an area of Cuba that used to be,
that had been devastated by 200 years of coffee plantations
throughout the whole sort of Colonial Period.
And a lot of it had been deforested,
basically this whole area.
And during the revolution in the 1960s,
one of the brothers of Camilo Cienfuegos,
who you saw in one of the previous pictures,
had this idea to reclaim this area ecologically.
So and basically, you know, since the 1960s to today
they have replanted all of these incredible African palms and
replanted this whole area and created this really kind of
idyllic ecological community that we visited.
And today, this community depends a lot on tourism.
This is a picture, up here, of a local artist
that does beautiful--
He's actually internationally known
but sells his work and does just,
really kind of stunning drawings
of different fanciful ideas about--
based on sort of Cuban wildlife.
Viñales, up here.
This is sort of the tobacco producing region of Cuba.
And, again, just, you know, a beautiful,
just a beautiful sort of area
with these kind of unique mountainous formations
that are unique to--
There's a few other places in the world
that have these mogotes,
these sort of strange kind of formations
that we kind of hiked up to, very beautiful.
So, go visit Cuba.
It really is. It's a wonderful country.
And the other thing I would just quickly say,
a couple of things that really struck me about Cuba.
I've lived and worked in Latin America for many years.
Cuba is one of the safest places
that I have been to in Latin America.
We felt very, very safe in Cuba.
There is very low crime rate, very low violent crime rate.
It really is a functioning society.
In many other parts of Latin America,
you have to worry a lot more about, you know,
about issues of sort of crime and things like that.
So, okay.
Now, let me just go back to sort of, you know,
the question of kind of--
And I'm just going to finish up
the last few slides here.
But go back to kind of the question of US/Cuban relations,
and, as Anju mentioned,
we are sort of in a different moment, right now.
We don't know what's going to be happening into the future.
But one thing that I will say I want to emphasize is that
public opinion in the United States
and also in the Cuban-American community, primarily in Miami,
has changed fairly significantly.
And so we now have a majority of US citizens,
as we can see up here, 63% of Americans today,
according to the Pew Research polling,
support normalization of relations with Cuba.
55% of Americans favor ending the embargo.
Of course, it has not been ended, and, as Anju said,
it cannot be ended, only by an Act of Congress.
97% of Cubans believe that normalization
is a positive thing for Cuba.
And, again, overwhelming, there is overwhelming support
internationally, and in particular in Latin America,
and I think, as Anju mentioned, this was an important factor,
you know, that sort of a push factor, pushing the US
administration to move in the direction of reestablishing
and trying to normalize ties with Cuba.
And even these sort of statistics over here,
where here, sort of in the heartland of the United States,
even in the heartland, also support for, again,
for reestablishing relations, ending the trade embargo.
In our midwestern states, also very high.
Okay, so where are we at today?
At the end of last year,
two kind of important events happened.
Of course, first of all, the election of Donald Trump.
And he had initially sort of expressed support for the
process of normalization, but then, as the campaign went on,
began to express more virulent and sort of saying that the deal
that Obama had made with Cuba was a bad deal.
Basically kind of saying that, you know,
if Cuba did not start doing things,
if they didn't make a better deal for their citizens
and change things politically that he would,
sort of nix the deal, threatening to nix the deal
and things like that.
So we have the election of Trump.
And then, also, very significantly,
just a few weeks after Trump's election, which again,
I think, portended somewhat a more pessimistic view
about the potential for relations over the next few years,
and then also the death of Fidel Castro at 90 years old,
at the end of November.
So, you know, very symbolic.
So we have these sort of two events
happening in November of last year.
So thinking about, you know, today,
and we're not going to do any predictions,
but we certainly can talk about, you know,
what are some of the factors that might impact the next
four years in terms of US/Cuban relations.
But, you know, these are kind of the outstanding questions.
Will the Trump administration
continue with what Obama started?
With detente with Cuba?
What is Congress going to do?
Will there be enough impetus within Congress
to end the embargo?
And, then how will other regional and international
developments affect US/Cuban relations as we move forward?
And just to sort of put up there
a few different things to keep in mind.
We haven't really mentioned the role of US business.
There is definitely a lot of interest in the US business
community in getting into Cuba, if you will.
And, also, next year Raúl Castro has announced
that he will step down.
That is significant.
And, again, the Cuban-American community,
which has been very central to US/Cuban policy
and to sort of resisting normalization
of relations with the Cuban government,
that has been changing.
And so that whole community and the developments
in that community is very interesting to look at.
So, with that, we'll end it.
We'll end it here, and I want to, both of us,
thank all of you for coming out.
- Do you have any questions you want to ask?
- We will. But, yeah.
- Thank you for coming, and we'd like to open it
to questions if you have any.
[applause]