- 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 we  - 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  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)