For the first time in nearly 60 years, a Castro will not lead the island nation of Cuba, as Fidel’s brother Raúl stepped down and new President Miguel Díaz-Canel was confirmed April 19. What happens next in Cuba is, of course, a matter of speculation. But Latin America observers still offered some insight this week into the possible future of the island in the wake of the country’s new president.
Christopher Sabatini, international relations and policy lecturer at Columbia University, said Díaz-Canel may represent a younger generation, but don’t expect drastic changes in governance. In an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations published April 18, he noted many Cubans have long anticipated an end to the Castros’ reign, and Díaz-Canel is very aware of that. But the Communist Party foundation is still firmly entrenched, and Raúl is still secretary-general. In addition, Raúl’s son is a “de facto liaison between the military, intelligence, and civilian sectors.”
The age of others in leadership, Sabatini said, will be telling.
“The thing to keep an eye on is how many of the older generation—the former revolutionaries—get elected to the Council of State,” Sabatini said. “Díaz-Canel will have a little more of a free hand if people of his generation and people of his choosing dominate that council.”
(Cuba’s Communist Party Central Committee’s newspaper on April 19 lauded the “Continuity of the Revolution,” with Raúl praising Council of State members’ contributions to the continuing revolutionary struggle.)
Sabatini also noted serious challenges Díaz-Canel will face right out of the gate. “There are two currencies in Cuba, which create huge distortions in the economy and act as disincentives to foreign investment,” he said. “Unification could be a very wrenching process and could even risk inflation and a higher cost of living.”
As for relations with the United States, Sabatini said, little will likely change.
“The Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which is still in effect, states that the president can only ask to have the U.S. embargo on Cuba lifted if certain conditions are met, including the release of all political prisoners, respect for freedom of expression, respect for freedom of association, and credible steps toward free and fair elections,” he said. “As long as policy is driven largely by [Florida Senator] Marco Rubio and other hard-liners, the embargo won’t be lifted no matter who’s in power.”
Ana Quintana, a Latin America policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation, said in a column in The Washington Times that it will likely be more of the same in Cuba. It’s still a dictatorship with little freedom.
“In a video leaked last year, Mr. Díaz-Canel disparaged Cuba’s dissidents and political prisoners as counterrevolutionaries,” Quintana wrote. “He also claimed that he would censor independent media, the Internet and other means of free expression.”
It was a moment that she said revealed his true stripes.
“In that same video, Mr. Diaz-Canel goes on to criticize countries such as Germany, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and, of course, the United States for their ‘subversive’ support of human rights,” she added. “Clearly, he is a dyed-in-the-wool Castro communist.”
Ted Piccone, a foreign policy senior fellow at The Brookings Institution said in a podcast that although experts expect a continuation of Castro regime practices, some reforms might be on the horizon, but he thinks Cuba’s relationship with the United State might deteriorate.
“President Trump is committed to a much harder-line approach as promised on the campaign trail,” Piccone said. “This was a key part of his appeal to voters—Cuban American voters—in Florida in the last weeks of the campaign, and he’s been fulfilling that promise since he got elected as president a year and a half ago.”
Piccone noted Trump’s rollback of Obama administration reforms that allowed for “constructive engagement” with the island. He also pointed out the mysterious incidents of illness among U.S. personnel stationed in Cuba that led to travel warnings and the recalling of more than half of U.S. diplomats from Cuba.
“To me, this is largely a result of the way Cuba plays in our domestic politics,” Piccone said, particularly in the swing state of Florida. “The Cuban-American community is largely unified in favor of a harder-line approach to Cuba.”
Contributing to this hardline approach to Cuba, he said, are individuals such as Rubio, the addition of secretary of state designate Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton as national security adviser. Piccone noted Pompeo’s endorsement of Rubio for president and Bolton’s critical stance against Obama’s March 2016 visit to Cuba.
Amb. Vicki Huddleston, chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba from 1999 to 2002 said in a column in the Los Angeles Times that this is an opportunity to re-engage with Cuba, and believes Trump would be wrong for not doing so.
“The 50-year trade embargo against Cuba has failed,” she wrote. “It has not influenced the country’s leadership to change its communist government or to improve human rights on the island.”
She added that when the United States cracks down on Cuba, necessary reforms in the country stop.
“The more we alienate Cuba, the closer it moves to Russia and China,” she wrote. “Russia recently initialed a deal to manage the Cienfuegos oil refinery, and it is now considering reopening a communications base that intercepts satellite communications.” She added that Cuba’s largest trade partner is China, and both Russia and China provide Cuba military advice.
“Nowhere else in the world does the U.S. maintain a unilateral embargo; not even against rogue nations like Syria, which has used chemical weapons against its own people, or North Korea, which threatens to make use of its nuclear program,” she wrote. “Most importantly, the Trump administration should work with Latin American governments to determine a regional consensus on policy toward Cuba.”
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