CUBA - CHANGE VS EMBARGO

by Leonardo Padura Fuentes
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Inter Press Service

Before an end of the US embargo of Cuba became even remotely conceivable, certain major international developments had to take place: the profound political shift in Latin America, the moving election of the first black president of the United States (a man, moreover, committed to change in its widest sense), and the financial and economic cataclysm that has shaken the capitalist system to its roots, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

In this article, Padura writes that President Obama said Cuba would have to demonstrate its desire for change. What he seems to have forgotten is that the embargo was an indispensable ally of the Cuban government that generated considerable political capital and international solidarity and was used deftly by Havana to justify domestic policy. The elimination of the embargo is not an urgent matter for the Cuban government, which has demonstrated that it can survive without the support of the socialist bloc, and even with the strengthened embargo of the Bush years.

Cuba has to change, not as a gesture intended for the other side of the Florida Straits but because of its own needs and shortcomings. And maybe the US, viewing the world now from a more realistic perspective, will come to see that the elimination or scaling back of the embargo is most likely way to bring about these and other changes in its neighbour in the Caribbean.

(*) Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a Cuban writer and journalist. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages and his most recent work, La neblina del ayer, won the Hammett Prize for the best crime novel written in Spanish for 2005.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//

CUBA - CHANGE VS EMBARGO

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