Statement, by Patricia Gutiérrez-Menoyo, given at a panel discussion with Cuban-Americans on U.S.-Cuba Policy organized by the Cuba Project of the World Policy Institute. Ms. Gutiérrez-Menoyo is member of the National Directorate of Cambio Cubano (Cuban Change) and daughter of Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo, a Miami exile leader and previous long-time political prisoner in Cuba who recently returned to live in Cuba in order to promote a legal independent opposition movement from within.

Good morning.

I’m honored to be here today. I would like to speak on behalf of thousands of Cubans who struggle to build a peaceful, independent opposition in Cuba that can lead us to an orderly democratic transition on the island. As such, we oppose the new toughened policies implemented by the Bush Administration. These measures are divisive of the Cuban family; inhumane in nature; un-American in spirit; and un-Constitutional in content. Furthermore, these measures are blatantly opportunistic, designed to pander to a segment of the Southern Florida electorate. The perception of this electorate as cold-hearted anti-Cuba is also narrow-minded and probably destined to backfire on those who have promulgated the harsh measures (Some may well be sitting here with us right now). It would not be the first time in nearly 50 years!

With this introduction, some of you may ask: Why has US policy regarding Cuba been so flawed, so partisan, so narrow-minded… for so long? The answer can perhaps be found in two particularly curious components of US foreign policy in relation to Cuba:

• The first component, and a constant of the recent half-century of US-Cuba policy, is a remnant of the old days of American patronage of the island. Cuba, the tiny, close neighbor, the turbulent, nascent republic, engendered under the Washington tutelage and the philosophical markings of the Monroe Doctrine and the Platt Amendment. It is “right” for America to be and to feel arrogantly possessive when it comes to Cuba —even if it means supporting some if its dictators, denying its struggle for independence or, more recently, American administrations feeling compelled to behave towards the island with the rhetoric of the Cold War days as if Cuba still remained a stronghold of the disappeared Soviet Union.
• The second component of this foolish notion is a by-product of the latter. America has allowed a tiny interested group in South Florida to physically kidnap America’s ability to formulate, try and implement a sound, measured, intelligent and independent foreign policy to deal with Cuba. A vociferous minority within the Cuban-American community has been gradually allowed to wrestle down American institutions and to silence nearly any frank and constructive dialogue within American society that could have produced a healthier, more democracy-conducive and politically effective approach to the Cuba issue.

In turn, and as a direct result of this mistaken view, the Cuban government has been given an inestimable ideological weapon for its political survival: the formidable pretext, the ever-present pretext of the American threat dangling over Cuba.

For those who may deem this complaint as naïve, I only need to refer them to four decades in which, sadly, the powers of darkness have been able to keep at bay any constructive effort to engage Cuba: From US-sponsored military attacks and CIA-conducted internal sabotage, to the ridiculous attempts to blow Mr. Castro’s head with a cigar in a fashion that can only recall the silly humor of an Austin Powers flick.

What do these “new” measures bring to the table, if not the same kind of callousness, arrogance and disregard for independence, international law, humanity, common decency, and common sense? How can anyone explain the incoherence of an Administration whose President proclaims himself as the only legitimate advocate for family values, while allowing the inequity of permitting Cuban-Americans to visit their family only once every three years? It is not a trivial detail to remind you of what happens if there is a family loss. How can anyone, with a modest degree of ethics, accept the division and isolation, and the further fracturing of the Cuban family, in terms and conditions that recall the harshest days of the Stalin era when walls were built to stop people from fleeing or coming in?

The path to an evolution to democracy in Cuba should promote compassion and understanding. If America —as it should— wants to promote change in the island, America must show coherence of purpose and an ostensibly clear moral argument. America cannot expect Cuba to achieve high goals on the democratic front when this Administration, through these new measures, is trampling on the very principles we as a Nation are supposed to uphold and protect.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 defends the principle that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Now you tell me, how can anyone argue in support of the Bush measures, purportedly aimed at promoting human rights in Cuba, when the first thing those measures do is to deny such basic rights to Cubans and, perhaps more disturbingly, to American citizens!!!???

One of the features of the new policies is that cousins, aunts and uncles no longer count as family that can be visited. This distorted interpretation of family offends the sensibility of the Cuban people, weakens America’s message of democracy and reconciliation, and emboldens hard-liners within the Cuban government to prepare for the worst. US persistence on policies of this kind has constantly boomeranged on its promoters, while resulting in profitable political gains for Cuba’s hard-liners.

One can only contemplate the irony of this crude interpretation of “family members” while revisiting the Elián González affair, when the interpretation of family membership was for some in the far right, and no matter if the child’s father lived in Cuba, an easy rationalization for Elián to stay in Miami with… “members of his family?” Cousins and uncles were family members back then.

But the ironies abound. While travel restrictions and caps on remittances are enforced, the Administration finds a way of identifying a type of Cuban who is supposedly above the rest of his fellow countrymen. This is a wholesale description of a new species, “the dissident,” as seen by Washington and as “suggested and approved” by some in Miami. This is a person of unquestionable selfless devotion to democracy, a person of unrecognized heroism, who should benefit from a budget of $60 million US dollars from American taxpayers, a budget designed and created —or at least, that is what they tell us—to promote democratic change in Cuba.

Who in his right mind can believe and expect that the proper conditions for a democratic transition, can be created by having the same government that imposes sanctions and pressures of all sort, lavishing millions of dollars on so-called “dissidents” who proclaim themselves advocates of change through peaceful means? How peaceful are economic sanctions? How can Washington foster change through economic means in other areas of the world and aspire to seek change in Cuba by emboldening an opposition to confront a government under siege? Have we not witnessed the many instances in which these efforts have proven fruitless by the fact that the government uses a most convenient pretext: the fact that the struggle of some of these dissidents is sponsored and manipulated from abroad.

For your information: Some of these funds could easily end up in the hands of members of Cuba’s State Police who have found enough porosity in the remote controlled opposition to permeate it and bring to the point of confrontation that benefits from.

What Cubans do need is moral support for an independent opposition. Allow me to repeat: INDEPENDENT… An opposition that can honestly speak for itself. Unabashedly. Not timidly. An opposition that is clear enough in its message of sovereignty and the transparency of its struggle for a political diversity through means that are not destabilizing in nature.

With Cambio Cubano’s (Cuban Change’s) leader, Eloy Gutiérrez-Menoyo, in Cuba, this is one of our more serious preoccupations stemming from the recent Bush measures.

Yes, there is an independent opposition in Cuba. And we ask Americans of good will to fight against the new measures, and to try to identify this new independent current of the opposition. To help this new current, you need not spend one penny from American taxpayer’s money. To help Cuba change, you need not promote confrontation but engagement. It is time for Americans to re-think Cuba policy, and to do it with one of America’s most effective weapons: IMAGINATION.

Thank you very much.