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U.S. Proposals for an Unwanted Transition in Cuba: A Critique

Marta Nez Sarmiento
Latin American Perspectives 2014 41: 147 originally published online 12 May 2014
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14534598
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LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X14534598Latin American PerspectivesNez / U.S. Proposals for an Unwanted Transition in Cuba

U.S. Proposals for an Unwanted Transition in Cuba

A Critique
by
Marta Nez Sarmiento
Two recent U.S. government and scholarly projects on a transition toward democracy
in Cubathe reports to the president of the Commissions for Assistance to a Free Cuba
and the results of the Brookings Institutions seminars on U.S. policy toward a Cuba in
transitionare typical of attempts by U.S. academics and policy makers to make Cuban
society conform to U.S. models of social organization and bring Cuba once again under
U.S. hegemony. Failing to consult the work of Cuban social scientists who have directly
assessed the gains and losses of the Cuban transition to a better society and criticized it
from within, they overlook Cubas permanent shift from capitalism to socialism in the past
50-plus years and ignore the distinctiveness of the Cuban socialist system.
Dos recientes proyectos gubernamentales y acadmicos estadounidenses sobre una
transicin hacia la democracia en Cubalos informes al presidente de las Comisiones
de Asistencia para una Cuba Libre y los resultados de los seminarios de la Institucin
Brookings sobre la poltica de EE.UU. hacia una Cuba en transicinson tpicas de los
intentos de parte de los acadmicos y los legisladores estadounidenses para que la sociedad
cubana se ajuste a los modelos de organizacin social de los Estados Unidos y para nuevamente llevar a Cuba bajo la hegemona de EE.UU. En no consultar el trabajo de los cientficos sociales cubanos que han evaluado directamente las ganancias y prdidas de la
transicin cubana a una sociedad mejor y criticarla desde dentro, se pasan por alto el
cambio permanente en Cuba del capitalismo al socialismo en los ltimos ms de 50 aos y
ignoran lo distintivo del sistema socialista cubano.
Keywords: Cuba, Transition, Cuban Americans, Commissions for Assistance to a Free
Cuba, Brookings Institution

Two important U.S. projects dealing with a transition toward democracy

for Cuba have appeared in the past decade. The Reports to the President presented in 2004 and 2006 by the two Commissions for Assistance to a Free Cuba
(CAFC) appointed by President George W. Bush (CAFC, 2004; 2006) summarized U.S. government agencies recommendations on hastening the arrival
Marta Nez Sarmiento is a professor of gender studies at the Center for Studies of International
Migrations of the University of Havana. Her recent publications include Cubans Abroad: A
Gendered Case Study on International Migrations (Cuban Studies 41 [1]: 105125), Cuban
Development Alternatives to Market-driven Economies: A Gendered Case Study on Womens
Employment, pp. 267292 in Devaki Jain and Diane Elson (eds.), Harvesting Feminist Knowledge
for Public Policy (2011), and Yo sola me represento: De cmo el empleo femenino transform las relaciones
de gnero en Cuba (2011). Much of the research for this article was conducted while she was a visiting scholar at Harvard Universitys David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 197, Vol. 41 No. 4, July 2014, 147163
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X14534598
2014 Latin American Perspectives

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147

148 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

of a transition in Cuba and identified U.S. government programs that could

assist the Cuban people in this transition (CAFC, 2004: xi). The documents of
the Brookings Institutions project U.S. Policy Toward a Cuba in Transition
(Brookings Institution, 2008a; 2008b; 2008c; 2008d; 2009a; 2009b; Huddleston
and Pascual, 2009) contained policy proposals for the next president made by
distinguished academics, opinion leaders, and international diplomats committed . . . to seeking a strong and effective U.S. policy toward Cuba (Brookings
Institution, 2009b: iii).1
As a visiting scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American
Studies at Harvard University beginning in 2010, I examined these proposals.
First, I wanted to understand whether they would change the course of U.S.
foreign policy toward Cuba and were based on principles of equity and mutual
respect. Secondly, I wanted to determine whether they advised the U.S. government to collaborate with the Cubans and their government in their halfcentury-long process of making Cuban society more just. Thirdly, I wanted to
identify the Cuban American consultants ideas concerning a transition and
determine whether they were included in the final documents.
I chose this topic because during the past 50-plus years I have experienced
the permanent changes produced in Cuba in the course of the comprehensive,
contradictory, sustainable, and ongoing transition from capitalist relations to a
new social order, defined as socialism, that is based on justice and the struggle
against all forms of exploitation. As a social scientist I have analyzed these
changes, compared them with other socialist experiments (as a result of my
work as an expert in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), and participated in the development of policy proposals to improve the distinctive
Cuban socialist model. Cubans have produced and tested these changes under
very stressful conditions, constantly struggling with severe international
restrictions and challenged by a cultural war aimed at subverting Cubas
national heritage and identity.2 The recent U.S. plans for a transition can be
understood as an attempt from outside to exercise power over Cuba rather
than as an effort to change U.S.-Cuba relations and place the two countries on
equal terms. They would impose U.S. models of democracy on Cuba without
considering Cubas history and present conditions.
The Documents
The CAFCs 2004 and 2006 reports dealt with policy measures for developing neoliberal politics in Cuba after the fall of the Castro brothers. In
Venezuela and Bolivia an old fear of U.S. elites had been realizedsocialism
was blending with anti-imperialist and independence ideals through elections
rather than armed struggleand Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, and
Paraguay were opposing U.S. dictates in the hemisphere. President Bushs
creation of the CAFC, under Secretary of State Colin Powell, in October 2003
was a response to harsh criticism from the ultraconservative Cuban American
leaders of South Florida in the spring of that year. They declared that the president had acted negligently toward the Castro regime and that he had not
compensated them for their support in getting him elected in the disputed

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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 149

election of 2000. The president needed to regain their support, for he was running for reelection (Eckstein, 2009). In order to confirm his relentless policy
toward the island and to avoid contradictions with his potential South Florida
voters in the elections of November 2004, he appointed the Cuban-born
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez as cochair of this
commission. (Martinez later resigned to run for the Senate.) Three Cuban
American U.S. government officials were among the authors of the first report:
Adolfo Franco, assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean at
the USAID (CAFC, 2004: xiii), Mirta Alvarez, deputy director of the Office of
Cuba Affairs, Department of State, and Jos R. Cardenas, a senior adviser in the
State Departments Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (CAFC, 2004: x).
The 2004 report argued in two-thirds of its 423 pages the need to hasten
Cubas transition. The reasoning was highly ideological, reproducing longtime
U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba, and the ideas were poorly supported by quotations from a few works by the University of Miamis Cuba Transition Project,
which included Cuban American scholars and politicians as well as U.S. specialists.3 Although it is evident that the report was hastily prepared, it contained recommendations that, when put into practice, had serious repercussions
on Cuba-U.S. migration, interrupted the already very limited travel by U.S.
citizens to Cuba and academic exchange, and hindered the flow of remittances
to Cuba. Another dangerous suggestion was the use of the regular C-130 flights
to transmit TV Mart, a TV channel inaugurated in the mid-1980s to subvert
internal order in Cuba but never seen there.
The 2006 report was chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
cochaired by Cuban-born Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutirrez and was
conceived as the U.S. government was intensifying its wartime politics not only
in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in Iran and backing Israeli actions against
Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon. It was hostile toward several Latin American
countries and had interfered in the internal affairs of countries in which electoral processes capable of putting popular leaders in power were taking place.
Ultraconservative Cuban Americans continued to occupy the majority of the
Hispanic seats in Congress and represented the important swing state of
Florida. The executive branch was doing everything possible to maintain its
tough image toward Cuba in anticipation of the congressional elections of
November 2006. Opinion polls carried out among Cubans residing in MiamiDade County since 2002 confirmed that their socio-demographic characteristics had changed: those who had arrived since the 1980s were now the majority,
and their views differed from the aggressive conceptions of the Cuban American
immigrants of 1960s and 1970s that had governed U.S. policy toward Cuba
since 1959 (NDN and Bendixen, 2006; Pew Hispanic Center, 2006) The polls
also showed that the newest arrivals were not registered voters.
It was in this context that the CAFC published its 93-page report, with proposals to hasten the transition toward a neoliberal economy in Cuba. In contrast with the first report, it lacked references, did not list its contributors, and
resembled a short-term plan of action for changing the Cuban political order.
It reinforced the earlier reports effort to legitimate U.S. government participation in a foreign transition process and included recommendations for meeting humanitarian and economic needs in terms reminiscent of the USAIDs

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150 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

documents for assistance in Iraq. An annex of this report was kept secret for
reasons of national security.
The CAFC did not survive into the Obama administration. Designate
Assistant Secretary Arturo Valenzuela told Senator Richard Lugar before the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 8, 2009, that the Obama administration [did] not use the CAFC to guide its current policy towards Cuba.
He added that the Cuba Transition Coordinator departed in October 2008
and we do not plan to maintain that position (Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, 2009).
The Brookings Institution, founded in 1927, has been one of the most influential think tanks in matters of elaborating domestic and foreign policy proposals for U.S. administrations. From the beginning of 2008 to 2009 it published
more documents on the transition in Cuba than other U.S. think tanks. At the
end of 2007 it had apparently replaced the Cuba Transition Project of the
University of Miami in its role as scholarly adviser on transition policies for
Cuba. The Brookings Institution documents were shorter than the CAFC
reports, and the language they used was concise and direct. Cuban-born Carlos
Pascual, who became vice president and director of foreign policy at the institution in February 2006, cochaired this project with Vicky Huddleston, a visiting
fellow and former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.4 The advisers
were well-known experts in the field of U.S.-Cuba relations, half of them Cuban
Americans. They conducted simulation seminars to enhance their understanding of the political realities in Cuba and the United States and to identify
potential catalysts and constraints to political change on the island (Brookings
Institution, 2009b: iii).
In February 2008 Ral Castro, who had been provisionally leading Cuba
since Fidels illness in the summer of 2006, was elected president. In the second
half of 2008 three hurricanes hit the island in a month, and Cuba proved that it
could recover from natural disasters that left 20 percent of its houses damaged
or destroyed. The government announced new economic measures and social
policies to continue its response to the crisis of the 1990s and confront the effects
of the global crisis.5 Cuba joined the Rio Group, strengthening its involvement
in Latin American and Caribbean regional organizations. The 2008 financial
crisis called into question the capacity of neoliberal models to develop societies
worldwide. Barack Obama was elected president of the United States on a platform of change, and he inherited enormous domestic and foreign challenges
from the Bush administration. South Floridas three Republican Cuban
American congress members were reelected with small margins, probably
indicating that they could be replaced in the near future. Miami-Dade County
polls showed that Cuban Americans favored easing U.S. policy toward Cuba
(IPOR et al., 2008).6
In its final report the Brookings Institution (2009b: 4) stated that President
Barack Obama should commit to a long-term process of critical and constructive engagement at all levels, including with the Cuban government, that
would permit the United States to protect its interests and advance with the
hemisphere to help the Cuban people become agents for peaceful change from
within the island. The Brookings Institution documents used up-to-date information on Cuban domestic conditions, but their policy objectives all involved

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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 151

interfering in Cubas domestic affairs and considered only U.S. interests rather
than those of both countries.
Earlier Studies of U.S.-Cuba Relations
U.S. scholarly institutions have historically offered proposals for policy
toward Cuba. Since the consolidation of the United States as a nation at the end
of the eighteenth century, various administrations have aspired to decide
Cubas destiny (see, e.g., Adams, 1823). Starting with the first U.S. military
intervention in Cuba in 1898, the U.S. leadership relied on academia to define
its intentions. During the twentieth century the U.S. governments strategies
for Cuba drew upon three social scientific approaches: the Foreign Policy
Associations (1935) Problems of the New Cuba, the Truslow (1951) Report on
Cuba,7 and the Council for Inter-American Securitys (CIS, 1980; 1988) Santa Fe
I and II programs. The authors of the first two documents were able to gather
information on the state of Cuban society in situ because of the neocolonial
status of Cuba in those years. They detailed the Cuban situation, mainly its
economic circumstances, at the time, suggesting ways to develop the country
within the U.S. sphere of influence. Both reports came out at times when leftist
movements were gathering strength in Cuban politics. Problems of the New Cuba
was published after the fall of Gerardo Machados dictatorship, in the midst of
an outpouring of anti-imperialist feeling, when the U.S. government was trying
to erase all traces of its ties with the ousted ruler. Fulgencio Batistaknown as
the U.S. strongmanhad become commander of the army and begun repressing the popular forces. Report on Cuba came out on the eve of the 1952 elections
that would see the triumph of the revolutionary presidential candidate Eduardo
Chibs. (Months later Batista led a coup dtat and the elections were annulled.)
The Santa Fe I and II reports studied the situation of the Latin American region
at two points in the 1980s in an effort to evaluate how much its countries had
moved away from U.S. policies under the influence of Cuba and the Soviet
Union. They also predicted the future course of the Cuban socialist project
domestically and in the region. The Santa Fe II report insisted on the need to
destroy all Soviet influences in the region and warned that, once socialism had
become rooted in the ideas and actions of the Latin American countries to
redeem their national identities, it would be very difficult to destroy regimes
that followed this political trend.8 Less than two years after this second document was launched, socialism was erased from the Eastern European countries
and the Sandinista government lost the elections in Nicaragua. The Soviet
Union disappeared in 1991.
The term transition toward democracy
The expression transition toward democracy arose in the postcold-war
years to counter the concept transition toward socialism that characterized
the scholarly and political approaches used in the USSR and in the socialist
Eastern European countries. The bankruptcy of these regimes paved the way

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152 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

for the neoconservative global ideologies to erase socialism as an achievable

social order and Marxism as its legitimate theory. The word transition
remained while democracy, its meaning taken from U.S. political structures,
was declared the ideal new social order for these countries to pursue. In the
aftermath of 9/11, when the military powers played a stronger role than ever
in U.S. international policy, transition toward democracy pointed to new
forms of polarization of culture, politics, and identities worldwide, assuming
that what was legitimate for the United States and the West was not so for those
who opposed them. Thus the term justified a new crusade to fight evil (terrorism, dictatorial regimes) wherever it was rooted (Afghanistan, Iraq,
Libya, and Syria) (Grimson, 2011: 6876). The scholars who developed these
policies failed to consider critical academic works on the socialist transition
that assumed the validity of a noncapitalist alternative.
The CAFC reports approached Cuban society with schemes used for describing the logic of U.S. political power structures that concealed the purpose of
subverting the current Cuban social order and installing a neoliberal one by
imposing elections controlled by the United States. The 2006 document said
that helping the Cuban transitional government to meet Cubans basic needs
was essential for reinforcing the new governments credibility, fostering the
participation of the population in timely democratic elections, and ensuring
its support of a free-market economy (CAFC, 2006: 5). Two problems in this
document remained unresolved: the exact moment of establishing the transitional government and how its members would be appointed. As to the first
problem, the spirit of the report was to hasten the transition and rule out any
attempt at having Fidel Castro succeeded by his brother Ral or by any of their
followers. (The 2004 report had also used the term hasten the transition,
but the 2006 report emphasized this urgency.) It advised the U.S. government
to create a stable and open environment that guaranteed free, fair, and multiparty elections without specifying when these would take place (CAFC, 2006:
6). The second problem was dealt with only superficially by both reports. The
2006 report mentioned Cuban civil society, recognizing that it had gained
strength since 2004, but it was obvious that the voices of civil society were not
heard during its preparation.
The Brookings Institution documents used the concept transition toward
democracy to describe ways of transforming Cuba without defining it and
without understanding the conditions that they were attempting to change.
The use of the term smart power implied that the new administrations foreign policy toward Cuba would differ from the status quo of the past 50 years
and would be guided by the change promised by Obama during his campaign. The documents stated that although many changes in Cuba had been
cosmetic, some things had been modified and U.S. behavior had to adapt
dynamically to the new scenario. They proposed once again using more
people-to-people policies, considering that conditions had changed since the
1990s, and suggested transforming the embargo into an effective instrument
of the smart power policy for attaining U.S. political goals.
Although the Brookings Institution documents proposed that President
Obama should commit himself to a long-term process of critical and constructive engagement with the Cuban government (an idea that was not included

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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 153

in the CAFC reports), they persisted in framing relations between the United
States and Cuba in terms of the logic of the U.S. power elites. While they stated
that a great lesson of democracy is that it cannot be imposed, it must come
from within, they declared that the United States should use the political,
economic, and diplomatic tools needed to help the Cuban people find the
political space that is essential to engage in and direct the policies of their country (Brookings Institution, 2009a: 1). This rhetoric concealed the basic intention of these documents: to subvert Cubas present order in order to restore a
political model that would suit the U.S. governments designs.
In a report issued in November 2008 (Brookings Institution, 2008d), the Cuba
section suggested actions at three levelsunilateral, bilateral, and multilateral.
The term unilateral could have meant that the new administration would
unilaterally undertake actions to eliminate the obstacles that the United States
had historically introduced into its relations with Cuba without expecting a
quid pro quo from the Cuban side. These obstacles might have included the
embargo (1962), the Torricelli Act (1992), the Helms-Burton Act (1996), the suspension of migration talks, and the listing of Cuba as a terrorist nation. The
nine recommendations stipulated, however, that any action on the U.S. side
would become effective only when Cuba had carried out democratic changes
as defined by the United States. The recommendation to remove caps and
targeting restrictions on remittances is a good example of this peculiar understanding of unilateralism: These financial measures would help get
resources directly into the hands of ordinary Cubans, empowering them,
improving their standard of living, and reducing their dependence on the
state (Brookings Institution, 2008d: 29). Empowering Cubans and upgrading
their standard of living through remittances rather than incomes generated
domestically was seen as a way of alienating civil society from the state. The
report missed the opportunity to recommend that the U.S. government unilaterally lift the restrictions and obstacles that it had imposed on Cuba. A subsequent report used the term unilateralism in the same way (Brookings
Institution, 2009a: iii).
The authors of these documents were apparently interested in reconstructing the damaged U.S. image worldwide. This may be why they stressed that
the United States should not publicly link the initiatives to specific actions of
the Cuban government (Brookings Institution, 2009a: 1), arguing that doing
so would give the Cuban hierarchy a veto over U.S. policy and suggesting that
United States should act on its assessment of internal developments and how
best to advance a democratic Cuba. The documents did not advise lifting the
embargo, and they failed to acknowledge Cubas right to develop as an independent nation. Their initiatives for a transition toward democracy in Cuba
in fact attempted to create a neoliberal capitalist order in Cuba in conformity
with Washingtons failed regional and global policies.
Foreign Models for Reorganizing Cuba
The CAFC reports focused on the leading role that the U.S. government
would assume throughout the Cuban transition process and subordinated the

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154 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

roles of other countries and international institutions. The 2006 report identified ways of replacing the financial and other economic resources coming primarily from Venezuela with new sources of assistance from multilateral
donors (CAFC, 2006: 62). It argued that the Cuban transitional government
would have very limited ability to borrow from its inherited banking system to
maintain social services and the civil service payroll during the transition. It
suggested that, as previous transitions had shown, cutting spending on subsidies to state-run companies would spur the restructuring of the state enterprise
sector but might also result in significant employee layoffs and popular dissatisfaction (CAFC, 2006: 62). The procedure for finding new sources of external financing required the Cuban transitional government to ask the U.S.
government for the necessary assistance, and only then would the latter request
international governments and institutions to help the transitional government
create a market economy, confront critical humanitarian needs, institute free
elections, and help prepare Cubas military forces to adjust to an appropriate
role in a democracy (CAFC, 2006: 8). At the request of the transitional government, the U.S. government would assist it with tax policies and public administration, budget and management policies, and all topics related to banking
and financial sector, including financial enforcement (anti-money laundering,
anti-corruption, and to counter financing of terrorism) (CAFC, 2006: 63). The
U.S. government would be willing to link the Cuban payment system to its
own by means of the Federal Reserve System and to facilitate Cubas incorporation into the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the InterAmerican Development Bank. The report advocated conferring contracts on
transnational entities as a way of transforming Cubas infrastructure according
to the needs of the world economy.
The sections dedicated to education in these reports argued, incorrectly, that
the Cuban educational system copied the Soviet patterns in every respect and
that the most vulnerable members of the population had no access to it. They
suggested that during the first three months of the transition the U.S. government could help the Cuban transitional government to replace the current textbooks with temporary instructional materials prepared with the help of the
Organization of American States. The U.S. government would bring teachers
from overseas, especially members of the National Association of Cuban
American Educators, and would look after the educational needs of the most
vulnerable groups (CAFC, 2006: 49, 50). Apparently taking the needs of the U.S.
educational system for those of the Cuban system, the 2006 report said that the
U.S. government would assist the Cuban transition educational system to
remove legal, social, and health impediments to vulnerable populations who
need special consideration in either traditional educational systems or in nontraditional education systems, such as those for current or released prisoners,
mentally ill individuals, the growing elderly population, homeless youth, or
drug abusers (CAFC, 2006: 50).
The 2006 report not only overlooked actual conditions in Cuba but recommended the transfer of schemes that the United States had applied in countries
such as Iraq, where it had created chaos. It described Cuba as a devastated
zone, and its recommendations, similar to the USAIDs humanitarian ones
in Iraq, resembled an emergency plan to restore the minimal infrastructure

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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 155

required by a free-market-based economy and the institution of free elections.

Chapter 2, Helping Cubans Respond to Critical Humanitarian and Social
Needs, calls to mind a USAID press release from Iraq in March 2003 (USAID,
2003). The section on health repeated the primary health care actions delivered
by the U.S. government in Iraq to prevent and treat killer diseases such as
diarrhoea, acute respiratory illness, and . . . measles (CAFC, 2006: 38; USAID,
2006a). Both the 2004 and the 2006 reports stated that the U.S. government
could help conduct campaigns for the immunization of children under five,
apparently unaware that this had long been the practice in Cuba.
Recommendations related to nutrition, again resembling the contents of the
Iraq documents, mentioned providing nutritional supplements in schools. The
same was the case with measures for sanitation such as providing HIV/AIDS
testing kits to ensure access to a safe blood supply. All these proposals were
judged essential for producing a healthy population that could help the Cuban
transitional government to institute free and fair elections (CAFC, 2006: 41).
Both reports ignored actual health conditions in Cuba. The emergency-condition treatment characteristic of the USAID proposals for Iraq (see USAID,
2006b) appeared once more in the section on shelter. The 2006 report promised
a comprehensive assessment of Cubas housing needs (widely acknowledged
by the Cuban government) and focused on helping the transitional government provide temporary shelter to vulnerable populations, arguing that the
existence of people without shelter could jeopardize the ability of the government to institute free and fair elections (CAFC, 2006: 45).
The actions proposed for meeting critical humanitarian and social needs
were emergency ones similar to those developed for reconstructing Iraq, and
their purpose was to make sure that the population would vote in the elections
organized by the Cuban transitional government and support plans to install a
market economy. Both reports described the present Cuban economic situation
as autarkic, completely isolated, overlooking the fact that Cubans had developed ways of negotiating with their economic and trade foreign counterparts
despite the conditions imposed by the U.S. embargo and the ongoing crisis
The Brookings Institution documents similarly overlooked the current conditions in Cuba in their proposals of political, economic, and diplomatic tools
to help the Cuban people engage in and direct the politics of their country.
Project codirectors Vicky Huddleston and Carlos Pascual (2009) wrote:
After a half-century of failed policy, there is enormous support in the CubanAmerican community for initiatives that would improve the well being and
independence of the Cuban people. What they didnt knowbut know now
is that there is no reason they cant reach out to the Cuban people and still
retain the embargo as symbol of their concern about the Cuba governments
failure to live up to international norms of human rights, democracy and transparency.

They went on to suggest that the president turn the embargo into an effective instrument of smart power to achieve the United States policy objectives
in Cuba, pointing out that constitutionally the president has the ultimate
authority to conduct U.S. foreign affairs and therefore could instruct the secretary of the treasury to extend, revise, or modify the embargo regulations.

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156 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Huddleston and Pascuals proposals and those contained in the Roadmap for
Critical and Constructive Engagement (Brookings Institution, 2009a) included
removing all restrictions on family and humanitarian travel to Cuba; permitting and expanding specific licenses for people-to-people travel for educational, cultural, and humanitarian purposes; reinstating remittances for
individuals and independent civil society in Cuba; speeding the entry of lifesaving medicines from Cuba; lifting the communications embargo on Cuba
and, according to the Cuban Democracy Act, authorizing a general license for
the donation and sale of radios, televisions, and computers; establishing an
assistance program for civil society and licensing the transfer of funds for activities that focus on human rights, the rule of law, micro-enterprises, and professional training; licensing Cuban state and nonstate entities to access satellite
and broadband communications networks; making Internet technology readily available so that any barriers to communication would be the fault of the
Cuban government; licensing U.S. companies to explore, exploit, and transport
oil and natural gas from the North Cuban Basin; and reaching a mutually
acceptable settlement of claims for expropriated property.
None of these recommendations questioned the principles of the embargo;
they simply aimed at liberalizing it without damaging its core. The initiatives
benefited only the United States and did not promote Cubas development.
Allowing U.S. companies to invest in Cuba off-shore oil and gas reserves overlooked the fact that Cuba had been exploring them with foreign companies for
several years. The recommendations of selling and donating telecommunications equipment and services to Cubans and allowing access to Internet technologies were intended to flood the island with information made in the United
States, and they neglected the fact that Cuban public TV channels were already
showing up-to-date American films, serials, cartoons, and video clips. The suggestion of speeding up the entry of lifesaving medicines from Cuba into the
United States ignored the testing of some of these products in the United States
through agreements with U.S. institutions conveniently licensed by the
Treasury Department. At the same time, the idea of permitting the importation
of additional categories of Cuban goods, which might have helped promote
Cuban economic development immediately, was classified as a long-term initiative. There was no proposal for lifting the Helms-Burton sanctions on third
countries that trade or maintain economic relations with Cuba.
The releases from the April 2008 Toward a Cohesive Cuban Civil Society
simulation seminar that took place at the University of Miami contained some
paradoxical statements. On the one hand, participants claimed that they were
interested in promoting the Cuban peoples well-being, but on the other hand
they feared that the Cuban government would be able to find ways to upgrade
Cubans living standards and thus reduce popular discontent and bolster its
political control. They recommended (Brookings Institution, 2008c: 910)
creative steps to encourage the wider dissemination of wealth across the
island, whether by lifting U.S. caps on remittances, supporting micro-finance
institutions through regional or multilateral collaboration, or engaging multilateral actors to form micro enterprise development funds. Such measures
should provide increased independence from the state for the Cuban people
and prevent the possibility that incremental reforms diminish incentives for
civic engagement.
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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 157

Proposed Initiatives on Politics and Civil Society

The CAFC reports referred to the topics of politics and civil society as
regime change, which meant overthrowing Fidel and Ral Castro to open the
way for the transitional government. Both reports recommendations concerning governability in a free Cuba duplicated the main political institutions of the
United States in terms of elections, political parties, executive, legislative, and
judicial powers, and constitution. This was also the case in the economic and
ideological spheres. There were no substantial contributions from the ultraright
Cuban American sectors that were distinguishable from mainstream American
institutions. Finally, Caleb McCarry, a high-ranking State Department officer,
was appointed to implement the measures spelled out in the 2006 report; none
of the nearly 30 Cuban American officials working in the executive branch at
the time was chosen for this post.
The Brookings Institution documents had more up-to-date information on
Cuba than the CAFC reports, but their policy proposals on civil society and
governability duplicated U.S. models. Without speaking of regime change,
they suggested ways of alienating civil society from the state in order to move
toward democracy. They suggested pursuing links with officials in the Cuban
government and acknowledged that under Ral Castros leadership Cuba had
continued on Fidels course. Participants in the Brookings Institution simulation seminars at the beginning of 2008 debated the various scenarios for transition in Cuba and concluded that the viability and sustainability of a transition
would depend on internal actors seeking change (Brookings Institution,
2008c: 1). They identified four internal actors seeking changereligious groups
(basically the Catholic Church), youth, the Afro-Cuban community, and organized opposition groupsand discussed their strengths and weaknesses.
Youth groups were considered most likely to become agents of transition. Of
a population of 11.4 million, approximately 8 million Cubans were born after
the 1959 Revolution. Of this group, the 2.2 million born after 1992 had experienced Cuban communism only under the austere conditions of the Special
Period and therefore were considered far less likely to harbor much enduring
loyalty to Cubas revolutionary heyday and . . . more prone to disillusionment
and/or a willingness to push for greater openness (Brookings Institution,
2008c: 4). Seminar participants felt that youth within the government or in government-affiliated institutions might uphold the basic principles of revolutionary ideology but, having little nostalgia for the past, might be the single most
important force for change. They considered the majority of youth on the island
today disconnected and disenchanted, posing a significant challenge for the
governments efforts to inject hope and revolutionary pride into a younger
generation. Consequently, they concluded, the civil society networks also
face significant difficulties finding ways to constructively engage youth and
mobilize their frustration into a push for political as well as economic change
(Brookings Institution, 2008c: 4).
Participants believed that the Catholic Church could play a major role among
civil society groups in infusing broad-based legitimacy into a future transition
process because of its extensive, semi-formalized national network: its provision of relatively safe, protected spaces of expression, and its human and material resources to train young activists and leaders (Brookings Institution,
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158 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

2008c: 3). Doubts arose, however, because the hierarchy did not consider it in
its best interest to express open sympathy for the organized opposition or dramatic reforms lest such a position provoke the state and threaten the Churchs
hard-earned organizational independence. They also questioned the likelihood
of the Churchs playing a leadership role because of civil societys strong strains
of secularism. Participants highlighted the fact that, while 60 percent of the
population had been baptized, only 13 percent of Cubans were practicing
Roman Catholics. Therefore they considered that the potential for Cubans to
acquire leadership skills within a religiously-oriented civil society framework
remains weak in comparison to the strong influence of government-affiliated
mass organizations (Brookings Institution, 2008c: 3).
The Brookings Institution (2008c: 4) said that 62 percent of the Cuban population was Afro-Cuban, adding that Cuba is an extensively integrated society and due to equitable access to housing, health care, and education, it would
be erroneous to speak of a single Afro-Cuban perspective. Seminar participants suggested that the economic hardship of the crisis of the 1990s was disproportionately borne by Afro-Cubans and that fewer of them enjoyed access
to foreign remittances because the majority of Cuban emigrants were white.
They stated that the regime may focus on short-term solutions to address
immediate needs and concerns, delaying deeper structural and institutional
reforms, asserting political control, and thereby rendering pressures from
external civil groups representing this community obsolete (5). They conceded that recent appointments of high-level Afro-Cubans, including three
women, to the National Assembly and the Politburo might assist in promoting
affirmative social policies and antidiscriminatory measures but that it remained
to be seen whether the Afro-Cuban community as such would cross a threshold
and begin to operate as a distinct civil society actor in the public sphere.
As to the organized opposition, participants opined that the three traditional
frontsliberals, social democrats, and Christian democratscontinued to pursue their own uncoordinated and often conflicting visions of change, keeping the opposition fractured. Few Cubans, they wrote, were likely to recognize
the dissident movements as a true symbolic or practical alternative, and
international support may be the only thread propping the movement up
(Brookings Institution, 2008c: 6). They considered that opposition leaders
would need to shift their attention from opposing to creating a positive message to bring supporters together. To avoid fading into irrelevance, groups
would have to move out of their comfort zone and speed up their processes of
mobilization.
The Brookings Institution established a set of political and economic concepts to promote a transition in Cuba, among them democracy, the rule of
law, freedom for political prisoners, and connecting economic difficulties
to the need for greater economic freedom. Other universal principles were
patriotism, family, justice, equal rights, a regime accountable to the
people, and acting within the law. These were all abstract terms that the
United States had applied to various countries: the former USSR and the
Eastern European socialist countries, Saddam Husseins Iraq, and Afghanistan.
The abstractness of these concepts made them alien to the real and highly complex Cuban situation.

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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 159

Participants in the April 2008 seminar proposed celebrating cultural events

in different parts of the country to mobilize forces in favor of democracy and
send a political message to the world (Brookings Institution, 2008c: 7). Cuba, of
course, had had long experience in organizing massive cultural events, among
them the Peace Concert that took place in Havana in September 2009. Weeks
before the concert took place, extremist Cuban American right-wing groups in
Miami took to the streets to protest it. The concert involved more than 1.25 million young Cubans singing and dancing for five hours in the Plaza de la
Revolucin and was transmitted to the world, including Florida, and there
were no antigovernment demonstrations. In Miami, immediately after the concert ended, angry Cuban Americans gathered once more on the streets, but this
time they were outnumbered by other Cubans (mainly people who had left
their country since the 1990s) rallying in favor of the concert. Opinion polls
conducted by Bendixen & Associates and the Cuba Study Group (2009a; 2009b)
among Cuban Americans in Miami before and after this concert showed that
support for the concert soared after they watched it, no matter what the respondents age or decade of arrival in the States. Seventy-seven percent of respondents, both Cuban-born and born in the United States, opposed the Vigilia
Mambisa protesters (an ultraright Cuban American group), and 52 percent
favored cultural exchanges between Cuba and the United States.
Regarding the role of the current Cuba leadership, the February 2008 seminar participants acknowledged that Ral Castro was firmly at the helm of
power and that his government had taken important though insufficient steps
toward economic opening (Brookings Institution, 2008a: 3). The March 2008
document concluded that there were no domestic or international conditions
that credibly threatened his hold on power in the short run (Brookings
Institution, 2008b: 4). They accepted that the Cuban Communist Party and the
armed forces were two of the strongest government institutions and that the
party could evolve into an umbrella for more diverse opinions. Cuba, they
argued, was moving from a highly charismatic individual to a more firmly
institutionalized ruling party. They concluded that addressing Cubans
demands for improved economic conditions without seriously undercutting
the authority of the state will be the fundamental challenge for the Ral Castro
government (2008b: 2).
Conclusions
Neither the CAFC reports nor the Brookings Institution documents suggested changing relations with Cuba. The Brookings Institutions proposals
were more prudent than those of the CAFC, but they also stressed the interests
of the United States. Its notion of unilateralism did not mean that the United
States would unilaterally abandon the policies that had distorted U.S.-Cuba
relations. As a result, the opportunity to rebuild relations on the basis of mutual
advantage was lost.
It is unclear to what extent the policy proposals of Cuban American consultants were included in the documents analyzed here. The first CAFC report
acknowledged three Cuban American officials from the USAID and the State

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160 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

Department as participants, while the second mentioned only the Cuban

American secretary of commerce, who cochaired it. Only a few of the many
papers produced by the University of Miamis Cuba Transition Project were
quoted in the 2004 report. Thus these two reports presented U.S. government
policy proposals toward Cuba, and Cuban American consultants recommendations were included as long as they favored these policies. Their inclusion in
the project was probably designed to involve them politically, making them
share the responsibility for U.S. policy regarding Cuba. The Brookings
Institution invited Cuban American scholars, diplomats, and politicians to participate in its seminars, probably seeking consensus among them. The fact that
the Cuba Study Group cofunded the project could have contributed to this
purpose. The documents consulted for this study show that the authors had
access to up-to-date information on Cuba and on Cuban Americans living in
Miami-Dade County and their opinions on U.S.-Cuba relations. Their policy
proposals were severely criticized by the most conservative Cuban Americans,
who considered that they did not oppose the Castros regime strongly enough.
Future events will confirm whether the intention of the Brookings Institution/
Cuba Study Group project reflected the desire of the U.S. power elites to distance themselves from the long-standing political representatives of the Cuban
Americans in Miami-Dade County and in New Jersey in an effort to revise U.S.
policy.
The documents analyzed here reflected the historical tendency of U.S. academics and policy makers to develop ways of changing Cuban society according to U.S. social organizational models, whether or not they corresponded to
those of the Cuban nation, and of bringing Cuba once again under U.S. hegemony. Their policy proposals for a transition toward democracy in Cuba
combined two failed concepts and lacked any historical context. They overlooked the fact that in the past 50-plus years Cuba has permanently shifted
from a capitalist to a noncapitalist society and ignored the distinctiveness of the
Cuban socialist system. While the Cubans copied some policies and strategies
from the USSR and other socialist countries that did not work out in Cuba, basically they have developed their own approach to socialism. Throughout this
enormous experiment they have learned from their mistakes and sought to
rectify them, always aiming at an independent, just, nondiscriminatory, and
efficient system based on Cuban national reality. The fact that the Cuban socialist model survived the disappearance of the USSR and the Eastern European
socialist countries is proof of its sustainability. U.S. scholars involved in assisting the U.S. government on relations with Cuba need to become familiar with
the social transformations that have taken place in Cuba over the past 50-plus
years and especially with the recent changes in Cubas economic and social
model. They should also consider the scholarly studies of social scientists living
in Cuba, who have directly assessed the gains and losses of the Cuban transition toward a better society, learned from them, and criticized policies requiring changes from within.
The Obama administration has followed the main U.S. policy toward Cuba
maintaining the embargo and attempting to provoke a regime change.
Employing the concepts of smart power and constructive engagement, it
has lifted some of Bushs restrictions on Cuban Americans travel to the island,
increased the amount of remittances and the value of parcels that can be sent
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Nez / U.S. PROPOSALS FOR AN UNWANTED TRANSITION IN CUBA 161

by Cuban Americans and other U.S. citizens to Cuba, opened more airports to
charter flights to Cuba, and expanded licenses for U.S. citizens to visit Cuba,
but it has maintained the travel ban, the financial and trade pressures on Cuba,
and the restrictions on agricultural goods sold to Cuba and manipulated certain cultural and academic exchanges. Recently it vetoed inviting Cuba to the
Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, in April 2012 (Granma,
March 9, 2012). Cuba has once more declared its willingness to engage with
U.S. authorities in a respectful dialogue between equals to eliminate the obstacles to mutually beneficial relations without damaging Cubas independence,
sovereignty, and self-determination (Castro, 2011). The U.S. government has
the floor.
Notes
1. Other works dealing with a transition in Cuba or with U.S.-Latin American relations published in the same period include Grupo de Trabajo Memoria, Verdad y Justicia (2003), InterAmerican Dialogue (2009), and Barshefsky and Hill (2008). Critical analyses of the CAFC reports
and the Brookings Institution project include Prez (2006), Egan (2007), Alzugaray (2011), Hare
(2010), and Pin and Muse (2010).
2. Cuban scholars critical works on the socialist transition in Cuba include the debates on
economic management in the 1960s published in the journal Nuestra Industria Econmica. Lecturas
de filosofa (Universidad de La Habana, 1968) included essays on the transition to communism.
From 1972 to 1990 the journal Economa y Desarrollo dealt with Cubas participation in the Council
for Mutual Economic Assistance and its repercussions on Cubas economic strategies and with
the rectification process of 19851990. Cuban studies on the crisis and readjustment processes
from the 1990s to the present can be found in Alvarez and Mttar (2004). Temas no. 5051 (2007)
deals with the transition to socialism. Acanda (2009) has summarized definitions of socialist
transition, and Rodrguez (2011) has elaborated on this topic from an economic perspective.
3. The Cuba Transition Project was created in 2002 at the Institute of Cuban and Cuban
American Studies of the University of Miami and was funded by the USAID from 2003 to 2008. It
appears that during George W. Bushs presidency it became a sort of think tank for preparing
projects for transition in Cuba and that its role ended with the establishment of the CAFC.
4. From 2004 to 2005 Pascual had headed the State Departments Office for Reconstruction and
Stabilization. The Brookings Institution explained his appointment as vice president and coordinator of the U.S. Policy Toward a Cuba in Transition project as due to his record as ambassador to
Ukraine, where he helped to strengthen grassroots democratic initiatives and to establish a strong
private sector and worked with the Ukrainian government to ensure its participation in the Iraq war.
5. Up to 2009 the mainstream mass media in the United States described these policies as selling Cubans cell phones and computers and permitting them access to hard-currency hotels, but
the reforms were far deeper. They included raising salaries, pensions, and welfare assistance,
leasing land to new private farmers in order to meet food demands with domestic production,
and repairing houses and constructing new ones. Agreements with Venezuela and China broadened and improved access to telecommunications. At the end of 2010 the Cuban Communist Party
launched a set of directions for economic and social policy of the party and the revolution that
were discussed by the Cuban people. The proposals coming out of these debates were included
in a new version approved by the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba and adopted
by the National Assembly of Popular Power on August 1, 2011 (Granma, August 2, 2011).
6. The 2008 U.S./Cuba Transition Poll was the eighth poll conducted by the Institute for Public
Opinion Research among the Cuban Americans of Miami-Dade County since 1991 and the first to
include the term transition in its title. The results showed that their opinions had changed concerning U.S. policy toward Cuba. This new situation could support some of the proposals that the
Brookings Institution submitted to the president.
7. From 1950 to 1953 the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which later
became the World Bank, also funded and published similar reports on Colombia, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and Mexico.

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162 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

8. I have been unable to locate the English version of the 1988 Santa Fe report known in Spanish
as Una estrategia para Amrica Latina en los noventa. In the Spanish version, the proposal on the
low-intensity conflict question reads: The marriage of communism and nationalism in Latin
America is the greatest danger to the region and North American interests to date (CIS, 1988: 27,
my translation).

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