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Cuba: Obama needs to respond to world opinion

It is time the US president ended the economic blockade of Cuba and freed the heroic Miami Five anti-terrorists

Widespread disillusionment over US President Barack Obama’s record in office convinces many people that little progressive can be expected during his administration’s last two years.

Cuban intelligence agent and national hero Fernando Gonzalez does not share this view.

The Miami Five member, who spent over 15 years in a US prison for infiltration of Cuban-exile terrorist groups in Miami, is optimistic that his three comrades who remain behind bars in the US will be released before Obama quits the White House.

Gonzalez said this week that he regarded former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s recent call on Obama to end the US blockade of Cuba as one of the most positive signs he’s seen.

“I would like to think that, before finishing his term, President Obama would decide to improve relations with Latin America. That would involve a change with Cuba and that would necessarily take place through a solution to the case of my three colleagues.”

Gonzalez’s reference to Latin America is crucial for two reasons.

One is that every Latin American state is opposed to the US blockade and demands its lifting.

The other is that US politicians linked to the increasingly isolated anti-Cuban Miami mafia are seeking to widen the blockade to Venezuela.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio drew attention to himself this week by writing to Democratic majority leader Harry Reid asking him to override objections by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu by placing an anti-Venezuela sanctions Bill on the floor of the Senate.

Similar draft legislation, urging sanctions against Bolivarian officials identified as infringing human rights, has already been carried in the House of Representatives, but Landrieu opposed unanimous consent for its continuation before the summer break.

She did so because of a jobs threat to 2,000 of her constituents employed by Citgo, the US subsidiary of the Venezuela state oil company PDUSA.

Even if the Bill were amended to meet Landrieu’s reservations, it could still be vetoed by the president, who has already indicated opposition to economic sanctions against Venezuela.

Nothing can be taken for granted, especially while far-right politicians such as Rubio, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart rage constantly about alleged human rights violations in Cuba and Venezuela.

Their campaigns are supported generously by right-wing political action committees, which threaten pliable elected representatives with withdrawal of funds if they challenge the received wisdom of the US corporate oligarchy.

And yet, anti-Castro, pro-blockade attitudes among Cuban-American communities no longer hold sway.

Opinion polls conducted three months ago among Miami Cubans by Florida International University found that 52 per cent of 1,000 Cuban Americans surveyed opposed the blockade.

Over two-thirds wanted an end to travel restrictions to Cuba for all US citizens rather than the current licensing system.

“There’s no reason to fear political backlash any more over Cuba policy,” said Professor Guillermo Grenier, who helped organise the survey.

Cuban exiles who left their homeland following the 1959 revolution or after the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion have always been most intransigent in backing sanctions, believing against all the evidence that they could eventually succeed.

More recent immigrants who have experienced both the negative effects of the blockade and Cubans’ resolute determination to defend their national independence increasingly oppose it.

There is also an age factor, with just 8 per cent of Cuban Americans aged between 18 and 29 backing the blockade as against 60 per cent of over-65s.

The vast majority of those who leave Cuba now to seek economic fortune in the US do not wish to see their homeland suffer to comfort its exiled former ruling class living out their days in Florida.

Cuban advances in medicine have become more widely known in recent decades, not least for the priority Havana attaches to seeking cures for conditions that affect the poorest people in the world.

In contrast, as noted by Nobel laureate for medicine Richard J Roberts, pharmaceutical transnational corporations increasingly develop products for chronic conditions affecting richer countries to ensure long-term profits.

Cuba’s socialist approach can be summed up by Operation Miracle, which celebrated its 10th anniversary in July.

What began as a Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America initiative to treat ophthalmological problems in Cuba and then Venezuela has expanded into an operation in 31 countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Operation Miracle has restored or improved vision for 3.4 million people suffering from cataracts, glaucoma, strabismus and retina problems — all at no personal cost.

Yet Cuba is simultaneously denied access to US equipment for anti-tumoral therapy to treat children with cancer because of the blockade, forcing it to buy further afield at greater cost.

Mr Obama can choose his own legacy, either of ending such hardship or drone attacks and punitive air strikes.

He could also opt to end the torment of US Agency for International Development agent Alan Gross in a Cuban jail for anti-government activities and the suffering of the three Cuban patriots in US prisons.

Cynics suspect that Obama will fail to challenge the Miami mafia.

But, for Fernando Gonzalez, “at this moment there’s a political context that makes me cautiously optimistic.”

Over to you, Mr US president. The world is watching.

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