A Dialogue to Rebuild Sundered Cuban Family

In my hotel room in Havana, I watched Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral on television. Rabin was a man with vision. As a soldier, he fought the Arabs on the field of battle, but he knew when the time had come to talk rather than fight, when the time had come to join in the struggle for peace.

Surely, the time has come for Cubans to follow Rabin’s example and begin a dialogue between those on the island and those in exile. After more than 30 years, it is time to seek peace rather than confrontation; time to reunite our Cuban family rather than allow the divisions between us to harden into permanent scars.

I have known my share of fighting. I led a guerrilla band against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Then, only three years later, I led another group against Fidel Castro. Overwhelmed and finally captured, I spent the next 22 years in Cuba’s prisons. After my release in 1986, I began a new life and, in 1993, with the help of hundreds of other exiles, organized Cambio Cubano, an organization that seeks solutions to Cuba’s problems through dialogue with former adversaries at home.

That is why I was in Havana in November, for a meeting between representatives of the exile community and the Cuban government. That gathering might well be remembered as a turning point.

The Cambio Cubano delegation I led called for sweeping political liberalization--including freeing political prisoners, freedom of the press and freedom of expression. The senior Cuban government officials we spoke to did not agree with all we had to say. We did not expect they would--were there agreement, there would be no need for a dialogue.

It is to resolve our disagreements that we must talk. The important thing was that they heard us out respectfully and recognized our right to express ourselves. It was a beginning we must now carry forward.

Meanwhile, there is another side to our struggle. We want to bring about change in Cuba, yes, but we must also insist that the United States give up its obsolete Cold War policy toward Cuba.

For one thing, the Clinton administration should lift travel controls that make it impossible for Cuban Americans to travel freely back and forth to the island--or, at least, to do so legally. The so-called loosening of those controls announced by President Bill Clinton on Oct. 6, 1995, actually did little. It provided that Cuban Americans could travel once a year to the island without seeking a license--but only if there is serious illness or death in the family. Otherwise, travel is not authorized.

How, then, are we to carry on a dialogue if we cannot travel to Cuba for that purpose?

In addition, the president’s special advisor for Cuban affairs, Richard Nuccio, has declared, somewhat ominously, that the circumstances under which many of us traveled to the November meeting “will be investigated.” Obviously, the administration does not wish to facilitate dialogue among Cubans. That is a strange position in light of its own talks with China and Vietnam!

It is especially important that the Clinton administration think this through--for the Cuban government has eased its own controls, making it far easier for most Cuban Americans to visit their families. Does the Clinton administration really wish to impose the principal impediment to family reunification--and to a dialogue among Cubans?

While there may have been a time during the darkest days of the Cold War when the embargo could have been justified, it no longer can be. Not only does it impede the cause of democracy and human rights, it results in increased suffering among our people, among our very brothers and sisters.

The U.S. embargo will not force Castro to accept democratic change. Rather, by furthering a “siege mentality,” it constitutes an obstacle to change.

Even worse than the embargo itself is the Helms-Burton legislation, which will most likely be debated in Congress again later this month or in March. It aims not only to tighten the embargo but, in effect, to turn Cuba into a U.S. protectorate--as it was before. Certainly, the atmosphere of tension and hostility its passage would engender will undermine the dialogue we began in Havana and, in a broader sense, imperil the changes going on in Cuba. It should, therefore, be opposed by all Americans who want to see change continue and by all patriotic Cubans on both sides of the Straits of Florida.

If we recognize the evil behind the murder of Rabin, we cannot see good behind legislation that chooses strangulation instead of dialogue.