Open Cuba’s Doors With Trade

The Times rebukes North Carolina’s senior senator for “one more provocation with Cuba” (“He’s Wrong on Cuba--Again,” editorial, June 1), for proposing legislation that would send $100 million to so-called opposition and dissident groups on the island. Sen. Jesse Helms’ effort is bipartisan in nature, has widespread Democratic support in Congress and was co-introduced by Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

The Times fundamentally agrees with Helms that Cuban President Fidel Castro “is a ruthless dictator,” but finds fault with the Republican senator for his approach, which it contends does not serve their common goal, the overthrow of the regime. Instead, The Times calls for other, unnamed measures to “foster democracy.” Like what?

Washington’s long list of tactics to undo its ouster as de facto owner and ruler of Cuba in 1959 has run the gamut from invasion and terror to economic strangulation and corruption. This 42-year campaign has lost, period. The Helms-Lieberman proposal does have one undeniable virtue. It represents U.S. recognition that it must purchase, at the cost of 30 pieces of silver--adjusted for inflation--Cuban “dissidents” to oppose the Castro dictatorship. What an admission of how isolated and paltry are these “democratic” betrayers of Cuban sovereignty!

Jon Hillson

Inglewood

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It appears you oppose the recently introduced Helms-Lieberman legislation to help peaceful human-rights advocates in Cuba because Castro’s security forces will seek to arrest and harass dissidents. By this standard, we should never have supported democracy in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Haiti or Serbia--all nations with repressive regimes at the time.

Your opposition misses a vital point: Everything being proposed in the bill is already being done on a small scale. In Cuba today there are political dissidents, independent journalists and economists, people who turn their homes into free libraries and budding entrepreneurs. These individuals struggle against a repressive regime with great courage yet little in the way of aid. Our choice as a nation is to help these activists--or to turn our backs on them. I hope we have the wisdom to choose the former.

Dennis Hays

Executive Vice President

Cuban American National

Foundation, Washington

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In Los Angeles recently, while articulating his policy toward trade with China, President Bush said that institutions and individuals most sympathetic to freedom are often the most friendly to trade and that frequent trade supports and sustains freedom.

President Bush, if you are a man of principle, I challenge you to apply this same conviction to U.S. trade with Cuba. The trade embargo continues to be an impediment on the route to freedom for the Cuban people. Free trade supports and sustains freedom, in all its forms.

Robert Millar

Topanga