Can’t We Treat Cuba More Like China?
In China we promote open exchanges of commerce and travel, this openness has broken the monopoly of thinking in the communist nation. The average Chinese citizen has much more economic and political freedom than Cubans partially because of the difference between our two respective policies.
In a recent article by David Paul Appell titled As Cuba’s Regime Turns 50, How About Some Common Sense — Finally? David writes:
I started visiting Cuba a decade ago, when a Clinton-era “people-to-people” policy permitted even commercial tour operators to send groups if they could be dressed with the fig leaf of “cultural exchange” or some such. I often witnessed the inequality between foreigners and themselves grating on locals — as when entering one of Havana’s top restaurants, the Café de Oriente, and overhearing a guard muttering, “Jeez, I’d sure rather be dining on lobster instead of the crap they give us.” One friend of mine, once a Communist Party liaison within his university department, was denied entry to a resort area, Playa del Coco, while I, the “imperialist enemy,” was waved through.
Such “tourism apartheid” measures disappeared after Raúl Castro took over in early 2008, but since most Cubans are still too impoverished to take advantage, inequality remains rampant. In this context, imagine a flood of Americans — including many Spanish-speaking Latinos — mingling with locals, infecting them with uncensored information and subversive notions of democracy and free markets. The winning of hearts and minds would far outweigh any financial gain to the Castro government (that hoary objection of exile hardliners and their pet politicos).