People from different social classes. Everyone, just desperate, just fed up. But in providing support, Mr. Trudeau needs to walk a political tightrope — and, ideally, ensure that our allies in Washington do not slip off their even more perilous line and jeopardize any hopes of change. Before we get excited at the prospect of a popular, broadly democratic-minded uprising after 62 years of single-party, planned-economy rule, we need to remember that Cubans are begging for help — and that they and their cause could be badly hurt by the wrong kind of help.
This has been amplified into outright starvation by the corruption and economic malaise introduced by President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who became the first Cuban dictator outside the Castro family after a power struggle in It did not help that erstwhile U.
CUSO opened a field office in Havana in , and for more than a decade co-ordinated educational and technical co-operation with Cuban schools and research institutes.
In the early s, engineering professors from several Canadian universities taught short courses to technologically hungry Cuban students. A group of English-as-a-second-language ESL instructors from George Brown College accompanied the group, quickly preparing the Cuban students to understand their Canadian professors.
In addition, close to Cuban graduate students came to Canada for three-month stints for consultation with their Canadian thesis advisers. Canadians deemed the project a grand success. The final report and other CUSO documents, available at Library and Archives Canada , is a testament to grassroots development projects.
And an even smaller number realize just how many of their dollars are going not to Cuba's undemocratic government, but to a group of companies controlled by a small group of well-connected generals in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.
While foreign arrivals in Cuba have crashed this year, no other nationality has stayed away as much as Canadians, according to Cuban government statistics. Overall visits are down about 95 per cent compared to , but Canadian visits have plunged by Russia, by contrast, actually sent more visitors in That is hugely damaging to Cuba's economy, because in normal years far more Canadians enter and leave Cuba than citizens of any other country — including Cuba itself.
Cuba is an island and few of its impoverished citizens can afford to leave it. But just a few days later, Cuba removed the testing requirement exclusively for Canadian visitors. In fact, the rules were relaxed just as Canada was approaching peak caseload for the entire pandemic up to that point — about 8, new cases a day. It's just a few hundred per day now. Cuba avoided the worst of the pandemic through That changed in ; Cuba reported just new cases on January 1, , but was recording over 1, new daily cases by February 1.
The Cuban government also offered PCR tests to Canadians returning home at about one-tenth of the price one would expect to pay in Canada, the U. Some Canadians remained so eager to visit Cuba they sought to extend the Atlantic bubble to include the Caribbean island — by travelling from Halifax to Cayo Coco to stay in a Canadians-only hotel at a time when Nova Scotia was requiring most Canadians looking to visit the province to apply for government permission.
The last person to hold the post had been Fidel Castro himself, who left it to become president. The appointment of the long-serving minister of tourism demonstrated the vital importance of hotels and resorts to Cuba's economy. Other than tourism, there is little Cuba has to offer world markets in comparison to its needs. For every dollar it gains through exports, it spends five on imports.
When measured against this history, the recent downturn in relations is especially surprising. The reasons why Canada continued to conduct normal relations with Cuba throughout the Cold War have been well trod in the literature but generally focus on the economic benefits for Canada, and the political and ideological identity of Canada in relation to the US.
The new Cuban government also had good reasons for maintaining close ties with Canada. Of all the states in the hemisphere, only Mexico and Canada did not succumb to American pressure during the crisis. Regardless of the political party in power in Ottawa, Canada did not bow to American pressure to isolate Cuba. In fact, at times Canadian-Cuban relations were quite close.
At other times, the relationship was more distant and formal. His government routinely disparaged Cuba even as US-Cuban relations began to thaw in and despite the fact that Canadian mediation helped to facilitate that very thaw. Thus, the presence of the once dynamic Canadian embassy in Havana faded into the background under the Harper government.
The visit, largely regarded as a success by both Canadians and Cubans, was quickly overshadowed by the death of Fidel Castro, a mere 10 days later. Many in the Canadian and American media and in the opposition parties harshly criticized this statement, and the resulting uproar likely created some reticence in the Trudeau government to appear overtly sympathetic to the Cuban government going forward. But relations are never that simple.
Trump has filled senior posts within his administration with individuals who have a long history of anti-Cuban views. After Trump hired John Bolton as his national security adviser, relations between the US and Cuba continued to worsen. Bolton has long been intensely critical of Cuba and opposes any normalization. Claver-Carone, a Cuban-American lobbyist well known for his antagonistic position on Cuba, is now the senior director for Latin America on the National Security Council.
Most significantly, Trump has made a series of changes to US-Cuba policy that are reversing the process of normalization. In June the US government placed restrictions on Americans conducting business with any Cuban entity that is controlled by the Cuban military, and placed more restrictions on individual travel to Cuba. Trump has continued to tighten the embargo ever since. Just last week, Trump further restricted individual travel to Cuba, most significantly ending cruise ship visits to the island.
He has made additional policy reversals including implementing Title III of the Helms-Burton Act in the spring of , which directly targets foreign companies doing business in Cuba. Furthermore, the US has largely resurrected the Cold War narrative that accuses Cuba of fermenting instability in the hemisphere.
But how Canada has positioned itself vis-a-vis the most dangerous charge the US has levelled at Cuba — accusing it of directing events in Venezuela — is emblematic of the new direction in the Canadian-Cuban relationship.
The speeches from the White House have become bellicose, taking the rhetoric back at least 40 years, accusing Cuba of instigating instability in Latin America. In , President Barack Obama implemented sanctions against the country after declaring Venezuela a security threat. The truth has to be told. For decades, Cuba has tried to create client states across this region. While normal countries export goods, Cuba exports tyranny and strong-arm tactics. Canada has also had a complicated relationship with Venezuela for over a decade.
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