Some won't prod Cuba to change

Posted on Thu, Nov. 02, 2006

THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT
Some won't prod Cuba to change
BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com

SAO PAULO -- The day ailing Cuban president-for-life Fidel Castro dies,
whenever that happens, several Latin American countries will express
their deepest condolences, and at the same time ask for a political
opening on the island.

Unfortunately, South America's biggest country is not planning to be
among them.

Before I get into why Brazil is likely to stay mum, let me tell you what
I'm hearing in Latin American diplomatic circles. When Castro finally
goes, at least half a dozen countries in the region will include a line
in their respective condolence statements noting that his death closes
an era in Cuba's history, and should open another.

Some of them, like Costa Rica and El Salvador, may openly ask for
democratic freedoms. Others, like Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Chile, are
likely to do the same with various degrees of diplomatic camouflage.
They will say that Castro will be remembered as a steadfast defender of
Cuba's sovereignty, and that it's time for Cuba to start a process of
national reconciliation -- a code word for allowing democratic freedoms.

But this week, following President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's landslide
reelection, I asked his top foreign policy advisor, Marco Aurélio
García, whether Brazil will join the group of countries that will ask
for a political opening in Cuba. His answer was a clear ``no.''

García, who is president of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party and was chief
of Lula da Silva's reelection campaign, told me, ``I don't think we will
ask anything like that. Brazil will ask that Cuba be allowed to solve
its problems by itself. That means that there be no outside pressures.''

DEMOCRACY

Why, I asked. There are international principles calling for the
collective defense of democracy. Besides, when countries like Brazil
lived under rightist dictatorships, didn't García and his leftist
colleagues now in government, who were in hiding or in exile at the
time, ask for international pressure to speed up democratic changes in
their country?

''I am absolutely convinced that outside pressures are very bad,'' said
García, who is often portrayed in the Brazilian press as Lula da Silva's
liaison with Cuba and Venezuela. ``And that's more the case in a country
[like Cuba] that has a very strong national sentiment.''

DISAGREEMENT

How do we know what Cuba's national sentiment is, I asked. There hasn't
been a free election there in more than four decades, and there is no
freedom of expression, I argued. ''Well, it's not us who are going to
tell Cuba how it must solve its problems. Let me tell you very frankly,
we have a disagreement with the United States in that respect,'' García
said.

That's perfectly fine, I responded. I'm not saying that Brazil should
back the U.S. embargo on Cuba. But what about doing what Mexico and
Europe's modern democracies are doing, which is to oppose both U.S.
economic sanctions on Cuba and Cuba's repression of its own people, I asked.

Without changing his line, García tacitly conceded that he expects to
see political changes in a post-Castro Cuba.

''This will be solved by itself if we don't exert pressure from
outside,'' García said. ``Cuba will have its political process, [since]
it would be normal for there to be a political evolution in the country.
Obviously, Fidel's death would create a new circumstance.''

He added, ``I think the succession would not just be a succession, but
that it would bring along other things of a political nature. But what
concerns us a lot is that if Cuba is suddenly subjected to a lot of
pressures, even the goals some countries are pursuing will become more
difficult to achieve.''

My opinion: I disagree. García is right in that heavy-handed pressures
would backfire, but respectful suggestions from Latin American countries
that Castro's death opens the door to a new period in Cuba's history,
accompanied by generous offers of economic aid linked to a political
opening, would certainly help.

An old saying from the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution goes: ''No general can
resist a $50,000 cannonade.'' Well, I think it will be hard for Cuban
generals to resist a $5 billion cannonade from the international
community to rebuild Cuba on the condition that it ceases to be a police
state.

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