Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen’s Questions to John Kerry

Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Questions to John Kerry / 14ymedio,
Pedro Campos
Posted on February 29, 2016

14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Havana, 29 February 2016 – The Miami press
reports that Cuban-born US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen asked
Secretary of State John Kerry, during a Congressional hearing, what
progress the Cuban government has made, given the many concessions made
by the United States, and how does he justify the mass exodus of Cubans
that has increased some 80%. At the same time, she requested the
extradition of those responsible for the downing of the Brothers to the
Rescue planes, and reminded him that since the announcement of
rapprochement, there have been more than 8,000 arrests on the island.

If it were simply a political confrontation between Republicans and
Democrats about some aspect of American foreign policy that had no
implications for world peace, I would refrain from commenting, but the
debate significantly affects the interests of the Cuban people, who
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen has always prided herself on representing.

Her questions to the Secretary of State are evidence of what everyone
knows: she does not share the essence, the basis of the new policy of
the Obama administration and, to try to discredit it, presents its
measures as "concessions" to the Cuban government that has not done
nothing to deserve them.

This is the great original error on which she bases her questions,
because the new policy is not conceived as a give and take, but rather
as a way to eliminate in the medium and long term the barriers that
prevent the Cuban people from exercising their sovereignty for
themselves, without foreign interference.

I have always believed that the policy of blockades and pressure against
the Cuban government by Unites States affected the Cuban people first
and not their rulers, and managed to put the ruling bureaucracy in the
role of victims; in short, it has been used to try to justify disastrous
economic, repressive and undemocratic policies and, ultimately, has
affected the needs of the people themselves, because the bureaucracy has
never lacked for anything.

Some defend this mess saying that once the Cuban people begin to starve
they will rise up against the government. There is nothing more to say
about that.

I am among those who are happy with the change of US policy toward Cuba,
since its implementation will make it clear that the rulers have been
the perpetrators who have sacrificed the Cuban people for their
state-centric policies – supposedly socialist – and it will do away with
all these justifications; there will be no way to continue imposing the
current control over the economy, politics, the press, culture,
education, public health, or of preventing the Cuban people from taking
into their own hands the sovereignty that is theirs by right.

There is no defense of the socialism-that-never-was, primarily
responsible for the current national disaster, without recognizing that
the policy of the embargo-blockade has been its fundamental source of
international support. Remove this girder and watch it collapse. But it
seems that the Cuban-born congresswoman, in her attempts to discredit
Obama the Democrat, does not adequately evaluate his policy toward Cuba.

This shift is intended to take effect in the medium and long term,
passing from acceptance of the current Cuban government and having as
its principal basis something that those who imposed and maintained the
blockade-embargo never intended: it is we Cubans ourselves who have to
fix this mess and not the policies of some foreign power. Interference
only serves to encourage the Cuban people's uniting behind the most
vulgar nationalism/anti-imperialism.

The congresswoman's questions are based on false premises. If the idea
is to question the policy, go to the bases of it and not to some
supposed effects that no one is proposing over the short term.

Perhaps she herself and the Cuban-American caucus in the United States
Congress, which has opposed President Obama's call to end the
blockade-embargo, could provide some of the answers to these questions.
Meanwhile, the blockade-embargo continues to be an indirect support to
economic and political centralization. It prevents the empowerment of
Cubans and stimulates mass exodus and arrests, while proposals to end
the Cuban Adjustment Act support and encourage internal groups who are
for confrontation and not for dialog.

Republicans have every right to try to defeat the Democrats, but they do
not have the right to do so at the expense of the Cuban people.

Source: Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's Questions to John Kerry /
14ymedio, Pedro Campos | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/congresswoman-ileana-ros-lehtinens-questions-to-john-kerry-14ymedio-pedro-campos/