New Day Dawns In Cuba

More U. S. Senators Visit
Posted: Sunday, June 28th, 2015

           Another contingent of U. S. Senators has checked out the island of Cuba  -- on Saturday, June 27th. They hailed the progression of friendship and detente since Presidents Obama and Castro announced back on December 17th that the two nations had agreed to try to normalize relations for the first time since the 1960s. This Reuters/Enrique De La Osa photo shows Senators Dean Heller of Nevada, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Ben Cardin of Maryland holding a news conference yesterday at the Saratoga Hotel in Havana. They had met with everyday Cubans and found them to be very receptive and enthusiastic about improving relations with the economic and military superpower just off the island's northern coast. Leahy and Cardin are Democratic Senators while Heller is a Republican...a rather unusual Republican.

      Dean Heller, the Senator from Nevada, is among a growing number of independent Republicans in the U. S. Congress advocating closer ties with Cuba, the largest nation in the Caribbean and a neighbor that is on friendly terms with all other countries in the region with one lone exception -- the United States. Senator Heller believes that more normal relations with Cuba will benefit a plethora of American businesses and, moreover, he is aware that foreign powers that compete with the U. S. -- including China and Russia -- are longing to take more advantage of the Republican-mandated hostility towards Cuba. Yesterday in Cuba Senator Heller told the Reuters news agency, "I think the United States Senate can move the House of Representatives regarding Cuba, but the Senate's going to have to act first." 

   
     This photo reflects the dawning of a new day in Cuba. 55-year-old Miguel Diaz-Canel has already been named the post-Castro leader of Cuba. Quite significantly, the three U. S. Senators -- Heller, Leahy, and Cardin -- who visited Cuba this weekend first asked and were granted permission to talk privately with Miguel Diaz-Canel. Born in the Cuban city of Santa Clara, Diaz-Canel ascended politically in Cuba because he is a favorite of everyday Cubans.

          This photo shows powerful U. S. Senator Patrick Leahy greeting Cuba's future leader Miguel Diaz-Canel in Havana yesterday -- Saturday, June 27th. Democracy-loving veteran members of Congress, like Senator Leahy, have long advocated that decency and sanity -- as opposed to bellicosity -- should be directed at the island's innocent people from the United States. Now Senator Leahy and others are taking advantage of the early success of President Obama's sane and decent overtures to the Cuban people.

        Earlier this month U. S. Senator Jeff Flake, the Republican from Arizona, led a group of politicians to the island and again, as shown above, Senator Flake particularly wanted to size up Cuba's future leader, Miguez Diaz-Canel. Meanwhile, anti-Cuban zealots from Miami and Union City are still trying to milk anti-Castro zealotry for all its worth, and it indeed has been worth a whole lot in the U. S. since the 1950s.

         This AP photo reflects the dawning of a new day in Cuba. This is Miguel Diaz-Canel -- Cuba's future leader -- flanked by two powerful but elderly figures from the Cuban Revolution. That is Ricardo Alarcon on the left and Ramon Valdes on the right. Prior to the transition to Diaz-Canel's leadership of Cuba, the island is making numerous economic and social changes -- creating thousands of entrepreneurs on the island as well as a billion-dollar Mariel Economic Zone 28 miles southwest of Havana that is signing foreign contracts with major investors. This week a company in Alabama is requesting permission from the U. S. government to build a tractor factory in that Zone on an island that spends almost $3 billion a year to import food that could mostly be grown in Cuba if it had modern tractors and other equipment. This week it was announced that Cuba's economy, which grew by 1% in 2014, is growing by an impressive 4% in 2015. Top economists in Miami agree with that 2015 statistic and attribute it to the "15 percent increase in tourists from the U. S. since the December 17th detente announcement." The three U. S. Senators in Cuba this weekend recognize that Cuba is changing...for the better. Republican Senator Dean Heller of Nevada is among a growing list of brave, patriotic U. S. politicians who believe that the obvious changes in Cuba "will benefit everyday Cubans and...everyday Americans." The transition to President Miguel Diaz-Canel is underway...even if self-serving zealots still benefiting from archaic Cold War tactics strongly disagree.

In other words...................

        ......................for the first time in decades, the Bush dynasty, eternally aligned with a handful of anti-Castro zealots from Miami, is finally being challenged in the dictation of a self-serving Cuban policy that has harmed millions of innocent Cubans and millions of innocent Americans. In that milieu, the bombing of a child-laden civilian Cuban airplane was hailed in Miami as "the biggest blow yet against Castro," and propagandized Americans were too timid to object. Perhaps...at last...more enlightened, and braver, Americans and Cuban-Americans are beginning to object, as indicated by the increasing support of President Obama's Cuban overtures.

        A bold President Barack Obama -- in the homestretch of his historic two-term presidency in June of 2015 -- has engineered some legacy-making political accomplishments that the pundits said he couldn't pull off in the face of the right-wing dominance of Congress and the blistering threats of the Miami Cubans. His Trade Bill this month was monumental. So was his getting Supreme Court approval of his Universal Health Care program, which might one day be mentioned as a legacy-making event equal to FDR's Social Security Bill in 1935 and LBJ's Civil Rights Bill in 1964. But, perhaps, President Obama's most significant legacy will be his monumental effort to normalize relations with Cuba, a process that he has already moved further along than the easily quashed efforts of all previous Democratic presidents. President Obama, confronting a Congress that is mostly bought-and-paid-for by lobbyists, has accomplished a lot for the vast majority of Americans who cannot afford to pay lobbyists. That, along with his universal health care plan and his bravery regarding Cuba, will, I believe, crown his legacy. A Republican presidency in 2017 will attempt to undo much of the good President Obama has done, but at least he righted some wrongs and forged ahead with some refreshingly bright ideas that were long overdue in America's tattered and tarnished but still precious democracy. 

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