Cuba Looks to "The Future"

 U.S. Right-wingers Bask in the Past 

       This REUTERS/Enrique de la Osa photo shows a major news conference in Havana yesterday -- Monday, August 29th. The poster says: "With a firm step towards the Future." Conducting the news conference left to right are Mayda Molina, Eduardo Rodriguez and Alfredo Cordero. They are top officials in Cuba's Aviation & Transport industry. The session addressed an historic and epic event in U.S.-Cuban history. On Wednesday August 31st jetBlue Airlines will fly a commercial passenger jet from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Clara, Cuba. It will be the first commercial airplane flight from the U. S. to Cuba in over five decades because of the U. S. embargo instituted in 1962 to appease Cuban exiles booted off the island, primarily to South Florida, by the Cuban Revolution in the first week of January, 1959. Ms. Molina yesterday said, "As Cuba looks to a brighter future for our people, we hope the obstacles against us in the U. S. Congress, a relatively few people I understand, will also recognize how many Americans are hurt by decades of hostility aimed at overthrowing our government. Our hard-earned sovereignty is precious to us and we hope to live peacefully with everyone. Our only enemy is a small but apparently powerful element in the U.S. Congress."   

       Wednesday's historic  jetBlue flight from Fort Lauderdale to Santa Clara will soon evolve into about 25 daily commercial flights from the U. S. to Cuba. There are now 17 U.S. charter flights that land in Cuba daily to accommodate Cuban-Americans. All U. S. laws related to Cuba since 1959 have had a dual purpose: {#1} To hurt Cubans on the island; and {#2} to help Cubans in the U. S. economically and politically via gross discrimination not available to non-Cuban immigrants. Of course, Americans since 1959 are supposed to be too intimidated or too stupid to oppose such things, and those two assumptions have worked wonderfully for over five decades on behalf of a handful of Cuban-American hard-liners and their sycophants.

       The jetBlue commercial flight to Cuba Wednesday will usher in another key element of President Obama's brave normalization plans but provocations, intimidations and other tactics have squelched such efforts in the past...and might do so this time. However, Obama is the first U. S. President since the 1950s to have seriously challenged a Cuban policy that, from an image standpoint, far more drastically hurts the U. S. than it hurts Cuba, an island whose pugnaciousness has actually gained it considerable international respect and out-sized influence. Safety wise, Cuba is ready for the influx of air traffic from the U. S. but otherwise it is not. Because of Obama, a record 3.3 million tourists have visited Cuba in the past 12 months. Cuba's hotels, private home rentals, transportation services and amenities are already stretched to the limits. The U. S. Batistiano laws mandate that Americans are the only people in the world without the freedom to travel to Cuba. In defiance of a Batistiano-aligned Congress, Obama has created 12 categories of exceptions to the travel ban but most everyday Americans are still restricted...meaning that the commercial airplane travel to Cuba starting this week will mostly cater to Cuban-Americans, which all U. S. laws related to Cuba have done since 1959. Yet, as Cuban aviation official Mayda Molina said yesterday, "As Cuba looks to a brighter future for our people, we hope the obstacles against us in the U. S. Congress, a relatively few people I understand, will also recognize how many Americans are hurt by decades of hostility aimed at overthrowing our government. Our hard-earned sovereignty is precious to us and we hope to live peacefully with everyone. Our only enemy is a small but apparently powerful element in the United States." 

      If you detected skepticism in Ms. Molina's words yesterday in Havana, you would be correct. Even within the bowels of the world's greatest democracy, Ms. Molina is astute enough to understand that, when it comes to Cuba, democracy takes a back-seat to the self-serving and/or revengeful bellicosity of a few hard-liners. Of course, that might change if the once-proud U. S. democracy could ever get a moderate Cuban-American elected to the U. S. Congress -- you know, to reflect the views of the majority of Cuban-Americans who are indeed moderate and who support President Obama's sane approaches to Cuba.

       A notable Cuban-American in Miami, Hugo Cancio, wonders, "When will Cuban-Americans elected to Congress reflect the opinions of moderate Cuban-Americans like me?" Millions of democracy-loving Americans, as well as Cuban-Cubans like Mayda Molina in Havana, have been wondering the same thing.

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