A View on Cuba's Opening From the De Facto US Colony of Puerto Rico
A View on Cuba's Opening From the De Facto US Colony of Puerto Rico
Thursday, 01 January 2015 12:00
By Ed Morales, North American Congress on Latin America | Op-Ed
Cuba y Puerto Rico son / Cuba and Puerto Rico are
De un pájaro dos alas / Two wings of the same bird
Reciben flores y balas / They receive flowers and bullets
Sobre el mismo corazón / With the same heart
—Lola Rodríguez de Tío
The “momentous” yet seemingly long-planned announcement that the United States and Cuba have agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations was an odd end to a chaotic year of crises and strife. From the summer of renewed violence in Gaza and the surge of unaccompanied children on the Mexican border to the anguish of Mike Brown/Ferguson and Eric Garner/Staten Island and the disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa, there seemed to be no end to conflagrations of long-stirring conflicts that expose the myth of American exceptionalism. The cost of freedom in the first-est of First Worlds that we live in is the increasing precariousness of life outside our borders—a carnage that is often not connected to our comfort, yet is a result of the burgeoning inequality created by the gospel of globalization. Yet now, perhaps one of the sorest points of contention in the hemisphere, the 50-year U.S.-imposed embargo of Cuba, is finally being acknowledged as a mistake.
But what will come now, with the embargo still largely in place? Even as talking heads and pundits from MSNBC to Fox News, Breitbart to The Nation, are weighing in on the political and economic fallout of the rapprochement between Barack and Raúl–one that may yet culminate in the tearing down of the commercial wall between free-trade capitalism and the socialist experiment of the United States’s closer-than-close neighbor—there is uncertainty and confusion about what it all means. That’s why today, on holiday in my second home, the unincorporated island territory, de facto colony, and imaginary nation of Puerto Rico, I’m going to engage not in a North-South cloud of speculation, but a Caribbean sea of questions from one eastern wing of this archipelagic bird to its western other.
The advent of Obam-apertura, the great “opening” that the U.S. neoliberal narrative holds as a form of liberation for a suffering people, is also something its internal corporate banking cabal sees as a way to recapture a lost market. While there is much to celebrate as a victory for the Cuban people—the release of the remaining members of the Cuban Five, for example—the opening creates the possibility of a sudden windfall of previously unexploited consumers and a workforce accustomed to even lower wages that are foisted on places like Mexico, India, and Vietnam. For an American economy that has been largely stagnant—aside from a recent spurt sparked by falling gas prices and temporary holiday season hires—the opening up of Cuba has the look of a last-ditch opportunity to stave off looming worldwide economic disaster. And for a president reeling from bad press—even his accomplishments are neutered by right-wing media’s echo chamber—and a disastrous midterm election, it serves as an instant legacy-making machine, like Nixon’s engagement of China and Reagan’s hollow triumph over the Soviet Union. Much has also been said about how the move seeks to repair relations with the rest of Latin America, which had decided to invite Cuba to the next Summit of the Americas despite U.S. opposition.
The implications for U.S. politics are striking, of course. In one fell swoop, Obama has defused several attacks from a triumphant Republican Party gearing itself up to attempt to end Obamacare, impeach him for his executive action on immigration reform, and otherwise gum up the works with threats of closing down the federal government again. He has placed several of his most hysterical critics–notably the increasingly apoplectic Cuban-American senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio–on the wrong side of the issue, hurt Jeb Bush’s chances at a presidential run and possibly destroyed the Republican strategy of winning the presidency through Florida (remember the hanging chads of 2000?). The home base of rabid anti-Communism that Republicans have been banking on since Reagan won in 1980 has begun to crumble on its own, as Democratic-leaning Puerto Ricans have begun to populating the Orlando area and successive Cuban American generations have become more moderate. But this now may be the death blow. Obama’s Latino-friendly moves have already made him the “First Latino President” in Politico’s eyes, anyway, further damaging the Republican brand.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28305-a-view-on-cuba-s-opening-from-the-de-facto-us-colony-of-puerto-rico
