Cuban scholars: “US-style democracy not only option”
Cuban scholars: “US-style democracy not only option”
by Avi Chomsky on January 17, 2015
The opening of US-Cuban relations has been much debated. Here, Avi Chomsky translates the voices of Cuban intellectuals, excluded from Western media.
Photo by Nick Kenrick via Flickr.
On December 17, 2014, President Obama announced that he was ordering “the most significant changes to our policy in more than fifty years” and that the United States was “changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.” While only Congress can lift the embargo, the changes Obama announced were indeed significant: re-establishing diplomatic relations, opening a review of Cuba’s designation as a sponsor of state terrorism, and further easing travel, trade, and aid restrictions.
The speech came on the heels of a series of embarrassments for the United States, as clumsy covert programs aimed at promoting ‘civil society’ in Cuba were revealed and WikiLeaks cables acknowledged that US-supported ‘dissidents’ had little importance to Cuban society. Obama reiterated the US goal to change Cuba’s domestic and foreign policies, but explained that 50 years of hostility had not achieved the goal, and it was time for a new approach. Nevertheless, “we will continue to support civil society there,” he reassured doubters. “I respect your passion and share your commitment to liberty and democracy.”
The US media sought reactions on the streets in Miami and Havana, and among a few chosen “dissidents” in Cuba. It generally ignored Cuban scholars and academics who have been laying the groundwork for better relations over several decades, visiting the United States (when the State Department has agreed to let them), collaborating with US counterparts in research, presentations, and publishing, while also opposing US policies and insisting on Cuba’s right to change in its own way and at its own pace, not as mandated by its northern neighbor.
The progressive Cuban journal Temas has brought together critical Cuban intellectuals since the early 1990s. These are not the “dissidents” supported and promoted by the U.S. State Department to bring about regime change. They are progressive Cubans who are engaged nationally and internationally in debating the changes, forced and desired, that have been unfolding in Cuba since the fall of the Soviet bloc.
Temas responded to Obama’s announcement by asking researchers in both countries to comment on a series of questions, and published the responses in the journal’s blog, Catalejo. Those on the US side included well-known academics like political scientists Jorge Domínguez (Harvard University) and William LeoGrande (American University), and historian Margaret Crahan (Columbia). But while Cuban readers had access to these voices, American readers had little access to their Cuban counterparts.
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