There has been much talk of as of late in favor of the Obama Administration changing U.S. policies towards Cuba. Already, the President and Congress have revoked the travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans with family members on the island, myself included, from visiting the tropical gulag. There is talk in Congress about lifting the travel embargo for all American citizens and even some talk about doing away with the Cuban Embargo in general. This week members of the Congressional Black Caucus even met with former Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro and sang his praises. You cannot even open up an issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine without multiple articles telling the POTUS he should change Cuban Policy. The argument is that the 47-year-long embargo has failed to lead to political change on the island and thus it should be done away with. While the current policy towards Cuba is flawed, the changes being proposed are gravely misguided.

To provide a look into the reality of the situation, let me provide a personal example as to why I was so hesitant to write this article in the first place. Because of the new rule changes, I plan to travel to Cuba and visit my family there for the first time. Yes, I recognize the hypocrisy of criticizing the rules I am taking advantage of, but I sometimes have to put family ahead of politics. My parents, who are traveling with me, are worried sick about the prospect of me being interrogated as soon as I land in Jose Marti International Airport. Why? Because of this article, and many others like it are online. As soon as I get there, Cuban authorities can search my name online, find opinions not to their liking, separate me from my family and release me when they see fit. They wouldn’t formerly arrest me and probably would not send me back to the U.S., but they would do everything in their power to intimidate me. That’s what the Castro regime does. I have lived in the freedom of the U.S. all my life and yet if I chose to go visit my grandmother, aunts, and cousins, I will have to live in fear of what a repressive regime might do for something I wrote back in the U.S.

Those in the American left like to call Cuban-Americans right-wingers, extremists, and worse. Easy for them to do so, considering they’ve always have had the right to free speech. They just enjoyed eight years of being able to criticize the government without fear of being locked up. Like Cuban-American Senator Bob Menendez said, in the U.S. calling for change wins you an election. In Cuba calling for “cambio” gets you beaten and tossed in jail. If anyone thinks that ending the embargo will change this they have no idea what they are talking about.

As to the argument that the Cuban Embargo hasn’t worked and should be done away with, the argument ignores that there is no true embargo in place. The embargo is a farce, a political tool by U.S. administrations to keep Cuban-Americans happy and by the Cuban regime as a scapegoat. With the embargo, the U.S. is still one of the biggest exporters of food to the island. With the embargo, Cuban-Americans still send hundreds of millions of dollars to their relatives, propping up a black-market for goods and services that the Communist system does not provide. Remittances are also highly taxed by the Castro regime. If we are trying to economically cripple the regime in order to promote change, then obviously these remittances are counter-intuitive. But how can you turn down your starving mother when you know that she could live comfortably with $50 a month you don’t need? That is the dilemma many Cuban-Americans face when sending money back to Cuba. They feel obligated to help feed their families, but by doing so, they are also helping feed the monster they are trying to bring down. The moment the American government started allowing food sales to the Cuban regime and remmitances to go through was the moment the embargo became more of a motto than a policy tool. The fact that embargo hasn’t worked and the regime is all the more autocratic means that the policies should become more stringent, not less so.

The idea that letting American tourists travel to the island will open it up to democratic change is also baffling. Republican Senator Mel Martinez, also a Cuban-American, has been disappointed with his Senate colleagues in both parties for expressing this sentiment. If all it took was tourists from democratic countries to spread the values of democracy, then how come the multitudes of Spaniards and Italians have had no effect? The regime will barely let tourists travel outside Varadero Beach or historical landmarks in Havana. It will guarantee as little interaction between tourists and locals as possible. The Castros don’t even allow tourists to frequent the same beaches, hotels, and restaurants. They even use different currencies to make sure tourists and those with access to dollars have better goods than those who earn government wages.

The love affair between the American left and the Castro regime is beyond troubeling. After meeting with Fidel Castro this week, Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush expressed admiration for Castro’s “basic human qualities.” Well, Congressman Rush, where do you think those human qualities were when Castro order the executions of tens of thousands, including my uncle, and the torture of many more, including my grandfather? Where do you think they were when he had my great-grandfather sentenced to seven years solitary confiment, driving the elderly man mad, all because a group of anti-Castro rebels had taken a sip of water from the horse pale in my great-grandfather’s barn? And when Castro let Che Guevara establish concentration camps in eastern Cuba, where were his human qualities then?

In the meeting, Castro supposedly asked Rush what he could do to help President Obama. What I want to know is why Rush didn’t ask Castro what he could do to help Dr. Oscar Biscet, the Afro-Cuban human rights activist currently imprisoned in Cuba? Biscet, who many have compared to Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, would probably win a democratic presidential election in Cuba if there ever was one. Instead he is rotting away in jail and foreign dignitaries are not allowed to visit him.

No, I do not think Cuban policy as is promotes the struggle for freedom in Cuba, but making things easier for the Castro regime, taking away the embargo completely and allowing Americans to pump millions of tourist dollars into the regime’s coffers will make matters worse not better. If the goal of our policy towards Cuba is to promote freedom on the island, then Republicans need to work with the Obama Administration on creating a policy that does just that, instead of appeasing the American left and the tyrants to our south.

Last 5 posts by Abel S. Delgado

• Let’s Support the Cantwell-McCain Bill - January 6th, 2010
• Deeds Gets Dirty, Doesn’t Win Anyway - November 2nd, 2009
• Obama & The Berlin Wall - October 25th, 2009
• The Nobel Prom King - October 11th, 2009
• Bureaucratizing Interrogations a Horrible Idea - August 28th, 2009