HAVANA TIMES – Things have changed since President Barack Obama implemented a rapprochement policy with Cuba and although some measures have been put into effect in recent months to bring families separated by the Florida Strait closer together, the Biden government does not see it as easy to return to those times of closer ties, reports Gisela Salomon, of the Associated Press.
“It’s hard to go back,” said Benjamin Ziff, the US chargé d’affaires at the Havana embassy. “The world has changed since Obama’s time and now we have to deal with today’s reality,” he said. in an interview with The Associated Press.
In 2014 Obama and then Cuban President Raul Castro announced the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States, the beginning of a series of agreements that included the reopening of the embassy in Havana, immigration cooperation, academic and family trips, facilitating the sending remittances, among other things.
Throughout his two presidencies, Obama resorted to executive orders to improve bilateral relations and weaken the US trade embargo, which has been in place for more than six decades and can only be lifted by Congress. With the arrival of Donald Trump to power, in 2017, a large part of these measures were discarded.
Biden was vice president during the Obama administration and his arrival at the presidency renewed hopes in some sectors that he would return to the policies of that time. His administration has put into effect relief for the sending of remittances, allowed more flights and humanitarian assistance to the island, but they are far from resuming the flexibility and rapprochement promoted by Obama between two historical enemies of the Cold War.
Ziff, who serves as the highest representative of the United States on the island, said that the measures adopted in recent months aim to improve the lives of Cuban families, but stressed that it is not easy to deal with the island’s authorities.
“The relationship with the United States for historical reasons, political reasons, human rights reasons, is difficult,” said the diplomat, who has been on the island for six months. “I would define the United States’ relations with Cuba as correct and pragmatic,” he said.
Ziff believes, “change in Cuba must come from Cuba, from the Cubans, it does not depend on anyone else.” He said that “the United States can support, help, encourage, advocate, pressure, everything, but basically the future of Cuba depends on the Cubans.”
After nearly five years in which the US embassy in Havana remained with a minimum of staff after mysterious health incidents and then the coronavirus pandemic. Officials and employees returned to work in July 2022.
Consular services, which had been suspended since 2017, resumed in January, 2023, and the embassy is offering “hundreds” of appointments daily for immigrant visas, including those for family reunification, the diplomat said.
Talks between the two governments have resumed and the most important issue on Washington’s agenda is human rights, after massive street protests in July 2021 that provoked a harsh response against protesters and opponents, Ziff said.
“That is our number one priority, to ensure that the Cuban population can have a future without repression and with economic hope,” explained the diplomat, who spoke mostly in English, interspersed with some responses in perfect Spanish.
He said it is very difficult to talk to the island’s authorities about human rights issues. He even noted that when US officials have wanted to meet with political opponents, some have been jailed. He did not offer names, however.
The resumption of consular activities coincides with a historic wave of Cuban migration to the United States that led the Biden government to take measures to curb illegal arrivals.
In the last two years, US authorities have detained nearly 300,000 Cubans on the border with Mexico, and thousands more trying to reach the Florida coast by sea. Some have been returned to the island, but the vast majority have remained under immigration rules dating back to the Cold War. That figure is equivalent to almost 3% of the inhabitants of Cuba.
As part of the resumption of dialogue with the Cuban authorities, the issue of illegal migration, a matter of national security for the United States, stands out. “The lack of hope is what is driving the rate of irregular migration,” said the diplomat.