USA Makes Proposal to Cuba to Resume Postal Service
HAVANA TIMES — Representatives of the US government handed Cuba a “specific proposal” for resuming direct mail service after half a century of interruption, informed the US Interests Section in Havana on Tuesday.
Talks to revive direct mail delivery between the neighboring countries had resumed Monday in the Cuban captial after the first meeting held in mid-June in Washington, reported dpa news.
“The United States gave the Cuban government a specific proposal for the direct transport of mail,” explained the Interests Section. “At the meeting (Monday) September 16, the Cuban delegation promised to forward a written response to the US proposal, at the earliest possible date.”
On Monday, the Cuban delegation had placed an “emphasis” on the issue of allowing mail transport through normal transportation, currently restricted by the trade and economic embargo that the US maintains on Cuba for over a half century.
“This is a central question to be addressed to restore direct mail,” said the Cuban delegation at the talks.
In a statement today, the United States reiterated that both sides “made progress” in the current talks.
Direct mail service between Cuba and the United States broke off a half century ago. Postal deliveries were discontinued in 1963, a few years after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Nevertheless, there is currently a mail service via third countries, with restrictions on large packages.
In 2009, the two countries held brief conversations to try to resume the postal service, among other issues. However such efforts were put on hold by Washington after the arrest of US agent Alan Gross on the island in December 2009.
Working for a USAID funded “democracy” program, Gross was arrested while trying to enter Cuba with sophisticated communications equipment not allowed on the island and sentenced in 2011 to 15 years in prison for crimes against the “independence” and ” territorial integrity” in Cuba.
In Cuba I believe there is a growing sense of an inevitabe power lost with the ruling political class with every measure that so slowly makes life easier for the people. History has proven that those with nothing have no time or energy to rebel for something while those with more want more and eventually rebel for more. The French revolution is an historic example. The rising middle class revolted against a government of a priviledged few. Cubans getting mail like everyone else is but another tiny comfort fro a freddon starved people.
Cuba has everything to gain by reinstituting direct mail service to/from the US. For Americans, in general, mail service to a small, poor Caribbean island of only 11 million people means very little. But if packages can be shipped from Miami to Havana and take weeks to arrive instead of, as before, 3 or 4 months, if at all, Cuban families can receive care packages sent from the US without using the far more costly private shippers like DHL. What in the world does Cuba need to decide? They should accept the “specific proposal” no matter what it is.