"Cuba-US detente upends life for Cuban dissidents" by Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press December 30, 2014
HAVANA — President Obama told the world this month that engaging Cuba is the best way to strengthen people pushing for greater freedom on the island.
But less than two weeks after it was announced, the US-Cuba detente is upending the civil society Obama hopes to strengthen. The prospect of engagement between the two Cold War antagonists seems to be undercutting the island’s hard-line dissidents while boosting more moderate activists who want to push President Raul Castro gradually toward granting citizens more liberties.
The traditional dissidents say they feel betrayed by a new US policy of negotiation with a government that Washington and the US-backed opponents worked for decades to undermine.
They say they fear that detente serves the Castro administration’s aspiration of following China and Vietnam by improving the economy without conceding significantly greater freedoms for citizens.
‘‘I think President Obama made a mistake,’’ said Berta Soler, head of the Ladies in White, Cuba’s best-known dissident group. ‘‘Cuba won’t change while the Castros are around. There will be positive changes for the government of Cuba but not for the Cuban people.’’
But moderates say the new balance of power inside the small, fractious world of Cuba’s opposition will produce political change by offering Castro a type of engagement that’s harder to reject: a negotiated, more controlled opening meant to avoid the sort of disorderly transition that scarred the former Soviet Union and, more recently, the countries of the Arab Spring.
‘‘Destabilization, disorder, anarchy — that’s never been on the agenda in the minds of Cubans, and whoever has this agenda isn’t going to be able to find space,’’ said Eliezer Avila, a 29-year-old computer engineer who leads We Are More, a small, year-old opposition group pushing for economic reform and political pluralism.
What’s unknown is whether the Cuban government will engage with the newly energized, more moderate members of civil society or will continue to sharply limit free speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of association as threats to the country’s single-party system. Raul Castro told Cuba’s National Assembly Dec. 20 that warmer US relations would not change the system.
A major test will come during April’s Summit of the Americas in Panama, a gathering of Western Hemispheric leaders where Obama and Raul Castro are expected to meet. A forum including figures from civil society inside Cuba is to be organized on the sidelines and appears likely to spawn debate between the United States and Cuba and among reformers from the island.
‘‘There will be some negotiations or discussions behind the scenes as to who gets invited, I would imagine,’’ said Richard Feinberg, a specialist in US-Cuban relations at the University of California San Diego.
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"Senator’s photos in exhibit
Vermont US Senator and amateur photographer Patrick Leahy will be in Brattleboro this week for a display of photos he has taken during his 40 years in the Senate. He’ll be on hand Tuesday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center for the opening of an exhibit of photos he’s calling “World Leaders and Global Citizens.” Leahy often has had access to such people beyond that afforded most press photographers. The display will include, for example, pictures of American Alan Gross as he was released from prison in Cuba earlier this month and brought back to the United States. Leahy was part of the team that traveled to Havana to retrieve Gross. Leahy’s photos also include candid shots of US presidents and of religious leaders (AP)."
Also see: Cuba embargo is Washington’s failed app
This is crazy, folks.
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