"Cuba does not buy spies"

In the last few weeks, two prominent cases of spying for Cuba have made headlines and worried some about fresh roadblocks on the path toward increased U.S.-Cuba cooperation. First, a couple in the United States (the husband a State Department employee) was arrested and charged with passing classified information to the Cuban regime for thirty years: that certainly constitutes a breach of trust in a relationship on the mend.

Then, this week the Supreme Court refused to review the case of the Cuban Five, the five men who were convicted in 2001 of spying in the United States on behalf of the government of then-President Fidel Castro. On the island, the men are hailed as heros subjected to an unfair trial in a hostile Miami atmosphere after the Elian Gonzalez incident. They have demanded retrial and release for years. Yet it appears the case has been closed by the highest U.S. judicial court. Since the case is one of Cuba’s top priorities, its closing will foster no goodwill.

An Associated Press interview with Cuban Parliament head Ricardo Alarcón this week revealed his thoughts, and importantly, he says that the decision on the Five will not jeopardize talks between the two countries. He did not miss the opportunity to call the United States “an ignorant lion” and the decision “a great insult,” nor to point out that the newly accused spies for Cuba were apparently unpaid (“Cuba does not buy spies… They don’t do it for money”), instead working because they identified ideologically with the revolution. But Alarcón separates the two issues: the impending talks are a necessary instrument to advance both countries’ interests in terms of migration, environmental issues, drug smuggling, etc., and the Cuban Five case, while important to Cuba, does not negate its interest in these other areas.

Already, this is more reasonable than U.S. and Cuban officials have been in years of dealing with these sorts of mutually infuriating developments.