The White House extends a hand: how will Cuba respond?

The Obama Administration went beyond expectations today when it announced not only the lifting of all travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban-Americans, but also an end to the telecommunications embargo that for years has kept Cuba using slow satellite connections instead of an easily accessible underwater fiber-optic cable. In a press release entitled “Reaching Out to The Cuban People,” the White House announced its position:

Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island. There are no better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. Accordingly, President Obama will direct the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to support the Cuban people’s desire for freedom and self-determination by lifting all restrictions on family visits and remittances as well as taking steps that will facilitate greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba and increase the flow of information and humanitarian resources directly to the Cuban people.

How will the brothers Castro respond? They have remained silent in the hours following the announcement, but we should expect a reaction as soon as tomorrow. And the White House press release itself gives them a suggestion of a good first response in the spirit of reciprocation: President Obama calls upon the Cuban government to reduce charges levied on those remittances that are sent to the island in dollars (which are the majority of remittances) so as to increase the support and impact of those funds for Cuban families.

But this is not the only symbolic gesture in the last week that the United States has provided: last Thursday a federal grand jury in Texas indicted Luis Posada Carriles and, for the first time since Posada arrived in the United States seeking asylum from Venezuelan and Cuban authorities, the court connected him to several terrorist acts in Cuba. Cuba and Venezuela have spent years calling for his extradition to face justice for these crimes. But Posada has lived freely in the United States for several years, while openly admitting to these strings of terrorist plots and bombings that killed over 80 people—73 on a flight from Trinidad to Cuba in 1976, and 11 more in tourist hotels and restaurants in Havana in 1997. 

At the very least, the impact of these new developments is this: the Cuban regime can no longer demonize US policy in the way it has for years, saying that the United States has kept Internet from the island, that it harbors terrorists that wish to bring down the Revolution, and that its policies tear Cuban families apart. The Cuban regime will now have to answer to its citizens for its own role in such issues: Will access to the Internet steadily increase? Will Cuba release prisoners that are unjustly held? And will Havana improve for Cuban families its own remittance policy?