Fidel Castro wasn't invited to the Summit of the Americas to be held in Trinidad and Tobago this week, but he may be able to dominate it nonetheless and humiliate the United States for its globally rejected policy toward Cuba.
Many Latin American presidents have implied that, at the summit, they will urge President Obama to end the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. And they will not be pacified by the changes announced Monday by Obama, even though the changes go beyond his campaign promises.
The Latin American presidents will tell Obama that Washington's policy toward Cuba is a counterproductive Cold War relic that inhibits cooperation and feeds anti-Americanism throughout the region; that it has been maintained by politicians who are overly influenced by militants within the tiny but powerful Cuban American community; and that this Miami embargo lobby seeks vengeance against Castro, which does not serve the broader interests of the hemisphere. And they will be largely right.
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) reports from her meetings last week with Fidel and Raul Castro in Havana that both are eager for unconditional talks with Washington about improving bilateral relations.
Raul, yes. Fidel, perhaps, though his career has been defined by confrontation with Washington. Fidel Castro may have changed, but it is at least as likely that he expects any significant reform Obama proposes will be shot down by those in Congress who support or don't want to fight with the Miami lobby or their Cuban American congressional colleagues. That would give Castro the moral high ground.
If major reforms do seem imminent, the question then is: Will he allow rapprochement, or have the power to prevent it?
Castro has "vetoed" U.S. moderation in the past, as in 1996, when he almost certainly ordered the shooting down of two small planes belonging to a Miami-based Cuban exile group over international waters. That predictably resulted in a furious U.S. Congress passing the Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened the embargo and prohibited normalizing relations until Cuba undertakes many mainly political reforms that the U.S. requires from no other country. Helms-Burton is still the twisted centerpiece of U.S. policy today.
While Cuban American militants insist that they alone are punishing Castro and promoting democracy and freedom in Cuba, the reality is that they have aided his cause. For decades, the embargo has given him a scapegoat to blame for all of his domestic and international actions and catastrophes.
