The Castros: A Creation of Washington

The majority of Americans support a change in foreign policy with respect to Cuba.

There’s a great distance between those who believe liberty is an end and those who know that it is an efficient path to human realization. In order to achieve their goal, it doesn’t matter if they trample over liberty along the way and, with similar inconsistency, manage to make the situation worse. The reality is that simply traveling by liberty (as an absence of violent coercion) and peace, its close relative, a total human violation takes place, overtaking the fear that supposedly transcends into the unknown future.

With the purpose of “ending tyranny,” the Allies launched World War II and, after amputating liberties in their countries and huge material and human losses, they finally achieved consolidation of the USSR, the Stalinist tyranny that ended up falling peacefully without war. The path should have been liberty and peace: Without the war, Hitler would have fallen under his own weight, causing less harm and doing so much more quickly than the powerful Soviet Union. In an unconsolidated USSR, the Castroist tyranny wouldn’t have grown easily. But additionally Washington, with the Bay of Pigs invasion and Guantánamo, gave the Castros an excuse to militarize the island. And the U.S. government continued by imposing sanctions on Cuba, violating the rights of its citizens and strengthening the isolation of the prison island.

Now, more than 40 individuals wrote a letter to Obama asking him to allay the embargo placed on Cuba over 50 years ago. In an unprecedented consensus, leading politicians and military officials, Democrats and Republicans, and prominent businessmen asked that it be unilaterally approved, avoiding the annoying trip through Congress, new executive support measures to entrepreneurs and civil society on the island so that they gain “greater liberties” in order to be “catalysts of significant change” in Cuba. Obama has an unprecedented opportunity, given that the majority of Americans support a change, according to a recent survey.

Also interesting is the position of Andrés Oppenheimer with respect to the Colombian president’s caution; he who assures that if his peace negotiations with the FARC [People’s Army] are successful, Colombia (which has already surpassed Argentina as the third largest Latin American economy), will grow more than 7 percent annually. Oppenheimer doubts this. It’s definitely true that peace and liberty enormously foment growth, but many investors are more concerned with regulatory problems (those raised precisely by state pressure) and, furthermore, an agreement with the FARC leadership will not necessarily bring peace, because many guerillas will find it more economical to continue in illegal trafficking, outlawed by state coercion.

In closing, let’s examine the pope’s trip to the Holy Land. They bring a rabbi and a Muslim professor from Buenos Aires, and according to the Israeli government he is “a true friend to the Jewish people,” and I’m sure that that’s true, but he still visits one of the most conflicted zones, where 22 crimes of vandalism were committed in Christian places by highly orthodox practitioners in 2013. But Frances will travel — as he did — through Lampedusa, Rio de Janeiro, and, each Wednesday, through St. Peter’s Square in an uncovered car, with no more protection than his own proximity. And it’s definitely not suicide, because he knows that peace and proximity are better protection than armed guards, who can be counterproductive.