Given that the Castro regime has maintained unwavering control of Cuba for nearly 50 years and that
Fidel himself has survived numerous American-led attempts to oust him, it's hard to imagine that sporadic funding of dissident programs will have any meaningful impact on fostering change within Cuba.
But Cuba's proximity to the US mainland and large Cuban exile community ensure that it plays an outsize role in American domestic politics. As the Miami Herald reports, this fact has led to the US funding dissident groups within Cuba - namely by giving them access to communications technologies that the US hopes will help foster democratic civil society on the island. Of course one man's "democratic civil society" is a Cuban (government) man's subversive meddling. Last month's arrest of American subcontractor Alan Gross highlighted this, shall we say, difference of opinion.
With Gross' arrest as a bargaining chip, Cuba would love to see an end to such programs which, in all likelihood don't accomplish a whole lot anyway.
And the current trends may favor Cuba getting just that. Obama has ushered in a
slightly more nuanced approach toward Cuba policy, but the main driver in his less aggressive stance towards Cuba
is an evolution in the sentiment in Miami's Little Havana - where younger Cuban Americans are moving beyond the animosity of the first generation of Cuban exiles and embracing a desire to normalize relations with the island.
Within this climate it's getting harder to justify multi-million-dollar outlays to support the slew of democratization efforts that have popped up with USAID and State money over the years.
Yoani Sanchez keeps Twittering, after all...
The bureaucratic way of expressing this reality is for money to begin drying up without any official word as to why. The Miami Herald points out that money
has all but stopped flowing to Cuban pro-democracy advocates in the US. In fact no new funding proposals directed toward Cuba have come from USAID since March.
Obama has taken small steps toward changing the core approach to Cuba, but it remains to be seen if he, like all of his predecessors, will fall back on a tough talk, little action strategy. If his current political woes persist or worsen ahead of the next round of important Florida elections he'd be well advised to do whatever wins him votes in South Florida. If the last 50 years are any indicator, Cuba will keep being Cuba no matter what our donated transistor radios have to say.
Online Sources: The Guardian, Miami Herald, Twitter, McClatchy, CNN
Image Source: Washington Post
With apologies to Stephen Sondheim for title of this post, passengers of one Bogota-bound flight suffered quite the scare on Friday:
