The 44th president of the United States of America respectfully sent his condolences in an official statement to the family of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s revolutionary leader. Some foreign countries did more. At the Spanish embassy in Havana, for example, the flag was hoisted at half-mast last Monday. As I passed the US embassy in a cab, I noticed the flag was flying high. The soon-to-be 45th US president tweeted “Fidel Castro is dead”, and that he would look for “a better deal for the Cuban people [and] the Cuban-American people”.
Since December 2014, when Barack Obama and Raúl Castro brokered a historic breakthrough in relations between Cuba and the US, I have been trying to imagine how we could have got a better deal. When I say “we”, I include myself in the more than 11 million Cubans born and raised on the island who are struggling to survive economically; who have family on both sides of the Florida straits as a result of economic or political reasons; who saw the 43rd president, George W Bush strictly limit travel and money transfers from one country to the other; who pay $2 for an hour of internet use, and almost the same for a bottle of cooking oil. That day in December, we did not get a perfect deal. We got a realistic one. We got the kind of bittersweet deal that makes you hope for more.
Now the president-elect is making a Twitter promise. My expectations are high. So what would a better deal look like for the Cuban people?
Two points get general agreement among the vast majority of Cubans: the US should return Guantánamo to Cuba and the embargo must be lifted. This generation of Cubans and Cuban-Americans should definitely put the Guantánamo and the embargo. There is no way of fully normalising relations between Cuba and the US without doing these things. We do not deserve to have a torture camp in our backyard. Cubans do not deserve to suffer economically just so the US can make our government look bad. By doing so for more than five decades, the US government has transformed our political system into a lighthouse of resistance and dignity.
There are also red flags: human rights, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of association. Cuba has more than five independent media outlets, created in 2015 and 2016, among them Periodismo de Barrio (where I am editor-in-chief), El Estornudo, Postdata, Cachivache Media and El Toque. All are directed by young women and men who did not want to work for state news media outlets. They are diverse in content and opinion, but have something in common: none is financed by the US government.
When we say “independent”, we mean independent from the Cuban government, but also from the US. It has not been easy. Lonely is the word most used to describe these young journalists who do not have the support of Cuban state institutions. Some have been arrested and detained, but they still believe in the power of their stories. Cubans have proved that we can take care of our humans rights, defend them, fight for them. Even if it is a long and hard process, I’m confident that fully restoring civil liberties in Cuba is going to be my generation’s legacy for the future.
I’m not naive. Of course, I’m perfectly aware this is not the sort of agreement the soon-to-be president was thinking of. And it makes perfect sense. After almost 60 years, it is hard to expect “a partner and an ally” from the political elite in the US, no matter how hard Obama tried to work for it. But the least Cubans can expect from another country is respect. President-elect Trump can make a deal on behalf of his interests. It will never be on behalf of the Cuban people. And certainly not in my name.
