Dear Mr. Richard Branson,
Read your blog, saw your Tweet, and believe that you are driven by good intentions to opine on Cuba, but as the German philosopher once said, "the devil is in the details."
First, I found the two photos you posted of yourself touring Havana in 2017 with Eusebio Leal, the city historian to be ironic.
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| Photo: Richard Branson blog, Twitter 2023 |
Military control of economy expanded during Obama thaw
Over a quarter of a century Mr. Leal through an extensive restoration effort transformed Old Havana into a "colonial jewel" and he was able to operate the City Historian's Office throughout this time, it became a hub of influence with budgetary freedom. This ended during Obama's detente.
Andrea Rodriguez, the Associated Press correspondent in Cuba, in her September 8, 2016 article "Cuban military expands its economic empire under detente" found: "That independence is gone. Last month [August 2016], the Cuban military took over the business operations of Leal's City Historian's Office, absorbing them into a business empire that has grown dramatically since the declaration of detente between the U.S. and Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014."
The Obama thaw coincided with the Castro regime's military expanding its control over the Cuban economy.
You state that the embargo has been "codified multiple times." My understanding is that it has been codified twice, and modified once.
When the embargo was codified into law, and trade opened
It was first codified in the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, during the Bush Administration, that also opened up exports of food and medicine, as well as permitting family remittances, postal services, and telecommunications to and from Cuba.
The second time was in 1996, following the February 24, 1996 shoot down of two civilian planes of the civil society group Brothers to the Rescue in international airspace on Raul Castro's orders in a premeditated act of state terrorism that killed four U.S based civilians.
The Clinton administration had the following options: do nothing, apply sanctions, or a military strike. They opted for the second option and signed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996.
This transferred authority over U.S. policy toward Cuba from the Executive Branch to the Legislative.
Congress loosened Cuba sanctions in the Trade Sanctions and Reform Act of 2000 (“TSRA”). This meant that cash and carry trade began between American companies and the Cuban dictatorship and its military conglomerate GAESA.
Mr. Obama's thaw with General Castro coincided with more repression, brain damaged diplomats
You mention in your blog that the Cuban government committed to bilateral talks: "to address issues like migration or mail service," but failed to mention the escalation in repression against dissidents during this "thaw" that began in 2009.
Two months prior to the high point of the Obama detente, replacing a plaque that said "U.S. Interests Section" with one that said "Embassy of the United States of America" on July 20, 2015 a vicious attack was carried out to silence a former government official.
In a vicious machete attack on May 24, 2015, Sirley Ávila León lost her left hand, nearly lost her right upper arm, had her knees slashed, and was left with crippling injuries. She was denied adequate medical care, and doctors secretly advised her that she would need to leave Cuba if she wanted to recover. The regime had been embarrassed by a campaign she organized to keep a school open. She arrived in Miami on March 8, 2016, and with the help of the Cuban exile community, a team of medical professionals took care of her. By September of 2016, Sirley was able to return home to Cuba. She found her home occupied by strangers and went to her mother’s house. A short time later a camera was set up outside to spy on her. By mid-October 2016, Sirley was getting death threats from state security and feared for her life. She fled back to the United States a couple of weeks later and sought asylum.
You made mention that "both nations also agreed to reopen embassies in Washington and Havana," but left out that downgraded embassies, but fully staffed, called Interest Sections were established by Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro on September 1, 1977.
You also omitted the mysterious Havana Syndrome that began to harm both U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Nov 2016, and appears to have been a directed energy device. NBC News reported on this in December 2021.
On February 20, 2022 the CBS News program Sixty Minutes reported on diplomat's children harmed by the Havana Syndrome. It was during Obama's opening the attacks began. U.S. diplomats over the past 39 years in Cuba were harassed, threatened, but not permanently harmed.
You cite your visit to Cuba during the Obama thaw as ground for your claim "that the Cuban people found something new that had been so elusive for decades: hope and opportunity." If that were true why did over 120,000 flee Cuba during the opening?
These Cubans fled because they knew President Obama would close the door on Cubans, and that the thaw would benefit the dictatorship and harm them. Mr. Obama ended the Wet Foot - Dry Foot policy, and also ended a an asylum program for trafficked Cuban doctors on January 12, 2017.
Would also recommend reading Hungarian-born political sociologist Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society and the section in which he catalogues the strategies and tactics totalitarian regimes use to control what one sees visiting their respective countries and what the unintended consequences are for its victims.
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| Machete attacks, breaking bones, knife attacks since 2012 |
Trump sanctions targeted Cuban military
Obama-era openings benefited the Cuban military. Mr. Trump in 2017, undid them through executive orders that forced Havana to open the economy to the non-military.
On February 6, 2021 the Cuban government announced it would "allow small private businesses to operate in most fields, eliminating its limited list of activities, state-run media reported". Why return to a policy that would reverse these changes further empower the Cuban military's control over the national economy, and not everyday Cubans?
Important not to be complicit in Cubans' suffering
We have not lost sight of the human cost and terrible despair caused by the isolation of the Cuban people or the fact that this was the policy of the Cuban dictatorship for decades. Even phone calls were discouraged, and punished. Families are still being divided by Havana in 2023.
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| Cuban nationals Omara Urquiola (left) and Anamely Ramos (Right) not allowed to return home. |
Today, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines are complicit in carrying out Havana's orders to prevent Cuban nationals Anamely Ramos and Omara Urquiola, and others from returning home to Cuba, leaving them stateless persons, separated from their families.
Has your airline, Virgin Atlantic, also engaged in this practice, in order to do business with the Cuban government?
Thank you for speaking out on behalf of Cuba's political prisoners. You are right when you give the following description: "many of them young people who were detained for simply filming protests and never had due process in court." There are over 1,000 political prisoners with out including thousands more imprisoned for pre-crime.
The New York Times reported on January 13, 2020 that documents obtained by a former senior judge in Cuba "showed that approximately 92 percent of those accused in the more than 32,000 cases that go to trial in Cuba every year are found guilty. Nearly 4,000 people every year are accused of being “antisocial” or “dangerous,” terms the Cuban government uses to jail people who pose a risk to the status quo, without having committed a crime."
It is a complex, layered problem
We are agreed that this is complex, and layered problem, it is not only a Cuban problem, but it is not impossible to navigate. The question for you is what is the final goal?
The Cuban government is clear about its goals.
1. Continue to advance its anti-U.S. agenda on the world stage working closely with Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to create an authoritarian international order.
2. Continue to empower regime elites in the private sector copying the Russian oligarch model. No rule of law, but rule by those connected to those in the center of power. Dissenters continue to be crushed.
3. Continue to weaponize migration to leverage the United States while ignoring the human cost in lives lost. Havana has done this in 1965, 1980, 1994, 2014-16, and is doing it now because they perceive the current U.S. administration as weak, and malleable.
Most everyone else
1. Most Cubans want a democratic transition to a system based in the rule of law where entrepreneurs can flourish and human rights are respected, including property rights.
2. They want to be left alone to pursue their own life goals, and live in freedom. They would like to do this in Cuba, but if that is not an option Cubans will continue to seek to do so elsewhere.
This was what you heard in the shouts of freedom, and calls for an end to the dictatorship by tens of thousands of Cubans across the island in July of 2021.
Finally, your concerns about Russia and China are mistaken.
The Castro regime rushed to Moscow's and Beijing's side in 1959 while the United States had normal diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba. Havana's ideology is both anti-United States and anti-Western Democracy.
Havana's relations with Beijing were not determined by relations with the United States, but the Sino-Soviet split. Relations were restored in the late 1980s with Cuba one of the few countries that supported the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. 30/
Relations with Moscow cooled during the Gorbachev-Yeltsin era. Soviet publications with articles on Glasnost and Perestroika were banned. Members of the Cuban military "contaminated" by reformist ideas were purged, and some were executed. Relations with Russia warmed again with Putin in 2000, and grown closer as he has become more authoritarian.
One last observation and two questions Mr. Branson. I remember the humanitarian concert you organized for Venezuelan refugees in 2019, and commend you for it.
How do you feel about the role the Cuban dictatorship has played in propping up Maduro in Venezuela?
Cuban forces in Venezuela, described as an "occupation force" by OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, are training Venezuelans in torture techniques and supervising torture sessions.
Is providing more resources to the Castro regime to carry out its overseas goals of destroying democracies something that you want to facilitate?
Thank you Mr. Branson for your time and interest in the well-being of the Cuban people.
From one troublemaker to another.
Cordially,
John Suarez
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