Cuba’s Slow Walk to Freedom

The Editorial Board – Miami Herald

To date, dictator Raúl Castro has shown no sign of relenting on the human-rights front. According to Cuba’s Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, there have been more than 3,000 political detentions since the thaw. There will be more, no doubt, because Cuba’s people feel emboldened to challenge a regime that dares not loosen the restrictions of a police state lest it all come tumbling down suddenly.

But the new relationship will give American diplomats greater leeway to reach out to dissidents. Instead of asking permission to travel around the island, diplomats simply have to notify the government of their travel plans….

The government should be encouraged to take steps to allow private business to flourish: Get rid of the parallel dollar market that works to the disadvantage of ordinary Cubans as it enriches government coffers. Update the primitive banking system so the government cannot freeze dollar deposits on a whim. Update the civil-court system so small entrepreneurs can resolve conflicts with the government in a fair, impartial manner. And, for heaven’s sake, allow Cuban workers of foreign businesses to be paid their full wages in a foreign currency so that the government does not reap the benefit.

Kerry Gives Address at Historic Reopening of US Embassy in Havana:

Stop Punishing Cuba’s People

William M. LeoGrand – Newsday

Now comes the hard part.

Myriad other issues still divide Washington and Havana, but none is more consequential that the U.S. economic embargo — or, as the Cubans call it, el bloqueo, the blockade.

The embargo’s original purpose was straightforward: to make the Cuban economy scream — to use Cuba’s economic dependence on the United States to plunge it into a crisis so severe that the Cuban people would rise up and overthrow Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government….

Today, there are two fundamental arguments against continuing the embargo: one moral and one practical. Pope John Paul II invoked the moral argument during his 1998 trip to Cuba. “Embargoes,” the Holy Father said, “are always deplorable because they hurt the most needy.'”

Castro, the young anti-Batista guerilla leader, center, is pictured with his brother Raul Castro, left, and another revolutionary, right, in the mountains of eastern Cuba in 1957. (AP)

Celebrate New Day for U.S-Cuba Relations

Maria Cardona – CNN

After more than 50 years of isolation, it is time for the United States to change its strategy towards Cuba. We are no longer in the throes of the Cold War. We are not in a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. For 55 years, the United States has done everything possible to shut off key resources to the island in hopes of weakening the Castro regime to the point where it would collapse or be easily overthrown.

But the perseverance and the staying power of the Castro regime has befuddled many, and the embargo has only worsened the suffering of the Cuban people…. Only Congress can end the embargo, and President Obama has urged them to do so quickly.

But in this do-nothing Republican Congress that opposes everything President Obama proposes, there is scant hope of this.

People wait behind barriers to catch a glimpse of the flag raising ceremony near the U. S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba on Aug. 14, 2015. (AP)