Confessions of a Cuban Counter Revolutionary by Jay Lillie

Sometimes the truth is hard to come by. In Cuba a couple of years ago in the company of a group of North American lawyers I came across a 19 year old who was complaining about the U.S. embargo against Americans doing business with Cubans in Cuba. I sympathized, but pointed to Fidel Castro’s repressive regime for the embargo’s rationale.

You’re a lawyer,” he said, “and you tell me that?”

As I nodded a “yes,” I could see him getting up the nerve to make his point.

Would you like to know why we Cubans haven’t overthrown Fidel Castro? Certainly you lawyers have heard of the Helms-Burton Act? This law, passed by your Congress in 1996, says your President and State Department cannot help Cuba form a new government until the claims against my country by those Cubans who fled to Miami are satisfied. Why should I risk my life to line the pockets of those people, who would then return and take Fidel’s place in Havana?”

Back in Washington I made good on a promise to check out Helms-Burton, and in the process turned up this bit of legislative history. Senator Chris Dodd, speaking on the Senate floor in 1995 during the debate on passage of the Helms-Burton Act, argued,

the language, Mr. President, is pretty emphatic – No assistance may be provided . . . to a transition government in Cuba. We now have 38 countries in the world, including Cuba, where United States citizens’ property has been expropriated, and we are in the process of trying to get those individuals compensated for that property. Some of these countries are very strong allies of ours. We never said before we cannot provide any assistance to those countries until those claims and matters are settled, and yet that is what we do with this legislation. . . I just think it’s bad policy, Mr. President [to] absolutely hamstring not just this administration, but future administrations, from being able to move intelligently and rapidly to try to shore up a government that will follow Fidel Castro.”

The Honorable Messrs. Helms and Burton are long gone from office, but the Castro’s are as painfully present as ever. Meanwhile this law, and the Trade Embargo on Americans doing business in Cuba which it was designed to tighten and expand, have not only failed in their purpose to depose Castro, they have helped keep him in power.

Does anyone doubt that having American engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, builders, technicians, and farmers on the ground in Cuba would help provide the templates and incentives for a free society to evolve in Cuba as American businessmen have provided elsewhere around the globe? Of course Castro can try to prevent this from evolving, but those behind the Iron Curtain failed in their attempts to do the same. Anyway, why should we do Castro’s work for him?

Let’s give all of us Americans the freedom to make happen in Havana what those Cubans who came to Florida have had the freedom to accomplish in Miami.

Points of View, by Jay Lillie

(c) 2007

Jay Lillie

Author

www.jaylillie.com