A conversation between Kirsten Welker, moderator of NBC News’ talk show “Meet the Press”, and Miguel Díaz-Canel aired on Sunday, marking the first time that a major U.S. media outlet has interviewed the current Cuban president.
The discussion focused on the current state of U.S.-Cuba relations and saw Díaz-Canel insist that he would not resign in the face of U.S. pressure while aguing that sanctions on the island were the driving factor behind his people’s suffering.
The Cuban politician did, however, express hope that current diplomatic talks between the two nations would culminate in a peaceful resolution and reverse the recent escalation of bilateral tensions.
1. Defiance towards U.S. threats
Responding to reports that the U.S. sees his dismissal from power as key to any successful negotiation, Díaz-Canel emphasized that, “In Cuba, the people in positions of leadership are not elected by the U.S. government … we have a free, sovereign state”.
Díaz-Canel warned that both he and the Cuban population would be prepared to fight for such independence; he told Welker that, if the United States attempted to enforce political regime change through military action, he himself would be “willing to give my life for the Revolution” and would not be alone in his conviction.
Invoking the words of Cuban independence hero and general Antonio Maceo, Díaz-Canel warned that “whoever tries to take power over Cuba will only get the dust of its soil, drenched in blood, if he doesn’t perish in the struggle”. Such a sentiment, the politician warned, is universally shared amongst Cuban people because “that is how we have been trained”.
The current readiness of Cuba’s military and population for the kind of irregular and asymmetrical warfare that Díaz-Canel referred to in the interview is unclear. The Cuban National Defense Council announced in January that its regular and irregular forces would transition into a state of preparation for war.
Also, Cuba has a mandatory national service program designed specifically to deter and defend against a U.S. invasion. Therefore, the regular forces of the Cuban military can theoretically be bolstered by a mobilization of a paramilitary force of over 1 million trained troops at any time.
Considering this well-practiced defensive posture, Díaz-Canel predicted that a U.S. invasion of the island “would be unsustainable and untenable”.
Though there is no way to prove Díaz-Canel’s claims about Cuban political unity in the face of U.S. threats, Dr Philip Brenner, an expert in U.S.-Cuba relations and professor at American University who spoke to Latin America Reports about the state of U.S.-Cuba relations, argued that the Cuban anti-regime opposition finds itself in a weak position.
“There is no legitimate opposition in Cuba, there is no opposition party”. Furthermore, when discussing the anti-regime Miami-based Cuban opposition movement, Brenner argued that he “see(s) no way in which people who have been living outside of Cuba will have an effect on the future of Cuba other than through investment … There is no movement in Cuba that would really bring any of these dissidents into a leadership position”.
However, growing anti-government dissent on the island could be a sign that the Cuban population is not as supportive of the Cuban political leadership as Díaz-Canel suggests.
2. Hope for improved relations
Despite his warnings about the potentially deadly consequences of American aggression, Díaz-Canel stressed that “both the American and Cuban peoples deserve … peace” and reiterated his desire that the current talks between the U.S. and Cuba could achieve that peace.
“I think dialogue and deals with the U.S. government are possible, but they’re difficult … Cuba has always been willing, throughout all the years of the revolution, … (to have) a civilized, neighborly relationship with the United States”.
On occasion, both sides have shown willingness to engage in high-level diplomatic talks, as was the case when revolutionary leader Raúl Castro and former U.S. President Barack Obama oversaw a normalization in relations in the mid-2010s.
Nevertheless, Cuba’s posture during the Cold War, when it aligned with the USSR, the principal ideological adversary of the U.S., was more hostile.
Specifically, Díaz-Canel listed the various areas of potential cooperation between the two countries, including combatting “drug trafficking, fighting terrorism, (working on) migration, issues of … transnational crime”.
There has indeed been cooperation in these areas before; the U.S. previously agreed with the Cuban government to the admission of at least 20,000 legal migrants from Cuba a year, a deal designed to reduce irregular migration between the countries and slow the exodus of the Cuban population to American shores.
Despite their governments’ mutual hostility, the U.S. and Cuban Coast Guards have also historically cooperated in operations against drug trafficking and terrorism.
Although Díaz-Canel saw continued and further cooperation on such issues as desirable, his positivity about the negotiations had a strong caveat; “we have always said that we need to build that relationship from a position of respect, from a position of equal footing, without having conditions imposed on us”.
In practical terms, that means that discussions about the nature of Cuba’s leadership and internal political system are off the table for Cuban negotiators.
Dr. Brenner emphasized the importance of this perceived diplomatic equality to any solution: “What the United States has to understand dealing with Cuba is that Cuba is not going to respond to threats, to the appearance of giving in to U.S. demands. They want to have a respectful negotiation that is mutually satisfactory”.
3. Identifying U.S. sanctions as principal cause of Cuban suffering
The Cuban leader decried American sanctions, calling them “genocidal” and referring to them collectively as “the blockade”. Díaz-Canel attributed the Cuban people’s suffering solely to the “policy of permanent hostility by the U.S. government at the national level.”
Because of the U.S. sanctions, he argued, “we lack financing to buy food, to buy supplies for our production and services (industries) … (to buy) the medicine that we need and to carry out the repairs that we need for our national energy system and our industrial factories”.
“Cuba is a country that has been under attack, … (having suffered) over 60 years of the blockade … We are talking about the longest running blockade in the history of mankind, the most severe blockade, a blockade that is not only aimed at the Cuban people but at the American people and other peoples”, Díaz-Canel added.
Many, including representatives of the United Nations, agree that U.S. sanctions on Cuba impoverish the country’s population by causing shortages of spare parts, machinery, food, medicine, fuel and other essential goods and services.
Dr. Brenner also pointed out that Cuba’s inclusion in the U.S. State Department’s state sponsors of terrorism (SST) list “makes it … (particularly) difficult for Cuba to engage in international commerce because most international transactions, regardless of whether the United States is actually involved, … travel through New York banks … (which are) very loathe to handle any transaction that involves Cuba” for fear of being sanctioned under the SST.
Others, however, point to Cuban government mismanagement, failure to reform and corruption as key factors in the nation’s economic woes.
Although Díaz-Canel suggested that he himself and Cuba’s collective leadership may have made some errors in economic judgement, he did not specify any and told Welker that the Cuban “people who are suffering … largely understand who the main culprit is”.
4. Openness to economic, not political, reform
Cuban negotiators have stressed that any reforms implemented after negotiations with the U.S. and Cuba conclude will be economic in nature. Some of these reforms have already been announced; Cuban Americans will now be allowed to invest in businesses on the island and remittances sent from abroad will be able to be withdrawn in cash as U.S. dollars in Cuban currency exchange offices.
Dr. Brenner suggested that such reforms demonstrated that the Cuban government is “willing to bend a lot … to regularize its relationship with the United States”.
Díaz-Canel made occasional reference to these changes and indeed seemed enthusiastic about the possibility of greater American participation in Cuban economic life.
“We can have investments and businesses from America, businesspeople in Cuba. We have a Cuban community living in the United States and we should also provide them with facilities, both in the United States and here … American people can come to Cuba for cultural and sporting exchanges … and exchange healthcare (expertise)”, he said.
The Cuban president cited the recent cooperation of U.S. and Cuban healthcare practitioners on a potentially revolutionary Alzheimer’s drug developed by Cuba’s Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) as a potential blueprint for future American-Cuban cooperation in key sectors.
Following the U.S. operation to capture Cuban ally and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the U.S. left the Venezuelan regime intact but decided to effectively control the Venezuelan oil industry.
Perhaps Díaz-Canel is hoping for a similar arrangement of political continuity with greater economic exchange in Cuba; during the interview, he said, “We’re open for foreign investment in Cuba, in oil exploration and drilling. There will be an opportunity for American businessmen and firms to come and participate in Cuba’s energy sector”.
The Cuban leader even expressed admiration for the development of Vietnamese and Chinese “socialism”; Vietnam and China both retain their one-party communist political systems with more market-oriented, less centrally-planned economies than Cuba.
Díaz-Canel’s admiration of such systems could suggest that he is open to steering Cuba in the same economic direction as Vietnam and China, though he clarified that the beginning of those two nations’ major economic development coincided with the lifting of U.S. sanctions, which clearly remains the Cuban leader’s economic priority.
5. Rejection of human rights criticism
Towards the end of the interview, Welker challenged Díaz-Canel on Cuba’s human rights record, citing the detention of Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo Pérez, a Cuban musician and the co-founder of the Cuban anti-government dissident organization Movimiento San Isidro.
Osorbo was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2022 for alleged “public disorder and defamation of institutions and organizations”. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has concluded that he was detained solely on the basis of pro-democracy activism.
Díaz-Canel did not directly address Osorbo’s individual case, but instead attacked what he viewed as a manipulative media-driven campaign to discredit Cuba’s political system.
“They (the media) speak about political prisoners in Cuba … there are people in Cuba who are not in favor of the revolution … and they protest on a daily basis in different ways against the revolution and they are not in prison”.
The narrative that Cuba arbitrarily detains peaceful opponents, he continued, “is a big lie … (designed) to vilify and to engage in a character assasination of the Cuban Revolution”.
Various human rights groups contradict this claim; Amnesty International, for example, reports that Cuban authorities routinely restrict freedom of expression, criminalize peaceful dissent and mistreat arbitrarily detained prisoners.
Díaz-Canel, however, claimed that those imprisoned were not peaceful opposition activists, but rather malicious actors who ”promote vandalistic acts and disrupt safety … often financed by terrorist organizations and … agencies of the U.S. government which promote subversion against Cuba”.
Those prisoners, he went on to argue, “would be in jail in any country in the world … for engaging in vandalism and (seditious) crimes”.
Amnesty International refutes this claim too, reporting that the Cuban authorities label activists and journalists “common criminals, mercenaries and foreign agents” to legitimize their detention.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) corroborates these claims; according to HRW the majority of the approximately 1,500 people detained after the widespread protests of 2021, were peaceful demonstrators or bystanders.
Cuban NGO Justicia 11J also claims that, of the 760 prisoners of conscience still behind bars in Cuba in March, 358 were arrested for their participation in the 2021 protests.
Featured Image: Cuban exiles in Miami hold placards calling for an end to the Cuban dictatorship and criticizing Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel
Image Credit: Luis F. Rojas via Wikimedia Commons
License: Creative Commons Licenses
