Word: cuba
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...concert. As Granma itself noted afterward, there was "no political manipulation of cultural expression ... just a vote for human understanding." And while that's to the Castros' credit, the truth is that the long-term effects of that sort of nondogmatic fiesta don't always favor systems like Cuba's. Says Daniel Erikson, a senior associate at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington and author of The Cuba Wars: "These kinds of cultural exchanges bring alternative voices that diminish the government's monopoly on information and expression...
Which is why the concert's supporters, including many in the Miami exile community, say it's time for the Obama Administration to revive the U.S.-Cuba cultural exchanges that began in the 1990s but were nixed under former President George W. Bush. "I took part in the Bay of Pigs, and I've been fighting the Castros for 50 years," says Francisco (Pepe) Hernandez, 73, president of the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami, which backed Juanes' efforts despite protests by more hard-line exiles that included smashing the singer's CDs in Little Havana. "But it was tremendous...
President Obama has pledged to thaw U.S.-Cuba affairs as a way to promote democracy on the island. Though he favors keeping intact the 47-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, he eliminated restrictions on travel to Cuba for Cuban-American families, and his Administration is now in talks with Havana about improving immigration and postal service between the two countries. Erikson says the concert by Juanes, who lives in Miami, was a reminder of the "soft power tool kit" the U.S. should wield more often. "Obama needs to bring more of that kind of cultural diplomacy back into...
Obama, however, seems less than impressed with such arguments. Sunday morning, in an interview with the Spanish-language television network Univisión, he said that while he didn't think events like the Juanes concert hurt U.S.-Cuba relations, "I wouldn't overstate the degree that it helps." If that indifference seems to contradict the spirit of U.S.-Cuba engagement that Obama expressed in his presidential campaign and at the Summit of the Americas earlier this year, it may be because he's found that conservatives can still give him headaches over Cuba and the Latin-American left. Republicans...
Still, in his book, Erikson describes how increased cultural-exchange activity at the end of the 20th century led to more robust public discussion and independent journalism in Cuba by the start of the 21st century - enough so, he writes, that an alarmed Fidel Castro cracked down with sweeping arrests of dissidents and writers in 2003. Despite that setback, exchange advocates feel it's time to start again. The point, they say, is that even if Juanes meant nothing by shouting "Cuba libre!," it was enough if he got some of those 1 million Cubans wondering what he did mean...