CubaBrief: Cuban dictatorship begins to liberalize Cuban economy in response to US economic sanctions. How to push for a democratic opening. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 1/ 
The Cuban dictatorship is taking steps to liberalize the Cuban economy in response to U.S economic sanctions and the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 2/
Reuters reported on July 29th that "Communist-run Cuba is loosening restrictions on small businesses as it seeks to stimulate a state-dominated economy hammered by the implosion of ally Venezuela, U.S. sanctions and the pandemic." cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 3/
Meanwhile, Nora Gámez Torres and Mario J. Pentón reported on July 30th in the Miami Herald in their article “We are closing all doors.” cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 4/
The Trump administration goes after Cuban bank in London that the "United States sanctioned Havin Bank, a London-based Cuban-owned bank, on Thursday in another attempt by the Trump administration to cut off the money flowing to the island’s government." cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 5/
Havin Bank is part of the Castro regime's conglomerate GAESA that is run by Raul Castro's former son-in-law, General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, and has a record of corruption. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 6/
This wasn't supposed to happen, according to the @USChamber, Ag & Pro-Castro lobbies sanctions don't work, & the way that the Castro regime would open up the economy in Cuba would be through loosening sanctions & providing credits to the dictatorship that would help Cubans. 7/
This was attempted during the Obama Administration and the results were opposite to what was claimed. Trade between the two countries collapsed in 2015 to $185.7 million from a peak of $711.5 million in 2008, the last year of the Bush Administration. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 8/
The claim that trade and tourism with the Castro regime will provide “an economic lifeline for the Cuban people” is untrue. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 9/
During President Barack Obama’s détente with Cuba, the Cuban military’s role in the tourist economy expanded and further centralized economic control. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 10/
Over a quarter century, Eusebio Leal, who recently passed away, "turned Old Havana into a painstakingly restored colonial jewel, a tourist draw that brings in more than $170 million a year, according to the most recent available figures." cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 11/
"His office became a center of power with unprecedented budgetary freedom from the island's communist central government. That independence is gone." cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 12/
"Last month [ August 2016], the Cuban military took over 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 US & Cuba on Dec. 17, 2014." cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 13/
Out of a population of 11 million Cubans, 600,000 “work for themselves.” Cuban law restricted Cubans living on the island from starting their own companies, reported the Miami Herald in 2018: cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 14/
“Private sector workers in Cuba, known as cuentapropistas, are licensed only to work for themselves & cannot legally establish companies to expand their work beyond a small scale. Larger enterprises are allowed only for the government and foreigners.” cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 15/
This is why Cuban dissidents are calling for an end to the internal blockade erected by the Castro regime, and over 20,000 have signed the petition calling for its end. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 16/
Eleven years ago the Obama Administration, together with other countries in the region, ignoring the Democratic clause of the Organization of American States (OAS) welcomed the Castro regime back into the democratic regional body in June 2009. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 17/
Raul Castro was not interested because the dictator preferred to strongly back, what he called, "the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro," and denounced the OAS. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 18/
This approach was part of an overall foreign policy by the Obama Admin that Dr. José Azel in a April 24, 2015 article published en El Nuevo Herald titled "The Resurrection of Neville Chamberlain" summarized & identified the architect of the policy. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 19/
The Obama Doctrine was first addressed by Charles A. Kupchan in 2001, and fully fleshed out in his 2010 book, How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 20/
Dr. Kupchan, currently a professor at Georgetown University, served as special assistant to President Obama for national security affairs from 2014 to 2017. Dr.Azel summarized Kupchan's approach into four phases: cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 21/
"It must begin, according to Kupchan, by making concessions to our enemies in an act of “unilateral accommodation.” cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 22/
"These concessions must be 'unusual and costly' to signal benign intent. [...] The second phase entails the practice of “reciprocal restraint” where the adversary nations walk away from rivalry, peace breaks out, and geopolitical competition gives way to cooperation.[...] 23/
“Social integration” and “the generation of new narratives and identities” are the third and fourth phases of Kupchan’s sequence towards stable peace. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 24/
This policy was a failure in Russia, Cuba & Iran. The abandonment of sanctions for a policy of neo-appeasement led the world to greater instability, the humanitarian & political crisis in Venezuela, the deaths of Americans in Iraq, & a more aggressive Russia. 25/
At the end of the Obama Administration U.S. - Cuba relations were a mess with soldiers marching in Cuba chanting that they would give President Obama a lead hat while U.S. diplomats began to suffer brain injuries. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 26/
It is important to recall that the inner circle of power in Cuba is composed of elderly white men that have ruled with absolute power for sixty one years, and maintain the will to continue calling the shots, but their time is drawing to an end. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 27/
How best to deal with the "biological" succession and push for a democratic transition? cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 28/
Doing business with a dictatorship that engages in human trafficking, subverts democracy & trains torturers abroad while terrorizing its own citizenry is a corrupting process that has demonstrated each time that it has been tried that it does not lead to a constructive end. 29/
There is an alternative to Kupchan's failed neo-appeasement policy, or to a policy of military intervention. It is a policy of nonviolent action as laid out by the late strategic nonviolent strategist Gene Sharp. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 30/
Economic embargoes fall within the 198 methods of nonviolent action that Professor Sharp listed in his writings that are available online at the Albert Einstein Institution's web site. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 31/
In addition to state actions there is a long list of actions that can be taken by citizens and non-governmental organizations to push for democratic change and liberalization. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 32/
The web site also includes two important books by Gene Sharp for pro-democracy activists: From Dictatorship to Democracy and How Non-violent Struggle Works that are required reading. cubacenter.org/archives/2020/… 33/
