Next month several members of Tampa City Council will travel to Cuba as part of a Chamber of Commerce visit. Commendable. Yolie Capín and Harry Cohen will make their initial trips and Mary Mulhern her third. It’s first-hand fact-finding, it’s credibility, it’s positioning for the post-embargo era–and it’s Tampa-self-interest smart.
The emphasis, understandably, has been on positioning Tampa for economic opportunities once Cuba opens up–as it inevitably will. Sooner rather than later as generational change exacts its impact. Tampa is a natural “gateway” to Cuba–from cargo to cruise passengers.
But hopefully sight won’t be lost of the other benefits, even though the purview of local officials is obviously not foreign policy.
A half-century-old, Cold War-relic policy has had adverse humanitarian implications for the Cuban people, and travel restrictions are an affront to the basic American freedom to travel. Normalized Cuban-American relations would also benefit the U.S. geopolitically.
Nobody else in our hemisphere agrees with the U.S. position of isolating Cuba. We’re bigger than that; we’re better than that. The status quo also undermines American credibility at the United Nations where only Israel, Palau and Micronesia vote with the U.S. on the embargo. Looking like a hypocritical bully in front of a world we want to rally for trade and anti-terrorism cooperation helps no one.
A lot of good–across a spectrum of causes–can happen from a foreign-policy reset on Cuba. And nobody benefits economically more than Tampa. Buena suerte, Sr. Cohen and Sras. Capín and Mulhern.