Cuba and the US: Stranded in Time

For a couple of decades, I have assumed that the US embargo on Cuba was an anachronism that would end before long -- say, within a decade. Today, reading a 2007 review by Christopher Hitchens (in his superb final anthology of essays Arguably) of Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, it occurred to me that I have likely been wrong in my assumption.

As Hitchens notes in his review, in 2007 Havana was "stranded in time", "compelled to remain very much as Greene described it" in 1958 (Our Man in Havana was published less than 3 months before Fidel Castro and his guerillas entered Havana in 1959). Like me, Hitchens assumed that this state of affairs is temporary, "until the day the dam breaks and the full tide of Americanization flows in".

But this temporary situations for a long time -- it has already been almost 55 years. The key reason for the impasse on Cuba is that neither Democrats or Republicans are willing to take the risk that policy change would produce electoral disadvantage in Florida, where many powerful Cubans still think of the days before the revolution. This is certainly not an idle fear. The US election of 2000 of course hung in the balance for months over the Florida vote and recounts, ultimately decided by the Supreme Court. And things were again very close in 2012, although Florida could not have changed the outcome of that election even if had gone to Romney rather than Obama.

So it suddenly occurs to me that the opening of Cuba may not happen in my lifetime, even if I am lucky enough to be around another 50 years. What a shame.