NURI VALLBONA/Miami Herald Staff
Vicki Huddleston listens as University of Miami officials announce
the receipt of a $1 million federal grant for its Cuba Transition Project.
Behind the ambassador is a bust of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.
Posted on 03/03/2002 2:33:08 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Before becoming the principal officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in September 1999, Vicki Huddleston -- a career foreign service officer and former ambassador -- had worked in Africa, Haiti and Latin America.
She had also worked on Cuba issues before, as deputy coordinator and then coordinator of the State Department's Office of Cuban Affairs from 1989 to 1993.
Her interest in the world beyond her Arizona home began as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru, where she organized the financing for two housing cooperatives in Arequipa. Then she worked in Peru and Brazil for the American Institute for Free Labor Development.
After her stint on the State Department's Cuba desk, she was named deputy chief of the U.S. Mission in Port-au-Prince from 1993 to 1995 during the deployment of the multinational force meant to restore democracy in Haiti. As the top U.S. diplomat in the troubled nation, she held meetings at her home with top Haitian commanders and was attacked by members of a mob protesting U.S. interference in their country. They pounded on her car at the port as she arrived to greet some 200 American soldiers and 25 Canadian military trainers as part of a 1,300-member U.N. military and police contingent arriving in Haiti to prepare for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
In 1994-1995, she and other members of the U.S. Embassy in Haiti were honored with the Distinguished Service Award and the Award for Valor for their efforts in an extremely hostile environment. She was then named United States ambassador to the Republic of Madagascar from 1995 to 1997 and spent the two years after that as Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs.
NURI VALLBONA/Miami Herald Staff
Vicki Huddleston listens as University of Miami officials announce
the receipt of a $1 million federal grant for its Cuba Transition Project.
Behind the ambassador is a bust of Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.
Her tour of duty ends in September. She has been more vocal in recent months in defense of island dissidents and in her criticism of the Cuban government.
Huddleston was in South Florida recently for the presentation of a $1 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development to the University of Miami's Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies. The money is for the institute's Cuba Transition Project, which seeks to study issues that may face Cubans in a transition to democracy.
Huddleston, who also met with journalists and commanders at the U.S. Southern Command, spent several hours with Herald staff writer Elaine de Valle:
Q: What headway or impact has the opposition in Cuba made in the past few years?
A: I think people in Cuba see them as speaking for them. It's hard for me or anybody to say what Cuban people think, but the fact that 10 years ago we had a relatively small group and principally in Havana, and now it has spread through the country -- and not just human rights activists but independent journalists, independent libraries, independent clinics, farmer cooperatives -- is very significant. They're expressing the will of the Cuban people to have free expression, to have a choice in their future. Obviously, in [Cuba], these people are receiving no publicity. In Granma, nothing is printed on these people. So who they are known to -- at least people like Elizardo Sánchez, Osvaldo Payá, Marta Beatriz Roque, Vladimiro Roca -- they are known to the international community, the international press, people who listen to Radio Martí, obviously the people who live around them and the other people in the movement. Look at the Varela Project [which calls for a plebiscite guaranteed by the 1976 Constitution] as an example. That is Payá's project, but other groups are supporting the idea that there should be a referendum on the type of government in Cuba. That's spread solely by word of mouth.
I think most of the medical doctors know who Marta Beatriz Roque is because she has tried to help doctors who want to leave, who want to be reunited with their families.
But I don't know if dissidents is the correct term for them. First of all, they are peaceful, and they follow democratic means. Should we call them oppositionists, dissidents or activists? Activists may be the best word for them. They are people active in the struggle to create a change in Cuba. Marta Beatriz and Elizardo are getting information out of Cuba on what's happening to the activists: who has been jailed. Who is under house arrest. Payá is asking the government to permit a vote on the type of government. What we have to look for is more Martas, more Elizardos, more Osvaldos.
Q: How can the U.S. help? And should it?
A: Certainly we should play a role. Any kind of role we play is going to be opposed by the Cuban government.
They are going to say we are interfering with a domestic issue. But of course we should play a role. All over the world, the United States defends and supports human rights and developing democracies. . . That is why using the [Agency for International Development] money is very useful. Because it's going to help the Cuban people prepare for the future.
There can't be a think tank in Cuba to explore these questions: How are we going to move in this direction? How are we going to have elections? But if people outside of Cuba can do it, particularly if it includes contributions from people inside Cuba to legitimize it, it can be a very good thing. We can be a signpost: The way to a democracy is through human rights and freedom.
The American government can't do much more. But the American people can do two things. Number one, they can participate in outreach, by sending books, subscribing to The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald and sending newspapers. If they are confiscated, good. Then the Customs person can read it. They can send money to buy computers and illegal satellite dishes. They can send medicine to start independent clinics. So that you can empower the Cuban people enough so that they have a certain protection from their own government. So they don't have to rely on the government for everything. By sending medicines to independent doctors, for example, their community starts to protect them because they can get medicine from them and they can't get them anywhere else. If you have them and share them, you gain a certain leadership position.
Number two I think is in some ways harder for Cuban Americans -- and as a non-Cuban American, I should tread lightly because I haven't had their experiences and history. But Cubans on the island are afraid of the future, of what that future holds. And Cuban Americans can explain to their friends and family that it's a brighter future. A future in which they can earn a fair wage for their work, where they can travel freely, where their children will have an opportunity for a better job or house so they don't have to move back in with Mom and Dad. It's important that Cuban Americans in the United States be seen by Cuban people as their friends and supporters. . . The exile community has become the enemy or has been made into the enemy, and the Cuban American people have to overcome that image . . . There is a special effort by the Cuban government to make them the enemy.
Q: What does the average Cuban on the island think of the Cuban exile community?
A: That's hard for me to answer. It depends on the education level. If they are not very educated, if they live in a rural area, they probably believe what they hear in the state-run media and in the rallies, which is not good. But if they are more sophisticated and listen to Radio Martí, or if you're at the university or work at a hospital, then you're likely not going to believe the negative propaganda. You're probably aware the Cuban American community does not represent a threat to you. But if you're a farmer in a rural area, or a teacher or a guard placed outside my house, you might believe what the Cuban government tells you. There is a billboard in Cuba that says ``There are a million children who will sleep in the street tonight. Not one is Cuban.''
Cuban Americans need to take every opportunity to overcome that image. So that when they're on radio talking about the future of Cuba when the government is gone, they need to talk about how there are going to be lines of communication that they're going to build, that there will be investment and an exchange of ideas, that there will be educational opportunity and cooperation. That's what we need to be talking about to get this message through.
Q: Does Fidel Castro enjoy much support still?
A: I remember going to this baseball game and the whole crowd is going, 'Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!' There are clearly groups that find it very much in their interest to support the government. The military, the security forces, and people in important places of power, for example. Then you have everybody else who needs to keep their job or get their child into a particular school or get an opportunity to go out of the country or get a gift of a fan or a bicycle. So it's difficult for me to say how widespread is the support for Fidel and the government. If the Cuban government, as it says, enjoys wide support, why don't they test it? Why not a plebiscite on the government? Why not an election? A true election with international observation, as internal dissidents call for.
Q: Many people point to an increase in visits by U.S. lawmakers and business people, as well as Cuba's historic purchase of $35 million of grain and recent comments by Raúl Castro about increased cooperation in the area of drug trafficking enforcement, migration and anti-terrorism tasks, as a warming of relations between Washington and Havana. Is it true?
A: No, there's not a warming of relations. But there's certainly a charm offensive on the part of the Cuban government. Nothing has changed in the relationship and nothing will change as long as Cuba doesn't make fundamental changes that President Bush has laid out, and the administration has said that the particular concern in the case of Cuba is human rights, civil liberties and free elections in Cuba.
Q: Should Cuba be removed from the list of terrorist states?
A: Cuba knows what it has to do to get off the list of terrorist states, and that is simply not to give safe haven to terrorist groups as it has in the past. We suspect, and in some cases we know, that they have provided safe harbor to members of the ETA [Basque separatists], other leftist movements of Latin America, the macheteros [pro-independence radicals in Puerto Rico] and the 70-some fugitives from the United States [the FBI believes that 77 federal fugitives are in Cuba, including former CIA agent Frank Terpil, a convicted arms trafficker, and Robert Vesco, indicted in a multimilliion dollar fraud]. Those are not terrorists, but they are still fugitives from justice. Cuba is not the player it once was on the world stage. Ten or 15 years ago, Cuba was a major player and Fidel had a large platform. It's much smaller now. . . . I don't see Cuba even as a leader on the Caribbean stage. I see more democratic Caribbean countries taking leadership roles.
Cuba is still sending doctors all over the world. They are still a leader in the arts and in sports. That's where Cuba is a leader. It is also a leader in the third-world bloc in the international forum because they help articulate the needs and opinions of other third-world countries. I would think Cuba could become a positive leader in the Caribbean and developing world as a democracy. [Cubans], as they've proved in the United States and also on the island, have an enormous wealth of talent and ability.
Q: Should travel restrictions to Cuba be lifted?
A: The problem with the lifting of travel restrictions is that the Cubans control it because they issue the visas. They can put quotas. They can decide to allow only the tourists going to Varadero and Cayo Coco and ensure they have very little contact with the Cuban people. And all that will do, initially, is fill the government coffers and build up the regime. It's ironic because what you need is for the government to respond to the current economic crisis by opening up, by letting Cubans own and operate their own businesses, by letting them invest, letting them stay at hotels. [In Cuba,] the economy is shrinking. It is too dependent on tourism and remittances. Their way of fixing the problem is to fill up the hotels. A far preferable way . . . would be to grow the economy by letting the people invest in their community by starting small businesses -- not just restaurants and taxis and services, but also . . . creating products. You have natural capitalists in Cuba, and the proof of that is in the cars they have and how they take care of them. If allowed to work independently, they would create wealth through their own labor . . .
Q: Are conditions in Cuba ripe for another mass exodus?
A: No, the weather is bad. [chuckle]. It is essential that our migratory laws be observed for the security of our nation's borders. We are also very concerned about the tragic loss of life that results from illegal migration. I can understand the frustrations of young people who want a better life, but they must also think about their families and their futures. They have many years in front of them -- Cuba will change -- and they will want to be alive to enjoy this new future in Cuba. Also, there are numerous Cubans that could qualify to legally immigrate to the U.S.. I hope family members will petition for their loved ones in Cuba. A wait of a few years is much more desirable than a risky and life-threatening illegal sea voyage.
Because she is reflecting the position of the Bush administration.
In an interview last week, Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge G. Castañeda expressed concern about the combination of ``a serious deterioration of the political and economic situation in several Latin American countries . . . and the somewhat complicated leadership situation, which makes things more difficult.''
Will Fox take a more active role in seeking international financial aid for Argentina, solving Colombia's civil war, or preventing political violence in Venezuela? I asked the foreign minister.
''President Fox will have to assume a position of greater leadership in Latin America, simply because of the flow of events, not because anybody asked him to do so,'' Castañeda.
But Fox will bargain hard with the Bush administration in exchange for becoming a regional crisis manager. Fox aides say the Mexican president will have clout at home and abroad only if he is perceived as having the White House's full support, which will need to be more than words of sympathy. [End Excerpt]
The recent events at the Mexican Embassy in Havana shows that Fox came short of the expectation of becoming a continental leader ready to stand for democracy and respect for human rights. From his last encounter with Castro he came out as a big but empty leader.
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