As we write, one of the most important games in baseball history is being played. On Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Rays took the field against Cuba’s national baseball team in Havana. In the stands was President Obama. Seated next to him was Cuba’s president, 85-year-old Raul Castro, Fidel Castro’s brother. Obama’s visit to Cuba, the first since Calvin Coolidge visited 88 years ago, coupled with his decision to open an American embassy and remove many travel and banking restrictions, marks the end of an embarrassing, counterproductive and downright stupid chapter in American history. We hope.
Removing the trade embargo that has crippled Cuba’s economy and helped to impoverish its people for the past half-century can only be done by Congress, something the current Republican-controlled Congress won’t do. It is also progress a President Cruz or Trump would undo.
The Castro brothers, along with Argentine doctor Che Guevara and Cuban poet Jose Marti, among others, were right to revolt against the corrupt, U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. No less than President John F. Kennedy said so.
“I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: To some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear,” Kennedy said in 1963.
However, their choice of a replacement political system, a communist dictatorship, was unfortunate.
America’s response, an attempt to isolate Cuba though it’s just 90 miles from Miami and has a long history of close ties with the United States, helped keep the Castro government in power and guaranteed that it would stay in the Soviet orbit. Today, it is one of the last of the world’s communist nations, but it is no North Korea. It is not a threat to the United States or the world. Later this week, the Rolling Stones will play a free concert in Havana to a crowd estimated at 400,000.
Like many nations ruled by dictators, many of Cuba’s people and the majority of its youth admire the U.S. and long for a system that gives them a say over their country’s future. Obama’s visit will swell their longing for democracy. America, too, never severed its ties with Cuba, at least culturally. Scores of American professional baseball players hail from Cuba, and Jackie Robinson played there before coming back from spring training to break the color barrier in baseball. Among the Cuban greats are Minnie Minoso, Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez Pedroso, Tony Oliva, and two who were in the stands on Tuesday: beloved Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant and Jose Cardenal.
Desi Arnaz, a.k.a. Ricky Ricardo, never left America’s TVs. The music played at the Buena Vista Social Club and the voice of Gloria Estefan can be heard in any big city. Cuban restaurants dot the American landscape.
For 50 years, the world watched as its biggest superpower picked on a little island nation of 11 million hungry people just off its shores. It’s only a matter of time before the Castro brothers pass into history, and the Cuban people will be faced with a decision to accept whoever follows them or demand a new system of government.
Obama’s visit, and closer cultural and economic ties to the United States, will tilt them in favor of democracy.
A bright day on the island of Cuba
