adminBill Van Auken Correspondent
The Obama administration and the Castro government formally opened their respective embassies in Havana and Washington on Monday. The move comes 54 years after US imperialism broke off all ties to Cuba in January 1961 and prepared the abortive invasion of the island nation by CIA-trained mercenaries at
the Bay of Pigs three months later.
The formal embassy openings consummated the deal announced by US President Barack Obama and Cuba’s President Raul Castro last December 17 after a process of negotiations toward a “normalisation” of relations that was initially brokered by the Vatican and Canada. The deal was formalised at the beginning of this month with an exchange of letters between the two presidents. The Obama administration cleared the way for this step with the removal of Cuba from the US State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, a libellous designation that inverted the real history of CIA-orchestrated terrorism against Cuba.
Monday’s embassy re-openings were a study in contrasts. The Cuban government organised an elaborate ceremony addressed by its foreign secretary, Bruno Rodriguez, and attended by some 500 people, including a delegation of state officials and others from Cuba, representatives of the Washington diplomatic corps as well as those of non-governmental groups that had supported closer ties between the US and Cuba.
Also present was a US delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson and including Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Benjamin Rhodes and National Security Council Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Mark Feierstein.
No such celebration was organized at the formal transformation of what had been the US Interests Section in Havana into a US embassy. US officials indicated that Secretary of State John Kerry will visit the island next month.
The divergent responses of the two governments to the restoration of diplomatic relations reflect the different objectives that they are pursuing. The Castro government and Cuba’s ruling strata hope that they can secure their interests by ending the half-century conflict with the US and expanding the capitalist market economy, while maintaining their political monopoly, along the lines of the rule of the Chinese Communist Party.
Washington, on the other hand, wants to return Cuba to the semi-colonial status that prevailed before 1959, while opening up the country to US capitalist exploitation, rather than ceding this potentially profitable market to US competitors in Europe and China.
It also is seeking to use the so-called normalisation as a means of improving US imperialism’s dismal reputation throughout Latin America.
In his speech at the ceremony in Washington Monday, Cuban Foreign Secretary Rodriguez stated that the Cuban government’s actions represented a renewal of the rebuffed attempt by Fidel Castro, the leader of the petty-bourgeois nationalist guerilla movement that ousted US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, to reach an accommodation with US imperialism. The Eisenhower administration made it clear it was unwilling to accept even the most minimal reforms or even change to the long-standing US treatment of Cuba as a de facto colony, pushing the new Cuban regime to seek Soviet aid.
Rodriguez said that Havana’s aim was to achieve a “civilised coexistence” with Washington, adding that the development of such a relationship would contribute to “the stability of the continent.”
As it has been decades since the Castro government encouraged or aided guerilla movements in Latin America, this promise of “stability” suggests Havana’s willingness to actively assist in containing revolutionary threats to capitalism in the region.
Rodriguez acknowledged that “normalisation of relations” represented a “huge challenge,” as “There have never been normal relations between US and Cuba” since the latter’s formal independence from Spain at the end of the 19th century.
He cited the infamous 1902 Platt Amendment, which was imposed upon Cuba under conditions of a US military occupation following the Spanish-American War, forcing the island’s government to accept Washington’s “right” to militarily intervene in the country at will and to cede the territory still occupied by the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
Rodriguez insisted that Havana sought a normalization of ties with Washington that would not “prejudice” Cuban independence or sovereignty, while warning against any US attempt to “persist in the attainment of obsolete and unjust goals and only proposing a mere change in the methods to achieve them.”
Of course this is precisely the aim of the Obama administration and the way in which the “normalisation” is being treated within the whole of the US ruling establishment, after the failure of over half a century of non-recognition and economic blockade to topple the Castro regime.
The White House issued a perfunctory statement on Monday on the embassy opening in Havana, saying that under the terms negotiated with Havana, US operatives “will have the ability to engage more broadly across the island.”
The statement added that “the best way to advance universal values like freedom of speech and assembly is through more engagement with the Cuban people,” signalling Washington’s intention to continue fostering and bankrolling “dissident” groups in a bid to destabilise the Cuban regime.
The move toward full diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana has been accompanied by an aggressive push by European capitalist interests to corner as much as possible of the Cuban market before their American counterparts can gain access. — wsws.
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