Cuban innovation will position it for the future

After more than a half-century, the first commercial flight between Cuba and the United States touched down Wednesday morning with a flight between Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Santa Clara, Cuba.

It’s a short trip in the air, but it marks a huge step forward in U.S.-Cuban relations. In the coming months, the two neighboring countries who have barely spoken since 1962 will continue to normalize their relationship, and this flight will be just the first of many trips.  The increased number of flights and competition will bring down fares.  More Americans in Cuba will only accelerate change in Cuba, and Cuba is primed to thrive.

{mosads}This summer, I traveled to Cuba on a people-to-people license with Witness for Peace, an organization dedicated to supporting peace, justice, and sustainable economies in the Americas.

As a professor of Latin American politics, and since I lived in Miami during the heated Elián González custody battle, I had some understanding of the Cuban exile community’s plight. However, I never presupposed to know Cuba’s realities. Honestly, I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.

Cubans repeatedly asked when I thought the embargo would be lifted. Inevitably, Congress will yield to domestic pressure from the U.S. business and human rights communities, globalization, and global opinion, but each passing moment just extends a counterproductive, hypocritical and inhumane policy that goes against the United States’ professed commitment to human rights.

Squeezing the citizens of a country to affect regime change is absurd. The embargo has done little harm to the Castro brothers and has actually furthered their political and economic interests for the last 50-plus years.

Strangely, the embargo itself has become normal in Cuba. The vast majority of Cubans were born after the embargo was first implemented. But the definition of “normal” in Cuba is bizarre in almost every other developed country.

1950s vehicles are ubiquitous. Consumer goods, medical technology and personal hygiene products are not.

Big box stores and supermarkets are non-existent because multinational corporations conducting business in the United States are prohibited from operating in Cuba.

But perhaps the most striking way to convey the realities of Cuba and U.S.-Cuba relations comes from conversations with two Uber drivers in Miami where I stayed upon my return from the island.

One of my drivers had only been in the United States for four years.  He was approximately 30 years old. Another driver, in his late fifties, left Cuba in 1994. Their perspectives could not be more different.

The younger driver told me his dream is to return to Cuba and start an import-export business once the United States lifts the embargo.

When I asked the older driver what he thought about Obama’s historic visit and the likelihood of ending the embargo, he spit out a few colorful expletives. He went on to say Cuba was a “repressive police state. People are starving to death and Castro has locked up thousands of innocent people in concentration camps.” He ended by saying he’d never step foot on the island again.

Indeed, the Cuba government does not permit organized political opposition, and dissidents have been imprisoned. But I saw no evidence of starvation or homelessness.

Yes, by U.S. standards, Cubans are poor. But they don’t live in abject poverty and they have very rich cultural lives. All Cubans have free access to a very good health-care system. Their medical schools and doctors are world-renowned and their life expectancy at birth is 79.4 years, slightly more than the United States at 79.1. Not to mention Cubans are well educated with nearly 100 percent adult literacy.

To some extent, Cuban innovation, ingenuity, fortitude and resilience are as much products of adapting to the embargo as they are of the Cuban Revolution.

For example, there aren’t any “mechanics” in Cuba. Instead there are engineers, fabricators and inventors. Replacement parts for cars made in the 1950s simply aren’t available.

Instead, recycling and repurposing are the norm in Cuba. Organic farming and sustainable agriculture are also widespread.

While it has served as an incredible burden for decades, ironically, the embargo also inculcated values and skills that will help the Cuban people flourish in a post-embargo, more economically free Cuba, when that day finally comes.

Vincent T. Gawronski is professor of political science at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.

The views expressed by authors are their own and not the views of The Hill.