There is one topic that goes highly unnoticed in the United States, and that is our relationship with Latin America; the region that brings us many of the immigrants that make up this great country. Although the Cold War ended almost 20 years ago, and Fidel Castro, the controversial leader of the Communist Party of Cuba whom up until his last days penned opinion pieces in “el diario” Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, passed away, the fate of the relationship with the United States still remains an important topic because of the embargo kept in place almost fifty years after the triumph of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Daniel Erickson discusses this and more in his work The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution.
Although the embargo is on the least important on United States agenda, it definitely affects many others. Cuba, a topic mainly discussed on travel blogs, Erickson gives a perspective on the country that any person without knowledge can gain a base understanding on U.S-Cuban relations. Although Cuba’s threat to the security of America has dwindled since the Cuban Missile Crisis and after the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S continues to back an embargo the has proven inefficient. Given that the U.S agenda is more interested in the anti-Islamic movement and the threat of ISIS, the thawing of Cuban-American relations is very significant because it continues to remain one of the biggest election issues every four years given the power of the Cuban-American lobby and the fact that Florida, a perennial swing state populated by Cuban ex-pats, holds a lot of power over our elections every four years.
Erickson offers a very important insight and background as to why the U.S Cuban relations became as strained as they are today and why they will continue to be a persistent issue in the future. From reading the text, Erickson takes the anti-U. S embargo stance and places a special emphasis on why the U.S needs to approach the issue in a different way in order to get the results that they desire. One of the main issues issues discussed is a difference of opinion on what the United States and Cuba consider to be human rights. Erickson approaches these differing points of views through interviews with policy makers in Washington, Cuban expatriates, and members of the Cuban diaspora. Erickson tells their stories in a myriad of ways. However, his stance is clear from the beginning, he believes that there are other alternatives to securing a democracy in Cuba.
Erickson is very successful in supporting his claims. He starts by explaining how folks around the globe assumed that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba would fall with it, and discussing the tightening of sanctions through Helms-Burton Act of 1996, thus showing that the United States has a more reactive approach, rather than one that is innovative. He later talks about the ineffectiveness of these American policies because they only strengthen the Castro agenda and continue to keep him in power because of the anti-imperialist crowd Castro is able to gather due to the effects of these policies. Erickson uses history and the past mistakes of American foreign policy towards Cuba in order to make his case, which in my opinion is very effective because it leaves out certain biases and uses facts and the effects of these facts in order to support his critiques of American sentiments towards Cuba.
In chapter six, Erickson goes on to speak about the U.S bias in every election cycle towards the support of the U.S embargo against Cuba. He mentions Florida’s position as a swing state and also the fact that it is the biggest home to the Cuban-American population so politicians always desire to win the state of Florida. Through his interviews, however, we see that many officials that are subsequently elected to office agree that a different approach must be taken so that any actual progress can actually be made.
This book can definitely find it’s place in a more journalistic area rather than academic. Through Erickson’s investigative techniques he brings a story to the forefront of those affected the most by these policies, and although Erickson does not aim to provide an analysis of U.S-Cuban relations that is based on numbers, what the reader will indeed get out of this text is a history of the U.S-Cuban relations, an explanation of the factors that have made relations this way, and where the country will go next from an American perspective that we can certainly tell has thoroughly researched this topic.
On the other hand, one of Erickson’s downfalls is that he holds American democracy on a very high pedestal and believes that our style of democracy is the model that Cuban society should follow. Although a bit contradicting, he stays true to his point of view, but I caught a bit of his bias in small sections throughout the book. He also fails to showcase the perspective of pro-revolution voices and forces. However, the perspective of Cuban society that he does grant a place in his book are the voices of the Cubans who want to pursue a reform in their government. While reading the book, I noticed that many pro-Castro voices are missing, I believe that including those viewpoints would only support his argument even further because it shows that there are people living in Cuba who support their lifestyle and their government. In brief, the main topic of this work is to highlight the ineffectiveness of current American policy towards Cuba and to encourage an open discussion on how to reform our policy toward the island, although not quite the academic read, Erickson’s research is not one that should go unnoticed because of the way he effortlessly supported his viewpoint with facts that are easily a google search away.