Twin personalities and policies clash in Cuba

Once upon a time, there were two fiercely ambitious brothers in Cuba - but the two men were very, very different.

Fidel, the older of the two, who would become world-famous, was a bearded pillar of fire when he spoke to "la masa." Raul, the kid, was unusually small, with a pinched face; his talents were not the undisciplined ones of The Crowd but those of the ranked obedience of The Military.

Strangely enough, when the two brothers had been running Cuba for many years, there also happened to be two presidents in the big country to the north with two very different views about how to deal with the Castros. And this month, those two leaders and their ideas clashed when President Donald Trump, a man not unlike Fidel, tried his best to rescind the policies of President Barack Obama.

But just a minute - perhaps we should say Trump APPEARED to rescind Obama's "opening" to the island. For there are curious contradictions in this policy from a White House where what you see is so often not what you get.

Essentially, what President Trump announced last week was that Obama's policy had been what he hates most: a bad deal. Cuba had not really given up anything. Repression had only grown over the last two years. The business of the U.S. and Cuba was essentially not much business.

Sure, Obama's policies had led to more than 4 million tourists entering Cuba last year - a record number - of which about 614,000 were Americans, some with organizations and some as individuals. Now, under Trump, travel would become notably less romantic, allowed only in large, organized and carefully overseen groups.

And therein lies the problem: If you're trying to encourage bottom-up "small amigo" venture capitalism, you can't do it very well with organized travel groups, which will pass these budding small enterprises right by.

Then there are the whispers that are already becoming newspaper fodder. The new policy directs a department of the U.S. Treasury to provide Americans doing business in Cuba with lists of prohibited hotels and other businesses linked to the GAESA, Cuba's humongous conglomerate belonging to Raul's Cuban military, which controls more than half of the island's economy. It seems to those of obviously little faith that President Trump, a famous hotel and resort builder himself, may be in effect freezing investment in Cuba in order to, as The Washington Post so unkindly put it, "undermine a growth area for his industry rivals who have raced in recent years to establish a foothold in a lucrative new market."

Last year, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, now merged with Marriott International, grasped Obama's opening to become the first Cuban hotel managed (not owned) by a U.S. company in nearly 60 years. But the Trump businesses could not take advantage of that opening because of the presidency (Trump has shown substantial interest in Cuba in the past), and now no one else can take advantage of it, either (for a while).

Meanwhile, the "Sad, Beautiful Story of the Isle of the Two Brothers" - what a great name for a movie! - has moved on. Well, let's correct that, too. Cuba has CRAWLED on.

Except for the leaders and the military, Cubans are utterly impoverished. Presidente Fidel has died. Presidente Raul, head of the military since 1959, has put the island on a much more military bearing.

And it looks as though his son-in-law, the humbly named Gen. Luis Alberto Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas (Dear Lord, please find the poor guy a nickname!), will take over soon and find that both Russia and China are moving in on the hemisphere - China's investments in the region now top the $100 billion mark.

One has to ask what the Trumpian changes really mean. The restriction to organized tours will backfire, isolating the small businesses Cuba needs; the message of hostility is self-defeating; American businesses and especially American agriculture are screaming already at being cut out of Cuban investments.

Surprisingly, some of those who are usually critical of President Trump are sending mixed messages about the new policy. Even The Washington Post writes in an editorial that "his message is not wrong - neither about the lack of political reform in Cuba since Mr. Obama's effort began, nor about the risk that Mr. Castro and his cronies will use greater economic flows as a de facto bailout."

Perhaps for now, we just have to live with ambiguity and have hope. That is, after all, what our diplomats and policymakers have to live with every day.

Email Georgie Anne Geyer at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

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