Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, right, during a UNASUR countries meeting at the Summit of the Americas on Saturday, April 18, 2009 in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
By Andress Oppenheimer
There was a lot of talk about a new chapter in U.S-Cuban relations at the 34-country Summit of the Americas, but top U.S. and Latin American officials point to some hopeful signs that go beyond the rhetoric.
After President Barack Obama's opening speech at the summit stating that ''the United States seeks a new beginning with Cuba,'' several top Latin American and U.S. officials told me -- granted, with various degrees of conviction -- that there are a few concrete signs that Cuba may accept Obama's olive branch.
Obama aides are cautiously encouraged by Cuban leader Raúl Castro's statement Friday in Venezuela that Cuba may have made some ''mistakes'' in the past and that ''we are willing to discuss everything,'' including human rights, with he U.S. government.
U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough told me Saturday that ''we are mostly struck by President Castro's admission that they could be wrong. That strikes me as a degree of candor that we haven't seen heretofore.'' He added, ''But the fact remains that the steps [President Obama] outlined in the last week are steps that he has been talking about for two years, since he wrote an op-ed for The Miami Herald in August 2007.''
The Obama opinion piece called for, among other things, the release of political prisoners in Cuba.
Another senior U.S. official cautioned, however, that ''we are at the very beginning of the search for a new relationship with Cuba, and that's going to take time. We are going to take a deep breath, go through the summit, get some time to reflect and then think about future steps.''
GAUGING GESTURES
Many senior Latin American officials believe Cuba is sincere in its claims to want better ties with Washington. Cuba's deputy foreign minister Alejandro González Galeano visited Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner last week, bringing a message from Havana that Cuba wanted to prevent a collapse of the Trinidad summit, along the lines of what happened at the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, they say.
A similar message was relayed by Cuba to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they say.
''The Cubans wanted all of us to ask for an end of the U.S. blockade to Cuba, but not to turn it into a make-or-break issue that could break the momentum toward better relations with the United States,'' a senior South American diplomat told me.
A story on Argentina's daily Ambito Financiero's website Saturday said that Cuba had asked Fernández de Kirchner to ''contain'' Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at the Trinidad summit. It said that Cuba feared that U.S. public opinion would turn against a thaw in U.S.-Cuban ties if Obama was mistreated by his colleagues over the Cuban issue at the summit, and that Cuba needed better ties with Washington in order to revamp its ailing economy.
Some Cuba watchers say, however, that U.S. and Latin American officials are seeing too much into the latest Cuban moves.
''There is no evidence of a significant shift in Cuban positions,'' said Richard Feinberg, a former senior Clinton White House official. 'The Castro brothers have said hundreds of times that they have to `rectify' past errors. The administration is looking for positive responses, and they may be overplaying the significance of Raúl's words.''
IN MY OPINION
Whether Raúl Castro's statement marks a shift in Cuban policy or not, I'm skeptical that Cuba is sincere in its claims to want better ties with Washington.
The Cuban dictatorship needs a confrontation with the United States to justify its absolute hold on power and its total suppression of political, labor and civil rights. Over the past 50 years, every time Washington has moved to improve bilateral ties, Fidel Castro has done something to sabotage it.
And I'm not sure that the Obama administration has a clear Cuba strategy. White House officials go back and forth saying that ''the ball is now in Cuba's court,'' and that ''the United States will make policy based not on what Cuba does, but on U.S. interests.'' I'm confused, and I would bet that I'm not the only one scratching my head.
But if Obama is just throwing a bone to Cuba in order to help change world public opinion and encourage Latin America to persuade Cuba to open up, that's good. And if he is just testing Raúl Castro to see if he is more open-minded than Fidel, that's good, too.
Andres Oppenheimer is a foreign affairs columnist and a member of The Miami Herald journalist team that won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. The Oppenheimer Report appears every Sunday and Thursday. (aoppenheimer@herald.com).
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