Visiting Cuba Helped Me Reconsider My Stance on the Embargo
Carmen Cusido, a child of Cuban immigrants, grew up taking a hard line on Cuban-American relations. A trip to her parents' homeland changed her mind.
'I took a hard-line position on US-Cuba policy issues – a reflection of my upbringing. ... Meeting my family members and other Cuban citizens during that trip helped me reconsider my position on the embargo.'– Carmen Cusido
Fifty-three years after my father boarded a plane from Havana to New York, I visited Cuba for the first time.
“You don’t have roots there. Your mother and I carry the roots from a country without liberty,” said my father, Armando, a Cuban exile who vowed never to return to the island. “You’re American.”
In one sense, he was right. I was born in North Bergen and grew up in Union City, New Jersey. My mother, a college graduate, was a grade school teacher in Jersey City and my father was in retail sales, but I had the chance to consider a variety of career paths. I was grateful for the opportunity to study journalism as an undergraduate at Rutgers and a graduate student at Columbia Journalism School. I’ve had several advantages early in my career, the most recent being a return to Rutgers this semester to teach journalism.
But like many U.S.-born children of exiles, I yearned to visit my parents’ homeland and meet family members I’d only seen in yellowing pictures or heard in spotty phone conversations. My father’s insistence that I’m solely American also glossed over my childhood summers in Miami’s Little Havana community and our family’s long conversations about U.S. policy toward Cuba. “Would the fall of the Soviet Union signal the end for the Castro regime?” my parents and their cousins would ask themselves. “Would it mean the U.S. embargo would be lifted?”
The decades-long question about the embargo was answered in December when President Obama announced he’d engage Congress “in an honest and serious debate” about lifting it. Five years ago, the president lifted some travel restrictions, paving the way for nearly 100,000 Americans to visit family members. A new set of regulations went into effect on Friday that further eased restrictions on travel, business and spending money in Cuba.
I traveled to Cuba with an educational visa during the fall of 2013. My weeklong trip was organized through the Chamber of the Americas (COTA), a Denver-based nonprofit with a mission is to facilitate commerce and understanding between the businesses and governments of the Western Hemisphere.
Meeting my family members and other Cuban citizens during the trip helped me reconsider my position on the embargo. For most of my life, I took a hard line position on US-Cuba policy issues – a reflection of my upbringing. Some of those positions will not change. I’ll never be a supporter of the island’s current autocratic government that still oppresses Cubans. Sadly, the Cuban dictatorship has used the embargo as a scapegoat so they don’t have to deal with their own failed economic policies. As a result, I believe ending the embargo would expand opportunities for both Americans and Cubans and be a step in the right direction to help 11 million citizens on the island.
During our visit, we met with Cuban and U.S. officials, economists and academics in Havana and a tobacco farmer in Viñales, a town in the province of Pinar del Rio. At night, I’d explore the nightlife with my new friend Will, a tourist from New England. We’d sometimes smoke cigars or drink rum and talk until midnight or later.
I met a journalism student in her last year at the University of Havana. She told me she was disillusioned with the current system in Cuba. Media professionals, she said, are too afraid or apathetic to report issues that may be controversial. And though she shared her assessment of life on the island, she was adamant about not using her name in print for fear of repercussions from criticizing certain government policies.
Toward the end of my trip, I had an opportunity to visit with my cousin Adriana. She took me on a tour throughout Calle Obispo – Old Havana’s main artery, crowded with visitors and locals, art galleries, eateries and shops. We stopped by bookstores, hotels and flea markets to chat with her friends before finally settling down at a bar to catch up on decades’ worth of stories.
Adriana told me that our grandmother had been trying to convince her family to leave for the U.S. in 1980, during the time of the Mariel boatlift.
“I begged my parents and younger sister to stay in Cuba. In those days, you were ostracized among your peers if you considered leaving,” my 49-year-old cousin said.
She’d like to see some reforms, including increased wages. Cubans earn an average monthly salary equivalent to about 20 US dollars. But she calls herself apolitical. “I live and work here. My family is here. This is my home,” she added.
Carmen Cusido also published an opinion piece on CNN and was interviewed by ABC News. Media inquiries: Carl Blesch, cblesch@ucm.rutgers.edu, 848-932-0550.