U.S.-Cuban relations

The Cuban government showed about half of President Bush’s recent speech and provided extensive excerpts, which is unprecedented.

Some experts wondered whether the decision to air and print the speech was part of interim President Raul Castro's campaign to open the Cuban news media to criticism. Castro, in office since his brother Fidel fell ill 15 months ago, has allowed the media to run articles critical of the system, and also has convened neighborhood meetings to air complaints.

"I am not surprised, because there have been changes in the media which are definitely part of Raul Castro's decisions," Rafael Hernandez, editor of the political magazine Issues, said by phone from Havana. "The changes in the press are something that should have happened sooner."

Hernandez said the Cuban leadership also probably decided to run the speech so Cubans could see Bush and judge for themselves.

"I think U.S. policy is like any horror-movie monster," Hernandez said.

What a strange combination. On the one hand, Raul has widely been viewed as more pragmatic than Fidel, and therefore more open to the idea of criticism, albeit tightly controlled (as the article notes, for example, the government did not allow the airing of the names of political prisoners). This could therefore signal some type of real change, the extent of which is impossible to guess.

On the other hand, Bush’s speech and his policy in general are so poorly thought out (one part of the speech suggested radical change in Cuba, in exchange for which we’d allow religious groups to give them some computers and internet access) that the Cuban government can safely broadcast it. In other word, U.S. policy is so off the deep end that it doesn’t even require much censoring.