 Well, good evening and welcome. I'm Joan Russell, Vice President of Travel here at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia, and the Travel the World flagship program, which is for all the councils across the country. Please take a moment before we begin to silence your cell phones and electronic devices. We do encourage you, though, to tweet after our speakers' remarks, and we also invite you to like our World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and our travel page on Facebook. I'd like to tell you about some upcoming events. We're pleased to announce that Ambassador Ryan Crocker was able to reschedule his visit, which will now be a luncheon, on Thursday, December 13th, at the Ragnar Valley Country Club in Villanova. He'll discuss President Obama's plan for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan as we turn over responsibility for security to Afghan forces. We hope that he may also help shed light on recent turmoil in countries like Libya, Egypt, and Syria. We're also looking forward to two timely discussions on the economy in the new year. On January 18th, Moody's analytics chief economist, Mark Zandi, will provide us with his outlook for the U.S. economy as the infamous fiscal cliff. Although I've been hearing people are now referring to it as a fiscal slope, approaches just in time for President Obama's new administration in second term. And on January 7th, Tom Friedman, Foreign Affairs columnist at the New York Times and author of That Used to Be Us, will discuss why he believes it's harder than ever to maintain American power in the world, focusing on four main challenges, globalization, the information technology revolution, chronic deficits, and unregulated energy consumption. Most importantly, we're here tonight because of a common interest in Cuba. So, whether you've traveled with us to Cuba in the past, are doing so in the near future, or are trying to decide if you'd like to go, please be sure to check out the many opportunities we offer to visit Cuba and other fascinating locations around the globe. Additional program and travel information is available on the table near the front exit door. These events and trips, along with the support of our members and partners, enable the Council to offer its most important programs to a diverse group of over 2,100 middle and high school students in 80 schools throughout the Philadelphia area, fostering the skills and sensibilities they will need in order to thrive and compete in a knowledge-based global community. And we have many students here tonight, so would you just raise your hands if you were able to stay for the program? Thanks so much for coming, and they had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Frank Argo Pryor before we started this program. But now I'm going to introduce and welcome our speaker, Raul Rodriguez and our moderator, Dr. Frank Argo Pryor, to the Council's podium. Raul Rodriguez is a professor and researcher at the Center for the Study of the Hemisphere and the United States at the University of Havana. He holds a master's degree in 20th century history and international relations from the School of History and Social Sciences at the University of Havana, as well as a degree in English from the Higher Institute of Foreign Languages. He's taught courses at the University of Havana about US history, Cuban history and US-Cuba relations to both Cuban and American students since 2004. Some of you may recognize Mr. Rodriguez as one of the fabulous expert speakers for the World Affairs Council's People to People programs that we offer now legally, and I may say that we now also have our license renewed for two years, so those programs are available to Cuba. And our moderator, Dr. Frank Argo Pryor, is a professor of Latin American history at Cain University in New Jersey, who received his PhD in Latin American history from Rutgers in 2004. He now teaches a variety of courses on Cuba and Latin America. His first book, Valencia Batista from Revolutionary to Strongland, was published in 2006, and he's currently completing a second volume of the biography. Frank is also highly involved in a number of social causes, specifically for immigrant rights. And of course, he's also led two trips to Cuba, and many of you were happy to reunite with him here in Philadelphia. So without further delay, please join me in welcoming Raúl Rodriguez and Frank Argo Pryor. Well, thank you, Joan, for that gracious introduction. I have to say the World Affairs Council is one of my favorite places to come and visit. I just love their community outreach. I've done some work with them in terms of some of the high schools and so forth, the UN. And so I just always love coming here to Philadelphia and the World Affairs Council. So yes, as Joan mentioned, I've traveled on several trips with the World Affairs Council to Cuba. And one of the people that we meet early on in our trip is Raúl. And Raúl is so well spoken. He speaks with such great clarity about the very troubled relationship between the United States and Cuba and the nuances and the transformation and the way it's metamorphosized over more than 50 years now. And so no matter what question you have, Raúl always has a very thoughtful answer about it. He's been fielding questions from tourists for quite a number of years and I've met him several times there. So I think the format that we discussed was that Raúl would start us off with some remarks, some broad general remarks. And then I have a series of questions and depending on how we're running for time, we want to leave some time for all of you to ask Raúl or I some questions. So without further ado, let me turn it over to Raúl Rodriguez. Raúl. Thank you very much. Bienvenido. Gracias. Thank you very much. It's very good to be here, despite the cold. Coming from the Caribbean, you can imagine that this is a very big endeavor for me, but I'm very happy to be here. As Fran was saying, I met the groups coming down before and this usually we engage in very interesting talks and discussions and for me it's very interesting to hear the questions most of all. Needless to say, this is a topic that is very complex, it's very broad, it has many angles of it. You can see it from the politics, from the economics, from the social, from the emotional. It's very emotional and it's a topic that really has drawn the attention of many people. As a Cuban who lives in Cuba, who works in Cuba, it is also a very big interest for me to come here and to speak and talk before an audience, essentially given the perspective of Cuba on this sense. Frank and I have been, I mean, first-money emails in the last couple of days about how we do this. Essentially what I would say is that the Cuban, the relation between Cuba and the United States is a relation that has deep historical roots. It is something, a relation that cannot be just framed in the 1959 or the post-1959 period. It's a relationship that goes well back into the 19th century. It's a relationship between a big country and a small country which are close together and it's a small country's quest for national sovereignty and in some ways self-determination. Of course, it's going to different periods and different moments. Needless to say, 1959 is a watershed. It's a moment, it's a break. It's a break and when you hear in the media and most of what they say, what they call the conventional wisdom is that it all started with Castro. Well, Frank knows and I know that it didn't start with Castro. A lot of things happened before that for Castro to come to power and when Castro came to power, it drew Cuba into a, started as a national independence in some way project that got drawn into the Cold War. Many things have happened in these 52 years. It would be impossible to cover them all in the time we have. So the only thing that I would also state is that for all these 50 years, the policy of the United States towards Cuba has been a state policy, regardless of the administration. They differ in methods and how to achieve one objective, but the bottom line from the Cuban perspective is that the administration of the United States since 1959 has tried to overthrow the government of Cuba by different means. You may go over in the last 52 years accounts of examples and administrations each with a somewhat different approach or a somewhat different way of looking at it, but the bottom line is that the Cuban regime is unacceptable for the United States and it's unacceptable in my opinion, not only because what happened in Cuba. It is true that the Cuban government has nationalized or nationalized American enterprises and made this whole discussion about that. But in my, in the other point of view would be is that this process took Cuba out of a pattern of Western hemisphere US hegemonic control, which was acceptable for the US ruling class. It is still acceptable. So no matter Democrat or Republicans, overall the objective is to bring Cuba back into this fold of Western hemisphere like-minded democracies with market economy and representative democracies. Again, this is a broad subject and there's a lot to discuss so I will, this is like, I wanted to state a few things and I'll be happy to continue my conversation with Frank and then listen to your questions. Thank you Raul. Well since you started off or since you ended off talking about how you know this is a policy that goes through 11 administrations that the anti-Cuban revolutionary strategy or policy, I thought I would go on to the question I was gonna ask about President Obama. Well you know as we know we all had an election here and one of the striking things in the Miami media was that about 50% of Cuban Americans voted for President Obama which is totally unheard of, unprecedented in the Cuban American community. And so and in fact a few days before the election there were flyers distributed throughout Miami saying that Obama was a good friend of Raul Castro and Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and so forth and there was this implication that he would lift the embargo, the US embargo against Cuba. So I thought it might be interesting to ask you whether you think that the re-election of President Obama is a positive development in the US-Cuba relationship. There is some speculation in foreign policy circles that in the second half of this administration he will further weaken the Cuban embargo, the aspects that he can weaken that are not bound by legislation. So I'm wondering if you see this as an important development, a turning point in the relationship. That's a good question. I'll try to do my best. Essentially what it ties into what I'm saying, it is true that if you compare the Obama administration with the previous administration there are some changes, some changes that are important in many ways because the previous administration there was a strong rhetorical back-and-forth attacks. The previous administration followed the line of tough and even tougher and no talking, no lines of communication, no ways of exchange because what they believed was that they have to shut down everything. So Obama comes in 2008 or years ago, almost four years ago, with this new beginning. A new beginning that the revolution, that the Cuban revolution is older than himself, that there is a need to work around this situation and he does a few things. In my view, things that he had promised the Cuban Americans in May of 2008. One of them is to allow Cuban Americans to travel to Cuba whenever they want, which I believe is very good. I'm happy that Cubans to live in this country can go back to their country of origin and visit their relatives and bring them gifts. Those of you who have been down there sitting in Miami airport with the big bags full of trinkets to bring back home and not only that, not the material things, you know, the emotional part of it, the disconnection of the family, that's wonderful. The fact that I'm able to be here speaking to you and the fact that this group of people like you can come to Cuba, it's a good thing. It's what has, so in other words, this administration has eased some of that aspect of the contact between the Cuban and the American people. Having said that, if you look at the other aspects of that, I mean the most, the core ones, it's pretty much the same because the Cuba still is in the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, which is something that not even in the Pentagon, people agree. Cuba is not a threat to the United States by any means, but still, formally and legally, Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism in the eyes of the State Department. Second, the financial transactions of Cuba are followed all over the world, meaning banks are fined because of dealing with Cuba. Third country banks, IMG Bank of the Netherlands got a fine of $619 million, if you want to go, for transactions they did with Cuba between 2002 and 2007. So those are examples to say that many of the things remain the same. Now, more to the question that Pram was asking me, what now? Well, from our point of view, a robin administration would have been a reversal of some of these positive aspects. So from the Cuban point of view, I'll be honest with you, it's the lesser of two evils. So you would have voted for Obama. I had to vote for Obama. So because at least you see there's a style of school. There's less tension in terms of statements by both governments accusing accusations. There's less of this kind of confrontational rhetoric. There is a possibility of people like me coming here during the Bush administration they wouldn't give me a visa. I've come back to the United States since 2009 six times, invited by American universities to do work here, research here, and I think that's a good thing. So in other words, now Obama on the second term, he's able to do several things, but the problem is that there is a law passed in 1996 which is the law of the land, the Helmsburden Act of 1996, which prohibits any rapprochement with the Cuban government. Obama can't suspend the legislations, but cannot do any significant transformations because the law of the United States is that the embargo is the policy of the United States, that the confrontation with Cuba is a policy of the United States, that as long as there is a Castro in a government of Cuba, there's no talking with the Cuban government. That is the law that Americans cannot travel to Cuba. Those who if you can travel, travel on a specific license, which means that the administration using their executive powers suspends the application of the law, but the law still there is still illegal for American citizens to go to Cuba. The only country in the world that is, which Americans are not allowed to travel, you're allowed to travel to Iran and to North Korea, but to Cuba, you're not allowed to travel. Think of this. So Obama and the second administration could do more. There's also some groups in Congress which would like to change that law, but you know better than I do how difficult to change a law in this country. So we'll have to see how it plays out and how it starts. One good thing is that when the right wing Republicans try to restate the provisions of the Cuban's travel last year in June, the administration say no. So that's, again for us, it's status quo. It's something that will remain the way it is, which is hopefully he could do more. Is there any, we've answered that very thoroughly, but is there any one particular act that you think Obama could do that would signal a change? No, again. Well, one thing that Obama could do, the administration, they could take you out of the terrorist list. That is something that doesn't need executive legislation. So taking you out of the terrorist list would be something that the administration could do because it would signal a change in policy. They could do that. It's just a State Department thing. So that could be something that the administration, even without changing the health burden bill, they could change that because, again, all the evidence points that it is wrong to have Cuba there. Even, I don't know if you followed the latest news. One of the things that the administration uses to have Cuba as part of the terrorist countries is that Cuba helps the Colombian rebels. Well, actually Cuba's mediating in the Colombian government has acknowledged that role. So, again, there's no, not even independent people who say that Cuba is a terrorist. Thank you, Raul. Well, speaking of threats real and perceived, of course, the original idea of this meeting was centered around the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. What do they call it in Cuba? The October Crisis? Yeah, October Crisis. So I was wondering, my story, I always tell to my students is one I gathered from one of Fidel Castro's press say it's a man named Carlos Franke that, you know, so as you all know, the Cuban Missile Crisis is a confrontation over the missiles that are found and U-2 overflights and Kennedy and Khrushchev have a series of negotiations that take part over 12 days in October. And so apparently, according to Franke, Fidel Castro is not a party to these ongoing discussions and supposedly he finds out about the resolution of the crisis when Franke goes to a teletype machine, sees a wire story from the AP that says the crisis has been resolved. According to Franke, Fidel picks up something from a nearby desk and flames it against a mirror, shattering it, leading to, you know, a lessening of the warmth that had existed between the Cuba and the Soviet Union at that time. But anyway, that's a story I tell to my students. I was wondering, I spoke to some students here before you arrived, Raul, and that was on their minds, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And so I was wondering your perspective on how did that crisis affect relations between Cuba and the United States and Cuba and the Soviet Union. Have there been any new revelations in the Cuban archives or elsewhere that you're aware of that would be important to shed light on? Well, again, this is another question that will keep us here until 10 a.m. tomorrow. I will say 10 p.m. But anyway, no, this is a very interesting question. It is true about the Missile Crisis, you have books, films, you name it. You have scholars that have devoted a career to the Missile Crisis, so it's a very complex thing. Now, the point that Frank is addressing is very interesting because it speaks into the role of Cuba in the Missile Crisis, which in many ways have been not very well documented because it's always been seen as Soviet Union and the United States, the two superpowers. That account that Frank has mentioned even led to many speculations of how Fidel didn't want the crisis to be resolved, that he would have done something else. The truth of the matter is that, and it's being seen now in some recent revelations from the National Security Archives, the papers by Robert F. Kennedy have been released just last month about the feeling in Fidel Castro and the Cuban leadership was that Cuba could have got more out of the crisis in terms of the negotiation, that the Soviets accepted the solution without speaking with Cuba and they agreed with the United States and let the Cuban government in the dust. Cuba would have got more if the negotiation would have included the three countries. One of the things that the Cuban government wondered was that the United States would get out of one tunnel, for example. So by that image, that account of Fidel Castro getting mad at here and that the Soviets had reached a deal, he was not mad because the world was saved from nuclear disaster. He was mad because the Soviets and the Americans had reached an agreement without talking to Cuba, which in the end would have been the most devastated country in that crisis. So that's why he was mad about that and now the new revelations that we had really give him some reason because in the new documents you see that John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were ready to work out a political solution to the crisis and to give more to Cuba in that sense. So from the Cuban point of view, that solution of not speaking to Cuba, it's not because the Cubans were mad that the world was saved from nuclear disaster, is that the agreement was reached by the two superpowers and they turned them back on Cuba, who was in the end, the country would have been more affected and also the country could, in this whole crisis, they could have had more negotiating leverage. For example, getting one tunnel way back or the other thing that the Cuban government got out of the missile crisis in that respect was a handshake agreement. I understand that in the Anglo-Saxon world, a handshake agreement means a lot, but once Kennedy's dead, where is the handshake there? What do you mean a handshake agreement? Yeah, a handshake agreement meaning that essentially a promise that the United States would not invade Cuba because when you look back at the missile crisis, the reason why the missiles were there is not because Cuba wanted to have played the nuclear power, it's because since 1961, at the end of the biopedics, there was a whole operation put on by the United States government called Maingus operation, which is the most thorough operation ever put in place by any country against another country to destroy that government. Assassination attempts, promotion of internal suppression and creating the conditions for another invasions. And in Cuba, the leadership knew that the United States had failed one the first time. The second time, there were none failed. If the first time Kennedy hesitated to send in aerial support and send in a bigger force, a second time, with the conditions created, they were not going to hesitate. They were going to send the whole full force of the American invasion and that was going to be a terrible disaster for the whole of the island. So they knew that that was not going to be a second time and that in some ways led the Cuban government to accept the missile as a deterrent for a possible U.S. occupation. Do you have any, do you lend any credence to some of the reports that have come out of the Soviet archives that suggest that Fidel Castro was willing to sacrifice Cuba for the greater good of socialism and in a nuclear confrontation with the United States? Absolutely no, I don't see that in any way. The most, the biggest part of that in terms of what to go back and say, the Soviets didn't know anything about Latin America and about the Caribbean in 1961. It was the beginning and Cuba in some ways was an open door to a, in a world of East and West. So that in some ways, I don't see how the Cuban leadership would have put Cuba in a position to be obliterated by a nuclear strike just because they wanted to play that card. I can't, something that even in the Soviet archives, I would not accept. Thank you. So one of the main, so of course I have, in fact, this semester I'm teaching two classes on the history of Cuba. I have 50 students right now. And so the first question I'm always asked, or one of them, is Cuba's human rights violations. This comes up almost right away, first day of class. And so I'm wondering your thoughts on that. There have been a series of recent reports, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Docking Rights Series of Abuses in Cuba. We, I ask my students always to read over two different internet sites, Grandma, G-R-A-N-M-A, which is the Cuban national newspaper, and Generation Y, which is a blog by a dissident blogger by the name of Ioannis Sanchez. So anyway, Ioannis Sanchez following up on that was recently arrested on the way to cover a trial in Eastern Cuba. So I guess I know how I answer the question of my students, but I'm wondering what is the approach that Cuba has towards political dissidents, and what are your thoughts on these reports of human rights violations in Cuba? In the first place, the way it is perceived in Cuba and from the Cuban side, there are different ways of looking at it. First, the concept of human rights, which is in many ways includes, from the Cuban perspective, not only civil political rights, but also includes social and economic rights. That is a whole debate that we could have in another time. It's a long debate. The other is that based on that conception, since Cuba is in a particular position, which is in a confrontation with another country, a confrontation which is not any other country. It happens to be the most powerful country in the world, which is bent on literally creating, in many ways, the process that is going on in Cuba. The perception on the Cuban side, and in many of the sectors of the Cuban government, is that this human rights campaign is even a way to signal out Cuba as a human rights violator and excessively putting the reason or justifying the reason for the confrontation on the basis of that human rights issues, which is inconsistent because the United States has relationships with countries and have had relationships with countries that have far worse human rights than Cuba. In the 70s and 80s, when I went that far, there was another time in the world, but the United States supported dictatorships in Latin America that committed atrocities and death quads and many things, and were good friends with the United States. But let's even look at that. Let's look at the current. China and Vietnam have also problems with limitations on civil and political rights, and the United States is a very good friend of China and Vietnam. The United States is very good friends of Saudi Arabia, where women are next to nothing, and Pakistan with a shattered girl in the head for advocating women's rights. So the perception in Cuba is that this is a campaign that is orchestrated from abroad to justify some sort of policy of destabilization, and that is how the Cuban government reacts to that. So I'm not going to say that there may be some issues in terms of limitations of civil and political right to Cuba. But the question is, are you going to play into that campaign or not? Everybody has the right to express their opinion. And Yoani, who publishes her blog, her blog is on the internet. She gets arrested because she's going to cover a trial. She's not a journalist. She doesn't have to cover a trial. But she decides to go. So there are many issues around that which make it a very complex situation. In terms of if you ask me objectively, there are limitations to civil and political rights in Cuba, there are. But I would also agree, I'll add that this is because the special situation in this country is vis-a-vis in a confrontation with the superpower that is bent on reforming and using those issues as excuses to justify a policy of aggression. So is that that simple to say that there are limitations? Yes, there are objectively. But for example, I would not do what Yoani does because of my own beliefs and my own. I think that in my own personal opinion, she's not doing any service to Cuba. She really cares about Cuba. She's just tweeting out whatever she sees in the Cuban reality. Anybody could do that. Any of you could come on and start tweeting out and say, I saw a homeless in Broad Street. I saw this. I saw that. That doesn't do any service to Cuba and the cause of Cuba's national independence and sovereignty. So she chose, she chooses to do that. Okay. I wouldn't do it myself. Would you like me to leave about 20 minutes for questions? Yeah, that's for exactly what I was going. Yes. Yes, I wanted to ask you, so big news in Cuba is, you know, the traumatic changes underway in terms of the Cuban economy. And we spoke a lot about this on our trips to Cuba. Recently, earlier this year, there was a union of self-employed workers established. And the latest reports I have read only a year, I'm sure more up on this than I am, but President Castro says that they plan to lay off about one million state workers sometime between now and March or so. So I guess the whole idea is to spark entrepreneurship and private businesses, and so forth. So how would you assess role at this point, efforts to interject market forces into the Cuban economy? And how do you see that? Where do you see that going? Each question is a whole You want to come tomorrow, right? Professor, professor, I can just do so much here. We want to come tomorrow, right? Each question you could sit on for a long time. Again, I'll try to answer that in a short way with the it's a very complex thing. At times, you know, thinking of this, when people look at Cuba is, and I apologize for this phrase, damn, if you do that, damn if you don't, is that now the Cuban government is trying to reform is trying to change. For many years, the overall idea has been the socialist in some ways, in my way, dogmatic to see things in the working class. And the working class got to power. Other problems have solved. There's no gender. There's no race. There's no religion. There's no immigration. Well, the Cuban government is now changing that. And the Cuban government is reforming its relationship with its immigration. It's reforming its immigration, its relationship. There's much more space in Cuba for gender issues. There's a gay pride parade in Havana, which is unthinkable or heard of. Because, you know, socialist revolutionaries are macho. Oh, no, it's true. So in the economy, there are some changes because there's acknowledgement that the almighty state cannot control everything. That the state needs to open up spaces for self-employment, for small cooperatives, for ways of getting an incentive for human ingenuity, and many other ways. And that is what is happening. Of course, in the conscious of Cuba, a strong state, I laugh because you see the right wing press here calling Obama a socialist. Well, you don't know what socialism is. So if Obama in Cuba, the Cuban conscious will be like a strong capitalist. So Cuba's moving from a strong centralized command economy in the same way that in the 70s and 80s, the Soviet Union was, to a more decentralized economy in which the state takes care of the commanding heights, but leaves room for foreign direct investment, for small cooperatives, for small businesses, restaurants, taxi drivers, which is something that everybody was demanding and something that is seen as the way to go forward. In the same way, is there's more, much more space for gender issues, discussions, there's much more space. Now they just have just issued a new executive order, so to speak, that reforms the relationship with the immigration. In the time that in the early 60s, when people left Cuba, they have to leave their house. Now you leave Cuba, you will lose your house. Now you can be out of Cuba for two years and come back. Now you don't need an exit visa to get out of Cuba. So things are changing in Cuba, changing to the demands of Cuba and changing to the demands of the population of Cuba. In my view, from the demands of the people who live in Cuba, who ultimately are the ones who have to decide. Speaking to the, I'm not an economist, so I probably dodged that. But essentially, in terms of the economy, there are two bad news, two pieces of news. Oil, three attempts, came out dry and sandy. This is one thing we share. We're so close that we share hurricanes. So sandy also hit Cuba with an added force and there's a lot of damage in the part of Cuba, not sandy. So those are two pieces of bad news for Cuba. When you say that they may not, the audience may not be aware of what you mean by the three times and no oil. Okay. In the last 10 years, there was been a good chunk of investment in the northern part of Cuba for offshore oil, drilling for offshore oil. All the surveys and all the studies said that there was oil and there is oil. But everybody, all three attempts at trying to get that oil, they've come up saying that it's too deep and it's not in a way that is profitable for commercial reasons. So you have to invest too much to bring it out and it's not profitable. So probably we need to get the bottle of oil $200 to make that work. So in other words, three attempts, one by a Spanish company, one by a consortion of Russian and other companies, and one by Venezuelans, by Pedebeza from Venezuela. They even brought an oil rig to do that. And the three times they've come up trying. I mean, not with the proper. So that's not very good news in that sense. And the other bad news is Sandy, which really had a very big damage in Cuba. So in terms of what is happening, the press tends to say, well, a million people will be laid off. It has been a whole movement in Cuba to try to reform that. I know it's difficult. A person who's worked behind the desk at an office for 30 years at a government ministry saying, you're not going to work there before you have to go and get on a hot dog stand. That's tough. That's not so it's not easy in Cuba, where you have a government that's always told you that they will give you at least the basics. And there's an egalitarian society. So there's a lot of conflict around that. And it's a complex moment in which this aspect has to be done in a very slowly. The Cuban president, my namesake, Raúl Castro, has a saying that in Spanish is goes sin prisa, pero sin pausa, which for me is very telling. No rush, but no stopping. So we're not going to rush and do things that may get out of hand and may create social unrest. And we are going to do things step by step, generating support in the majority of the population, generating political support, and explaining that they need to do things. But we're not stopping. Not stopping to towards a model that would be economically sustainable. Cuba is a small country, a country without resources. We have no oil, we have just discovered. We have no big resources, just sun, beaches, and a highly educated population. You have to work out a way to make work that to your advantage. So in terms of the economy, many things are happening. But at the level of small and medium enterprises, cooperatives, and small property. So that it's what's what, but you need time to transform that. And the mindset, also the bureaucracy, it's also a big thing. Just to follow up on Raúl's point, we were reading an article in grandma in my class. And Raúl's namesake went to visit Santiago de Cuba, which is in the eastern part of the island. And the estimate was that about 15,000 homes were destroyed. So just to buy Sandy, just to put in perspective what Cubans are going through. All right, well, I see from the clock that we have, we need to turn it over to all of you for any questions you might have. So Joe, do you want to feel them? Or do you want me to? Great. Okay, does anyone have a question? Yes. The death of Castro and are there any political forces that are operating in Cuba now other than which Castro because you think of them both as equal brother? They're not equal. That's one of the things. They're not the same. What if you look at Cuba since 2008, all the things that have happened in Cuba, it tells you that they're not the same. I mean, basically, yes, basically, they are strong nationalists. But they're not the same in their methods. They're not the same in the way they operate. And they're not the same in many ways. Fidel Castro is a historical leader of the Cuban Revolution. But I will even go beyond the question for Cuba is not about the Castro. The question for Cuba is about the whole generation of Cubans who took it upon themselves to change Cuba. To take Cuba out of that pattern that I was thinking, saying at the beginning, to take Cuba out of a pattern of a subservient, political client state to the of the United States, and a dependent economy and set Cuba on a path of socioeconomic development and social justice. That was their idea. And it's a whole generation. For that, they've worked for 50 years. And within Cuba, they still have, in my view, an aura of founding fathers of they have like an extra legitimacy, political legitimacy within the Cuban population. So the question for Cuba is, once that generation is gone, in the next five to 10 years, because they all are in their 80s, what's next? So that's why some of the things that are happening now, like I was saying earlier, to reorganize Cuba's relationship with this diaspora, to open up to a more democratic society without that socialist dogma of the workers are in power, the proletarians in power and everything is solved. The society is much more complex than that. So Cuba needs to move more towards a more, what I would call socialist democracy, in which people feel there are more enfranchised and participate more and everything is not directed from the top by these leaderships, these founding fathers. So Cuba is at a point in moving from that stage to the next, which is very difficult. If you ask me, then I would, what would I wish? That's the only thing I could say. I wish that this 50 some years or this 60 years, whatever happens when that generation is out there, had left behind at least at least some important pillars upon which the Cuban society and nation can build on towards a independent, essentially, and a nation with social justice and many of the things that have been achieved over this last 50 years, that not everything is lost. That's what I would like to say. Whether it happens, I don't know. I would do my best for that to happen. Sir, in the second row, you had your hand up? Sir, in the back. Yeah, in a recent visit, Professor, I guess last spring, I was pleased that so many things that went well in the 50 years of Cuba's revolution and struggle for independence, your educational system, your medical system. But there were obviously incongruities for a planned economy. And the biggest one in my mind was that a country that had a very arable land was importing 80% of its food. And it seems to me that a planned economy, a top down system can say, Excuse me, but you'll be a farmer, you'll be a farmer, you know, we will not waste our natural or our national debt. It should be adversely impacted by having to import so much food. Is there any reason why there was that you know of? Because it was a badly planned economy. I'm sorry. It was a badly planned economy. Oh, okay. But I mean, it's such an obvious, absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the things that that has been part of this current reforms is in the first place, to give more land to the people who are willing to work. There's also one thing that happened in Cuba, which is on the novel. There is something about underdevelopment, that when the big cities are the places where all the jobs are, it happens in many Latin American countries in many underdeveloped countries. So what happened in the Cuban countryside in many ways that it was people had the opportunity to go to go to university and study, and they started leaving the farm. And then after you have a degree at the university, you don't want to go back to the farm. Then what do you do? You have a lot of engineers that don't want to go back to the farm. And that happens in many countries of the world. We have a lot of that in the heartland of America. But what happens here is that you have another technology that can make up for that. We don't have that. So that is one phenomenon that happened in Cuba that in the 70s and 80s, there was a lot of opportunities for people to study. And a lot of young kids left the farm and went to the cities to study and they didn't come back. Now there's the whole movement to try to bring people back to the countryside to work the land and give them more land to those who want to work for that and give them more private incentive to work in that sense. There's a whole movement that I eventually would start with cooperatives in the farm. Now, for example, cooperative farmers can sell directly to the sector, which was not there before. You know, even before that, if you were in Cuba, those problems, problems getting mint for the mojitos. Mint leaves for the drinks. In any corner, you open up a tap dripping and put few mint leaves and you grow. So that's easy. Now, but you know what? Because the farmers had to sell to a state enterprise and the state enterprise would sell to the hotel. Now they just cut that state middleman and now the hotel can have a contract directly with the farm saying, I'm going to buy you pineapples, tomatoes and mint and whatever straight from for the farm. So those are the things that are happening in in that's why in some ways, the state in Cuba is rolling back. In your context, that's unthinkable because state here is already rollback. I say Obama speaks about regulation and you'll tell it's a socialist that you're not you but the press. So this gentleman here in the second row. In addition to taking Cuba off of the terrorist list, what what specifically can the United States to encourage you to come back into the community of more democratized nations? Well, I said take care of the terrorist list because that's a simple thing. The other would be just lift the embargo. Because one of the issues that one of the things that they can certainly say is that the press Castro blames of the Castro so the Cuban government blames the embargo for the Cuba's problems. That that. Well, if that's the case, just leave the embargo and then the given government will have no more justification. Call their bluff. They wouldn't do it. So what what when I say taking care of the terrorist list is because in my view, that's the easiest thing to do. The other things are too complex because to change the policy. In the first place, you would have to recognize that the Cuban government is a legitimate government. The United States government would not speak to the Cuban government. You know, after September 11, the Cuban government offered help open up the airports. The same day, even let the detainees coming from from Afghanistan to fly over Cuba aerospace, something that and landing one time accepting that when the Bush administration acknowledged the governments didn't acknowledge the Cuban government, they sent a note acknowledging that Cuba had helped. So one of the things that happens in the United States, I'll give you another example. Today, the Cuban Coast Guard and the American Coast Guard are cooperating. It's something good because they work in drug introduction. They work in many things in the Caribbean Sea that is of mutual concern for both countries as neighbors. But you know what the Cuban government has proposed to sign something, they wouldn't sign it. It is operational cooperation. It's happening. Why do you sit down and say, okay, it's actually happening. It's good for both countries. Why don't we just create, send a group of experts from both countries, sit down and sign a treaty that allows both Coast Guards cooperating a framework of that. Because by doing that, they are acknowledging the legitimate Cuban government. So they wouldn't do it. There's cooperation in hurricane tracking. There's no reason why we should not tell Florida, there's a hurricane going your way. There's no reason why Florida could not tell us, there's a hurricane going your way, right? There's cooperation. But there's nothing that you see that is operational cooperation, which again, is better than nothing. I would applaud that. I would be happy that that continues. I'm not advocating for them to stop. Let them go on. But when you say operational cooperation means it's happening around Guantanamo. In the first place, Guantanamo, Obama said it was going to close Guantanamo. Why didn't he close that? And turn that back to the Cubans. Guantanamo has no... It was going to close the prison. Yeah. But okay, okay, okay. Guantanamo today has no real work value for the United States Army. Guantanamo was a naval and cooling station at the time when the Navy was the most important thing. Today you have drones and F-35s. You don't need Guantanamo. So you can just give Guantanamo back, right? Take them. I don't know they have there. We don't want them. And give us Guantanamo back. It's actually McDonald's human territory. I want Guantanamo back. You bring them back and leave us Guantanamo. That would be a good gesture because Guantanamo, the Pentagon doesn't need Guantanamo for anything. So that would be something else if they could do it. Gentlemen, the gentleman in the first row, you had a question, right? Once a vision question is a vision going fast forward 10 years from now. Oh, boy. Where do you see? I'm assuming the cash periods will not still be alive. But where do you see the relations with Cuba in the US and Cuba's role with the whole continent with Brazil and Argentina, the Brit, you know, Chile. And the other thing is how does the infrastructure, I've heard things from people travel. There's been a lot of advancements in Cuba, but there's a lot of infrastructure problems with plumbing and things like that. I'll start from the back. Okay. A country in an economic crisis. We've gone through different moments and different problems. There is huge infrastructure problems in Cuba. There's a lot of need of cement, paint, pipes, and all that stuff. Like there's a lead or other things, because Cuba's a country that's gone through an economic crisis, essentially, since 1991. The second question. How do I see that? South America and America is moving in a very interesting way. Yeah, there's a shade of left leading governments starting from Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, maybe move a little more to Brazil and Argentina. And there is an interesting movement in the sense that they're moving towards a stronger state within a market economy. And Cuba, in some ways, is moving in the same direction. Not that Cuba is going to do the same thing, but every country. And it comes to the realization that in today's economy, governments need to play a bigger role. Brazil has come out of the leading power in Latin America. Brazil and Cuba have very good relationship. Brazil is investing, I would say, very well in Cuba, in infrastructure. With the Brazilians, the Brazilian company is building a port. And your port is West Havana. And they just announced that they're going to invest in sugar mill. Cuba's sugar industry has been declining for the last 10 years. And with Brazilian investment, it's a good recovery in plan. And you may even be speaking about Cuba producing ethanol. So that is... And the challenge for Cuba is to diversify its trading partners. More in Latin America, but also with Russia, China, and create other partners in the world. I think that the situation for Cuba in Latin America today is the best ever. Cuba has a relationship with all 34 countries of the Americas, except with, you know who. So everybody else has his friends with us, except the big guy in the neighborhood. Eventually, you saw that at the Cartagena Summit, that the only country that... Well, in Canada, but Canada in some ways is your little buddy, in many ways, in foreign policy. But every other country, even from the next summit of the Americas in Panama, everybody said, if Cuba is not included, no more summits. This is a precedent. So there's a movement towards the inclusion of Cuba in the hemisphere. And the hemisphere is changing. It is a think of that Cuba would be voted to be accepted back in the OAS. Not that Cuba wants to, but majority of Cubans, of countries in the hemisphere say, who would like Cuba to come back to the OAS? Cuba is a member of the real treaty, again, and there are many, many, many aspects that are moving in that direction. So Cuba, in its foreign affairs with Latin America, is in the best position. And eventually, this administration would have to look at that and try to... The problem is that Cuba is not a priority for this administration. It's the Middle East. Latin America is not a priority in that sense. Janet, did you have a question? I'd like to go back. If you could buy things from other countries. Okay. Janet wanted to talk more about the embargo, and she wanted some clarification about a point Raoul made earlier about ING, a bank being punished for transactions. I guess something to do with Cuba. Well, according to the government accountability office, the embargo of Cuba by the United States is the most comprehensive set of sanctions ever imposed on any country in the history of the world. You can look that up. G-A-O, government accountability office. They put out a report with all the details. Having said that, the problem with the embargo, that we call blockade, by the way, we know that in English blockade means having actual ships there, but in Spanish it doesn't mean that, so we still say blockade. The problem with that, the United States has the right to... Not to trade with another country. It's a sovereign right of any nation to say, I'm not going to trade with you. That's fine. The problem is the extraterritorial implications and the ING banks as an example. The country, the ING bank did transactions with Cuba, but since Cuba is on the terrorist list, that was subject to penalization by the United States government. But there's more. And there are many examples of how the extraterritorial implications of the embargo affect Cuba, make prices higher, make things more difficult, make... I'll give you an example. The Cuba public health sector buys MRI equipment, 20, put in different hospitals, from a Swedish company. Okay, no problem. The MRI come. The Swedish company the next six months gets into a deal with an American company or starts incorporating American patents in their thing. The Americans turn around and say, you cannot continue to deal with Cuba. So all those MRI equipment that you bought six months ago, start breaking down. When you turn down to the Swedish they say, sorry, we're going to give you more, more spare parts, no more. So what do you do with those 20 MRI equipment? Let it run in a corner. Yeah, counts of examples of moments of that in which Cuba has traded with another country and by... I'll give you an example of tourism. Not that we want cruise ships, but there was a company of a cruise company doing tours to Cuba. That company was bought or had to get into a merger with Carnival Cruises. No more going to Cuba. And the worst example, a Cuban kid gets a award from UNESCO on a photography contest. Ten kids from all over the world get that one as Cuban. The award is an icon camera. All the nine kids get the camera. The Cuban kid cannot get the camera because the icon says they cannot give the camera to Cuba because we're violating the embargo. So that is symbolic. I mean, I'm not worried you'll get into a lot of drama here. It's symbolic. But it tells you how it goes to the... that even companies before the Cuban would say, how this is going to affect our trade with the United States. So it makes things more expensive, more complicated, and more difficult. So the extraterritorial implications is what really affects in that sense. Is it a federal law of the United States? Yes. It's a law of the United States that there is an embargo in Cuba. It started with the 1917 Trade with the Enemy Act. No, it's that you force that company not to continue to deal with Cuba. Because they violate the laws of the embargo. That's what I didn't quite understand. One last example, which maybe moves you to laughter. In Port of Spain, there's a summit of the Caribbean Heads of States. It's going to be held at the Hilton in Port of Spain. Barbados. Trinidad. Trinidad. It's a summit of Caribbean Heads of States. At the Hilton in Port of Spain in Trinidad. Hilton turns around and says, we cannot host the Cuban president. I mean, that's not important. The Cuban president can go to another hotel. But the symbolism of that, I mean, they say, every other head of state is welcome except the Cuban. So gentlemen, there in the back, do you have your headphones? Yeah, I'm just curious. We're talking about, you know, the changes that would have to occur here to normalize. I'm wondering if Cuba, if Cuba is ready for, if we were suddenly to have a complete change, you know, if Cuba, the culture, the political culture, is ready for normalization or is there any anxiety about what it would be like if Baby U decided to want to come to the table? Well, it depends on which way you want to look at it. I mean, do you want ten carnival bruises showing up in, I mean, in other words, I see... No, no, no, no, I understand what you're saying. There are different ways of answering that question. One is how I would answer it. I think that Cuba and the United States are close geographically and Cuba needs to be able to exist as an independent nation with a normal relationship with the United States. Period. If not, we never have the right to exist as a nation. So, having said that, the question for the Cuban government would be how to manage that relation in a way that is beneficial to the nation and the country and the majority of Cubans. The problems for many of the Latin American countries is that a small group of people take advantage of that relationship. The problem for Cuba before 1959 was that a small group of Cubans took advantage of that relationship. The wealthy sugar mill owners and a middle class in Havana that benefited from that relationship and that kind of relationship, that kind of contact would not spread to the majority of the Cubans. That's what happened in Central America and in many countries that a small group of world to do Latin American who benefit from a close relationship with the United States, how do you explain that the countries who were against the free trade for the Americas, the FTAA were the bigger countries because their national let's use the term bourgeoisie would say, no way we cannot go into that. But the Salvador say, yeah, we don't have any families in the country and of course we want to sell the bananas and the rest of the Salvadorans are in the dust. So for a country like Cuba would be about a government or a leadership in whatever government that puts the interest of the majority of Cubans first and say, yes you want to invest in biotechnology alright you want to have a joint venture and this and that Cuba has relations with every other country with Canadian companies, with French companies who they invest in Cuba the question will be how to manage that opening which is the best interest of Cuba, not the best interest of the multinational corporations I know that's a big challenge that's a big question I hope that the future government of Cuba can do that for the benefit of the majority of Cubans if not will it become an Arabian hotspot Are there any other questions from the audience? Yes, Denise Can you give us an update on the Cuban Five and the American being held by the government? The question was an update, Denise asked about an update on the Cuban Five for those of you who are unaware of the Cuban Five, there are banners and posters of them all over Cuba and they were arrested in the mid-1990s for spying on the United States and admitted as much in court and have been held for about 15 years I think one of them is on parole and so President Rold Castro has spoken frequently about freeing them and then you asked about Alan Gross and then a few years ago I forget if it's 2007-2008 a US contractor went down and visited a synagogue in Havana and he brought down equipment that was prohibited I think it was satellite equipment or something to that effect he was tried for espionage in Cuba and convicted a few years ago and is now in jail there Obama during the presidential race gave an interview on Spanish language television in which he says that unless this Alan Gross case is resolved it will be very hard to bring the two the relationship between the two countries and even footing there have been some suggestions that Rold Castro is trying to arrange suggestions by several senators who visited there earlier this year a prisoner swap between the Cuban Five and Alan Gross that's just a little bit of context so Rold so you all know what the issues are behind that question well again you're ready to be here until 10 first on the Cuban Five the Cuban Five were or are Cuban intelligence officers who came to the United States as many Cubans come as posing as political refugees and they penetrated the organizations in South Florida that for 50 years have been doing terrorists attacks and organizing violent actions against Cuba with the consent or with the looking to the other side of the American government what they did was to convey those organizations and to pass information to Cuba about the actions of those organizations who were organizations organized by Cubans who are trying to organize terrorist acts and acts of violence against Cuba which the United States did not prevent for 50 years they were tried in Miami in a political environment where judges would not do other than accept whatever happened and they were convicted of excessive sentences one of them has two lives plus 15 years for crimes which are not espionage and they are in jail on different topics one of them has already fulfilled his sentence but he had three years in parol one of the big issues here is that if he already spent 13 years here he had three more years to go on house arrest or supervised freedom or whatever they want to call it but if he is in danger to US national security he is in Cuba why they just want to force the man to stay here three more years if he is a threat to you have a new territory send him out they wouldn't mess with him now the Alan Gross case is a different case what I say is a different case is because Alan Gross had a contract from the United States government from USAID which if you go into the USAID website they dedicate 20 million dollars to do actions that support the Cuban government Alan Gross accepted a contract from USAID went to Cuba knowing that he was sent by the United States government to do actions that were not legal in Cuba and are legal in the United States and he was tried for that the Jewish community in Cuba which is very small by the way has already internet access they did not need Mr. Gross's equipment and what the Cuban government has said is that the Cuban government is ready to negotiate a humanitarian solution to Alan Gross even to send him back if the United States would be willing to sit down and in the first place acknowledge that Alan Gross is not a poor well-intentioned activist that he is a person that was doing the task of the American government to subvert the Cuban government but the United States government would not accept that if you look up recently Judy Gross his wife was in Cuba he was in Cuba and the problem with Alan Gross is just that that he went to Cuba knowing that he was doing illegal things that he was doing the job of the American government to do things that would subvert the Cuban government and of course this is a broader picture in that sense and what the Cuban government has said is that let's sit down and talk and start by acknowledging that you send him down to do things that are not proper that are aimed at subverting the status the situation and then we can talk about humanitarian but the United States government continues to say Alan Gross is an innocent Jewish they even try to make it a Jewish issue and the Jewish American community say no we don't want anything and they send him down and they would not acknowledge so that's the reason why it's still and the other question is that President Obama saying until there's a solution to Alan Gross there's no movement let me tell you something the United States policy towards Cuba for the last 50 years have been moving the goalposts so the Cuban government would not take that in the 1960s Cuba was an exporting revolution and they say if you stop that we can talk in the 1970s Cuba sent troops to Angola and Ethiopia and was doing if you stop that we can talk in the 1980s Cuba was helping the Nicaraguans and the Salvadorans and Cuba was the source behind the Central American problems if you stop that we can talk in the 1990s the Cold War is over Cuba's not exporting revolution to any country because there's nothing to export there's no Central America there's no Africa there's no Che Guevara there's no Communism his t-shirts are still all over but Cuba's not a threat to the United States so what's the problem now the problem is what I started out saying is that for the United States it's unacceptable that the Cuban government tries to chart a different path tries to do something that stays out of the American conception for this hemisphere that's my personal opinion full circle I think on behalf of us all we'd really like to thank you Raul and also Frank for your great job moderating we can certainly talk here about this topic and we hope at some point very soon our governments can continue our conversation me too